If you don't own this, for some crazy reason, hopefully this review will convince you to pick it up RIGHT NOW! This is one of the most amazing, soulful, emotionally rich, politically charged, well crafted and musically dynamic albums of all time! His first solo record after leaving The Impressions, simply titled Curtis, was released in 1970 and it still blows us away and gives us chills all these years later.
Mayfield is a true musical genius, not only blessed with one of the greatest voices of all time but also such an incredible songwriter and arranger. The songs on Curtis are filled with lush instrumentation, swirling strings, soulful horns, and deep hitting percussion. And the songs are bold and brave, inspired by the Civil Rights movement and not afraid to speak out against the injustices (still) plaguing this country. But what makes this album so fucking special is that it managed to be both strong and breezy, charged and mellow, poignant and chilling.
We've been playing this in the store so much lately and everytime, customers always know that it's Curtis Mayfield but they usually assume it's a greatest hits collection and are stunned to find out it's an actual album. It's one of those rare albums packed with songs that could have been the best single ever ("Move On Up", "Give It Up", "We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue" are all on this album!) and what's amazing is that the other songs on the record are just as good and maybe even better! It's not surprising that this record has been sampled by loads of folks including EPMD, NWA, Tupac, and Pete Rock, just to name a few. This Rhino reissue adds nine bonus tracks which are all worth having. This is one of those truly special albums that we could, and have listened to hundreds of times, and yet never get sick of, always feeling something and taking something away from the album with each repeated listen. Music for the spirit and soul. A true masterpiece!
THE URNS RETURN. We never get tired of that. And we never get tired of Monument Of Urns, whose impossibly beautiful and crushingly suffocatingly heavy slow motion doom seems to effortlessly outpace all their doom-ed brethren. Four releases, each one a single track. A single 3"cd-r, meticulously designed and packaged. Each of those four tracks, massive and expansive, slooooooooooooow and so grimly gorgeous. Even at twenty minutes a pop, we can't ever get enough. The Urns' black doomscapes need to spread and sprawl, for hours, days, weeks. A sonic black plague slowly but systematically infecting the whole world.
For those new to the world of Monument Of Urns, their sound is massive, ultra thick guitars, pummeling drums, howled harsh vocals, glacial tempos, incredible dynamics, complex arrangements, and here on Absence, the band have definitely hit a peak. Not as slow as past releases, this one is a monster. With super dynamic stop start segments, squealing streaks of harmonized feedback, guitars that buzz and crumble. The sound here is as much Eyehategod as Khanate. With a healthy dose of Harvey Milk. In fact, lots of this does definitely sound like a blackened Harvey Milk. The lurching mathy stumble, the churning downtuned chug, always with those feedback filled pauses. And somehow, Urns manage to make this caustic doomed brutality catchy. We even just caught Antaeus humming along with the main riff! We've been bugging the Urns to release a full length, or to let Andee re-release all the 3"s on tUMULt cd. But they are perfectly happy to work at their own pace, to create the elaborate packaging one at a time and by hand. To forge this black art, in some mysterious pit, unleashing each noxious missive, only when they deem we are worthy. So for now, we'll have to be happy with the occasional 20 minute helping of glorious black sludge. And wait patiently for the next one.
As always, the packaging is amazing. An oversized cardstock sleeve, with an outer vellum sleeve, the overlapping designs meshing perfectly, the inside gatefold all elaborate fractals, the cd affixed to a nub on one of the inside panels. So nice.
Peter who? Moren! Y'know that Peter, the Swedish gent without whom there would only be Bjorn And John, and that band would be an instrumental duo!
This is his solo debut, and if you love PBAJ, this will surely please your ears too. Not surprisingly, The Last Tycoon is a fine album filled with well crafted, charming, sensitive lad pop songs written and sung by one charming, sensitive lad! Who'd think we'd be gettin' all cozy with a tycoon?! But we sure are with this one!
A few months ago our ears were treated to the newest record from Morning Recordings, The Welcome Kinetic. While it was our first time hearing from this Chicago based project led by Pramod Tummala, it felt like hearing from an old dear friend who you turn to when you need lots of warmth and woozy comfort. Needless to say we've grown so much in love with that record, that we decided we definitely wanted to check out their earlier release, since somehow we missed out the first time around.
