It's taken 6 years, but finally, one of our favorite Acid Mothers Temple records is available again, with fancy new artwork and lots of extra music!
Originally released as the first (and only) installment in tUMULt's aborted picture disc series, 41st Century Splendid Man still ranks as one of AMT's finest moments as far as we're concerned. This stuff comes from WAY before these Japanese avant-hippy heroes began pumping out a brand new release every few weeks. When this psychbomb dropped, these guys were still cloaked in mystery, some fucked up weirdo psychrock commune whose sound was as mysterious and indescribable as whatever strange corner of the universe these guys and gals called home.
The sound is epic and tripped out and druggy, blown out and blissfully psychedelic, AMT at their absolute prime, and one of the tracks features special guest star Tatsuya Yoshida of the Ruins! The original was three extended tracks (35 + minutes) of ultra divine transcendental psych-drone. "41st Century Splendid Man" has to be the most beautiful track AMT have ever recorded. Uncharacteristically tranquil and captivatingly beautiful. Droning, shimmering chimes coalesce into some sort of cosmic Ur-drone, punctuated by simple caveman thuds and epic swooshes, resulting in a grand and gorgeous ambience! The other two tracks from the original 12", "Genesis Of Humanity" and "Dalai Gama", are almost like a single track separated into two movements. The first sees AMT back on more familiar ground, with swooping synths and freak out guitar. A stumbling kosmic krautrock, with motorik rhythms and free guitar, amidst a swampy wash of rumbling low end and squealing synths. The track erupts into bubbling atonal out-rock exploration splattered with mad scientist synthesisers as the whole thing slowly mutates into 'cosmic slop' of the nth degree, becoming gradually free-er and free-er. The second 'movement' is all slithery free jazz with bubbling cauldrons of synth sputter, wild keyboards and Can-like rhythms until the whole thing gets all dreamy, eventually blissing out completely.
For this cd reissue, from Brazilian label Essence, there are two extra tracks tacked on that perfectly compliment the three originals. The cd opener, "Ruck Zuck", is an unhinged Hawkwind style heart of the sun, black hole freaked out space jam, a motorik krautrock groove, buried in FX and clouds of shimmer and skree, strange squealing vocals, streaks of feedback and dense swaths of whir and bloop and bleep.
The disc closes with the bizarrely titled "Hell Eskimo Or Polyhedral Mu", a 14 plus minute abstract ambient epic, that twists and contorts, slithers and creeps, beginning as a full on brain melting drug jam eventually transforming into a blissy jazzy post rocky slither that floats hypnotically through glistening clouds of glimmer and shimmer and sparkle, a super nova dappled interstellar drift that sounds a bit like a more damaged psychedelic Necks. Fuck yeah.
Super gorgeous deluxe packaging, a full color Stoughton style paste on gatefold, with the original cover art subtly altered on the cover (sorry, no naked ladies) and some awesome psychedelic liner notes on the inside. And just to avoid any collector confusion, the notes mention the original 41st AMT being a 10", but as mentioned above it was in fact a picture disc 12"! This cd reissue, while not nearly as limited as the 12", is still limited, this time to only 1000 COPIES!
WAY WAY WAY recommended!!
*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert*
Heck, Acid Mothers Temple overload! Essence Music of Brazil has brought us not one but TWO Acid Mothers Temple discs this week: the expanded reissue of 41st Century Splendid Man originally released as a picture disc on Andee's tUMULt label, and also this brand new album. Well AMT fans are always ready for more product, aren't they? Better be! 'Cause the cosmic vibes of which Makoto Kawabata and friends are but the earthly vessels for are not waiting for you to pay off those student loans or get that raise... No, they mean to be heard NOW and probably again next week, even if their devotees need to start selling their plasma to keep up with AMT's releases. If you have to choose between paying the rent and picking up another AMT cd like this one, we're confident you'll make the right choice. And if it makes you feel any better, this IS a pretty great AMT album! Great song titles too, and we're not being sarcastic: "Na Na Hey Hey From The Cosmic Inferno", "Nipples In The Dream Woods", and "Golem Rock" are but three of 'em. These Japanese neo-kraut psychedelic voyagers offer up the jams to go with such titles, that's for sure. If AMT's Electric Heavyland is one of your faves, this ought to be right up your acid rock alley.
The disc opens with the wild, wah-wahed guitar excess of "Ecstasy In Hell" and really never lets up, pounding on through the nearly 19-minute "Nipples...", spacey fx in full effect. A darkly droned-out detour is however taken on the next 17 minute track, "Omen Amen", kind of a ceremonial-sounding, folky trance ritual, followed for the next 13 minutes by the riff-repetition of "Dark Side Of The Apocalypse", sounding something like a hypothetical Hawkwind / Les Rallizes Denudes summit. That brings us to "Golem Rock", a garagey number that cranks up the FUZZ big time. And then "Na Na Hey Hey..." provides a surprisingly quiet, spaced-out, and sorta silly coda to the whole thing, with electronically effected voices chanting you know what...
And this gets extra bonus points for the awesome packaging, the miniature LP-styled gatefold sleeve opening up to reveal a rad pop-up book style gimmick inside!
Recently, we've been marveling at the fact, that otherwise troo, grim, cvlt metalheads, seem to be totally smitten with this new wave of blissed out dreamy, barely metal black metal. Most notably, Alcest, who are more My Bloody Valentine than Burzum, and Alcest mainman Neige's other not very metal project Amesoeurs. Sure that stuff is epic and sweeping and gorgeously gauzy, but it's barely metal, let alone BLACK metal. But here we are, anything from either of those outfits is like black gold to the black metalheads world wide.
Well, if the most recent Alcest had you wondering about the above, then this single will definitely be the true test. We'd been waiting ages for a new Amesoeurs record, the last ep, was an all time favorite around here, still heavy, but also mathy, and post rocky, and pretty damn shoegazey all at once. Well this most recent single, one brand new song, jettisons all traces of metal entirely. The result is pretty great, but it's hard for us to imagine metalheads digging this much. More than metal, it sounds like nineties indie rock, college rock, the female vocals are way up in front, over a jangly guitar, and super sunshiney major key melodies, hard not to think of stuff like Jale, Helium and Scrawl, which is not a bad thing at all, just a not very metal thing. But it's a killer song, and back in the day, these guys would have been huge on Simple Machines or K or one of those labels. Can't wait to hear what they do with the next full length.
The flipside features a band called Valfunde, which is essentially the exact same band, except with the addition of Peste Noire mainman Famine, and he brings a little bit of metal and a whole lot of what the fuck to the proceedings. The first Valfunde track begins much like the Amesoeurs track, strummed clean guitar, a bit of jangle, minor key, but over that, another guitar, super distorted and woozy, spills out a convoluted and stumbling sea sick melody, the sound is maniacal and druggy, almost like someone is constantly and randomly twisting the tuning pegs while the guitar is being played blindfolded. The result is a song that sounds a bit like a funhouse mirror sea shanty, dizzying and completely and awesomely fucked up. The second track is the only sort-of-metal thing going on here, with a midtempo Burzumy buzz, creepy haunted house organ, while the vocals are delivered in a raspy demonic shriek, eventually joined by soaring epic guitar leads, not as damaged as the first track, but still pretty freaky, in that distinctly Peste Noire way.
Good stuff for sure, but metalheads be warned, everyone else, as long as you're up for some weird shit, this might just hit the spot...
What can we say that we haven't already said about this dynamic dronedirgedoom duo? Seriously, have a look at any of the other reviews we've written about The Angelic Process, and see us gush like crazy, what's not to love? Gorgeous swirling black ambience, massive crushing metallic pummel, soaring majestic melodies, the sound somehow heavy and brutal, but washed out and gauzy, a thick My Bloody Valentine haze draped over everything, voices drift amidst the buzz like paper angels dropped into a roaring fire. Everything glistening and sparkling, glimmering and shimmering, then roaring and grinding and washing over you like some suffocating black tide.�
All�of their records are fantastic, each feels and sounds like a continuation of the one before it. As if they were all movements in some metallic black hole symphony, with each record, each movement, offering up its own subtle twist on the AP's black buzzing sound world. This latest might be the most sonically varied of the bunch. It's been out for a while now, but we had been working our way through the older titles first.
The overall sound like the others is warped and warbly, a slow crawl though an alien world, like every note and melody is being twisted and bent, tangled up into shapes that confuse and confound, the distortion so thick and viscous it seems to be able to alter the natural order, to use gravity as just another effect, ton-of-bricks downtuned guitars don't fall forward like an avalanche, they seem to drift like billowy black clouds somehow, slabs of low end fall upward, guitars slither in reverse, vocals twist inside out, a gorgeous multidimensional swirl of sound, that occasionally coalesces into a roiling propulsive thunderstorm of blissed out doom. Songs grow�from whispers into roars, a black doom Godspeed, but the heavy parts aren't just heavy, they're unearthly, unreal, melodies are pulled apart into sparkling notes that spin and soar, dancing atop a churning miasma of crush and crunch. The sound is an impossible blend of light and dark, evil and good, beauty and utter and complete horror. Like Katatonia broadcast through a wall of clothes dryers, doom metal performed by a symphony of leaf blowers tuned to drop-D, pop songs composed using cement mixers filled with gold bricks, a DJ spinning My Bloody Valentine over diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter remixed by Tim Hecker, all nestled amidst dreamy drifts of hushed shimmer and soft focus ambience.
We could go on and on and on and on and on and on.... needless to say, an absolutely essential slab of blissed out dreamdronedoooooooooooooooooooooooooom...
You know we love field recordings and "environmental sounds". And you know we love '80s arcade games (witness the vintage Tron and Rastan machines that now make their home in our shop). So when we found out about these "Aracade Ambiance" discs -- which are exactly what the name implies -- we had to have them, and suspect that more than a few of our customers will want 'em too. There's three volumes in this professionally reproduced cd-r series, 1981, 1983, and 1986. We have all three but thought we'd get more of this first and earliest entry to highlight it on our list, this time.
