Holy shit, this is fucking great! And who would have ever thought that the A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins would make a record together? And who would have imagined that it would be this fucking awesome? It's all superlatives and all expletives in describing the first collaborative production from AFCGT. The A Frames had managed to raise some eyebrows here through their post-punk appropriations of early Wire and early Fall, but the vocals had always been something of a miss for them especially on the last Sub Pop album. But in working with the AQ-endorsed Climax Golden Twins who are a band accustomed to delivering exemplary instrumentals from literally every corner of the avant-rock landscape, the A Frames have the permission to shut the hell up and let the Climax Golden Twins dump the fucking kitchen sink all over A Frames rhythmic swagger. The album opens with a tumultuous blast of glue-huffing noise-rock, sort of like a fistfight between the Butthole Surfers and the Sun City Girls. Soon after, a series of bad-ass Birthday Party / Oxbow swamp rock riffs explode with spindly space-age gamelan leads; elsewhere, the No Wave ghosts of R.L. Crutchfield-era DNA emerge with of jagged chops across the guitar pick-ups, bloodied fingers and all. Fuck, it all sounds fucking great! It's a damn shame that this thing is only limited to 50 copies! That perhaps is our only complaint.
Ultra limited latest release from the uber prolific Antony Milton and his always genius PseudoArcana label. This time it's an ultra limited lathe cut, created of course by the lathe cut master himself, Kiwi legend Peter King. Limited to 50 copies, the initial pressing of this lp disappeared in no time, but we managed to get a tiny handful of this, the second and final pressing, and it's a doozy. Packaged in a gorgeous hand screened/painted brown paper cover with a brown paper inner sleeve and housed in a resealable plastic jacket, and the record itself clear with printed inner labels, this split teams up label head Milton and his Nether Dawn project with Irish one man band Agitated Radio Pilot. And it's a perfect match up.
Agitated Radio Pilot unfurls slow growing, wheezing melancholy melodies and warm warbly atmospheres, split into 4 tracks, it sounds more like one lengthy extended pastoral drift, a lazy wander beneath leafy trees and a burnt orange late afternoon sky, laid back and blissed out. Melancholy and gauzy. The muted buzz of guitars, warbly melodies, all very hazy and indistinct.
Nether Dawn (this time accompanied by fellow NZ noisemaker James Kirk) counter with their own brand of blurry haziness. Long drawn out drones, hushed whispered vocals, smeared buzz, distant washes of distorted guitar and muted rhythmic clatter. It sounds like pop songs stretched out and pulled apart into spare skeletal stretches of somnambulant sound. Like ARP, it's all very soft focus and dreamlike. And remember, with lathe cuts, the more you play them, the more they degrade, and the sound gets even fuzzier and blurrier and more washed out. So after a bunch of plays this might sound even better! So lovely.
Second and final pressing of 50 copies, once these are gone, we won't bee able to get more.
Some super experimental low end doom drone minimalism from Brad Rose, who besides playing in The North Sea, Corsican Paintbrush, Jade Emperor also runs the insanely cool Digitalis label.
Up until now, most of what we've heard from Rose has been on the folky side of things, who knew he had this in him. A seriously grindingly dense churning buzzscape. Caustic and thick, huge slabs of heaving low end, layer upon layer of black hole heaviness. Dentist drill high end surfaces here and there, but overall, every track here is some sort of leap into sonic tar, struggling to breath or even hear, your ears clogged with crumbling back grit, your body pinned to the ground beneath wave after wave of slow motion blacknoise pummel.
You know if you need this. If you're into the slow, and low and HEAVY, you probably do. But this was LIMITED TO ONLY 72 COPIES. It's out of print. We have 15. Do the math.
Red cassette cases, red cassettes, cool full color sleeves on nice textured paper, each copy hand numbered.
Oooh, moody. Ilpo Vaisanen of Pan Sonic and Dirk Dresselhaus (aka Schneider TM) have recorded as Angel before, exploring the realms of noise and drone with discs on the Bip-Hop and Oral labels, bringing in guest cellist Hildur Guonadottir for the latter. Now they're officially a trio, and offer up a fantastic third album, released on Editions Mego, where this four part, hour long, totally epic album fits in nicely alongside the digitaldoomdrone likes of O'Malley and Rehberg's KTL.
Kalmukia opens with the evocative "Bones In The Sand" which definitely has a desert-y feel, the wide open spaces, barren badlands. Desolation. Dunno about you, but it had us immediately thinking Earth (Hex-era and after Earth), with cavernous slide guitar riffs echoing forth across the wastes...
The tremulous electric humming of the title track is next, nearly 20 quietly mysterious minutes long, graced with droning cello on the edge of feedback. The creepy loveliness continues on through "Effect Of Discovery", which builds up into a shimmering drone laced with metallic electronic whip-cracks and waverings. Full on distorted rumble is kept in reserve, hinted at throughout the thick buzzing beauty of album-closer "Aftermath: The Mutation", which is also filled with delicate percussive chimings and some of this album's most melodic moments.
Packaged all fancy-like in an oversized rectangular sleeve, this is definitely one that fans of the most abstract/ambient side of Southern Lord's output (Oren Ambarchi for instance) should appreciate, along with those into Pan Sonic, KTL, etc.
Satan was an angel, once, too.
We carried a split release some time ago by this Minneapolis band and SF's Linedotstar (see our review for the details)... and quite a cool one it was! On the opening track "2 In 24" on their latest cdep Fun Is Near, Artifact Shore initially seem to be continuing on with their prickly post-post-rock blend of noise abrasions and aggressive rhythms. The very next song however reveals other facets of the band's scope. The title track flows a bit smoother and more melodious, gently fuzzy and maybe even a bit shoegazerish, but still with periodic bursts of distortion. And so these five tracks progress, gradually from fervent sharp insistence into drowsy near-poptronic stuttery dreaminess.
From his work with Deerhunter to his excellent solo project Atlas Sound to other various artistic projects, Bradford Cox has some serious creative consistency. It seems like part of that reliability is based on the fact that all of his work seems to be approaching the same types of emotions from slightly different angles. That's not to say the sonic spectrum he occupies is not varied, but there is the feeling that everything operates based on the same type of tension. Well, Atlas Sound's Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel is no different. In Deerhunter, the more upbeat '60s influenced indie pop and the glistening analog landscapes seem more distant from each other. Here, Cox seems to have fused the two into a more singular package, in a good way. All of the songs are in a similar range, but the presentation of various melodies is interesting enough for everything to stand alone. Ah, let's see, maybe those hungry for specific band comparisons can take faith in an impressive list. For instance: Jesus and Mary Chain, Seefeel, Ulrich Schnauss, Caribou, and ... White Rainbow and Valet, which is interesting. Why? Well, because Adam Forkner of White Rainbow and Honey Owens of Valet are two members of the Atlas Sound live band. Alongside the crew are also Brian Foote of Nudge (along with Ms. Owens), and someone we just don't know named Stephanie Macksey. But in company like that, we're sure she's done great stuff too! If you, like us, occasionally need to embark upon an interstellar journey into emotions both inspirational and bleak, look no further, here's your guide. Recommended.
As much as we love us some ultra doom, some seriously sick slowness, you know, that doooooom, that is so glacial, that the songs begin to crumble and ooze into viscous black pools. We do. But sometimes we just want our doom to ROCK. Sounds contrary but it's been known to happen. Doom can be slow and low and still rock. Take B.Son for example. Whose particular brand of doomic energy is drawn from bands like Harvey Milk, Karp, The Melvins, godheadSilo, more a sort of downtuned propulsive sludge with doom elements, than pure doom. But goddamn if it isn't just as brutal and heck, doomy...
Thick ropy buzzbass, pounding destructo drums, throaty howls, grinding guitars, all lurching and swaying like some drugged and demented superrock doombeast, all filtered through a bit of grinding screamo and some buzzed out metallic blackness.�
There are moments of blisssed� out post rockiness, and weird laid back grooves, stretched out near ambience and dense little mathy jams, but those moments just serve to keep the doomed sludge rock fury from becoming too much.�
Produced by James Plotkin. Spiffy black and gold sleeves... This seems to already be out of print as well, so this batch could very well be the last we see of these...
Several cool things about this newly reissued album, originally released in 1973 (recorded in 1970). First, it's called Lemmings. Who doesn't have a soft spot for those doomed little critters? And then there's the cover art, a black and white drawing depicting a flood of rather spooky looking lemmings, under a starry night sky, with an owl hovering ominously above... But most importantly, the music! The music on Lemmings makes it a bit of a cult classic in the annals of British prog rock. Darkly melancholic, super melodic and gentle, yet quite powerful too, as the guitarist occasionally lets loose with some really tasty, acid psych soloing... the warm vocals are another strong suit, both feeding into emotional epics, songs of alienation (as Lemmings is subtitled) and Eastern-influenced hippie philosophy.
Bachdenkel began as a Birmingham UK psych pop outfit called The U NO Who. They then changed their name to the much more you-don't-know-who Bachdenkel, and finding little success in England, hove off to France where they could really indulge themselves in going fully prog, though they never lost their knack for the '60s psych pop side of things, reminding us sometimes of AQ faves Kaleidoscope, with the heavier edge of a T2 or NSU.
Maybe 'cause they were based in France, and did their own unique untrendy thing, focussing on songs more than flash, they remained fairly obscure, but this album (the first of two, the second of which, Stalingrad, we've yet to hear) is nonetheless worthy of consideration as a prog masterpiece, up there with the much better known likes of early King Crimson.