Music For Places is another gem of delicately crafted and richly layered mellow and drifty pop that's perfect for daydreams and those mornings when you barely wanna do anything except roll around in your pajamas and sip some delicious tea.
Tummala uses everything from harmonium, vibraphone, optigan, guitar, piano, Hammond organ and his narcotic and soothing voice to create a record that so gently lifts you up and makes you float ever so slightly on cool summer breezes, but with a musical core to the songs that warms you up at the same time. With a bunch of his talented friends from the Chicago scene lending a hand (Fred Lonberg-Holm, Barry Phipps, Jon Hensley, etc.) Music For Places has that same richness and soft touch that reminds us of Yo La Tengo's And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, Red Stars Theory's swan song Life In A Bubble Can Be Beautiful and Bedhead's Transaction de Novo. All beautiful albums, and we can now add Music For Places to that illustrious list. Highly recommended!
Now re-pressed and available again on vinyl! Here's the review from when we first listed it way back in 2002:
Same ol' dependable John Darnielle making some of the most witty yet heartfelt singer songwriter material to tickle our fancy here at AQ. While he has forged a completely unique style all his own that is consistently evident here, this album is also a slight departure of sorts. It's on respected British label 4AD which means Vaughan Oliver (that M Oliver has designed one of his album covers sends Darnielle into paroxysms of ecstasy). Being on 4AD also afforded John the opportunity to go to England to record the album with Tony Doogan, who has worked with Belle & Sebastian. Thus the album has a more produced feel, but that's not bad. It's simply a long way from Darnielle's singing into a boombox days. There are unusual, for Mountain Goats, touches such as shimmering cymbals and (what sound like) occasional doubletracked vocals. We weren't disappointed, however, and neither will you be. Very nice.
Another beautiful, deeply moving album from longtime AQ faves Mountain Goats! Sounds like it was a pretty intense recording session -- Mr. John Darnielle along with Franklin Bruno (piano and organ), Peter Hughes (bass), Nora Danielson (violins), Christopher McGuire (drums) holed up in the studio for just ten days! -- resulting in sixteen completed songs, thirteen of which make up We Shall All Be Healed. Whew! By the way, has anyone else noticed that Mr. Darnielle's singing voice is sounding more and more like that of Daniel Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers)? It used to seem the other way around, but perhaps it's simply the works of two kindred spirits drawing closer (although we've heard that Mr. Bejar has taken Destroyer in a radically different direction with his forthcoming album). There's certainly an affinity between the two fellows' songwriting -- poetic, earnest, and at once both starkly observative and richly imaginative. There's so many fine moments on this album, many of which glow even brighter with the pianowork of his Extra Glenns' partner in crime Mr. Bruno. Check out "Home Again Garden Grove" and "The Young Thousands". Seems like Mountain Goats have found a well-suited middle ground between his beloved bare bones early recordings and those that make up their more recent higher-fi 4AD releases. Wonderful! Produced by John Vanderslice (who also has a dandy new album out now!). Very recommended!
Folks who managed to catch Nadja performing live at aQuarius not too long ago, were treated to quite possibly the heaviest, catchiest, grooviest Nadja track yet. An awesome hook filled seventies rock style ultra jam, wrapped in thick clouds of billowing distortion and anchored by the crunch and pound of programmed beats, Aidan Baker's vocals a whispered croon, Leah Buckareff's bass throbbing and rumbling, but the main riff, SHIT, unbelievable, even after our ears stopped ringing, we were all humming that riff for days...
Well the funny thing we learned later, was that there song was in fact a cover. And an incredibly unlikely cover at that. The only obvious link between the original and the band covering it? Canada. The song, some of you might remember, is in fact from the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy, and proves that Nadja can turn hooky pop into hooky sludge-y doom. The chorus is an absolute killer, and similar to how Torche transform pop into skullcrushing hook filled heaviness, Nadja take that pop and wrap it all up in some of their distinctive blissed out fuzz and we're talking HIT. Well, a hit if there were actually some sort of blissdoomdronesludgepop chart. Which there should be. And there sort of is, in our heads, but anyway...