It's one hour of "authentic" eighties video arcade sounds, what you'd hear if you paid a visit to a busy, bustling arcade back in '81. The blips and beeps and blasts of video violence, memorable musical themes from classic games, some crowd noises and of course the occasional clatter of the coin changer/token machine... it's just like we're ten years old again and skipping school. Those of us of a certain age that is -- some of the staff here at AQ weren't even born back then. Actually I might have been a little older before I spent a lot of time hanging out in the local arcades, as when younger I recall having bad day at the "Pennsylvania Spacetion" when some bullies took my tokens... Anyway if you were shooting aliens and asteroids, running mazes and dodging monsters way back when, this is gonna be a definite nostalgia trip!
We put "authentic" in quotes above 'cause this is actually a bit like the Jurassic Soundscapes cd we highlighted on our last list. The fellow who put these together didn't have the amazing foresight to drag a tape recorder out to a real video arcade back in '81. Nor was he able to convert a Time Pilot game into an actual time machine, though there's a good chance that he's dreamed of such a thing (which he probably wouldn't use to meet Jesus or kill Hitler or buy Google stock but instead to blow quarters at his local long-gone eighties arcade). "Composer" Andy Hoyle (whose face appears on the back cover of these discs, for some reason) wanted to create an background ambient soundscape to help give the impression that when playing retro games on his home console, he was actually in an arcade back in the day. Carefully collaging the musical cues and sound effects from period video games (this '81 set including the likes of Centipede, Asteroids, Gorf, PacMan, Defender, Frogger, Qix, Berzerk, Crazy Climber, Missile Command, Rally X, Space Invaders, Tempest, Galaga, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, and many more) with some more generic sounds recorded in a modern day arcade, Hoyle has artificially (and very convincingly!!) re-created what an arcade in 1981 actually would have sounded like. Not unlike the way field recordist Jean-Luc Herelle enabled us to hear the trompings and trumpetings of the dinosaurs of the Jurassic, 200 million years ago... It's a dense, non-looping, almost-hypnotic soundscape that Hoyle has sampled and sequenced. Heck it IS hypnotic for those of us in love with arcades!
And like we said, we also have copies of Arcade Ambiance '83 and '86 available, they're great too, each one guaranteed to bring back remarkably specific memories to those who wasted afternoons (and many quarters) during the golden age of arcade gaming... you can practically smell the cigarette smoke (that's right, they allowed smoking in arcades, and most machines had burns on 'em from players resting their cigarettes) and bask in the imagined video glow. Good times!
To truly enjoy this dvd, from Fred Armisen, he of Saturday Night Live fame as well as bit parts in numerous funny big time Hollywood movies, and before that the drummer for Trenchmouth (remember them?), you need to either be a drummer, or have seen one of those super cheesy drum instruction videos. Preferably both.
Set up like one of those videos that seem to be playing in a constant loop on the tiny TV set on the counter at Guitar Center, Armisen plays European fusion rock drummer Jens Hannemann, complete with accent, pony tail, soul patch, and sleeveless t-shirt. He performs some awesomely and brutally cheesy fusion jams, with his equally cheesy band, his drumming purposefully unfunky, and retarded. Not bad, just "Advanced" in a way few of us can handle! The songs are so bad, it's almost impossible to sit through them, but it's worth it, as after each track, Hannemann breaks his drum parts down, into totally nonsensical patterns, made up drum techniques, ridiculous time signatures, and he'll play it, then demonstrate it and count it out, then play it again totally different. The he'll play it fast, and then slow again. Hard to explain why it's funny, you really need to have seen some drum videos to get it, but if you have, you will.
The screen is peppered with various bits of useless information (like "0 bpm") and shots of his stumbling double kick work, and of course sweeping shots of his MASSIVE kit (at one point he says "of course, I hope you have 17 toms like me" as he's demonstrating some complex and shitty tribal tom jam).
These bits of drumfoolery are peppered with Armisen's other alterego, an East Coast, journeyman drummer, with a thick accent, who teaches us how to tune a snare, hold you sticks, and of course play a reggae groove. So dumb, and so goddamn funny. Also included are several pages of musical notation, which start out sort of playable, but by the final page, the notes are so dense, it's almost a solid black rectangle or an Asci program gone haywire.
Recommended for EXTREME drum nerds only.
It's that time again, another volume in Astral Social Club's ever expanding self released cd-r series. It's been only a few months since the last one, but who's complaining? If we didn't have to work and do stuff and eat, and all that, we might just spend all our time high as a kite, sprawled out on a big ol' fuzzy sofa, with Astral Social Club blasting through 1000 watt quadraphonic speakers mounted in the ceiling.
But, as it is, we'll just have to make do rocking these cd-r's in our iPods. Which is fine, as this stuff is perfect to drown out daily life, or to fill your head with whirs and buzzes, drone and spaced out psych, to chillout, drift off, or to groove to on some alien dancefloor, or to blast from your strange sleek pod like vehicle as you speed down some alien highway. Neil Campbell, ex-Vibracathedral Orchestra, the man behind ASC, continues to dabble in dance music, as well as spacekraut, taking his usual Sunroof!-ed ragas, into all sorts of new directions. Sure the core of the sound is still the circular looped hypnotic longform drone, but many of the tracks here get twisted into strange mesmerizing rhythms, some bordering on dance grooves, but even at its 'funkiest' it's still blissy and droney and spaced out and druggy. A few of these tracks still show that Campbell can hold his own within the dreamdrone set, offering up transcendental slabs of glistening high end that Sunroof! Or Birchville would love to call their own, but then right after, will come some super minimal percussive flutter, some swirling abstract FX-scape, or some pounding almost house sounding banger. But all filtered through Campbell's uniquely cracked effects-soaked, drug-infused, blissed out, space drone soundworld.
Not one, but TWO new Aidan Baker releases this time around, the reissue of Nadja's out of print cd-r Bliss Torn From Emptiness, and this, an ultra limited live document, of Baker performing in Philadelphia in February of 2007.
A gorgeous set of deep dark ambient drones, minimal, ghostly, haunting, slow building, but never really reaching resolution, instead building all sorts of glorious tension, then slowly fading out again. The opener, is a slowly swirling sea of deep dark tones, almost bell like, but spread out into lugubrious melodies, softly pulsing and gently drifting. The middle two tracks are much less bass heavy, instead offering up hisses and whirs, the creepy exhalations of some old abandoned industrial wasteland, notes and tones and chimes, slowly making their way up from the abyss, through the hazy, gauzey atmosphere, indistinct and blurred, but gradually taking shape, and assembling themselves into almost-melodies.
The final and longest track, begins super spare, long tones, and single notes let loose in an expanse of soft shimmer and lots and lots of space, like someone playing a guitar, in slow motion, miles away, the sounds taking forever to reach the speakers, and once they do, they've degraded and changed, merely shadows of the original sounds they once were. But the track explodes near the end into a glorious polyphonic sonic sunburst, streaks of high end skree shot skyward, the crowd bathed in the white glow of this pulsing, organic, slowly expanding sound. And with all live shows like this, the smattering of applause at the end is so surprising, like there were only maybe 20 people there (which there probably were) as the sound is so massive, it's hard not to imagine that Baker wasn't in some huge cathedral, behind a massive bank of lights and soundmakers, instead of hunched over his gear in some dingy little club.
Recorded by Scott Slimm, who runs the aRCHIVE label (as well as recording many of the live aRCHIVE releases), and gorgeously packaged in an elaborate fold over origami style cardstock sleeve, silkscreened, each one hand numbered, with a full color insert, and of course... LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!
- MPEG stream: One
- MPEG stream: Two
Not sure if a lapsed Jew is anything like a lapsed Catholic. But if it is, I definitely used to live with one. We joked that I was way more of a Jew than he was. I would make matzah brie and matzoh ball soup� OK, well maybe my Jewishness didn't extend much beyond the kitchen, but that was STILL more Jewish than my lapsed housemate.
What's the point of all that? Well, I of course know nothing about Jewish religious music either really, cantors, synagogal religious songs, but I know what I like. And I have been LOVING this collection of old 78s by Yitshak Jacques Zaludkowski, aka Ben Baruch. A two disc set that collects his complete recorded output, originally released as 78 rpm picture discs in 1950 on Saturn Records. Running the gamut from religious, songs -about- religious topics, and songs about the inception of the state of Israel, all sung in Hebrew, Baruch's music is gorgeous and emotive, his voice a lush rich baritone, the music super dramatic and orchestral. Strings swoon beneath Baruch's powerful croon, some folks here thought it sounded like the music in the sad parts of Disney movies, which is not all that far off. His voice actually sounds a bit like Thurl Ravenscroft, who sings the Haunted Mansion song. Operatic and darkly emotional, Baruch weaves dreamy, haunting tableaus, every song sounds like it was pulled from some mysterious old film, jazz, big band, swing, all lushly underpinning Baruch's gorgeous smooth voice. And of course, since they're mastered from old 78's, there's plenty of crackle and pop and tape hiss, wrapped warmly and lovingly around every note. In fact, fans of the recent record of the week Victrola Favorites will probably dig this too! So gorgeous.
Noisemaker Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk label offers us three brand new blasts of delightful noisiness. Two discs of SERIOUS noise from Incapacitants and Hijokaidan, and this one of softer prettier noise, from long time aQ favorite Campbell Kneale, aka Birchville Cat Motel.
And even by BCM standards, Gunpowder Temple of Heaven is pretty pretty noise. One long meditative ur-drone, shimmering, glistening layers of reverberating sound, like Spacemen 3 played Phill Niblock. The sort of dense dronemusic, that becomes alive when listened to closely. The various sounds sprawling and twisting, changing shapes, timbres shifting, overtones beating, subtle rhythms, ghostly melodies, all this going on just below the surface. The surface being long thick, rich tones, each drifting subtly, tonal colors gradually changing.
What begins as soft and shimmery, soon builds to something more gritty and dense, glistening sonic flares smeared into roiling swirls of blinding sound. Eventually, the rough edges are worn away, and the tone becomes more and more pure, smoother and more rich, the sound of organs, and lilting melodies surfacing, the sounds gentler, their interactions with each other more complimentary, soothing, dreamlike, mesmerizing, various notes and tones gradually sloughing off, leaving less and less sound, the drone becoming more fine, more simple, until finally, a single note wavers and then blinks out. Divine!