Reissued by Ork, a division of Cherry Red, this disc is has been remastered by original producer Karel Beer, and features 3 bonus tracks including an unreleased single from 1969. Also, the cd booklet is stuffed with liner notes and photos detailing the whole Bachdenkel story.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As much as we tried, and we have, we could just never get that into Porcupine Tree. And before you flood us with emails, we tried, we really did. And it's not that it's bad or anything, just not our cup of tea. Steven Wilson's other project though, Bass Communion is a whole 'nother story. Bass Communion as a project explores worlds of deep deep low end, a literal bass communion, how could it not appeal to the aQ drone obsessed?
This release was outrageously limited, and thus we ended up getting only a fraction of the copies we ordered (as in 17 copies is all we have) so we won't go into too much detail, just know that if you want one, best act fast.
Originally Pacific Codex was intended to be released on vinyl, but apparently the notes were so low and the bass so heavy and intense, that they could not be fully realized on vinyl, so the project was reimagined as a cd / dvd release as those digital formats could in fact handle the deep tones. And deep they are. This is some seriously deep, low end sound. At low volumes, much of it is barely audible, at high volumes, the room literally shakes, and the woofers vibrate so intensely the papers on the desk next to the speakers flutter and are blown across the table top. Woah.
And we love bass. We know you do too, so this is like the ultimate low end document, huge billowing metallic shimmers, deep rib cage rattling rumbles, melodies rendered in slow motion, transformed into glacial smears, the feeling is that of being underwater, but WAY underwater, maybe several miles below the surface, everything inky black, save for a few glowing fish, and stray bits of light that somehow made it down from the surface.
What else to say, drone obsessives will lose their mind over this. Imagine cranking your favorite most minimal Lustmord record with the bass cranked to 10 and the treble down to zero. This is the sort of record you don't hear as much as you feel. And yeah, it's minimal sure, but the low end is maximal, threatening to split your stereo right down the middle like some beautiful seismic serenade.
The accompanying dvd is dvd-AUDIO (5.1 surround), so don't try watching it, it's just a black screen, but it is sort of the perfect visual representation of the music within.
Two discs, one cd, one dvd, both housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with a full color perfect bound cd sized book filled with gorgeous textural photos of the sea and sky, a printed insert card on super thick textured paper each one hand numbered, all housed in a heavy gauge box / slipcase.
Again, we only have a handful, so when these are gone we will NOT be able to get more as it's already out of print at the label.
For those of you who've worn your beloved copy of Odelay down to dust... and who have a few extra bucks in their pockets! Beck's arguably best album is the latest to grace the Universal Music deluxe reissue series. Hard to believe that Odelay was released almost a dozen years ago, but indeed it was! You can once again revel in the slacker glory of "The New Pollution", "Devil's Haircut", "Where It's At", and the other eleven album tracks. Yes, sooo good, but you don't have to stop there! On this double disc set you also get three bonus tracks, plus a second cd with three remixes (by Aphex Twin, U.N.K.L.E., and Mickey P) and a slew of b-sides!
Belong are just one of many new bands exploring the sound of decay. The sound of music within murk, the sound of pop, melted down and smeared into shapeless forms. For a while there it seemed like every band was lacing their delicate pop with bits of glitch and electronic shimmer. To the point where ANY band, no matter what they sounded like originally, were suddenly 'experimental' with nothing but a bit of crackle and bleep added to the mix. A similar thing has happened lately, another movement has taken hold, of bands burying their sounds under distorted drones, blistering feedback, bleary eyed shimmer, oceans of crackle, sounds pulled apart and layered into strange organic ambient blurs. We're not complaining though, we've long been proponents of distressed sound. The more distressed and heavy and fucked up and crackly and distorted the better. The problem lies in the fact that a movement usually entails everyone and their brother suddenly wanting to sound like whatever band or sound is 'happening' at the moment. SUNNO))) spawned a legion off doomdrone combos, and these movements are not all that different.
A band, be they pop or metal or whatever, can wrap everything in buzz and distortion and suddenly whatever genre they were can get hyphenated with the suffix GAZE, or alternately, a band can blur everything, slow it down, make it muddier and murkier and dronier, and voila, become a doomdronewhatever outfit.
But with all these things, it's not as easy as the truly amazing artists make it sound. And this becomes evident on almost first listen. Anyone can plug their guitar into a laptop, but no one can create gauzy gristly soundscapes like Fennesz. Anyone can tune way down and let their guitars ring out, let riffs crumble to pieces, but it takes more than that to make something a compelling listen.
From the very first listen to Belong's last full length, October Language, we knew these guys were special. They were one of those bands who had the sound down, but were using the sound to create glorious sonic worlds of their own invention. Not aping anyone else's sounds, merely absorbing elements, and transforming them into something new, and distinctly Belong. And the other thing about Belong, was they weren't just making beautiful noise, they were writing songs, that were infused with beautiful noises, sometimes obfuscated by them, but there was always a song, a melody, never just sound for sound's sake.
This new four song ep takes things even further, by being about someone else's songs. Reinventing, reimagining, reinterpreting the sounds of four different artists, and making them all sound like they could have come from nowhere else than this mysterious entity known as Belong.
The first might be the best of the bunch, and it's no coincidence that it's the most song-y. A Syd Barrett cover, via the somewhat more obscure Cleaners From Venus, "Late Night" in the hands of Belong becomes an epic sweeping cinematic warped record spinning underwater, on the surface of some alien moon, beneath the warm glow of twin suns. Soaring vocals, gorgeous melodies, all beneath a thick churning lush wall of crumbling, shimmering sound. Woozy and seasick, dizzying, dense and warm and absolutely gorgeous, it's almost like a more blurred and buzzed version of Oval, digital skipping replaced by indistinct slow motion riffage, everything gauzy and washed out. The other three tracks, covers of '60s psych pop songs by Tintern Abbey, Billy Nicholls and July, are even more ethereal, almost choral sounding, voices and streaks of sound drifting in a softly churning sea of hum and whir, and breathy blur. The final track a thick, viscous outro, the July original barely audible beneath a blown out swirl of creeping low end and free floating metallic flutter, somehow sounding heavy and intense, but laid back and soporific at the same time, eventually fading to a whispery hum. So good. Definitely one of our favorite groups exploring the world of distressed / decayed / deconstructed / dreamy / dronelike sound.
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 300 COPIES!! Each one hand made by the group using recycled sleeves.
Seems that our pal Eric Lanzillotta (former proprietor of Anomalous Records) is serious about this 'zine publishing venture. Issue one of Bixobal appeared just three or four short months ago, now here's the equally interestin' issue number two, again a bargain at two bucks. It's a digest-sized black and white 55 page xeroxed affair, crammed with cool things to read if you're into stuff along the lines of experimental drone, free improv, and international exotica. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Bixobal's got various folks from Sun City Girls/Climax Golden Twins axis on board as contributors. Contents this ish include among other things Part II of Sir Richard Bishop's Indian travelogue, interviews with avant vocalist Phil Minton and electronic musician Robert Haigh, an article about the whys and wherefores of collecting "bad records" with advice about doing so, a Rob Millis essay about the wondrous "talking machine", and a hilarious rant from cranky old Uncle Jim taking music journalism to task for the overuse of certain words, like "jangly" and "soundscape" (good thing we're careful never ever to use such terms, ha!). Plus then there's 24 densely packed pages of music reviews, from Angelblood to Zashiki Warashi. Plenty of readin' here to entertain and inform the average AQ customer for sure!
Two man heavy riff-machine Black Cobra return with another pummeling release on At A Loss. Picking up right where Bestial left off, Feather And Stone shreds from the start. Brutally punishing circular riffs, heavy as all hell doomy moments, throat ripping screams, and incredibly hard hitting and precise drums. The fact that this massive sound comes from two fellas is pretty damn amazing. The album has all kinds of peaks and valleys. Amidst the constant time signature shifting, and brain-burning riff heavitude, there are a couple of beautifully dark intros and outros thrown in, giving the album a very balanced feeling. But it's mostly just crushingly heavy and ripping. If you can imagine a heavier, much more misanthropic Karp, that's kind of what they remind us of. Feather And Stone is a must for anybody needing a little taste of thrashing triumphant, sometimes doomy and dark, sometimes fast and techy, but always heavy and punk as fuck ROCK music. It tastes good. This is also an enhanced disc, including some pretty righteous footage of the Cobra ripping at Roadburn! Proving these guys really are that HEAVY, even with just the power of two! For fans of Cavity, Karp, Floor, Torche, and things that kill shit!
The return of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer. This time teaming up with fellow low end noisemakers Anakrid. For this tag team effort, each band gets a side, and uses mostly the other band's sound as source material. We weren't able to tell which side was which, but they were both awesome, and because of the cross pollination, either side could have come from either band.
The A side is a dark stuttery dronescape, bits of hiss and static, fluttering lowend synth, some sort of moody minimal new wave, a cinematic drone with a subtle underlying beat, murky and propulsive, creepy and throbbing, sounding not unlike Wolf Eyes recording for Kompakt. A buzzing lo-fi doomdrone black ambient sort-of techno maybe? Whatever it is, it's killer.
The flip side is more post industrial drone, a bleak barren soundscape, peppered with crumbling rhythmic crunch, all manner of grinding metallic whirs, deep ribcage rattling rumbles, almost like some slowed down caveman krautrock, blinding streaks of feedback melted into soft smears and strewn over boiler room hiss and no-radio-reception static, the track morphs into something much more lovely, a beautifully subdued percussive outro, but peppered with sharp bursts of demonic growls or thunder cracks or slowed down bullwhip cracks, or all three woven into super creepy blasts of harsh weirdness, made even more so by the beautiful drift lurking beneath.
Gorgeously packaged. Thick plastic sleeves, printed vellum inserts, the record pressed on thick coke bottle clear vinyl, the ink black and metallic silver. So nice.