Even though this is one of FIVE Nadja releases on this week's list, and they're all pretty amazing, this one might just be the most essential of them all.
LIMITED of course. One sided vinyl, hand letterpressed covers, pressed on all sorts of different colors, including black, don't ask, you'll get what you get!
One of two new releases from Mr. Aidan Baker. One under his own name, a gorgeously druggy twangy slab of slowcore, and this the latest from his slow motion sludge metal doom duo Nadja.
And it's a killer. One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel.
The disc begins with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
Besides being one of FIVE, count 'em, FIVE new releases from the ever prolific Nadja on this week's list, Thaumoradiance also just so happens to be a companion to a previously released disc, Thaumogenesis, which has just been repressed and is also reviewed elsewhere on this list as part of the abovementioned four.
Being a companion release, it of course shares much sonically with its predecessor, a sound shared by most Nadja records in fact, but as we've mentioned before, Nadja have found a sound, and embodied it. Made it absolutely their own. The sound of Nadja is not something you'd easily confuse with their doombliss brethren. While they exist in a scene rife with bands creating similar music, a world of droning dirgey doomy metallic show gaze-y bliss, they also exist outside of it.
Thaumogenesis is gorgeous sounding, recorded live. Two tracks. The first, is the title track from an older Nadja record, reimagined, and begins as a slow core crawl, with hushed vocals, waaaaay off in the distance drum machine skitter, simple soft guitar strum, peppered with HUGE speaker melting walls of sound. Crumbling distortion, garbled vocals, throbbing bass, the cool thing here, is the weird digital skips and stutters, the heavy part always being preceded by some glitched out chunk chunk chunk, before the hammer falls. And the opener transforms surprisingly into a thick shimmery high end whirl, white noise washed out into dreamy feedback speckled glimmer.
The second, is an alternate version of "Thaumogenesis", and is just as gloriously blissed out and effulgent as the original version. Much of the track is spent glistening minimally, melodies and notes nothing but soft smears of sound, a washed out haze of barely there shimmer, but it's Nadja, so the heavy parts manage to be just as pretty, but suffused with blown out buzz, and a rainbow halo of crackle and buzz, whir and hum, the drums a monstrous pummel, the bass and guitar thick and superdistorted, but still shot through with dreamlike melodies, and wreathed in an warm unearthly glow. We describe the original as sounding like M83, Merzbow and Philip Jeck, if anything this version, is less Merzbow and more of the other two, eventually unwinding into a languorous fuzz infused drift, peppered with haunting FX drenched percussion, and dark whirling ambience. Haunting and lovely. Of course.
As with all aRCHIVE releases, the packaging is fantastic, similar to Thaumogenesis, a sort of 6 panel center gatefold, the cd affixed to the inner center panel, artwork by Seldon Hunt, and of course, LIMITED TO ONLY 600 COPIES!
Number five of five (!) on this week's list from uber prolific doomster Aidan Baker and his doombliss duo Nadja. Thankfully each release has something new to offer, so even if you have a whole shelf in your house dedicated to your Baker/Nadja collection, all four of these are definitely worth making a little extra space for.
This one especially, since if you're a fan of things dark and shimmery, dreamy and drone-y, then you're bound to be enthralled by the Netherworld tracks here, which help balance the loooong Nadja track at the end. Plus the two collaborate on a song as well, so there's lots of doomdreamdrift to be had.
The first three tracks are all Netherworld, and they do in fact sound like some strange Netherworld, all soft swells and muted chimes, gentle drifts of warm whir and distant shimmer, long slow tones, deep lush chordal smears, all very serene and sprawling, minimal, yet somehow epic and cinematic, sweeping soundscapes that evoke, wide open expanses of ice and snow, rolling hills, emptiness, an endless horizon. Soothing and meditative, a disembodied abstract new age, quite lovely for sure. And definitely reminiscent sonically of Thomas Koner, Lull, Biosphere and the like.