Super deluxe gorgeous packaging. Gatefold digipak, with thick velvet backing for the cd, and a booklet with an awesome BCM essay from the Dead C's Bruce Russell.
More True Sheffield Black Psychedelia!!! Which is quickly becoming our new favorite microgenre. As the name implies, the sound is black metal, psychedelic, and of course from Sheffield in the UK. Although black and psychedelic only barely scratch the surface of what's going on with these discs. Post rock, blacknoize, krautrock, furious grind, blissed out ambience, hypnorock, all tangled up into fierce blasts of whatthefuck atmospheric heaviness. We've already listed amazing releases from Ice Bound Majesty, Skultroll and a split between Dukkha and Black Vomit (see the reviews on the AQ website for more on Treu Sheffield Black Psychedelia). And we were so smitten with Black Vomit, we figured we'd track down more from them.
So here's another blast of Black Vomit, this time teamed up with the equally distastefully monickered Rape Rack.
Black Vomit start things off with some haunting ambience, that quickly gives way to some crusty fuzzy drone, eventually erupting into some fuzzed out metallic groove, which transforms into some grunting psych power violence, the programmed drums occasionally shorting out DHR style, a blur of garage fuzz pound, murky blackness, and relentless hyperspeed krautrock. After a brief bit of ambience, the band kick out the jams on a super space-y, hyper processed Circle-style jam. Hypnotic, and relentless, the riff wrapped in FX, the drums slipping from motorik pulse to furious blast and back again, over the top, harsh howled demon vox, a weird washed out blackened krautrock, that after another brief bit of drone tranquility explodes into some straight up black buzz. Awesome. Black Vomit are like Immortal's Blizzard Beasts crossed with Circle's Zopalki. We definitely need a full length from these guys.
Rape Rack offer up their own take on black psychedelia, eschewing drums completely, for some intense textural black ambience, rough and gritty, hissy and crumbling, distorted and buzzing, melodies falling to pieces, being sucked under corrosive drones, the 16 minute epic that finishes things off, is smoother than all that, glistening shimmering cavernous expanses of digital buzz smeared into soft streaks of shadowy grey streaks.
Not sure about the last track, it's definitely too heavy and fucked up to be Rape Rack, maybe it's the two bands together, but it's a killer, furious lightspeed buzz, processed and heavily effected, the vocals deranged and over the top, huge echo-y bellows howling in clouds of reverb and delay, threatening to drown out the din below. A furious black coda, that leaves us wanting WAY more.
On their latest album Liferz, Blood On The Wall keep playin' it primal, loose and low slung... y'know, bluesy New York gutter rawk. If you've dug the lanky sounds of Royal Trux and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, you might wanna dig into the raunch of Blood On The Wall.
Wilding In The West, the follow up to his first live record, Summer In The South East, finds Prince Billy with full band at his side as they play lots of material from recent albums The Letting Go and Master And Everyone, recorded at shows throughout California during their 2007 tour. We love when the band gets down and dirty turning the usually quiet and folksy Bonnie Prince Billy into a rugged force to be reckoned with (check out the raw and rocking version of "Master And Everyone"!). A true troubadour and songsmith, Oldham demonstrates once again that his songs can take many different forms and can be interpreted many different ways. Along with some super charged versions of classic BPB songs there's also a really comfortable down home feeling to many of the tracks, letting the band show off their tight chops but play it laid back enough to allow the songs to travel well off the path when needed. This one's a Japanese import (hence the price tag) but luckily there is some cool packaging and photos that along with the great live performance will make bigtime Will Oldham fans want to add this to their collection for sure!
Brown Jenkins sounds like a pretty unlikely name for a black metal band, until you realize it's from an HP Lovecraft story. And the cover is sort of an unlikely image for a black metal record as well, just two hands playing a guitar, against a field of black. But then Dagonite is a very unlikely sounding black metal record.
This one man band from Texas, manages to weave an incredibly drone-y doomy black web, no furious buzzing or relentless blasting. Instead, it's murky and woozy, warbly and dissonant, heavy on the drone and the atmosphere, there are barely any vocals and when they do surface, they are more moans and howls than actual vocals, just another layer of blacknoise. The tempos go from mid, to total doom, but are more complicated than normal, with a bit of mathiness to them, a definite post rock vibe, sometimes the black fog dissipates, allowing the riffs to lock in and actually sort of groove, but even then, it's weirdly haunting and ominous, and not really rocking, more sort of lurching and seasick.
Sometimes Brown Jenkins sounds like Velvet Cacoon slowed waaaay down, at other times they sound like a damaged druggy Ved Buens Ende, lots of loping arpeggiated melodies, and woozy riffage, but even when they're referencing other bands, they sound totally unique, a weird dark, drugged out fucked up black heaviness, as creepy and atmospheric as it is pummeling and relentless. Some sort of blackened slowcore, or post-doom blackness, fuck, who knows what to call it, but whatever it is, it's awesome. One of our favorite black metal (or whatever) records of last year (yeah, we're just getting around to reviewing it now) which will totally whet your appetite for their new record, which should be coming out soon! Can't wait.
Not sure we remember much about Gavin Bryars original Sinking Of The Titanic, or at least past recordings and performances. We do remember digging it. A dark elegiac meditation on the sinking of that ship obviously, but also a musical metaphor for the failure of modern technology, the piece is open, and can be as short as 15 minutes, and as long as an hour plus, lots of low end, Bryars is a bass player after all, lots of samples and spoken text. That is one thing we do remember, that there tended to be way too much sampling and spoken text.
This latest performance, finds Bryars reimagining his pieces with two new collaborators, who help give the piece a whole new sound and feel. One is Italian avant chamber outfit Alter Ego, the other is long time AQ fave Philip Jeck. It's difficult to determine what Alter Ego contribute, much of the atmosphere and ambient sound and classical instrumentation we would assume, but it's not hard at all to hear what Jeck brings to the table, records and record players, hiss and crackle. It's perfect really, his gauzy dusty sonic smears, help transform the piece into a haunting snapshot from the past, an old yellowed newspaper clipping, a faded memory.
Right from the start, the piece begins with a thick layer of staticky crackle, laid over a murky throbbing bass, eventually, the crackles moving to the background, letting the soft drifting passages come to the surface, like sonic glaciers floating on a sea of hiss and fuzz, fragments of melody, and bowed strings lurk just below the surface. There's plenty of text in this version too, samples, sounds, voices, but they too are blurred and smeared and become more like voices from the past, calling out from the beyond, the thoughts and fears of ghosts and spirits. Throughout, the mood and timbre shifts, from deep murky minimalism, to soaring dramatic majesty, always slightly uneasy, subtly ominous, a gorgeously dark and mysterious trip into the past.
Not knowing better, you could definitely mistake this for a new Jeck solo record, a roomful of turntables with records by Arvo Part spinning at 16rpm, but it's more than a sonic collage, The Sinking Of The Titanic is a stunning composition, the melodies and movements, the mood and mystery, carry as much meaning as the players and their sound.
Housed in a deluxe oversized cardstock gatefold, with lots of liner notes in lieu of cover art. Cool.
We'd be hard pressed to think of ANY band that could hold their own on a split record with our very own local noiseniks Burmese. But if anyone can, it's Israeli noise combo Cadaver Eyes.
But first off, holy shit are we psyched to have new music from Burmese. These guys are seriously sloooooow workers. Other than a handful of shows, we've heard nary a peep from these guys, there was the reissue of the tUMULt release on vinyl, but it's literally been years we've been waiting for a new record. Multiple lineup changes, disastrous tours, scrapped recordings, the sort of luck that has plagued these guys forever. But finally, they've beat the curse, and gotten us 11 new blasts of brutal, speaker shredding ultraviolence. Some confusion mix of Whitehouse style abstract noise, pummeling grind, damaged metal, freaked out power violence. They may be down to one drummer, but they still have two bass players, and now THREE vocalists.
They sound as good as ever, still furious and freaked out, sometimes offering up sprawling electronic dronescapes, sometimes, frantic flurries of lightning fast grind, sometimes convoluted lurching metallic crunch, and often all of the above at the same time. Hypnotic and heavy and seriously fucked up. Just another reminder, since they're loath to do it themselves outside of their sporadic releases, that these guys are quite possibly the best band in SF.
But then there's Cadaver Eyes, recorded live on WFMU, using just drums, vocals and no-input mixing board. And listening to this, it seems impossible that there's not two guitarists and multiple drummers and synths and who knows what else. The sound is dense and freaked out. Spastic spurts of strangled grind, long stretches of speaker shredding electronic buzz and skree, long drawn out abstract dronescapes of howling vox and pounding drum plods spaced WAY out, culminating in the nearly eight minute closer, beginning with the strangely titled "Ba Yom Yom" and finishing off with an absolutely unrecognizable cover of "Sweet Home Alabama", a convoluted blow out of maniacally howling vocals, sputtering percussive crunch, LOTS of feedback, and thick walls of rumbling crumbling distortion.
Awesome. And about as UN-easy listening as we can imagine.
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a "drop card", which is a thing that lets you download a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It has been far too long since we've heard from Chessie. Seven years, in fact. And that sabbatical, hibernation, hiatus, or whatever you want to call it is somewhat quizzical, considering that Overnight (the 2001 album in question) had received heaps of acclaim from all across the board. For loyal Aquarius customers who happened to venture in the store around that time, Overnight was on the short list of albums that seemed to be in constant rotation here in the store, alongside the likes of Spoon's Girls Can Tell, the first New Pornographers album, Amon Duul II's Yeti, and the Andrew Chalk / Jonathan Coleclough collaboration Sumac. We have our beloved former co-worker Byram Abbott to thank for getting Overnight under our collective skin. Seven years later, Chessie works their magic once again.