LIMITED TO 324 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
New Boris record. We toyed with the idea of just leaving it at that. Three simple words. Certainly enough to produce a frenzy of adding to cart and buy-button mashing. For Boris obsessives, the above should indeed be enough. Hop to it. NEW BORIS RECORD!!! It's limited. Of course. Colored vinyl. And if you don't buy one now you'll be shelling out $50 for it a few months down the line on eBay. But you knew that already.
For the rest of you, and in the interest of the folks who still want to know what it might sound like before they pull the trigger, allow us to continue the review forthwith:
Two tracks, both short and sweet. One from the forthcoming new album Smile, one exclusive to this here 7" (and perhaps a forthcoming import 12"), but for the collector or completist inclined among you, again,the B side will not be on the album.
The A side is pretty killer, fans of Boris' Pink will feel right at home. A serious Kiss like riff, some cowbell, and then some ridiculously blown out in the red acid psych lead guitar. It's weirdly lo-fi sounding, but still fierce, and if the band sounds a bit fuzzy and muddy, the leads sound like Wata is IN your headphones, ramming her guitar straight into your ears. It's pretty amazing actually. The music is a wild wooly garage metal stomp, tons of FX, wah wah, the vocals though are a bit of surprise. Weirdly poppy. Double tracked. Super melodic, almost sing-along-able. But it's all about the riffy groove and those impossibly acidic guitar freakouts. WOW.
The flipside, "Floor Shaker", starts out all ambient and shimmery, slow groovy guitars, eventually the track kicks in and we're in some seriously poppy territory, the vocals soaring and melodic, it almost sounds like some lost grunge band, that sort of punky riffage wrapped around pop hooks, near the end of the track it gets all weirdly distorted, but it's kind of an exciting new direction, some sort of metallic grunge pop. Looking forward to hearing Smile now for sure.
The packaging as always is over the top. Yellow vinyl, yellow inner sleeve, the band in full glam mode on the cover, all glamour poses and teased hair, inside, Wata reclining on a little Orange amp, facing a MASSIVE stack with THREE cabinets, and THREE heads. A total Japanese psych freek guitar geek pin up if there ever was one.
Again, super limited, only 3000 copies worldwide, we got tons, but as with most Boris stuff, these are gonna fly out of here. Which also means ONLY ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
We just love it when a plan comes together. Somebody thought it would be a good idea for these three Norwegians and one American to form a band and knock out some killer electric avant jazz improv jams. And indeed it was! Of course, just WHO these Norwegians and American were made a big difference: Box consists of guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim (Scorch Trio and a million other projects over the years), bassist Trevor Dunn (Fantomas, Secret Chiefs 3, Mr. Bungle, etc. etc.), drummer Morgan Agren (Mats//Morgan Band), and on electronics & keyboards, Stale Storlokken (Supersilent, Humcrush). None of 'em novices at acting and reacting as interesting sound-makers in diverse contexts.
The first track, "Untitled 9", is the longest, at 17 minutes, and pretty much says "Shred". Loud and clear. If you liked the Scorch Trio's scorching disc on Rune Grammofon, you'll probably dig this too. And the remaining five tracks here are also worthy, offering up plenty more moody bass burble, glitchy synth textures, threatening electric guitar, and percussive percolation. And though the disc is entitled Studio 1, we should note that this was all improvised live to analog tape with no overdubs or edits. Just pure badass instrumental interplay from four dudes who know what they're doin'.
Brethren indeed. This is the work of two consummate stringed instrument manipulators working in the improvised avant-folk idiom... Brother #1, from England, AQ fave James Blackshaw (who just blew us away with an amazing solo instore performance two weeks ago!), a dexterous master of the 12 string guitar. Brother #2, from Belgium, Renaissance lute player Jozef Van Wissem (who was also recently scheduled for an AQ instore alongside his pal Tetuzi Akiyama but unfortunately had to cancel due to a bad cold or flu). Van Wissem has received acclaim from us and others for his solo recordings incorporating electronics and field recordings alongside his innovations on classical lute improvisation.
Together, it's a perfect pairing, Blackshaw and Van Wissem conjuring a delicately dense intertwining of forward-flowing fingerpicked minimalist melodies... stately spiritual praises that are all instrumental but for a brief Current 93ish spoken coda to track one, "...The Lifting Of The Veil". And track three, "How The Unencumbered Soul Advises That One Not Refuse The Calls Of A Good Spirit", is more of an electrically-charged, expansive soundscape of moody string-strike. Electronics, "tennis edits" (??) and the "feline vocals" of one Bun Bun are also woven into the mix with Blackshaw's 12 string and Van Wissem's baroque lute.
To sum up: alchemical loveliness, utterly mesmeric! Really our only complaint about this is also a compliment: at just under a half hour total (28:39), we wish it were longer! The trance-like reveries this induces are too soon interrupted unless we set our cd player on repeat... (not an option with the super-limited vinyl version of this of course.) That's right, the lp version is LIMITED TO 330 COPIES. Whereas the cd is limited to a mere 1000. And we only have a few of the vinyl...
British Sea Power's recent Krankenhaus? (their question mark not ours) cdep revealed the band as a musical entity with a scope and prowess far beyond that of its fellow early-'00s dance rock Brits. Sure they can still kick out a right-on rollicking anthem like "Atom", but they can also execute a remarkably epic and grand passage filled with dynamics and nuance that gives Sigur Ros, Radiohead or Godspeed You Black Emperor a run for their money. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture, doncha? And they don't stop there. Nope, they go ahead and expertly dish out the smooth dreamy number "Open The Door" that's equal parts The Go-Betweens and Yo La Tengo. Really really good and recommended!
More mysterious and otherworldy sounds from our favorite Australian free folk brother / sister duo, and it sounds just as good as ever. Their sound is still like a down under cousin to the foresty folk of Finnish groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros, which makes a lot of sense since both groups end up releasing records on many of the same labels.
This is BOTOS's first release for Italian cd-r label Akoustic Desease (another AD release, Siddhi, is reviewed elsewhere on this list) and it's a beaut. Mixing soft shimmery strum, convoluted glitched out electronic stutter, dark ominous drones, tribal rhythms, abstract ambience into a sprawling exploration of lost sonic rituals and stumbling noise making free for alls.
The percussion is mostly found (at least it sounds that way), clanks and clunks, rattles and scrapes, here and there some actual drumming surface, but even then it's simple and muted, various strings buzz and creak and scrape, bits of twang, atonal strum, detuned chords, all wound into stretched out melodic tangles, above it all, flutes flutter, horns moan and whistle, it's all gloriously ramshackle, the vibe is a bunch of folks gathered around a pile of noisemakers, in the shade of a big tree beneath a blue sky and Summer sun. It's not at all dark or creepy or ominous, it's more festive and celebratory, voices drift in and out, chimes tinkle, bells ring, drums skitter, occasionally everything locks into a distinct groove, sounding almost like some skeletal krautrock, but for the most part, the sound meanders and drifts, lazy and lost, laid back and content, carefree and happy.
Housed in an oversized ultra thick fold over cardstock sleeve, the cd affixed to a nub inside, LIMITED TO 116 COPIES, each one hand numbered!!
At first glance, it might be difficult to know what this record it all about. The sleeve is just a photo of trees and leaves, a dense overgrown forest. Pull out the cd, that too is cryptic, just some random letters on the disc, the sleeve, an old crinkled photo from some seventies porn mag of a topless cowgirl with a gun in her mouth. There's an insert, with a bunch of strange shapes, the word CAVE right at the top. But we know what it is. We've been waiting for this disc for ages. The debut recording from, wait for it� CAVE! Who just so happen to be the spacerock krautrock dronerock riff heavy jam band side project of one Warhammer 48K, who were already spacey and krauty and droney to begin with, so needless to say this is some seriously kick ass, aQ freakout worthy shit.
For the attention span impaired, howabout some Hawkwind, Can, Circle, Lightning Bolt, Pharaoh Overlord? Sounds good huh? Well, it's easy to hear bits and pieces of all of those bands in the sound of Cave, a dual drummer-ed riff heavy psych rock, that takes single riffs and hammers at them, pounding and pummeling, repetitive and mesmerizing, a sort of kraut flecked hypnorock, but with all sorts of strange twists and turns, bizarre arrangements, baffling breakdowns, but woven into longform jams that should have anyone into the above mentioned bands frothing at the mouth.
The opening track is a gorgeous little tangle of minor key melodies, looped and repeated, over a tense distant drone, thick swaths of keyboard whir over soft tangles of acoustic guitar and space-y backwards guitar swoops, but then the opening riff of the second track kicks in, and it's all fuzzy and feral, the greatest riff Pharoah Overlord never wrote, and they just hang on it, way longer than any normal band would, FOREVER, before the drums kick in, and they're off, a relentless and hooky groove, with brief blasts of super dynamic chaos, before slipping right back into it. Keyboards lay still more hypnotic melodies over the top, vocals, when there are any, are shouted way down in the mix, or are wordless falsetto la-la-la's, adding more texture and sonic complexity than anything. The dual drummers mix it up spitting out occasional tribal squalls, sometimes thick swirls of staticky fuzz wash over the proceedings, but their propulsive fortitude never falters. The first two tracks would almost be enough. Nearly 12 minutes of heavy freaked out space jam nirvana. You can practically feel the walls heaving and the sweat dripping through the speakers. You'll probably need a lie down afterwards. But there's no time, cuz hell, there's 6 more tracks to dig through. The sound is punk rock, lo-fi, but lush and epic, damaged and delirious, like garage rockers raised on Magma and Faust, there's plenty of Neu! in there, Stereolab too then, but it's way heavier than that, the guitars crunchy and thick, occasionally opening up into wailing psychrock blowouts, the drums getting more and more distorted and frenzied. Imagine an amphetamine fueled Circle or Can, but via the basement, the sound a sweat soaked drug drenched mostly instrumental kraut groove
Mathy, murky, like the fucked up younger brother of Yes, a Neanderthal krautrock, laced with awesome grinding space rock riffage, blown out squalls of ur-psych, flurries of percussive splatter, chanting cult vocals, bits of what the fuck vocoder (!), but for all the weirdness, the core sound of Cave is THE RIFF. Whether it's a warbly synth, or a superdistorted guitar, or tra-la-la vocals, they all align themselves with that riff, the mission, to entrance, to ensorcel, a heaving, pulsing, throbbing mass, the sound magnetic and irresistible. Endless jams that aren't really, but feel like they should be. Like they are anyway. Transcending the laws of time and space, dragging us kicking and screaming, bouncing and bobbing, into some blissed out basement at the end of the universe, where we subsist of nothing but riffs, drums and FX. We never want to leave.