The Nadja track that closes the cd is a 19 minute crusher, but as heavy as it is, and as doomy, it manages to be more effulgent and incandescent, the guitars grinding and shooting off rainbow colored sparks, thick radiant swells of sound, that seem to stand still yet manage to convey inexorable forward momentum, in fact this track finds Nadja giving Sunroof! a run for their money. This is a seriously transcendent ur-drone, keening high end, sine waves, crumbling distortion, soaring, whirring, static buzz and fuzz and skree, all over a whirling undercurrent of throb and pulse. Truly one of the most intense and unique tracks we've heard from Nadja.
But before we get to this explosive coda, the two outfits team up for a transitional piece, which manages to perfectly meld the two aesthetics, and acts as a bridge between the serene contemplative drift of Netherworld, and the luminous roar of Nadja. A whirring slow building dronescape, deep resonant rumbles and soaring string like melodies, the layers of sound, thickening, gradually becoming more corrosive, more active, more volatile, until the sound is a roiling organic mass, a heaving sea of tangled tones, woven into a single whirling orb of sonic fire, threatening to engulf everything around it, which perfectly and almost seamlessly leads into Nadja's closing salvo.
Packaged in an oversized, 6 panel gatefold cardstock jacket, glossy and full color, the cd in its own plastic sleeve.
This long in the works split matches up doombliss duo Nadja (this is one of FIVE new Nadja releases on this week's list! Yowza!) with ambient soundscapers 5/5/2000 (featuring aQ pal Nathan, from Creation Is Crucifixion, M. Kourie, Human Quena Orchestra, and Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation) and it proves to be a pretty potent and appropriate pairing.
Nadja start things off, and waste no time, no slow builds, no pretty simmering, it's straight into a big ol' lurching doom, the drums big and reverbed, the guitar offered up in swells, and allowed to drift off, leaving just the drums to pound away between bursts of crumbling distortion. Very industrial sounding, dark ambient, the drums locked into a loop, a distant keening high end hovering just above the rumbling whir, there is a build up, but the duo begin the build already in the thick of it. The guitars grow more and more fuzzed out, the sound becomes thicker and more distorted, the background becomes more chaotic, riffs seem to coalesce out of those abstract swells, strange harmonics drift into the picture, the recording sounds decayed and damaged, as if it was some unearthed archival slab of ancient doom bliss, until the last 4 or 5 minutes, when yet more buzz and distortion enter the fray, and while the drums remain constant, they seem to sink deeper and deeper beneath the blossoming swirl of blown out noise and warm dense fuzz, all the while the sound threatening to crumble or collapse, gloriously fractured post industrial doom bliss crawl for sure.
5/5/2000 reply with what might be their heaviest recording to date. A nearly 17 minute low end sprawl, groaning, coruscating distortion, rumbling and roiling, while beneath some sort of shimmery soundscape plays out. Delicate and dreamy, abstract melodies drifting and swirling, fuzzy and gauzy and blurred into soft focus streaks, until right near the end, when the soft tranquility is overtaken by a dense swell of layered guitar, grinding and buzzing, a blissed out, blown out blackened drone.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each lp comes with a cd featuring the same music, as well as a printed cardstock insert.
It gets harder and harder to describe drone records and dark ambient music. After hundreds of releases, all of them dark and drone-y and shimmery, mysterious and rumbling and blackened, whirring and abstract and ominous, we've pretty much exhausted our thesaurus. But truth be told, those words still do apply to most of the ambient music we like, and just because we run out of new words, doesn't at all mean that there isn't more dronemusic to be discovered. More black ambient to explore.
And while repeating ourselves is perhaps unavoidable, each record that does offer up something new, will hopefully in turn allow us to discover new ways of describing those sounds. Sounds that while perhaps similar to other music we've heard, are in fact, in their own way, unique, and which sonically transport us to someplace fresh and exciting.