A duo comprised of Stephen Gardner and Ben Bailes, Chessie operates along the borders between digitally crunched electronics and impressionist shoegazing. Gardner began his off-and-on musical career in US shoegazing indie-pop band Lorelei back in the early '90s, with a smattering of impressive singles that clearly formed the foundation for Chessie's chiming guitars grafted into an electronica context. Many of the songs on Manifest enjoy wistfully slow-burning, post-pop crescendos (e.g. Pinback, early Stereolab) as remixed through the fizzing Max/MSP patches of Fennesz. Shuffling motorik breakbeats, pierced bleeps 'n' bloops, blissed-out washes of multi-tracked guitars, and maudlin samples from muted French horns and strings pock the album's varied tracks, with occasionally lulls into hypnotic atmospherics only to snap into some truly memorable pop hooks. Had Chessie decided to incorporate a vocalist, perhaps they might be the next Postal Service; but the more adventurous route of the instrumental better serves Chessie's sensibility. A very highly recommended album, and one which will no doubt be on lost of folks 2008 top ten lists!
It's been over 6 months since Daft Punk played in San Francisco but anyone who was there will never forget it. Daft Punk proved they are one of the greatest live experiences on the planet. From an immaculate trance inducing light show, to a futuristic pyramid shaped console that they were housed in and then of course the loud, supremely danceable songs that they blasted through the amphitheater as thousands of people grinning wildly, completely let themselves go, dancing with ecstasy and an adrenalized joy that we rarely ever get to experience. Alive 2007 captures that show (and that recent tour) perfectly. It's pretty much the same set they played here as they morph many of their songs into one new track which gives a new life to many of their already well known songs from their three albums.
We're sure that at least one Daft Punk record has found its way into your subconscious (Discovery will always be our favorite!) as they are a duo who have discovered an amazing way to be accessible to such a wide range of people (ravers, metal heads, hip-hop kids, gay club scene, indie rockers, ordinary joes, etc) yet create music with such charged and creative energy. They manage to bring elements of disco, prog, house, psychedelia, funk and rock to a level of ecstatic heights rarely reached in popular music. Long live Daft Punk!!!
Old Growth shows that Dead Meadow have grown oh so very comfortable with their now trademark sound, one that hazily recalls the Black Sabbath/Blue Cheer thud of their early albums, but downplays that sort of heaviness in favor of the mellowed-out, more melodic lighter touch we loved about the dreamy, Floydian-feelin' Feathers, their previous album from 2005.
Maybe they've gotten just a little too comfortable with it, as this new one doesn't push forward too much further, their smoke cloud drifting on to settle over another set of loping, lazy stoner groovage, with whiney vocals mumbled in their usual style. There's a whole lotta psychedelic blues rock guitar, but not so much in the way of heavy riffing. Instead, a lot of this is sorta stripped down, the very first track "Ain't Got Nothing (To Go Wrong)" somehow reminding us of something the White Stripes might do. And it's definitely a "song-oriented" album.
It's probably a 50-50 proposition that fans of Feathers (the album, not the band) will either be well pleased with this or feel sorta blah on it, really depends on how these songs strike you. Some of 'em we really dig. Dead Meadow heads from way back might have been hoping this time for more heaviness, however.
Holy crap. 30 seconds into track one of this new Dead Raven Choir opus and we're like, what the heck is goin' on? Is this really our Polish pal Smolken, the avant-folk poetry-readin' cd-r makin' black metal lovin' weirdo?? Well it must be, but that track he sure sounds like some sore-throated Japanese man, fronting an intense industrial distorto-drone metallic pipe-fight dirgerock explosion, with the sawing strings of a cello (or bass) suggesting the funereal-folk of another Smolken project, Wolfmangler.
It's not like Dead Raven Choir wasn't scary before, either in acoustic Eastern European Jandek mode or doing the (Cask Strength) black-metal-as-sheer-noise thing, but good grief! In some ways, this is the perfect, sick hybrid of those two approaches, sounding something like a weird-folk version of Khanate or SUNNO))), with blown-out bulldozer bass frequencies utterly overrunning songs that Smolken probably originally composed on acoustic guitar, sitting on a back porch somewhere, staring at the sunset. What could have been sparse folk numbers are instead fully distorted and doomful and get a big thumbs up from us.
Ok, we must admit we wrote all that before bothering to look at the song titles (or read the press-release). Now we know why some of these tunes maybe somehow sounded slightly familiar, or as if transposed from a less-dire domain... he didn't compose very many of 'em at all, instead My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind is for the most part an album of covers! 7 out of the 10 tracks here are Dead Raven Choir interpretations of some of Smolken's favorite country, folk, and popular tunes by artists/victims as dissimilar as Richard Thompson and Cole Porter (!!). They're all done in Smolken's special skewed style of outsider black metal, as described above, and needless to say most of 'em are darn close to unrecognizable! We liked this a lot to begin with, now we're even more into it knowing we're actually hearing songs by late great country western songwriter Townes Van Zandt (Smolken used to live in Texas after all), alt-country chanteuse Neko Case ("Favorite"), and even obscure New Zealand drone-pop artist G-Frenzy ("From The Stars", a song that originally appeared on an out-of-print PseudoArcana cd-r we reviewed a few years back). There's also a maritime ballad by Stan Rogers, and oh yeah, the vocals on that very first track sound Japanese 'cause it's a song, "Kigi Wa Haru", by PSF-label folk troubadour Kazuki Tomokawa, an sensible choice on Smolken's part since Tomokawa's work aligns closely with that of Kan Mikami, with whom we've compared DRC's starker acoustic guitar n' vocals tracks before.
And if you like this as much as we do, you'll be happy to learn that he has another, all-country-covers album coming up, entitled Lonesome Drinking Metal...
Yaaaaaaay! One of those releases that probably doesn't even need any introduction, its feverishly anticipated arrival is received by grabby hands and torrents of drool! The always deliriously fun and wildly captivating Dengue Fever is back with their third album! You simply can't help but get all giddy and dance-y when they unleash their unmistakable blend of good ol' American rock'n'roll with the pop sounds of Southeast Asia and beyond. Luminous lead singer Chhom Nimol slips effortlessly from slinkily sensual to playfully kittenish, and the fellas continue to kick ass with their awesome musicianship and artistry. Together they're electrifying, intoxicating, and drop-dead gorgeous! We could go on and on, but why? We're wasting valuable listening time! Recommended!
Holy crap, a new Earth album! Since the full-scale return (and reinvention) of Dylan Carlson's Earth project with last year's highly regarded studio album Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (a Record Of The Week here at Aquarius when it came out) and subsequent tour, fans of the slow and low have had plenty to be happy about. That album took the extreme drone-metal Earth invented in the early '90s (a sound appropriated by SUNNO))) some years later) and turned it into a bleak n' desolate hybrid of post-rock and country-western! Spacious desert drone dirge with lap steel, something like Low meets Calexico meets the old Earth. Most Earth fans, ourselves included, had to give Hex a spin or two just to be sure we were hearing things right. But then, we all knew we were hearing it right and right it was. Such a great album.
What manner of follow up then is this new Hibernaculum? Well, some of it is gonna sound familiar...yet different. Since Earth's approach has morphed so much over the years, Dylan and co. have decided to revisit and re-record some old Earth compositions in the style of Hex, the way they've been playing 'em on tour, like when we saw them here in SF last year. Not a bad idea at all! You get to hear 'em do the classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" from their 1991 debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" from their final Sub Pop album, 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons, and the obscure "Miami Morning Coming Down" from a 1997 compilation on the Ash label called Scatter. These tunes all get the Hex treatment and wind up as windswept and lovely as you'd expect. There's also a fourth track, a new mix of the 16+ minute "A Plague Of Angels" which originally appeared last year on a very limited edition split vinyl release with SUNNO))). All of these pieces are simply gorgeous. Minimalist, Morricone-cinematic, twangfuzzdrone. Glacial twilight shimmer, velvet-hammer heavy. Droning deep and dark but uplifting as well. Weirdly we realize that Earth now sounds more like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore than Bohren & Der Club Of Gore ever sounded like Earth, if you know what we mean. And their instrumentation is a lot more like Bohren's now, including Hammond B-3, piano, upright bass, and trombone among other things (not the typical doom arsenal).
And, as they say, that's not all -- this comes with a dvd disc as well! A documentary film by graphic artist Seldon Hunt entitled "Within The Drone", shot on tour with Earth and SUNNO))) in Europe in 2006. Lots of live performance footage, intermixed with scenes from the road, and interviews with Dylan Carlson, who proves to be charmingly laid-back, plain spoken and (yes) down to earth. He talks about LaMonte Young and suchlike inspirations, but he's got no pretentious theories of "the drone" to espouse, though he does opine interestingly that for him, the more complex music becomes the closer it is to noise. So a simple sound, slowly repeated -- a drone -- is much more to his liking. Aha. Hmm. But it's clear from watching the scenes of Earth in action though that simple does not mean "easy". Supreme precision and feel is needed. To play music this slow, they've got to be good -- and they are.
The cd version has again gone out of print, but now we've got it once more on vinyl, a reissue of this all time AQ fave...if you've been wanting it on wax, here's another chance! Our usual review follows:
A while back we listed this, just 'cause we happened to order a few in and some of the staff here who were previously unexposed to the wonders of the Flower Travellin Band, notably Byram, became obsessed with it (and them). It was a Japan-only import and we felt that while many might already know this album backwards and forwards, it had most certainly slipped through the cracks for too many others out there. So we listed it and got an overwhelming response. Now it's a constant seller here at AQ. And still to this day, almost any time you come into the store, you might well hear the Flower Travellin' Band blaring.