Killer packaging, it's an lp AND a cd, same music on both, fold over full color sleeve, full color one sided cd sleeve (all described above) and a full color thick cardstock insert. And of course, limited, only 500 copies!
Chalk and Daisuke Suzuki have known each other for many years now, as Suzuki runs the Siren label out of Japan and had released Sumac, Chalk's masterful collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough. Suzuki is also responsible for one of the very few published interviews with the somewhat reclusive Chalk. Their friendship certainly runs deep, and out of this friendship came the impetus to collaborate once again (both Suzuki and Chalk had contributed to the now defunct Ora project well over a decade ago). Slippery drones open the album, declaring that Andrew Chalk is definitely a principle author of this album and mimicking many of the fog-enveloped sounds that Chalk brought to Mirror's Eye Of The Storm. While these sounds quiver like a distant mirage out on the open desert for a passage of time that could be 5 minutes or it could be 25, the long-string drones begin to separate into a series of alien plucks which bear more than a passing resemblance to the expressionist poetics of Keiji Haino at his most introspective. Echoes and vibrations of these plucks ripple underneath in the shadowy reflection pool of echo and shimmer. As the album progresses, the enveloping opiated drone wrapping around cold, cold, cold field recordings of arctic winds racing across a seashore becomes the center piece, reflecting just how good Andrew Chalk's sounds are. Lo and behold, it's another excellent Andrew Chalk record.
This is the first time we've reviewed anything by Swedish dronescaper Thomas Ekelund, aka Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, which is weird as folks around here are big fans. It's not for lack of releases, he's been pretty prolific, it just one of those things, so many releases, artists, records, so little time.
Well, we aim to change that all right now, with this, the latest from Ekelund, a limited cd-r released on night-ocean-drone label Mystery Sea, and Ekelund's sounds here sound right at home. Three looooong tracks, the first, ultra minimal, it takes minutes to get going, but once it does, it's a fantastic expanse of ultra minimalism, so minimal in fact that much of it borders on Francisco Lopez territory. But turn it up, and listen close, and Ekelund's soundworld will reveal itself to you. A washed out murmur, peppered part way through with footsteps, the sound of metal on metal, some sort of random field recording, of men working, the clang and clatter overshadowing the whispery sounds beneath, but by the end of the first track, those whispery sounds have built into growling swells, thick smears of muted melody, crumbling and almost industrial sounding when paired with the grind and creak of the workmen.
The second track starts off in a similar fashion, strange super close mic'd sounds, thumps and scrapes, crinkles and cracks, over a super busy microscopic dronescape, all hisses and whirs and little bits of almost invisible melody, but it doesn't take long for that track to also swell into something dense and thick, high end tones rest atop a pulsing sea swell like drone, the low end fading out leaving a strangely dreamy high end shimmer, eventually fading out and leaving just those strange clunks and scrapes and that whirling swirling whisper beneath.
The closing track is a continuation of track two, in fact, they all sort of fit together into one sprawling soundscape, but the closer remains murky and minimal, a subtle scraping floating on a thick, but soft and smeared low end rumble, it's only in the last minute or two that other sounds join in, strange twinkles and glimmers, like laying on the ocean floor and watching bits of sunlight slowly make their way through the swirling blue grey sea.
Amazing packaging too, full color tray card, numbered, the booklet a half booklet, leaving half of the cd face exposed. Very striking.
And as always LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slowmotion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
Cool cover art by Arik Roper, housed in a gorgeous black slipcover, letterpressed and printed in gold metallic ink.
Finally, the return of the Elemental Chrysalis, the duo of Chett Scott (aka Ruhr Hunter, he also runs Glass Throat Recordings) and James Woodhead, who were responsible for The Calocybe Collection, one of our favorite discs of 2005. A sprawling woodlandscape of dark ominous dronemusick and fluttery forest folk. It's been 3 years but once you hear The Dark Path To Spiritual Expansion, you'll understand what took so long.
A gorgeously packaged double disc set, looooooong tracks, four songs on each disc, the shortest clocking in at 7:32, the longest at 26:55. Gone is much of the drone, leaving their sound much more folky, the focus on the strings, plucked and strummed, buzzing and humming, the sound a mysterious mystical crawl, foresty, funereal, dark and dolorous and dreamlike.
The first nearly 15 minutes of the opening track consist of the same acoustic melody, repeated over and over, like some magical mantra, and it works somehow, the repetition trancelike, the subtle variations, propelling the track forward. Eventually, the track spreads out, the vocals ghostly moans, the strums become more abstract, the sound underpinned by haunting shimmers and whirs.
While these guys do get lumped in with the free folk or freak folk of forest folk movements, on The Dark Path, they are definitely something more akin to classic seventies folk. It could be some lost disc from a mysterious UK hippy commune in 1971. Opening for Comus and The Incredible String Band. This is some serious Wickerman shit. But without all the silliness or overt weirdness. The Elemental Chrysalis have created timeless folkmusic. A sort of foresty country music. Bits of twang definitely inform the band's dark wistful threnodies. The pace is lugubrious, the sound is sprawling and soporific, the voices drawled to the extent that they often sound like just another instrument. And the instrument list again is extensive and massive, a handful we'd never even heard of, but the band don't do the usual, everything and the kitchen sink, instead, they are employed subtly and judiciously, so much that you could be forgive for believing it to be just voice and guitar and a bit extra ambience. There are a few moments, especially on the second disc, where the band stretch out and craft some serious sonic soundscapes, but even then, they tend to drift above that same gorgeous forest floor folk flutter.
A gorgeously languorous countrified folk flecked slowcore, that will no doubt appeal to all the various folks mentioned above, but should also appeal to fans of later Earth, and anyone into dark beauty and haunting musical mystery.
Fantastic packaging, an oversized thick cardstock 6 panel fold over sleeve, green and black, stunning cover art, linernotes and credits, the cds mounted on nubs on two of the panels...
The master returns. To teach the young ones a thing or two about the guitar. And about turning that guitar into something wholly other.
It's been a while since we've heard from Christian Fennesz, but thankfully, very little has changed, he can still take a guitar and a laptop and create a dense world of dreamlike shimmer, with a deftness that puts most other soundmakers to shame. So here's a brief two song taste of what Fennesz has been up to lately. And if this single is any indication, the upcoming full length is going to be the drone-y dreamy disc of the year!
But for now, we'll take these two, and just play them over and over. The A side finds the guitar completely transformed into muted smears, the overall sound a shifting sea of corrosive crumbling distortion, but rendered in breathless whispers and washed out hues. The metallic thrum is spread out into soft shimmers, a murk that would almost sound industrial if it wasn't so pretty.
The flipside is more guitar oriented, a steel string acoustic, the melodies branching out in simple softly strummed strands, a skeletal framework for swirls of soft hiss and chunks of fragmented melody drifting by like leaves on a forest stream. The sound is like some simple folk music, broadcast via a staticky short wave radio, but beneath the guitar, and the dreamy hiss, are lush, stately swells melodic and cinematic, that infuse the track with a dark, but sweetly sorrowful elegiac quality. Gorgeous.
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Another gorgeous missive from the ever expanding world of modern freak folk, this time from Philly based singer, songwriter, guitarist, cellist Margaret Wienk, who with Music For Witches and Alchemists has crafted a darkly dramatic gem of moody mournful melancholia. Equal parts Pentangle, Incredible String Band, and of course some of her more modern sonic compatriots, Brightblack, Vetiver, Espers (Greg Weeks and Meg Baird both play on Music For Witches and Alchemists) and the like, Fern Knight is most definitely modern folk, but at the same time sounds so classic, the songwriting, Wienk's voice, the arrangements, a perfect combination. But the band manage to take that classic sound and infuse it with some sweet sonic mystery, due in no small part to the unlikely instrumentation, the sweet moaning cellos, dreamy swaths of harp, alien melodies on the singing saw, the twang of the Jew's harp, the wheezing harmonium, but unlike most bands, those sounds don't define Fern Knight's sound, merely add to the texture and mood of the music, which even stripped to its bare basics would still sound as sweet.
Before all you Forgotten Woods fanatics freak out the way we did when we first saw this, let us say that most of this disc IS included in the still available Baklengs Mot Stupet 1992-1996 triple cd set. But don't stop reading, there is definitely still a good reason to pick this up, even if you have the 3cd set. There are basically two possibilities for wanting to own this, a brand new reissue of Sjel Av Natten. Either you're a newbie, who wants to check out FW, but doesn't want to drop $25. Although we can pretty much guarantee, that once you wrap your ears around this you WILL want everything you can get your hands on. Or, you already own the set, but desperately need every bit of Forgotten Woods there ever was, and the fact that this disc contains two exclusive, unreleased FW jams is enough to send you scooting toward the buy button.