Although fresh and exciting are maybe not words we would use to describe Whispers of The Approaching Wastefulness from Italian black ambient master New Risen Throne. The sounds here are, well, see above, all of those. But in addition to being ambient music, and dronemusic, the sounds here are much more than that. Incredibly textured and cinematic, each song playing out like the soundtrack to some harrowing journey, evoking underground caverns, windswept icefields, barren fields, forests of dead trees, these tracks are rife with all manner of miniature events, NRT approaching sound less as a composer as a recordist, or an anthropologist, making sure to make note of every detail, no matter how minimal or seemingly inconsequential, as all of those little details, when fused into a larger whole, offer up an incredibly rich and deep world of sound, surrounding and swallowing the listener whole. Stepping through your speakers and emerging in some lost world, dimly lit by some black sun, buildings in ruins, cities in flames, fields run fallow, a landscape of dead leaves and burned bodies, the usual long slow rumbles and shimmering blurred buzz are of course present, but those sounds are just the backdrop for what is really going on, much of it seemingly not musical, it's almost like a field recording made by some time traveler lost in the middle ages, the drone and whir and buzz, merely sonic artifacts from the time travel, or the faulty recording equipment, the actual magic being the lives and worlds captured on tape. Eyes closed, one is able to imagine these other places, sound being as powerful if not more powerful than sight or smell or touch. And sure, cursory listeners will find this to be some gorgeous drone music, perhaps a bit on the grim ominous side for some, but adventurous listeners, willing to strap in, eyes closed, and leap into the abyss, will definitely find much more than mere drone music within Whispers of The Approaching Wastefulness.
Release me now from my mortal flesh, where all my thoughts look towards death. This blackened void in which I gasp for breath, death release me NOW! Oh, what I mean is, this is the newest release from San Francisco's own twisted goth, mindfreakin art damaged, sorrowfully psychedelic Death Rockers, The New Thrill Parade! Whoa. Woe.
We have reviewed all their previous releases up until now, and luckily for us things just keep getting weirder and weirder and more and more demented in the New Thrill Parade commune. The sound is an angular misanthropic romp. Bass and drums churning out urgent, fractured rhythms, while the guitar cuts the throat of any soul with open ears, with piercing, discordant, mind-bending leads. Everything swirling, and seething madly, till the brain leaks out of the ears, and any thoughts you had before, about music, life, social relations, death, sex, are completely mutated and subverted. It's a jubilant sonic experience, but travels dark roads to come to it. This explanation of NTP's sound world is not unlike those of our past reviews (which you should check out), but Slumber In Colorland presents a marked development in both the bands sound and aesthetic. The intensely orchestrated, and inspired song craft fuckery of this latest venture show the band maturing and really finding their own unique mode of operation, giving this album a consistency not yet found in their previous works. It's like gothy deathrock darkness has finally met its blurry-brained, altered state, tripped out, color smeared polar blood brother! The songs range from depressive dark jazz sounding crooners, to completely fucked up rock fury, with mutilated melodies and disjointed noises. Heavily warped shit! Not so much genre defying, as it is genre defining!
Like Radiohead before them, Nine Inch Nails decided to embrace the digital download delivery method as a preamble to the 'proper' CD release. In addition to a super cheap download price -- $5.00 for all of the material on 2 discs -- Trent Reznor also offered a hyper-commodity in the form of an overpackaged vinyl set costing something like $300.00 a pop. As novel as these forays into the brave new world of e-commerce are, it's just a shame that Nine Inch Nails made such a boring record. Sure, Trent Reznor has demonstrated some great taste in early Autechre and Coil, but his ability to manufacture an instrumental record like his influences is woefully lacking. Yes, Ghosts I-IV wants to be an ambitious double cd set of instrumentals; but the lock-step electronic loops, hackneyed sequencing circa 1991, and ambient smoke & shadow lack any real direction. At its best, Ghosts I-IV comes across like a more jet-black cyborg version of Labradford, but the languid guitar moments are few next to the tepid electronics. Maybe this is a post-modern throwback to the early '80s when post-punk and new-wave were experiments with what could be done through minimal equipment; but why not write a decent song? Considering that all of those recent compilations of French electro-punk from back in the day totally kick the ass of this sad-sack record, there's little point...