This is an album (and a band) that are not celebrated nearly enough -- possibly out of misguided notions of their being another bad psych knock-off among the many crowding the record racks in the early seventies. But Japan's Flower Travellin' Band were no mere cheesy imitators of occidental rock 'n roll, they were in actual fact a full-fledged, pioneering tour de force of psychedelic progressive hard rock, equalling the krautrock heavies of the era. FTB can be compared favorably to Amon Duul's better efforts with their experimental meandering (think Yeti), and the best trancey spaceouts from Can. Yet there's never a sense that FTB lose track of their compositions no matter how far out they take a track. Perhaps because even more than these experimental Krautrockers, FTB's heavy (fucking ominously heavy) sound points to a major Sabbath, Purple, and Crimson influence. Released in 1971, Satori is the band's second and arguably best album. From the first screech/howl at the beginning of track one -- "Satori Part I" (the tracks on the album are all "Satori", parts I-V) -- from vocalist Joe, who inhabits a zone somewhere between Can's Damo Suzuki and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, the album gets straight down to business. Joe's scream is followed by a foreboding bass, guitar and drum dirge that's straight up collision between Cream and Black Sabbath in which no one survives. It's got so much more teeth than either, it's not even funny, predating punk by a good many years. "Satori Part II" however is quintessential FTB Over a pounding tribal drumbeat, alternating between a buzzing sitar-esque guitar drone and a melody line that curls ripples and lilts like a plume of burning incense smoke, guitarist Hideki Ishima lays out one of the creepiest, coolest guitar leads ever. If that ain't enough, vocalist Joe's singing is like that of Axl Rose being channelled by the Sun City Girls! Even if the rest of the album were total shit -- which it ain't -- the cost of this cd would still be well worth it for this song alone! "Part III" -- an instrumental -- picks up where II leaves off but slows the tempo down to a deathly pace, which makes it even heavier. This is the Sabbath influence on FTB writ large. Replete with an improv freakout before returning to the original riff and building into a frenzied crescendo. Needless to say, if you weren't bobbing your head at the beginning of the song, you will be by its end. "Part IV" could be considered FTB's "blues" number, with Joe picking up the harmonica instead of singing. But instead of churning out the expected twelve bar formula, FTB truncate the form and construct a minimalist jam around a short riff instead. "Part V" shows yet another facet of FTB's seemingly infinite potential with Hideki (?) playing some kick ass, spooky koto-like guitar overdubbed on top of some heavy psych. Damn! They could have done ten fucking albums around this schtick alone and probably never lost our interest... sigh... Absolutely, fucking recommended!!!!
Limited cd-r pressing of 300! We've just received two releases from these young post rock instrumentalists! Recirc is their limited edition ep on the terrific Bay Area indie label Three Ring Records. As with their debut album The Form And Fate Of Lakes which we've also got, Recirc featured somber black and white photography on the cover and it suits the music well -- moody expanses which when observed closer burst with textures and dynamics. Fiery and jagged at times, thick and brooding at others, all tempered by delicately picked lilting guitar passages. Sure, we've heard the 'loud-quiet-loud' done a-plenty but we're not complaining 'cause these guys do it exceptionally well!
We've just received two releases from these young post rock instrumentalists! This one is their full length debut on the terrific Bay Area indie label Three Ring Records (we've also got a limited cd-r, the Recirc ep). The black and white photography of distant glacial landscapes featured on the cover suits the music well -- moody expanses which when observed closer burst with textures and dynamics. Fiery and jagged at times, thick and brooding at others, all tempered by delicately picked lilting guitar passages. Sure, we've heard the 'loud-quiet-loud' done a-plenty but we're not complaining 'cause these guys do it exceptionally well!
If you have any way to listen to vinyl, you should definitely buy this, like right now! Very few items in our store require such minimal convincing that they are absolutely essential, as we've seen this flying off of our shelves as soon as we got them. What more could you want to know: Serge Gainsbourg! Psychedelic Years! Double vinyl! Totally Affordable!
Ok, Ok, some of you need some further convincing. Probably some of you have some Serge in your collections and want to know what exactly is on here, and it's good to know because it's not really that obvious. The title says "Psychedelic Years", but this isn't a greatest hits collection, and probably only a couple of songs will be familiar to casual Gainsbourg fans ("Bonnie and Clyde" and "En Melody" from Melody Nelson). The bulk of the tracks are from French films and TV soundtracks between 1966-1971 and are arranged by either Jean-Claude Vannier (Histoire de Melody Nelson) or Michel Columbier (Initials B.B.), two of Gainsbourg's greatest collaborators. Each providing smoky and stony grooves, some with sexy femme backing vocals, for such films as Cannabis, Anna, Le Pacha, Vidocq, Manon 70, Ce Sacre Grand-Pere, La Horse, Mister Feedom and Si J'etasi Un Espion. Three tracks even contain bonus beats for you record heads. There is not one bad cut on here. So don't miss out as we're not sure how long this will be available. Did we say that THIS IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tolkien fans, be warned -- this sixties psych pop group from New Jersey was only hastily dubbed "Gandalf" mere weeks before their debut was recorded in 1967. As Mike "Ugly Things" Stax' liner notes say (with perhaps some unnecessary scorn for the inhabitants of Middle Earth): "The group's name is actually a misnomer; although full of magic, the Gandalf record is thankfully free of wizards and hobbits." Previous to their Gandalf incarnation, the band was called the Rahgoos, named, believe it or not, after the Ragu brand of spaghetti sauce! (The liner notes again: "What was needed was a new, more 'with it' name." So they chose Ragu? What?) Whatever the name, though, the band's lone LP, now reissued by Sundazed, is pretty darn great, with gentle, melancholy singing, hypnotic piano and Hammond B3, and plenty of psychedelic tape echo courtesy of a piece of equipment (the Binson Echorec) that the band had acquired soon before the recording sessions and used to great effect, ahem.
Gandalf is especially known (to those in the know, that is, who speak of them in hushed whispers we'd imagine) for their amazing, dark, psychedelic version of the old standard "Golden Earrings" with which they open the disc. Along with that cover, they also interpret several songs by Tim Hardin as well as Eden Ahbez's famed "Nature Boy". But they had a fine songwriter in the band as well, Peter Sando, and his "Can You Travel In The Dark Alone" equals the spooky effect they achieved with "Golden Earrings", while Sando's album-closing "I Watch The Moon" rocks out a bit more with some tasty fuzz guitar -- which you'll also hear in their "Nature Boy", for one!
As long lost, forgotten '60s psych gems go, this is the real deal, not baseless hype based merely on how much some ponytailed psych collector was willing to pay for an original vinyl copy. Sundazed gets our thanks once again!
One of two new dvds from the always amazing Sublime Frequencies label, this one, like a visual version of those Sublime Frequencies "Radio�" compilations, where the compilers would flip through the radio stations in whatever country they were visiting, capturing little chunks of sound, radio plays, pop jams, folk music, etc. And while this is not quite as short-attention-span as those comps, it's generally the same idea, a sprawling, musical and visual collage of live shows, impromptu performances, local scenery, bits of television shows, nature footage, night markets, street scenes, all woven into a slightly psychedelic expanse of sights and sounds, with of course a KILLER soundtrack.
From live nightclub hip hop workouts (covering House Of Pain no less!), to casual jam sessions, seated around a coffee table, players smoking and relaxing on couches, to funky musical reviews, complete with a journeyman band and a sexy dancing and signing teen superstar frontwoman, to far out sci-fi monster movie clips, to strange performances from variety shows, homeless dudes rocking out on busted old Casio keyboards, lots and lots of birds, chirping and trilling over mysterious dronemusic , violin players weaving a cacophonous tuning-up din, gorgeous haunting classical music complete with the instructor correcting his students, sultry nightclub torch singing, amazing traditional folk music and costumed performances, incredible broken glass dancing, acoustic beach jams, complete with the sound of the surf, children playing, and best of all, just tons of footage of people, and places, playing music, hanging out, doing business, relaxing, dining, traveling, living their lives, all set to an incredibly varied selection of music, from folk to pop, to classical and anything in between.
Includes a bunch of extra footage, more amazing performances, extra footage of some of our favorite bands in the feature proper, as well as a a whole segment of trailers for other Sublime Frequencies dvds.
Attention Young Marble Giants Fans!!
If you have worn out your copies of Colossal Youth from repeated listenings, and have always wanted to hear more from that group, this might just be the next best thing. Started as a side project by YMG main songwriter and guitarist, Stuart Moxham, The Gist's first single hit the shelves six weeks before YMG called it a day at the tail end of 1980. Taking time to stretch out from the rigid arrangement process of YMG, Moxham recorded the Gist's only album, Embrace The Herd, with a bit of help from his former bandmates, Alison Statton and Phil Moxham along with guest appearances by Epic Soundtracks, Viv Goldman and members of Essential Logic. Combining Eno-like fourth world instrumentals with an idiosyncratic approach to songwriting, Embrace The Herd is an engaging document of post-punk DIY creativity. Think a dancier and stranger YMG, yet not as loungey as Alison Statton's spin off group, Weekend. While perhaps not as seminal or as focused as Colossal Youth, The Gist sound remarkably refreshing and much less restrained. Plus it's nice to have some new-to-us sounds from this era to worm away in our ears. Includes four bonus tracks. Fans of Antenna, Marine Girls, The Slits, The Raincoats, and leftfield post-punk rhythms of all sorts will find lots to love here. So Recommended!
Johnny Jewel may not be a household name but his music has been on our stereo pretty much non stop for the last several month. The musical mind behind both Chromatics and Glass Candy, it's his sparkling touch that has helped make electronic pop sound exciting again. It's no mistake that Glass Candy had the leadoff track on the After Dark compilation that helped define one of the more exciting scenes to emerge in the last several years. Songs that make you want to dance in clouds as you get lost in that hazy intersection of new wave, spaced out disco and post-punk minimalism.
Much like Chromatics who underwent a very radical and rewarding shift in sound with their latest Night Drive, Jewel has brought that same aesthetic to Glass Candy with equally impressive results. Beatbox travels in such a nice way starting off with seriously sassy momentum on songs like "Beatific" that almost sounds like Lizzy Mercier Descloux covering a track from the first Madonna record and then the later part of the record travels in much moodier cosmic territory recalling French AQ faves Ruth with nods to the brilliant early production of Giorgio Moroder. Glass Candy rang in the new year with a performance here in SF on New Year's Eve and we can't think of much better company to party with. So good!
Fans of the damaged and deranged, the truly warped and mindbending, the freaky, fucked up and plain baffling, by now should be well acquainted with the mysterious master of the guitar synth, and his bevy of bewildering outfits, two of which we've reviewed on past AQ lists, this being the third, in what we can only imagine is some sort of insane trilogy. Xynfonica came first. A "classical" record, completely composed and performed on the guitar synthesizer. A tripped out, outsider slab of post Peter And The Wolf classical deconstructed, atonal and so so so difficult, oh and did we mention that the other part of the equation was seemingly incongruous raspy evil metal vocals? A totally not-right combination, but for those of us who dig that sort of stuff, it was pretty unbeatable. Then there was the HUGE booklet of lyrics, complete with FOOTNOTES!!!