For the newbie, let's explain the wonder and allure that is Forgotten Woods (we'll get to the extra tracks in a second):
So...what's the big deal you ask, why are these Forgotten Woods so unforgettable? Well, first off, and at first listen, this will definitely appeal to the whole raw, old-school, Nordic forest black metal necrocrowd. Really good grim stuff in the unholy spirit of classic Darkthrone and Burzum, but with that extra kinda inept, Benighted Leamsish fuckedupedness to it that of course makes us love it all the more. And, additionally and importantly, there's also always a strange, unexpected sort of poppiness underlying everything. As a friend (who also likes this band, and is a member of Thuja, the Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, the Skygreen Leopards and a bunch of other Jewelled Antler acts) put it, "man it's good...completely inept, like they're barely pulling it off, total 13-year-old-metal-kid-in-the-basement drums." So, this is most definitely the kind of black metal (like Benighted Leams, Xasthur, Lugubrum, Leviathan, Abruptum, Meads of Asphodel, Ved Buens Ende, and Sigh for example) that we have to recommend to all of our customers who are into (not-necessarily metal) weirdness.
So for the rest of you, the ones who already love and cherish their Forgotten Woods discs, there are indeed two unreleased tracks (three, if you count the weird 10 second spoken word outro), both incredibly raw, some sort of rehearsal or practice space recordings, but even in that form, maybe especially, they completely kick ass, heavy and stumblingly brutal, but with an incredible pop sensibility buried right below the surface. The second track has a definite Slinty Ved Buens Ende vibe, but both are amazing, proving that besides being grim and true, these guys, whether they realized it or not, were incredible songwriters as well. So recommended, as is the triple cd set (maybe even more so!).
Finally, the last piece of the Forgotten Woods puzzle. We listed the amazing 3cd box Baklengs Mot Stupet 1992-1996 ages ago, and STILL we can barely keep it in stock. It collected most of the essential FW material, all of it mindblowing. Recently, one by one, the various releases included in the 3cd box have been getting reissued on vinyl. This, The Curse Of Mankind is the last one to hit wax, a bit prciey as the exchange rate sucks and overseas shipping on heavy heavy vinyl is steep, but it's a doozy. A massive double lp.
If you're new to the wondrous and cracked black world of Forgotten Woods, then read on...
Clearly this '90s Norwegian black metal band has a cult following! But just why are these Forgotten Woods so unforgettable? Well, first off, and at first listen, this will definitely appeal to the whole raw, old-school, Nordic forest black metal necrocrowd. Really good grim stuff in the unholy spirit of classic Darkthrone and Burzum, but with that extra kinda inept, Benighted Leamsish fuckedupedness to it that of course makes us love it all the more. And, additionally and importantly, there's also always a strange, unexpected sort of poppiness underlying everything, despite song titles like "Grip Of Frost" and "Dimension Of The Blackest Dark". As a friend (who also likes this band, and is a member of Thuja, the Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, the Skygreen Leopards and a bunch of other Jewelled Antler acts) put it, "man it's good...completely inept, like they're barely pulling it off, total 13-year-old-metal-kid-in-the-basement drums." That by itself would be enough to explain this band's appeal. But our sensibilities here at AQ are further stoked by the fact that the more you delve into these discs, the more you find yourself wondering just what the hell you're listening to...as Forgotten Woods mysteriously morphs by the third cd into something that sounds like jazz-inflected, naive indie-rock mopery, with clean jangly guitars that starts to sound like Felt or The Church or even Maher Shalal Hash Baz! Other tracks seem to echo The Cure, all slow and post-punkish... what a weird band! We can only wonder at what they thought they were doing, and wonder even more so at why they're so accepted by the grim black metal underground. It's the kind of black metal (like Benighted Leams, Xasthur, Lugubrum, Leviathan, Abruptum, Meads of Asphodel, Ved Buens Ende, and Sigh for example) that we have to recommend to all of our customers who are into (not-necessarily metal) weirdness.
Richard Formby is someone you are probably less familiar with than most of the bands he has worked with: Vibracathedral Orchestra, The Telescopes, The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, Fuxa, Mogwai, Spaceman 3, Dean & Britta, The Pale Saints, Hood, the list goes on. Known mostly as a producer and remixer for the past twenty years, this is his first release as a musician, and we're surprised it's taken so long as this is really quite good. Part of a planned three volume set, Volume 1 is comprised of 8 instrumental compositions perfect for a blissful night-drive. From the motorik propulsions of "Karoli" (a memorium to Can's Michael Karoli),the minimalist groove of "Oscillate", the cinematic "Universi", and the wistful chamber pop of "Crater Ives" to the dreamy loping drones of the 20 minute final track, "The Church Bells at Filey". Recommended!
Wow, haven't heard from Fuxa in awhile (hey, didn't we start another Fuxa review with a similar sentiment?). The Michigan space dreamers have never received as much attention as their peers, Windy and Carl, or Add N to (X), but maybe cuz their records are so few and far between. Well, it's always nice to hear from them, and their latest offering is this single which features a cover and collaboration with of all bands, Suicide!? Well, it sort of makes sense, doesn't it, as Suicide were a key bridge between minimalist punk and space rock. Fuxa with the help of Martin Rev along with Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Lun, Dean & Britta)and Sonic Boom (Spaceman 3, Spectrum) take on a gorgeous and driving retelling of Suicide's classic "Cheree" that sounds a bit like all of these bands combined. Hopefully, it won't be forever before a new Fuxa full length.
Anyone remotely familiar with aQ knows we've long had a soft spot for earthy, psych-tinged music that weaves its way along beautiful shadowy paths through the dewy glimmers and murky sludge. Well, here's something new that fits the bill and has been pleasing many an ear around here! We actually put a call out to these Portland, OR folks back in October to send some of their music down the coast. A few months have passed and here we are finally with cds in hand, and we think it was worth the wait! Heck, in the short time we've had Like This Forever in stock, in-store play has already been stirring up many many queries with at least one purchased each time it's spun.
Stormy waves of electric guitar distortion and reedy woodwinds crash upon one another, then melt into clear smooth bell chimes. Horns and piano also enter the fray that ebbs and flows around mainman Eric Crespo's emotive vocals that have been compared to those of Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. As you listen you get a sense that Crespo and co. may have been raised on a balanced diet of Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac as well as Pavement and Slint. Yes, all the most nutritious and tastiest food groups! Recommended.
We almost missed out on this one completely. Limited to 100 copies or so, we tried to order 40 and were informed they only had a handful left. So we begged and pleaded, and the label agreed to press up 40 more copies just for us, and thus for you. Whew! Since we discovered this band we've become pretty obsessed. As have you all, judging from how quick we sell out of Gnaw records. They're heavy, they're super fucked up, it's not just black metal or sludge, it's some head spinning hybrid equal parts abstract industrial, ambient collageblasting blackness, hyperspeed grind, blackdrone, harsh and hellish, but strangely musical, their last record, the recently reviewed An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood (they have a knack for titles too) is pretty much a shoe in for record of the year. Have a look at that review for some serious gushing.
This 3 song ep, is GTT at their most black metal. The first two tracks, while laced with bits of orchestral grandeur, and blown out crumbling bliss, spend most of their time blasting away, but even then, there are bits of melodic flair here and there, the distortion is so thick and intense, the whole thing threatens to blur into some thick whirring drone, the opener has a killer breakdown groove, utterly majestic and epic, before flitting back to the black blast. The second track is another blackened monster, furiously thrashing and convulsing wildly, but it too is peppered with bits of glimmering effulgence, and a middle breakdown where distorted guitars are pitched up and allowed to shimmer ominously like some Bernard Hermann score, before the metal drops back in, transforming the track into a pummeling slow motion Godflesh style industrial dirge that eventually launches itself back into a furious burst of grim brutality.
The final track is the creepiest of the bunch, long drawn out synth drones, wavering ominously, wrapped in bis of whir and metallic buzz, samples distorted and effected drifting amidst the swirling black ambience, the moodiness eventually overtaken by a thick wave of white noise distortion and what sounds like voices screaming in terror, finally splintering into a hellish black frenzy.
Packaged in a mini 3" dvd-style case, with full color artwork, and pressed on a black cd-r. Limited to these 40 copies, once they're gone, might be tough to convince them to make us more again...
Not many artists can lay claim to their very own musical genre, but Hollywood, Florida's The Goslings are among the elite few who most definitely can. On first listen their sound seems to fit pretty comfortably amongst the current crop of distorted deconstructed decaying blissed out dreamy dirge rock that seems to be all the rave (Nadja, Alcest, Hjarnidaudi, Procer Veneficus, etc.), after all they often get described as half SUNNO))) and half My Bloody Valentine, but that's really only half (again) true. And while their sound does share some of the elements of those other bands, The Goslings are their own perfect, synergetic sonic force, an organic, original soundworld that has absorbed and re-synthesized those influences entirely. In other words, on this latest record, they somehow manage to sound way, way heavier and much, much more lush, transforming any vestiges of other bands' sounds into something distinctly theirs. Formerly just a husband and wife duo, Max and Leslie Soren, Occasion finds the couple joined by two apparently full-time members which does nothing but help make their sound, thicker, and more dense, more intense, more distorted, and impossibly, more beautiful. It's not a huge departure from the sound of their previous outings, but that's not really a bad thing. Occasion just serves to demonstrate that their sound is now even more of a particularly refined and menacing chunk of skull crushingly gorgeous sound.