It's no secret that we loved the full-length from LA's so-so-good punk noiseniks No Age, released on Fat Cat. But, it was just a collection of 7"s releases and we've been fiending for an actual album ever since! After all the hype -- albeit well-deserved -- and exposure, can they live up to our expectations? Well, this 7" is STILL not an album, but it is a taste of what should be in store. Side one is a brand spanking new track, full of all the same warmth and fun of Weirdo Rippers, but with a back porch style, knee slapping sing-a-long drive to it that makes us want to call our friends, meet up at the park, and run around like 14 year olds. Side two offers three songs. Kinda. It's three cover songs. What are they trying to do to us? No Age, you're a bunch of teases. Just put out a real record! We know you've got more songs! Ah, well, the covers include tracks by Nate Denver's Neck, The Urinals, and The Nerves. If you're a fan of fun, pick one up, and join us in vigil awaiting their Sub Pop album Nouns coming out soon (May 6th!). It better not be a covers record, but, anyway, this 7" is totally recommended.
If we had to pick the ultimate doom outfit, the band that most embodies ultra depressive sonic misery, who is able to weave vast expanses of utter blackness, able to create vast soundscapes of both brutality and beauty, glacial waves of slow motion heaviness, it would be a tough call. There are the pure dronedoom outfits like SUNNO))) who create black energy with long stretches of static buzz, or the more sort of true doom combos, who wield riffs and write songs, and then there are the black metal bands, who play slooooooow and instead of buzzing maniacally instead crawl and slither, and then there are the ultra doom outfits, the ones we use many multiples of 'o's to describe, and somewhere in amongst all of those, but not quite fitting in any particular one, is the mighty Nortt. This one man band from Denmark, is a long time aQ fave, melding the black buzz of Burzum, with the regal abstract slow motion doom of Skepticism, the result, some otherworldy demonic trudge through barren landscape and moonlit skies. Nortt have always employed a deft hand in crafting their doomscapes, generously peppering record with as much tranquil blackened drift as lurching doomic pummel, but on this latest disc, Nortt have embraced the moodier more ambient side of their sound, with looooong stretches of drift and shimmer, sometimes almost whole songs, and while the heavy parts remain heavy, they seem to grind slowly to a halt, leaving just shadows and ghosts, soft traces and outlines of what came before, which are allowed to hover and float amongst black smears of sound, interrupted by rhythms spread out into occasional bursts of lugubrious slow motion.
The disc begins with some dark delicate shimmer, that is downright dreamlike, deep resonant chimes, the washed out whir of softly struck bells, which quickly gives way to the disembodied doom of the second track, the riffs crumbling and stretched waaay out, the drums, an abstract plod, and in the background, warm streaks of high end, that drift throughout the entire record, even at it's heaviest, those keening tones, drift mournfully in the distance.
Even the longest tracks here, spend most of their time in some blackened dronestate, rumbles and whirs, ghostly moans, flurries of low end piano, disembodied melodies, all blurred into grey sonic snowdrifts, occasionally, the guitars roar back in, but it's more like a passing storm, as it soon drifts off, leaving just the lilting black minimalism that came before.
We joked in past reviews that Nortt played a minimal black doom that Bohren & Der Club Of Gore would like, but on Galgenfrist, it sounds more like a minimal black doom Bohren would PLAY! A similar sort of impossibly brooding blackness, a gorgeous lush creep, abstract and ambient, not as jazzy, but just as moody and minimal, murky and mysterious.
As we mentioned in the past, this is the sort of black doom band that could totally appeal to non-metalheads, and might just be the gateway band so beware, but fear not, this is plenty grim and heavy and black for all the rest of you.
We never thought the day would come, but the return of Old Forest is nigh!!! The first release from these UK black metal anti-legends in 7 years! Their first record, Into The Old Forest is an all time aQ weirdo black metal fave. And their second unreleased record, None More Black, was meant to finally see the light of day via tUMULt, but instead, will be released by the original label later this year. And when the world hears that one, well, Old Forest just may rightfully reclaim their crown as masters of genius fucked up grimness for sure.
The real surprise though is the band surfacing from whatever dark hellish abyss they retreated to nearly a decade ago. With a new full length in the works, but also this three part ep collection, focusing on the myths and legends of the Sussex countryside from which these guys hail.