Then came Shevalreq, part two in the "trilogy", his 'world music' record, where the same atonal angular tones and notes, the howled raspy vocals, were this time wrapped around faux tablas and various other ethnic percussion instruments. If anything, it was even more fucked and amazing. Not to mention the over the top cover art, with miniature jousting knights on horseback ON TOP OF various dat machines and other studio gear. WTF?
So while we anxiously awaited part three, we were fairly sure nothing could top Shevalreq. But oh were we wrong.
The new one is called Gluttony, the name of the record: Collapse Of The Roman Republic, another epic tale of war and death and love and betrayal, this one being his quote unquote jazz record, and fuck if it's not the most amazingly fucked up record EVER. Now in addition to the metallic rasp, the stumbling angular melodies, are lots of synthesized horn stabs, crooning synthesizers, faux vibes and marimbas, synth oboes, synth bassoons, all peppered with some serious twisted tangles of Greg Ginn-esque guitar squall, usually draped over some woozy, smoky dive bar synthjazz. It still sort of sounds like Peter And The Wolf, but it also sounds like the score for some mystery noir z-movie thriller, ripe for some sort of Sam Spade voice over, but instead you get a voice over from some growling bile spewing demon, and the tracks lope on endlessly, the melodies, maniacally off kilter, the whole thing so brilliantly baffling it's almost impossible to listen to the whole thing, but we've come close. Very very close.
Absolutely recommended, but ONLY for those who can handle stuff like this. You know who you are.
You can definitely tell a lot about a band by the names of records and song titles. Case in point: Gnaw Their Tongues. Some song titles: "My Body is Not a Vessel, Nor a Temple. It's a Repulsive Pile of Sickness", "And There Will Be More of Your Children Dead Tomorrow", "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Sound the Horns, the Water is Poisoned". Some album titles: Spit at Me and Wreak Havoc on My Flesh, Preferring Human Skin Over Animal Fur, Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh, Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladders Emptying, Vomiting, and now this, An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood. But then what is it exactly that we can glean from these titles? That the men in Gnaw Their tongues are demented? Sick? Depraved? Probably. But where titles like this might lead one to assume the music attached to the above words would be some sort of hateful harsh white noise, or some sort of near unlistenable Whitehouse worship, the truth is, Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the few bands with an utterly distinctive and recognizable sound. There are very few bands we can think of, even amongst our favorites. You will absolutely never confuse the music of Gnaw Their Tongues with any other outfit. And conversely, you will never hear something that is not them, and assume it is, because NOTHING sounds anything like Gnaw Their Tongues.
So much so that even explaining their sound in a review is fairly difficult. The last GTT review, we resorted to a tale of hell and hellbound journeys, of total annihilation and utter destruction, of death and decay and misery, all in a bid to evoke the same sort of images and visions, thoughts and feelings that are evoked by the sounds these guys produce.
It's definitely not black metal, but it is most certainly black. If forced to describe their sound in some succinct, and non-rambling manner, it might be cinematic operatic orchestral avant industrial doom. But since we can ramble, it might be easier to dig a little deeper.
Every song is epic, like little films, sounds evoking images, evoking thoughts and emotions, horns and orchestral stabs, flutes and strings, are as much a part of the sound as guitars. Probably more so. Thick gristly slabs of buzzing low end, crawl beneath pummeling percussive plod, operatic vocals soar and wail, bits of electronic glitch and whir drift in and out, guitars are downtuned and allowed to spread like toxic oil spills, tracks are peppered with bits of dialogue, and snippets of films, found sounds and mysterious textures, occasionally, harsh hellish blackened shrieks join the fray, as do bits of dark ambience. There is plenty of space, the sound managing to be expansive and open, as well as claustrophobic and suffocating.
It's a bit like a black metal Arvo Part, scoring a lost Hitchcock thriller, so totally intense and emotional and epic, rife with nervous tension and extreme dread. Whenever the sound verges on white noise, or total implosion, the sound abates, leaving Bernard Hermann-ish strings, or some bit of cryptic dialogue, or some strange disembodied rhythm, before spilling forth again like black vomit. The layers of blasphemous sound piling up like blackened bodies, buzzy and filthy and grime-y but so composed, not really that chaotic at all, a controlled chaos perhaps, each sound painstakingly placed to help paint that blood red picture.
An impossible blend of metal, choral, industrial, electronic, ambient, drone, noise and blackness, a gorgeous, and gorgeously infernal concoction, every record, another chapter in some sick saga, hell swallowing the surface dwellers, misery and mayhem overtaking humanity, death and pestilence, the world a graveyard for humanity, such utter depravity conveyed in such epic and dementedly brilliant sounds, which is precisely why Gnaw Their Tongues is quickly becoming one of our favorite bands going�
Somehow, we have never reviewed anything by Gown (not to be confused with Gowns plural), the work of Andrew Macgregor, who is one half of Bark Haze with Thurston Moore. But this is as good a place to start as any.
On For The Maples, Macgregor enlisted the help of longtime AQ faves Sunburned Hand Of The Man, for one big final psychrock blowout before he left the US of A for more Northernly climes (aka Canada), and it is indeed a blowout, but not without plenty of gentle twang, fluttery folk, and meandering jams. The opener starts out with a massive multiple drum jam, a furious percussive cacophony, with thick streaks of blown out psych guitar, but all that quickly settles down, into a spacious twangy drift, the vocals crooning over slowly unfurling minor key guitars, and shuffling drums, but the track ramps it up and is soon a murky krautdrone groove, Macgregor's guitar, keening and wailing over Sunburned's druggy drift. The second is another woozy spaced out jam that builds to a total wild pagan psychrock freakout.
And finally, the nearly 20 minute closer, Sunburned in full on caveman drug jam mode, Macgregor wrangling some seriously cosmic sounds out of his guitar, the whole group locked into a psychrock duel to the death, culminating in blown out blast about halfway through, before the track devolves back into a churning space drone plod, gradually petering out to fuzzy soft shimmer.
Gorgeous heavy 180 gram vinyl, thick silkscreened sleeves, hand numbered, LIMITED TO 698 COPIES, each lp comes with a real cd (not a cd-r) of the whole record, AND while they last, a SECOND disc, of previously unreleased material. But there are only about 300 of those, and we only got a handful so those definitely won't last long.
A sterling '70s US hard rock/proto-metal obscurity, Granicus from Cleveland, Ohio (one of their song titles) sounded not unlike an American Led Zeppelin on this, their sole album dating from 1973. While not quite as well known as some other '70s proto-metal heroes like Bang, Captain Beyond and Leaf Hound, these guys were definitely capable of delivering the goods. At their best, quite powerful, we'd even say, kick-ass. There are of course some mellower moments, as often found on even the most seemingly metallic albums from those acid rock daze... but Granicus makes its mark with the beefier stuff, helped out immensely by wailing vocals that are expressive and impressive, more than a match for the band's bombastic heavy guitar action. We get the idea they were sorta radical, political hippie hardrockers, a midwestern band aligned with the MC5 tradition...
This cd reissue is a Spanish import, with 3 unreleased bonus tracks from a radio session, limited to only 500 copies. Packaged in a mini-LP style gatefold sleeve.
Imagine the standard doom/dirge band to be a large rock, nestled solidly in the earth. Well, pry that rock up, tip it over, and see what slimy, wriggling, many-legged or legless creepy-crawlies squirm in the dark, damp dirt beneath -- that's the shuddering sludge sickness that Graves At Sea make sure you hear in their music.
We know a lot of AQ's sludge-doom lovin' customers are already into this band, judging from the number of copies of their split release with Asunder that we've sold. And if you live on the west coast, perhaps you've been a witness to one of their live shows, a bloody spectacle as we recall... LA's Graves At Sea (not to be confused with the equally doomy Buried At Sea from Chicago) take their doom way seriously. From the bulldozing, slowed down, headbanging riffage from the guitars/bass to the rasping, snarling, distorted, animal vokills of their singer Nathan (appropriately credited in this cd booklet with "hissing goblin tongue/evangelist of misery"), this is HEAVY nastiness for fans of Khanate, Corrupted, Eyehategod, Unearthly Trance, and all other heavy as hell, feedbacking freaks. Actually, let's look and see what else it says in the cd booklet about what some of the other Graves At Sea bandmembers are responsible for... we've got Nick on "sluggish wall of murky despair", Steve on "crushing storm of fire and brimstone" and Roger on "timbre of submarsh sludge". Heck they practically wrote their own review right there!
Four songs, half-an-hour. Originally a cd-r release from '03 (their debut recording), now at last on cd, adorned with much better cover art.
It's hard for us to come to terms with the fact that the Grey Daturas are from Australia, it seems like they're always on tour, always in the US, and always in aQ! I We feel like they must live just down the street, we see them more than some of us see our own families. Part of it is because SF is their homebase when they're not at home. But part of it is that they ARE indeed always on tour. And as most folks realize, the more a band tours, the tighter they get, and while we loved the Daturas from day one, their shambolic improvised psychedelic drone rock always on the verge of total chaos, they have continued to get better and better, their sound constantly evolving, able to pummel and destroy with the best of them, but also perfectly capable of weaving drifting drone-y ambience, which is what they do here. Mostly.
This limited lp only release, finds the Daturas in Texas, and unlike most bands, who on their days off, drink, and record shop and fuck around, the Dats record. Often with other like minded bands in whatever town they happen to be holed up in. So while the Daturas were in Texas, they borrowed some equipment, and recorded these two sidelong epics. Two halves of what was probably an extensive ambient space jam, surprisingly tranquil for these noiseniks, but not entirely.