Each of The Goslings' records has been self-recorded straight onto tape in their $15 an hour rehearsal space. Before it was a 4-track, now it's a reel-to-reel 8-track tape, with any additional tracks being added at a friend's house in Pro Tools -- a slight upgrade, but again, one that merely serves to push their sound even further into some hellish sonic realm. Mastered by James Plotkin, their commitment to relatively lo-fi, analog recording a significant part of why each and every track is so totally ear-stabbingly, skull-fuckingly shit heavy. But beneath the obvious doom veneer, the crushing sludge, the washed out hiss and buzz, there are buried some lovely melodies and more of the Goslings' near perfect pop songs. Fear not though, it's not like Nadja or Jesu, where there is potentially enough of said pop to turn-off those more dedicated to the seriously heavy and/or utterly grim. Regardless of the surprising melodic structures lay hidden beneath the blown out bluster, or the prettiness of Leslie's vocals drifting ethereally throughout, the music, the sound, the Goslings' sheer power continually threatens to overwhelm, a bludgeoning slab of sonic destruction that's systematically destroying your entire life, note by note. Then out of nowhere, there's a weird little bluegrass number, a brief respite before the band lurch back into motion, unleashing another avalanche of village crushing, ultradistorted, stumbling, downtuned beautiful brutality.
A higher recommendation would be difficult to give. Essential!
We loved the debut release from the band Niflheim, as much as you can love something that dark and dour and depressing and miserable, but love it we did. A crushing chunk of soul shearing Burzumic buzz, laced with strange drones, and bits of haunting ambience.
For some reason the band changed their name to Gris, and this, Il Etait Une Foret, is the first under the new monicker, but, it's actually the 2nd chapter in Gris/Niflheim's musical quest which is apparently meant to span seven volumes. But we're off to a pretty good start�
But with the name change, the sound has changed as well, pretty dramatically actually, but before we get into it, we feel that we have to preface the following with this disclaimer: we definitely get pretty hyperbolic about the music we love, proclaiming things the best ever, the most fucked of all time, the heaviest, but you know, there's nothing wrong with that really, cuz often, for that moment, whatever we're listening to really is. You're not playing things side by side, not comparing two records, you're letting a single record and the music within overwhelm you and engulf you and carry you away, so it's no wonder, that in the throes of that sort of listening, whatever that record is, it IS in fact for that moment the MOST. The great records are the ones that continue to be the most even on repeated listens.
Okay with that out of the way, this Gris record has some strange ineffable quality, some wondrous confluence of heaviness and prettiness, that in short order has quickly made it our most listened to and probably favorite black metal record of the year so far. It's not the heaviest, or the fastest, or the grimmest, but it is truly strange, beautifully unique, mournful yet majestic, depressive yet dreamy.
The sound is definitely Burzumic, a loping lurching almost midtempo buzz, the guitar super brittle and crunchy, the arpeggiated notes dripping with crumbling distortion, the vocals some of the most anguished we've heard, recalling Weakling for sure, as well as groups like Hekel and Malcuidant. A raspy near hysterical wail, always on the verge of cracking completely. The riffs are moody and melancholy, intense and emotional, often a second, acoustic, guitar, offers up a melodic counterpoint, giving the depressive dirge a strangely stately and classical vibe. The songs often burst into epic crescendos, the screams growing even more tortured, strings soaring, it's like a black metal opera, over the top and super intense, cinematic and totally heart wrenching. Rare is the band of any stripe, especially black metal, that is able to illicit that sort of response in the listener.
Some of the tracks are just acoustic guitar and drums, a loose skeletal framework, the vocals a howling banshee wail scrawled across the rhythms below, bursts of machinegun like double kick drum, soaring guitar leads, flurries of piano notes, those tracks occasionally erupting into walls of blasting buzzing neo classical blackness, but still rife with mournful melodies and strange sonic flourishes, choral vocals, drifting drones, but the core is this super intense, ultra moving heaviness that loses none of it's emotional impact even when it's furiously pounding away.
Other tracks find the piano picking out a sad melody beneath a crushing doomic plod, wrapped in yet more strings, and the vocals, continuing their harsh howling lament.
Then there's the closing track, a full on classical piece, none of that fake synth ambient classical bullshit, this is a dense chunk of modern classical, strings and piano, wound into tense melodies, weaving back and forth, creating an epic and moving coda, dark and evocative haunting and mysterious, gloriously emotional and so stirring and lovely.
Not sure what else to say, at the risk of slipping into hyperbole again (but you -were- warned!), this record is absolutely amazing, a definite contender for BM record of the year, and not only does it have already anxiously awaiting chapter three, it's got us all fired up to go back and revisit the first one as well. SO recommended.
Brooklyn-based ambient-drone duo Growing never fails to please the devoted. It could also easily be said that the duo has failed to truly diverge from their original starting point. Although, part of the charm of this sort of music is indulging in a process of creation that celebrates the difference and repetition within a given theme or concept; expanding or investigating a specific idea over a length of time. Thus, if you like Growing, you'll love this EP. All of the usual landmarks are here: a Nadja on opium meets some sort of Windy & Carl and Labradford hybrid, heavy filter manipulations, masked, aquatic tremolo and chorus leads, and full-on auto-pan attacks that completely embrace stereo dynamics. We've read that -- specifically within the ambient-drone scene -- Growing has been particularly reluctant to utilize computers, preferring to employ pedals and more organic looping techniques. Still, a quick listen to this release unearths enough digital-sounding distortion to make the listener wonder whether or not these two dronesters have finally caved in or not. Fans of long, drawn-out melodic landscapes or psychedelic explorations won't want to miss out on this one. Definitely recommended.
Prog nutters? These guys are, definitely. And be prepared to go prog nuts yourself for this new release from AQ-faves Guapo. This British band is now on Neurosis' Neurot label, after releases for (among others) Mike Patton's Ipecac and our own Andee's tUMULt. We've been fans of 'em for a long time, obviously, and are in good company! This new one is everything we'd expect from Guapo: extended, mostly instrumental cinematic symphonics, dark and moody, played with the virtuosity and verve of their '70s prog rock ancestors. Heck, I (Allan) played a 15 minute track from this, "King Lindorm", on my prog / krautrock radio show last night, Klaus To The Edge (www.westaddradio.com/klaus), and it fit right in perfectly alongside the '70s likes of Cornucopia and Gnidrolog!! Droning strings. Eastern melodies. Bombastic battery. Elegant eeriness.
Yet at this point, Guapo have developed their own sound to a degree where you can't just tag them as a retro proposition. Creatively, they're bringing their old school prog rock inspirations into the 21st century, and have refined their approach to a point where they have as much in common with modern post rock soundscapers as they do with the eccentricities of hoary prog heroes Magma.
As always, the duo of Daniel O'Sullivan (Fender Rhodes, piano, bass, guitars, harmonium, modular synthesizers, autoharp, voice, electronics -- whew!) and David J. Smith (drumkit, percussion) are their own veritable prog rock orchestra, though they do have occasional help from guests, including vocalist Jarboe from the Swans on one song. That'd be "The Selenotrope", one of two tracks originally from Guapo's tour-only Twisted Stems cdep, both of which are included here, and which we previously described as sounding something like a horror movie soundtracks scored by The Necks. (To Guapo fans who happen to already have Twisted Stems, we say no worries, you'll still be getting well over 40 minutes of brand new music on Elixirs too.)
All this proggy goodness comes wrapped up in a snazzy black & white artwork, packaged in a jewelcase with cardstock slipcase.
We were intrigued the moment we saw a copy of this reissued early '70s Eastern-influenced tranquil psych gem. The back cover displays dark and mysteries photos of the five men in The Habibiya. All clad in turbans and sporting long beards. We could almost hear the mystique before we pushed play. When we did finally listen we were steadily reeled into their raga like hypnotic sounds, influenced heavily by the music of Sufi Muslims from Morocco, where they visited on what was apparently an extremely moving trip for them in 1971. In fact we had no idea at first that The Habibiyya weren't from somewhere in the East, as the music we were hearing sounded so effortless and true. We later learned that they were in fact from London and featured ex-members of Mighty Baby (kind of the UK equivalent of The Grateful Dead). But where the Mighty Baby stuff we heard was cool and jammy it never really transported us like this recording does. It's music to close your eyes to, as the rich sounds sweep you away, aiming for the sky as its deep hitting core glows with an undeniable spiritual force. While most bands of the era had their backstage area filled with booze and groupies, The Habibiyya mostly just had books with them backstage like the I Ching and texts from mystic minds like G.I. Gurdjieff and Aleister Crowley.
Using zither, piano, banjo, oboe, koto, shakuhachis and an adaptation of classical Moroccan Andalusi singing they were able to create a sound that felt both ancient and timeless. We can all agree that what usually happens when Western musicians try to tap into an eastern sound and feeling, is that the sound can fall miserably short, sounding tepid and watered down, but there are those special rare occasions, when regardless of origin or location, musicians can tap into a special spirit and make sounds that transcend place and time. The Habibiyya did just that!
It's taken quite a while for local boys Hey Willpower to have their debut full length come out here in the states. But finally it has arrived, and the party jams are a plenty. The mastermind of Will Schwartz, also of Imperial Teen with most of the music and beats created by Tomo Yasuda from Tussle & Coconut. Hey Willpower have really perfected their live show over the years with impeccable and endearing dance moves and a stage presence that's as sassy as it is sincere. P.D.A. has a couple tracks re-recorded from their debut ep as well as nine brand new songs that tap into their feel good take at unadulterated dance minded pop that lands somewhere between the Junior Boys and Justin Timberlake.
In the last few years Hot Chip have made the transition from being a well kept electro-pop secret to one of the more popular bands in the world of indie/electro-rock. It's for good reason as they really found a refreshing way to tap into both the more interesting elements of electronic pop while also delivering jams that you can really shake your stuff too. Incorporating elements of indie rock, electronica, pop, and even sneaking some avant garde and experimental influences into their super catchy blend of music for the masses, a sound that doesn't pander but instead creates a super fun place where music lovers of all stripes and persuasions can come together for a super good time. Tapping into everything from OMD to Daft Punk, Prince to Gary Numan, Justin Timberlake to Soft Pink Truth. This is what the kids are going crazy for at the moment, and they could be doing lots worse cause Hot Chip are really good!