Sonically very little has changed. The sound is still murky and buzzy, the guitars thick and blurred, plenty of keyboards, pummeling drums. Lots of atmosphere, and haunting ambience, the vocals a demonic croak, the songs ranging from blasting and black, to creepy midtempo dirge. Haunting baritone monklike chants drift in and out, field recordings of crickets and birds, wind and rustling branches, the songs are packed with super memorable riffs, sing songy "woooo, ooooh" sort of call and response vocals, double kick blasting away, even during some of the more mellow bits, the songs lurch and pound woozily, peppered with incredibly catchy and unlikely little keyboard figures, the band occasionally launching into some furious blasting, but just as often slipping back into a fuzzy dirge or midtempo pound.
And everything, no matter how true or grim, is infused with the cracked black sensibilities of Old Forest, much like countrymen Meads Of Asphodel (who may have one times shared members with Old Forest), not taking it too seriously, but at the same time taking it all deathly seriously. Dark and buzzy, spaced out and psychedelic, heavy and black, but also slightly cracked and definitely warped. And this is only part one�
LIMITED TO ONLY 222 COPIES. Each packaged in a mini 3" jewel case, with super striking red and black artwork, and liner notes and lyrics.
With a press release that simply declares this as "sinister psych, semi-acoustic noise" and a photograph on the back of the LP with the band posturing with instruments in a crumpled shack out in the forest, this record was pretty much made for Aquarius. Onde is a project that has come out of Noise Maker's Fifes, a theatrically Neo-Dada ensemble in the same orbit as Nurse With Wound and HNAS. The best known member of these groups is Timo Von Luijk, who had recorded briefly in Mirror with Andrew Chalk & Christoph Heemann and more recently has continued on with Heemann as In Camera. Onde delivers with the sinister psych and semi-acoustic noise with four long form slabs of drone murk with one side being more of the dark, gloomy drone strategy, the other belonging to a monstrous heaviosity for sheer noise. The mellower shadowy half recalls Taj Mahal Travellers meandering through electronics and instrumental flutter with bits of the impressionist atmospheres of Mirror and In Camera coming through. On the flip, Onde crash head forward into the acoustic noise compaction of bowed metals, screeched steel strings, and growling amplifiers somewhere between Birchville Cat Motel, Organum, and Sunroof! It's pretty awesome.
Thus far Mississippi Record's bread and butter has been seriously deep blues and gospel compilations, with the occasional pre-war Hawaiian tune or Balkan folk ensemble. However, with the reissue of Orchestra Regional de Kayes, originally released in 1970, and the sterling soon to be re-pressed Lipa Kodi Ya City Council comp from a few lists ago, Mississippi is finding a bit of flexibility in their catalogue, with no drop in quality whatsoever.
In 1960, after Mali won Independence from France, the government specified that each of the eight regions of Mali be represented by an orchestra comprised of, naturally, their very best musicians. The orchestras convened once a year from 1962-68, and subsequently every other year until the mid-eighties, to determine who was the best. This record documents a portion of the repertoire performed by the Orchestra Regional de Kayes, representing a region in the northwest of Mali bordering Senegal. It is their only recording, and was originally released in the Barenreiter-Musicaphon series. The bulk of the songs are renditions of traditional Mande folk songs, interpreted in the context of Mali's burgeoning modernity. And now, with a bit history under our collective belts we feel more justified in saying casually� holy shit, this is beautiful.
After a few listens, it comes as no surprise that we are listening to players that were determined most officiously and perhaps ridiculously, to be THE best. Sit with that for a moment... THE BEST. What comes as a surprise, therefore, is how soulful, sensitive and lyrical every performance is. Though technically flawless, the musicians' chops are always employed in service of taste and spirit. The guitars alone are worth the price of admission, and are deployed in a seriously vast and nuanced manner; sometimes darting through the mix with insect-like dexterity, other times languidly careening across the chorus with zen-like patience, and most often threading their way adroitly to a soft spot between rhythm and melody, tradition and innovation, in which the players freedom is found in a limitless palette within and through the manipulation of convention. And in this way, the guitar playing is always very musical, but also lyrical and mimetic, as though the players are talking to you, or hinting at some emotional quantity embedded in the form. And that is just the guitars!