The A side is all guitar, no drums at all, an epic expanse of various texture and timbres, of feedback and long drawn out notes, of billowing chords and downtuned buzz, all shifting and drifting glacially, dreamy and druggy, not really menacing or ominous at all, more sort of washed out and sun dappled, rich warm and inviting, really really pretty, quite reminiscent of Fear Falls Burning in fact�
The B side is more of the same, beginning almost exactly where the A side left off, except for a big chunk in the middle, where the guitars are whipped up into a psychedelic frenzy, and the drums finally come crashing in, not so much pounding out a beat as offering another layer of percussive texture, loose stumbling rhythms, little flurries of fills, nearly buried by the barrage of dense guitars, sounding a bit like a Loop vs. Dead C jam, only to have the drums drop out again, letting the guitars slip back into their abstract, near-ambient drift.
Awesome.
You know how much we like instrumental underground UK prog masters Guapo here, right? Andee even put out one of their albums (2001's Great Sage, Equal Of Heaven) on his label tUMULt. Subsequently they released the massive Five Suns opus on Cuneiform. And now, their new release Black Oni is unleashed by Mike Patton's Ipecac label. And they've been going from strength to strength.
Like Japan's Ruins, the Guapo trio take a lot of inspiration from '70s prog, in particular the "zeuhl" stylings of the amazing French band Magma. But where the Ruins generally concentrate the Magma sound into a hectic hyper-blast, Guapo tend to stretch things out, spreading their prog-frenzy across (in this case) a forty-three minute, five part epic composition, not unlike the five part, forty-six minute title suite of Five Suns... that's their specialty it seems. Crazed drumming and complex bass lines coexist with spaced-out keyboards (including '70s prog stalwart the Mellotron), making Black Oni a combination of energetic prog mayhem and droning electronic darkness. For fans of Yeti, Tarantula Hawk, Circle and even The Necks... and of course anyone already into Guapo will love this new one. Recommended!
- MPEG stream:
- MPEG stream:
Last year we raved about this oddly named, mysterious one-man-band's debut disc on Utech, entitled Aphotic Leech, saying stuff like "Absolutely essential for the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined, fans of all things SUNNO))), Nadja, Fear Falls Burning, Trollmann, Boris, Marzuraan". We've been letting Half Makeshift's second cd (four tracks this time, instead of one long one) sink in for a while now, and are convinced that it's just as amazing, even more spacious and atmospheric. Though maybe we should stress that while we think that the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined are likely to dig this, it ISN'T really all that heavy. More super moody and slow and atmospheric. It's not until like the end of the seventeen minute track 1 "The Whale's Heart", and again halfway through the 14 minutes of track 3, the title track, that some truly loud and heavy guitar destruction is heard. A lot of the rest of the time, this is way more restrained. The first track, for instance: Chiming tones and majestic chords, slow and gorgeous. Building slowly, ponderously, into a massive cloud of distorted rumble, joined by a broken, staccato rhythm track right, blast beat style, at the end that eventually glitches out as the song fades away, piano notes suspended amidst the silence hum reverie in silent reverie. Later on, you get gentle music box melodies combined with fuzzed guitar worthy of a black metal horde. And slo-mo doom, with seagulls and ocean samples, that's mesmeric but never all that heavy.
It's all the work of one guy, Nathan Michael, who is credited with piano, organ, strings, drone, machines, manipulation, glitch work. He hails from Maryland, a hotbed of old school doom, but Half Makeshift is closer to Nadja than Pentagram. Also way more post-rock! Sorta like Coh meets SUNNO))). Heck not too unlike KTL.
Mastered by James Plotkin, and packaged much like an aRCHIVE release, in an oversized rectangular 4 panel cardboard sleeve with four postcard-like arty photo inserts featuring super striking images of towers and piers and tunnels and back alleys...
Awwww, February, blossoming romance is in the air! Fans of fey femme folk, here's a Valentine sweetie for you! Dan Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers, Swan Lake) and his ladylove Sydney Vermont took some time out from North America and travelled to Spain for a spell. The musical inspirations that their journey spawned are found on this here album. It's an earthy, ephemeral melange (yes, we said "melange"!) of Kate Bush drama, waif-pop Lavender Diamond, '70s soft rock AOR singers such as Melissa Manchester or Carly Simon. With a description like that you could be warily anticipating a somewhat milquetoast listen, but fear not! It's all distinguished and elevated by Bejar's unmistakable musical eccentricities. His prickly guitar and distinct voice are perfect foil for Vermont's lilting soprano tones -- particularly on fine songs like "Mediterranean Snow" and (Cup's current favorite) "Sunny Skies". Oh and yes there's even flute (ya hear me Andee?). Go on, don a flowing chiffon gown and sway to this floral loveliness. Includes a cover of Kevin Ayers' "Hymn".
Japanese noise aficionados, this highlight's for you... nope it's not another Merzbow album, but something quite a bit less common: new Hijokaidan! The facts in the case of this newest Hijokaidan noise atrocity as are follows: three tracks, approximately 25-27 minutes each, all recorded live at the 2006 All Ears Festival in Oslo, Norway. Actually only the first track is Hijokaidan proper, the other two being variant line-ups featuring a guest Norwegian musician dueting with one or the other of the two core Hijokaidan members. Track one, "No Oslo No Harm", is classic Hijokaidan howl, from the duo of Jojo (guitar) and Junko (voice). An ear melting white noise screech n' screamathon, natch. Track two, "Book Of Changes", featuring Jojo teamed up with another guitarist, the Norwegian Per Gisle Galaen, is just a bit more, er, "musical" and dynamic, with even some moments of relative peace and calm amidst this psychedelic (a la Keiji Haino) storm of droning, exploding, feedbacking "out" guitar destruction... while Jojo is a master of the art, Per Gisle Galaen more than holds his own. With all its vacuum cleaner violence and low end clangor and buried hints of fragile melody, we'd pick this as our fave selection on this heavy duty disc.
Third up is "Le Rayon Verte", a track performed by the duo of vocalist Junko and one Sten Ove Toft on electronics. The electronics are a grinding, crumpled distortion pile-up, the vocals an endless squeaky wheel shriek. It's harrowing to say the least, like hearing the sounds emanating from a torture chamber/wind tunnel combination!
This is one of the first three releases we've had on the new Pica Disk label run by Norwegian noise dude Lasse Marhaug (Jazzkammer, Jazkamer, etc.) along with the new disc from New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel also highlighted this list, and another Japanese noise entry from Hijokaidan compatriots the Incapacitants. Clearly Pica Disk means business!
We've long been fans of Seattle's Iron Lung, but this is the first time they've made it on the aQ list, it's about time too, after about a million splits and a couple proper full lengths. A drums and guitar duo, not that you'd ever know it from their sound, Iron Lung are dense and thrashing, lurching and pounding, thrashing and grinding modern power violence.
And yeah, we know that all the real power violence bands are dead and gone (Man Is The Bastard, Infest, No Comment, Spazz, Crossed Out) and that most bands these days who call themselves power violence, are typically NOT, and are just trying to garner cool cred by aligning themselves with the above mentioned bands. As far as we know, Iron Lung don't consider themselves power violence, probably more like thrashcore, or just hardcore, but their sound is way too varied and fucked up and metal to be so simple to describe. Sure there's plenty of thrashing and blasting, but the band spend just as much time plodding along doomily, with some serious metallic riffing, and plenty of lurching stop/start arrangements, huge slabs of churning downtuned groove and caveman like pummel, but even at their doomiest, the tracks still occasionally splinter into atonal angular melodies, mathy off kilter rhythms and freaked out squalls of tangled grind. Brief bursts of complex fury, stretched into churning, sprawling mini power violence epics.
Awesome cover art by Rudimentary Peni's Nick Blinko!!
If you've been in AQ more then a few times in the last few months you probably already know how obsessed we've become with Jeremy Jay. There's a pretty good chance we were swaying back and forth listening to his ep Airwalker over and over as we have countless times, and we still aren't even close to getting sick of it. Mixing a twee sensibility with the power of the Factory Records vaults, creating songs that invite you to jump right in and throw up your arms as you close your eyes and enter a world so dreamy and infectious.
So of course we've been starving for anything else to get our hands and ears on by Jay, and luckily we have two new songs on this 7" to get lost with. The tracks here are quite different than the songs on Airwalker and show that Jay is not content with having an easily defined sound. The A side "We Were There" made us think of prime time Make-Up with it's sassy rhythms and spoken/sung delivery. The B side "Beautiful Dreamer" is what's getting us the most, with it's sparkling and dizzying cloudy sonics and late night haze. Two more reasons to love this young talent from LA!
Sorry Lightspeed Champion, but we had to check and doublecheck that your new album wasn't a new one by '90s college radio darlings Versus or Whysall Lane! Your boy/girl vocals are a deadringer for theirs -- so very very Balayut/Toups-esque. However, it's not just in the singing department that we hear the similarities. Hey, we're not complaining. Check out those intelligent, sensitive, heartfelt lyrics, finely crafted tunes!
Though Lightspeed Champion is primarily the work of one Londoner named Dev Hynes (formerly of Test Icicles) and this album was released by Domino Records, he is joined by many luminaries from the Saddle Creek label because the album was recorded in Omaha, Nebraska. Lending a welcome hand are Mike Mogis, Nate Walcott, Emmy The Great (hers is the sweet female vocal counterpart to Hynes') and members of The Faint, Cursive, and Tilly And The Wall. They finish off the album off with a lovely chamber string outro. This here's some really good indie pop, sure to become a college radio staple!
One of our all time ambient drone favorites, available on vinyl for a super limited time.