Now also reissued on vinyl...
Heavy-ish prog/psych power trio action outta Edinburgh, Scotland circa 1969, here's the sole album by this obscure but well-regarded band. This is its first fully official reissue, done with the help of the band members themselves. This moody Beast was apparently much heavier in live performance than on this comparatively tame studio recording (a common problem for bands back then, lamented in the liner notes by bassist Ed Jones, who claims that only about 45 seconds of the record really reflects their earbleeding live sound). Even then, Volume One isn't without, well, volume. And power. Explosive electric guitar breaks and urgent rhythms, alternating with plodding and poetic dreamscapes. Wah-wah'd chicka chicka chicka guitar with Eastern-inflected melodies wending around and around. The first song is called "Mystic Man" and indeed the entirety of The Human Beast's album evokes a mystic, almost creepy feeling, accentuated by cryptic lyrics, lines like "We celebrate the feel of human meat" and "Mind escapes you, flies to freedom / Leaves your hollow gargoyle kingdom". There's certainly a special weirdness to The Human Beast, a peculiar, pagan freakiness. Their cover of The Incredible String Band's "Maybe Someday" fits right in. Very effective.
And while the production never lets them get quite as Beastly as they wanted to be, for 1969 this is still pretty badass. These guys probably never heard Randy Holden's Population II, but they probably would have liked it. And they'd certainly heard their share of Jimi Hendrix and Iron Butterfly... While more '60s psych than '70s proto-metal (at their heaviest here, closer to Cream than Sabbath), we'd certainly rank 'em in alongside the likes of High Tide, Sam Gopal, NSU, The Dark, Arzachel, and Andromeda...
Most of the metalheads we know, especially ones with a soft spot for classic eighties metal, are unanimous in their love of Phoenix hard rockers Icon. Their first disc was an all time classic, super rocking, crazy catchy, hooks galore and a raspy vocalist with a voice that sounded quite a bit like Blackie Lawless from W.A.S.P., in fact the whole band was sort of a dead ringer for W.A.S.P., or early Great White even. One of those records we NEVER get tired of listening to. Both Allan and Andee rank it as one of their all time favorites.
Icon's follow up was this disc right here, finally given a super deluxe reissue treatment, by Rock Candy, the UK label that gave us killer reissues from the Sea Hags, Zodiac Mindwarp, the Plasmatics, Billy Squier, and now this, Night Of The Crime.
The liner notes call this "without doubt one of the greatest melodic hard rock records ever made," and while we might not go quite that far, it is pretty awesome. But be warned, it's way more AOR than hard rock a lot of the time, plenty of keyboards, some ballad-y bits. But the songs are all crazy catchy, and the hardest rockers, like "Raise The Hammer" and "The Whites Of Their Eyes" could easily have been outtakes from their first record.
The sound hovers somewhere between Whitesnake, Autograph that sort of poppy hard rocking eighties sound and more commercial fare like John Parr. But it's the hooks and the killer voice that makes this stand out. The songs stick in your head like crazy, and it's difficult to imagine why these guys weren't huge. The liner notes are packed with photos and stories, the band had some serious Behind The Music drama going on, it makes for a good read. But again, if you don't dig the sound of the eighties, poppy melodic radio ready hard rock, big hair, all that, you might not be able to get into this. Allan and Andee both love the first Icon desperately, but only Andee is willing to stand up for this one, but he stands proud, hair teased, spandex pants, bullet belt, Chuck Taylors, lots and lots of scarves, head banging to his heart's content.
Ready to be touched by the magic hoof?!
Two years ago, we just about sold our souls to Satan in tribute to the glorious magnificence of this band's Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer album. Allan's favorite black metal record of 2005 by far. Now this two-man cult is back with a new album for No Colours and we're sacrificing babies over here in celebration. Well not really but guitarist Dagon and drummer Incubus would probably like to hear that. And if anyone was gonna convince us through the power of stabbing riffage, flashing battery, and croaking vox that Satanism is the way to go, these are the dudes to do it!!
What makes the storming black metal of this Seattle duo so special? Certainly not just their love of Satan, though they do seem more sincerely devoted than most. No, they're just -different- from the hordes of hordes out there. For one thing, Dagon's vocals aren't the usual high-pitched anguished rasps, nor are they deathly grunts. They're more like droning crypt-creakings, layered and insidious, truly "nefarious dismal orations", an integral part of Inquisition's trance-inducing doomic atmospheres -- along with the varispeed velocity of their attack, seemingly simultaneously plodding yet blurred with speed. Then there's the RIFFS. You can't argue there. Inquisition understand old school heavy metal hookiness without being overtly retro, y'know? And this stuff oozes METAL as much as it gives off a sinister shine of actual originality and serious Satanic faith. Pure metalness plus weirdness (in the arcane, occult sense of "the weird"), yeah! We're spellbound. And what the heck is going on with the buried, backwards masked munchkinisms we think we're hearing at the end of the amazing title track?
Clearly Germany's No Colours, a label with lots of staggeringly excellent, evil bands, is well aware that Inquisition is indeed a cut above and deserving of special treatment. They've produced a limited edition initial run of this cd, a thousand copies packaged inside a black cardboard slipcase with a die-cut pentagram!! If that wasn't enough, there's also a full-colour poster folded up and inserted inside the slipcase too. We got a bunch of 'em but don't know how long these will last.
It would be wrong and misleading to say that this sounds like Om meets Watain, but somehow it we think it has the EFFECT of what such a indescribable hybrid would sound like. But if we did have to compare Inquisition on this album to anybody, we're reminded the most of good ol' Immortal. Recommended as if you couldn't tell already.
We're not sure how many aQ customers out there are Spanish speakers, but this magazine was just too good to pass up. Hopefully, there ARE a few folks out there who do indeed speak and read Spanish, and who will be super psyched to discover this amazing music magazine, while the rest of us can lament the fact that there's not an English version. That said, however, some adventurous non-Spanish speaking music lovers out there might just want to pick this up anyway. Oversized, glossy full color cover, and packed with articles about, interviews with and photos of Animal Collective, Vashti Bunyan, Low, Matt Elliott, Carla Bozulich, Grizzly Bear, Pere Ubu, SUNNO))), Jens Lekman, Battles, Scott Walker and more. 120 pages, tons of record reviews, illustrations by Jennifer Heremma and Ariel Pink / Jason Yates as well as 2 free cd-r compilations, one from Constellation Records, featuring tracks by Hrsta, Hangedup, Les Fly Pan Am, Black Ox Orkestar, A Silver Mt. Zion and what appears to be a live 17 minute exclusive track from Godspeed You Black Emperor, and the other from Finland's Lal Lal Lal label (run by one of the members of Avarus), featuring tracks by Maniacs Dream, Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat, Fricara Pacchu, The Anaksimandros, Keijo and a whole bunch of Finnish acts we've never even heard of!
The return of perhaps the world's only musician whose main instrument is in fact ICE. That's right, ice. Fashioned into percussive instruments and horns. Listening to this, we're once again completely baffled by how ice can be made to sound so, well, musical. The sound is like a gamelan, or a xylophone, some notes deep and rich, others delicate tinkles. And then there's the horns, fashioned from ice, their sound can range from high pitched whistle to conch shell moan. We've yet to see a performance in person, but he sounds here are so fantastical, and so compelling, we're beginning to think a trip to colder climes is definitely in order.
This particular disc, one of two new ones from musician and ice sculptor Terje Isungset, is a document of the very first ice music tour, 29 concerts performed in Norway and Japan and Norway. And the liner notes cleverly point out that "No concerts were cancelled due to bad weather". Each track is from a different performance, the liner notes explain what instruments were played on each track, ice percussion, icefon, icehorn or simply ice, and who accompanied Isungset and on what, flute, trumpet, sampler, vocals. In addition, the weather conditions during the recording of each track are recorded: "3 degrees below zero, no wind, aurora borealis", "6 degrees below zero, clear sky, no wind". So cool.
While there are accompanists on most of the tracks (Supersilent's Arve Henriksen shows up on many of the tracks), some of them just ice instruments, most of the rest feature ethereal female vocals. The results are soft and shimmery, the tones rich and resonant, a sort of wintery new age drift, it's not difficult to imagine Bjork getting Isungset to play on her next record, many of the vocalists do affect a similarly Bjork-like coo. But whatever else is going on, it's the magic and the mystery of the ice, and it's impossible not to be wowed by these sounds. When we play it in the store, people literally will not believe this is the sound of ice. Check out the sound samples and you'll see what we mean.
Dreamy, delicate, soft and sleepy, and very very beautiful.
And like the two ice music releases before it, Ice Concerts also boasts some of the most amazing packaging we have ever seen. The booklet and tray card are semi-transparent vellum, printed images of ice, the bubbles trapped inside the ice, in gorgeous deep blues, the whole thing wrapped in a thick slip cover made from a thick foggy semi transparent textured plastic, the front with various sized circles cut out like little bubbles, the edge cut away to reveal the cd's spine, which is filled with water, with tiny bubbles drifting back and forth, and yes, we mean ACTUAL water, in a little custom made vial, so perfect it does indeed look like the cd tray is full of water, just waiting to be frozen and played! So awesome!
Fans of the late great Japanese free improv guitar master Masayuki Takayanagi take note of this release. Guitarist Kondo and his group pay tribute with a version of Takayangi's gorgeous, gradually projected "Herdsman's Pipe Of Spain". And the rest of this is quite in keeping with the spirit of Takayangi's pioneering New Directions Unit. And while therefore pretty "out" sounding, it's also quite a bit different from some of the more extreme offerings we've heard from Kondo's other band, the electronics n' computers plus free jazz noisemaking ensemble Exias-J, known for their droning and distorted Borbetomagus-like jams. Here things are often calmer and more, dare we say, melodic. Though this is still pretty darn avant-garde. It opens with a solo guitar piece, finding Kondo playing a "ten-string gut guitar", which is an impressively large, plank-like instrument. Later on, he's accompanied by a group featuring flute, percussion and contrabass.
And this is called Structures for a reason. Even though there's a large improvisational element to Kondo's music (with certain tracks designated as such) he's really into experimenting with improvisations within particularly strict and unusual theoretical structures. Or at least that's the idea we get from what we've read about it, and certainly the very meticulous music here, full of moody pink-plonk, rumble-fumble, and scritch-scrape, seems like it could creatively stem from such complex, intellectualized musical methodologies...
You might recall Ms Kadet Kuhne's two exceptional IDM albums 2001's Seismic and 2004's Thin Air. In the years since she moved to LA and has now returned to the Bay Area with this dvd. We always knew that she was one heck of a multimedia force -- filmmaker, electronic music composer, installation artist -- just as adept at sculpting atmospheres through visuals as via artfully textured glitch and drone audio... and this document reconfirms it! Holding Pattern III: Infinite Delay is an audio/video work of hers from 2006. Otherworldly languid live-processed soundscapes with dreamy underwater imagery. She's joined by like-minded artists mem1. Immersive and beautifully crafted.
Well, it looks like the Wooden Shjips don't have the market cornered on sixties inspired drone drenched psychedelic drug rock after all. The Lumerians offer up their own take on modern psych with their debut ep, 5 songs, all of them looooong and gorgeously tripped out. Where as the Shjips seem to be channeling the Doors, the Lumerians take ? And The Mysterians, mix in some Fuzztones, and filter it through the sound of Spacemen 3 and Loop resulting in a mesmerizing, repetitive organ infused doped up hypnorock.
The second the opening track kicked in we were SOLD. Fuzzy blown organ, pounding simple drum beat, super sixties vibe, buzzy and trippy and druggy and totally divine. The vocals drawling over that relentless beat and that warm thick organ. Wooden Shjips fans will freak, and just might have found a new favorite local band.
The second track is just as cool, but way different, super minimal, almost jazzy, with muted percussion, subtle bass grooves, soft shimmery synths, very spacious (and space-y) and laid back, like a druggier more psychedelic Necks.
The B side is all slow lugubrious organ drenched crawl, shuffling drums, a wall of washed out buzz, with one track introducing some ethereal, blissed out female vocals, drifting weightless above the fuzzy groove, giving that track a serious shoegaze vibe.
Killer stuff. Super limited. Only 500 copies, each pressed on nice thick clear vinyl, housed in a plastic PVC jacket with a thick color cardstock insert, and comes with a code, so you can download MP3's for your iPod as well.
We complain a lot about the glut of cd-r releases. The whole, "even my Mom has a cd-r out" (and yes, her new limited 3" cd-r will be out soon, ahem)� The ease of recording and pressing up 50 copies, means that lots of stuff that maybe shouldn't get released does. Not everything recorded deserves to be released, and not everything played even deserves to be recorded. A serious lack of quality control for sure. But with the bad comes the good, and in this case, the good is often VERY good, and thus it's well worth slogging through all the shit, to get glimpses into some of the twisted creative musical minds, that otherwise might have toiled away in obscurity with no one but their housemate or mother (depending on the circumstances) hearing the amazing fucked up and far out sounds they've been creating.
It sometimes boggles our minds to think about the various songs and recordings, that due to lack of resource or technology, or even initiative, were lost forever, or were just never even recorded at all. We don't have that problem so much anymore (see above), but what it does mean is that folks who might be too timid to start a band, or too isolated to find likeminded folks, still have ways to create, to attempt to realize the sounds they hear in their heads.
And some of our favorite records of the last few years have been just that, random home recorded cd-r's produced not for cool points, or scene cred, but because the artists were driven to do so. The cd-r micro label is now a cottage industry, my Mom doesn't just have a new cd-r out, she also has her own label� but that is still where we find the most vibrant and ultra personal music being made.
Mamaleek is a one man band from right here in SF, this is his long in the works debut and it's a killer, equal parts blissed out metalgaze, furious hyper grind, and buzzing ambient murk. In some ways, it's almost the perfect aQ record, bits and pieces of all the stuff we can't get enough of. But deftly assembled into something cohesive and pretty original. Nods to Jesu, Nadja, Xasthur, the Angelic Process, the usual suspects, but Mamaleek are definitely their own queer beast. The lo-fi recording adding to the murk and mystery, and of course the fuzzy blissy vibe.
The record opens with reverb drenched piano, lazy and laid back, all sepia toned and warm summer porch-ed, which makes the second track sound even more epic and massive. A crushing roiling slow motion riff, superdistorted and almost crumbling, the melodies in the distance soaring, the track shifts briefly into a blast of processed grind, before returning to its majestic trudge, sounding like Jesu, if Jesu still sounded like Godflesh. The track flips back and forth, slipping into a tinny, black ambient interlude halfway through, only to transform into a spacious almost math rock drift.
The rest of the record sort of slips easily between those two sounds, harsh washed out blackened bliss, often peppered with jagged sonic shards, and haunting drones, and murky ambience. The disc's centerpiece is the nearly 20 minute long "Shout On, Children", beginning with some straight up bluegrass guitar pickin', still muddy and lo-fi, some slippery slide and some fret buzz, but then, the programmed drums kick in, some gurgling demonic vocals, and then thick sheets of coruscating sunburnt guitar buzz, but that acoustic twang continues on right below the surface. But it never gets HEAVY, it just shifts between gradations of buzziness, murkiness and blur, some parts are wide open, a skeletal rhythm over smears of horn like synth and throbbing bass, other parts are gauzy, the guitar chopped into haunting pulses and layered over washed out whirs, and others incorporate operatic vocals and barely there shimmer, finally finishing off with a brief blast of ultra-lo-fi blackened metal.
The last four tracks lean toward metallic bliss, and pounding buzzing heaviness, the guitars thick and buzzy, the vocals a fierce growl, the drums simple and mechanical, everything whipped into pulsing waves of sound, occasionally coalescing into blasting blackness, but just as often, becoming unmoored, and drifting skyward the various riffs and beats spreading out like a sky full of black wraiths shot through with sunbeams.
Handmade packaging. Fold over cardstock sleeves, with paste on full color front and back images, and a printed insert on nice thick textured paper. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
Finally available again, the gorgeous all ambient second album from Hungary's Marblebog, who on other records (which we gushed about on past aQ lists) combined bits of ambient drone with their mournful black buzz, but for Wind Of Moors, they jettisoned all traces of metal completely, and in their place, crafted a gorgeous slow moving world of drifting melancholy ambience. Very krautrocky, and quite reminiscent of Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh and the like, the opening track is soft and sun dappled, gentle muted bongos, beneath a constant low level raga like buzz, soft synth swells, shimmering streaks of ethereal whir, a gorgeous laid back sprawl of nearly new age mesmer.
The next track is even lighter and dreamier, chords smeared into shadows as they drift by, chords suspended in soft swirls of sound, the notes, floating weightless, a breathless whisper of a song.
The third track has a bit of muted propulsion, a gentle heartbeat like pulse, beneath some thick, but still soft, buzz, a gorgeous minor key melody played out in high end tones, draped over the droning blurred raga below, so completely entrancing and hypnotic. Slightly ominous, dark clouds drifting across a steel blue sky, but still, the vibe is more like a forest just before the storm, hauntingly calm but still slightly uneasy.
The final track is the darkest of the bunch, a creeping sonic fog, layered melodies, gauzy and shimmering, slowly drifting, casting dark shadows, filling the speakers with dead leaves and cold rain. A chilling, but mysteriously lovely bit of dreamlike sound.
Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the first release from the Monopoly Child Star Searchers, a Skaters side project that we have been digging like crazy, it's also the first release on a new cd-r label run by Spencer from The Skaters called Pacific City Sound Visions, mostly to release his Monopoly Child Star Searchers cd-r's, seeing as 4 of the first 5 releases are in fact his own records, but the 5th is by some mysterious entity called Miles Devens, which we later discovered was in fact another moniker for the fellow behind aQ faves Ignatz, which made perfect sense when we threw this one. And thus, this is essentially a new Ignataz record, two tracks of alien Appalachia and haunting ambient buzz.
Two tracks, each over twenty minutes long, but each, split into movements, separate songs woven together. The opener begins with haunting glimmering high end shimmer, soft sweet melodies, a sea of sparkle and upper register effulgence, strings buzzing, the track shifts into a sing songy little lullaby, all hushed vocals and tiny melodic curlicues, which are soon overtaken by some deep raga like buzz, a shimmering metallic whir laced with murmured melodies, a woozy warbly sprawl, which shifts again, and becomes a muted campfire hoedown, more hushed vocals, little flurries of acoustic twang, eventually giving way to a super distorted, lo-fi ballad, with mumbled vocals, angular guitar, and lots of gauzy reverb and delay.
The second track begins super spare, a lonely acoustic guitar, lots of room reverb, a slow hushed drift, dreamy and haunting. The second part is all frenzied guitar squiggle, like sped up Applachia, some drawled effected vocals, which gives way to a murky cloudy dreamy dronefolk drift, soft stately melodies, in a dense field of effects, vocals wrapped in reverb and allowed to float and flutter, the low end rolling off until the sound is like some alien shortwave broadcast, all twang and strum, but all treble, fading into a gorgeously murky swampy slow motion electronic drone outro.
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