We love noise. Not the face melting super nova amp destroying ear shredding noise of Merzbow and Wolf Eyes, although we do dig that too. No, we're in love with -noises-, the sounds of sound, from the warm whisper of nature,�the whoosh of the wind, the roar of the surf, the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs, to the clattery clang of industry, the roar of cars, the grind of machinery, the whir of air conditioning and and the thrum of vacuum cleaners, to the subtle sonic byproducts of sound reproduction and music making, the hiss of old cassette tapes, the warm warble of old 78's, the pops and crackle of lps, the digital glitch and fuzz of more modern musical malfunctions. On their own sure, we could listen to a symphony of frogs or the gentle hum of an air conditioner for hours, but preferably wrapped around some haunting otherworldly music, creating a glorious hybrid of subtle murky mystery.�
We've sung the praises of Philip Jeck and his creaking antique turntablescapes, the murky looped loveliness of William Basinski, the strange warm fuzzy pixelated guitarscapes of Fennesz, the dreamy electronic droneworlds of Tim Hecker, and most recently, the gorgeous post-rock dreampop haze of Swedish bedroom soundscaper Jasper TX. It's no coincidence that this record, the latest from Dutch sonic explorer (and former doom metal guitarist) Machinefabriek is on the same label as the Jasper TX. Both share a similar approach, burying gorgeous melancholy sounds beneath all manner of sonic disturbances and musical interference. After discovering the Jasper TX record, we looked a little deeper at the Lampse label and decided that we just may have found ourselves a new favorite label. Murky and pretty and fuzzy and so so so pretty. Everything we've heard so far. Instead of looking at Lampse as just the label, one can almost picture Lampse as the actual artist, and each release an epic track from some massive hours long murky muted masterpiece Each of those tracks dense with subtly varied parts and movements, each its own entity for sure, but at the same time one piece of a larger and indescribable puzzle.�
Where Jasper TX was deeply rooted in soft indie rock jangle and sleepy bedroom pop (albeit swathed in a thick cloak of blur and grit), Machinefabriek approaches the same sound from a slightly different direction, each piece a lengthy slowburn epic, brooding gradually building ambience, grandiose washes of sound, the cinematic dynamicism of Mogwai or Earth, filtered through the looped hypnosis of Basinski, pianos and guitars rendered as abstract sounds, smeared and swirled into buried minor key melodies and and slow shifting chunks of sonic mood music. Marijn is Machinefabriek's sonic travelogue of a journey through the abyss, a soundworld cloaked in fog and draped in constant darkness.��
Our first glimpse of the other side is a�gorgeous echoey world of record crackle and pop, of thick reverb and crunching creaking ambience.�
Like a beat up old record player stuck in the run out groove of an old 78, recorded at the bottom of an enormous cavern, eventually soft warm swells surface beneath the rainlike crackle, a mournful melody of delicate piano and whirring drone, the notes of the piano blown out so they distort and waver a bit like bad radio reception or some strange atmospheric interference. Some antique piano recital recorded on a wax cylinder and then broadcast from tiny blown out speakers in a huge empty warehouse, then broadcast over shortwave radio and finally heard through a battered pair of old headphones.�
The rest of the record, while not as obviously damaged (in terms of crackle and distortion and fuzz) is rife with sounds equally obscured and obfuscated, lilting lonely pianos and haunting music box melodies drift beneath some strange sonic murk, occasionally interrupted by strange crumbled digital interference and all manner of stuttery hiccuping glitch and skitter, as if some other piece of music is trying desperately to claw its way through. Eventually,�the distortion and audio damage recedes just enough to allow a simple piano motif to drift softly and subtly across a soundscape of barely there drone and hushed melody. From far off in the distance,�warm warbles and shimmering sheets of sparkling muted sound appear, glimmering softly, like the reflection of light in some undersea cavern, lit only by the glow of indirect sunlight, waves and ripples and strange patterns shiver and shimmy subtly. Then, a piano begins unfurling a funereal crawl, mournful and melancholy, before being�slowly enveloped by a digital swarm, a swirling dizzying drone, until it's almost like a blinding white wave of fuzz and hiss, but beneath it all, a sad melody still lurks, just an echo, a shadow, a warm rich whisper behind a blinding roar. The�final passage is a near 20 minute piano meditation, soft and smooth, notes drift and shimmer, simple but stately and sweetly sorrowful, nestled in a tangled bed of digital hiss, slowly swelling chordal hum and whispery keening� drones, all beneath a distant whir like some alien orchestra tuning up, the�soft cacophony building slowly into the thick wash of static and distortion slowly swallows the melody whole, until all that remains is a ghostly afterimage, a shimmery outline, a fuzzy faded memory...
Last year one of our favorite reissues came in the form of the strong and passionate voice of Gerard Manset. A French mastermind musician who has been crafting iconoclastic and lush sounds since the late '60s. The release we first heard last year titled 1968 quickly became an AQ favorite and made us think of Manset as a French incarnation of Caetano Veloso. We went from barely knowing anything about Manset to wanting to try to find out as much as we could about him, as that release reeled us in so strongly with its elegant and charged melodies.
La Mort D'Orion was recorded a couple years after that release in 1970 and finds Manset in a much more avant setting, but with equally stunning results. Created as one multi-part suite, the record is filled with strings, the music moving from small scale moments to sweeping epics, beautiful melodies everywhere, all colored with rich instrumentation and of course there's Manset's elegant voice.
This is the perfect antidote to fluffy ye-ye pop. With La Mort D'Orion, Manset created a piece of challenging and brooding symphonic pop akin to the best work created by the likes of Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker and Franco Battiato. Accented with shots of prog, psychedelia and modern classical, Manset displays his amazing ability to pull together a wide range of elements in creating such a monumental and rewarding piece of music. Highly recommended!
Over the past six years The Mars Volta has always torn it up. Their roster has boasted some serious players with amazing chops, but their songs could be long-winded, self-indulgent and overtly wanky (example: 2006's Amputecture). Still, you can't knock 'em too hard. Since their awesome Tremulant debut back in 2002, they've tirelessly brought their often seemingly impervious ethno-proggy sounds to the youthful masses who in turn have devoured them and continue to clamber for more. Starting the year off with a fierce bang, The Bedlam In Goliath is this tight, well-oiled music machine's most infectious and accessible work since that first ep. Yet, it's still driven by the epic, the techy and the cerebral. Sure to please their devotees and win them some new ones too. Pssst, a little aside: Cedric's vocals are sounding their most pitchshifted-up-up-up into the shrill Chipmunks stratosphere. As far as we know they aren't processed but they are totally crazy!
The year is only just beginning but there have already been some amazing new records released that we're pretty sure will end up on our favorites of '08 list. This new outing by the enigmatic John Maus is one of them and it might just be the most engrossing and addicting albums we've been hooked on in a long time!
Best and barley known in the past as being loosely associated with the Paw Tracks family (Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Ariel Pink) Maus has made a record that will make his name definitely stand on its own. As he's created one of the most fantastical, bizarre and engaging pop records in recent memory. Warped bedroom pop with a flair for fantasy, wrapped in old fucked up synths, deep slowed down vocals, cosmic beats and a singular unique vision. Like OMD on codeine or early home demo recordings of The Cure captured on an answering machine tape that's been dubbed over way too many times. Or imagine a soundtrack to a lost early '80s movie made by both John Hughes and John Carpenter, as romantic teenage life intersects with magical apocalyptic doom! Love Is Real is as creepy and mystifying as it is heartfelt and endearing. As catchy as it is unpredictable. Out of nowhere the synths will rise to crazy loud levels or Maus will let out a haunting scream, and even after listening to this album hundreds of time as we have obsessively already, those parts still jump out, scare, startle and thrill us every time we listen.
Start to finish the album is impeccable. Songs lead into each other perfectly, the pacing is dead on, and every single track on the record belongs where it is and has a weight of its own. Whether it's sounding like the muddiest version of a Psychedelic Furs track or tapping into a bizarre drugged out cosmic disco excursion or having a freaked out panic attack, the record pulls from so many directions while always sounding like a completely other universe. This is what fantasy sounds like when the world around you is falling apart. Totally amazing!
The latest in the ever expanding Sublime Frequencies collection of audio and video sonic treasures from around the world. This most recent dvd focuses on "ancient mystical brotherhoods' in Morocco, small groups of stringed instruments and drums, players managing to create intense and intensely emotional sounds and songs, that range from dark and simple, sweetly contemplative, to fierce and fiery and jubilant, explosive and over the top.
As always, the scenery and setting is as breathtaking as the music., lots of amazing shots of Morocco, crumbling buildings, bustling harbors, cobblestone streets, vast deserts, winding highways, cozy apartments and most importantly, bustling street markets, lit by fires and lamplight, a huge after dark celebration, story telling, eating, socializing but most importantly making music...
Small lantern lit clusters of people gather around old record players, home made amplifiers, rusty old speakers, strange (to our eyes) stringed instruments, all manner of drums and percussion, the crowd eager to bask in this amazing music, and just as often to participate, whether it be as another drummer, a singer, a dancer or even just as an onlooker.
The music, is a stripped down blues, the buzzing strings, the gorgeous hypnotic melodies, looped and cyclical, so hypnotic and catchy, the vocals soulful and impassioned, from solo crooning to strange harmonies, to chanting, and lots of festive sing alongs. The focus is the buzzing strings and the pounding drums, and there are plenty of both, but there are also buzzing snake charmer style horns, wild dancing, costumes, and of course the usual outdoor crowd sounds, folks talking and laughing, cars driving past. It's so much like wandering through Morocco, it's amazing. And sonically, WOW. The rhythms and the melodies, a constant barrage of groove and drone, simple percussive thumps and shuffles, haunting melodies, huge tribal drum jams and of course some incredible riffing.
Our favorite segments feature what appears to be a traditional banjo, but electrified and plugged into a rusty old handmade amplifier, turning the banjo into an awesome buzzing sitar like beast, emitting intense almost metallic chunks of incendiary riffing, raw and emotional, super distorted and intense, underpinning the wailing vocals and dense drumming.
As awesome as this is to watch, the sounds themselves are plenty, so even after a few viewings, you'll end up listening to this dvd over and over. Fans of the sadly out of print Group Inerane lp, also on Sublime Frequencies, as much of the music here has that same feral blues buzz and dark looped riffing.
True to its title, Mucca Pazza's new album is a kitschy kaleidoscopic listen of, yes, marching band styled escapades that tumble out of your speakers with a swooning bump'n'grind exotica flair. Lots of brassy horn, accordion and percussion stimulation! We know it's a totally different thing, but if you loved the recently released Daisies soundtrack or Balkan gypsy music inspired groups such as Beirut or A Hawk And A Hacksaw, we'd highly recommend Mucca Pazza too! An ultra fun album that'll put a gleeful smile on any grumpy face.