The vocals are also fantastic, with plenty of excellent call and response dynamics between a lead vocalist and a chorus. A few of the tracks feature lead vocalists that spill untamed and urgent phrasings that harken to recent Aq fav Omar Souleyman, and also hint at the kind of rabid flows some of us have come to love in the grime explosion. However, most of the vocals are more soulfully paced, and sometimes a bit mournful and bluesy. Needless to say they are all very moving performances. The vocals are also supported by some gorgeous and syrupy accompaniment from an array of wind instruments, and a terrifically spare but present percussion ensemble. Something particularly exceptional in this collection compared to some of what we've heard in the Ethiopiques series, and more recently with the Nigerian Trilogy on Soundways, is the sense of space and continuity. This is one band, in one room, and as a result there is a sense of atmosphere and spaciousness that makes the record effective. Rather than a survey of style, it is an invitation to inhabit a space that is entirely elegant, and lyrical. It's hard to believe that it has taken this so long to find re-release, so don't miss this limited opportunity to gain a fleeting glimpse into a truly powerful and nascent period in Mali's musical history.
Fucked up far out sonic explorers Peeesseye (or PSI) return with a brand new disc that finds them sounding as weird and wacked as ever, and continuing to drift in the same direction as their last disc, Commuting Between The Surface & The Underworld. The first time we heard these guys, they were a much noisier proposition, spewing a caustic and fractured noise rock, that we liked quite a bit, but by record number two, they seemed to be exploring songs and melody more than noise and texture, their sound markedly prettier and folkier. On Mayhem In The Mansion, the band continue to drift through some strange folky forest, but being PSI, it's all glimpsed through some cracked funhouse mirror. A strummed acoustic guitar seems to root most of these songs, but that guitar is strewn upon skipping stuttering electronics, strangled yelps, random clatter and chaos, growled vocals, dense clouds of cymbal shimmer, stumbling tribal percussion, random bits of thump and rattle, distant moans and creaks, shimmering electric guitar melodies, furious squalls of static drenched psychnoise and lots and lots of effects.
It's definitely pretty and folky, but so completely out there. The prettiest parts somehow manage to get all tangled up with the obtuse angular bits, folky strum is smothered in buzz or bleep or both, but it works, it becomes some impossible artpop weirdness. A lot of this sounds like Avarus or No Neck, but more than anything it sounds sort of like Animal Collective, but with most of the hooks removed. Or better yet, like Animal Collective's deformed mutant twin brother. The one they keep locked in the basement. With just a busted up acoustic guitar, some effects with dying batteries and a 4track.
And shit, if that doesn't sound amazing, well, then we give up...
Wow, this is totally hitting the spot! Much like disco, it's just as important to look at who produced a hip-hop record as it is to see who the actual artist is, as the producer's trademark sound and amazing beats will be all over the record. The latest outing from Percee P was produced by the one and only Madlib so when we saw an instrumental version of the record was available on vinyl we were super excited. While we still need to get our ears on the non-instrumental version of this eagerly anticipated outing by Percee P, Madlib's production and tasty touch is doing us so well on its own. If you like your hip-hop with madly creative samples and driving beats then it really doesn't get much better then this. Madlib's production here is as good as it gets making this a must have for DJ's, J Dilla fans and anyone who loves cream of the crop hip-hop.
While so much of the mainstream press surrounding this new R.E.M. record offers up phrases like 'the return of R.E.M.' the truth is that R.E.M. have really been a rare example of a band who has sold millions of records and reached the highest kind of success a rock n roll band can achieve, while still continuing to make quality music throughout their entire career. Yes, their last outing Around The Sun was their weakest to date, but many of us here have loved other recent records by them like Up and Reveal. Of course probably everyone at AQ has an early R.E.M. record that they still hold dear to their hearts. Accelerate is for sure the most rocking and 'loud' R.E.M. record in many years, probably since Monster. But we're not always sure if we need R.E.M to totally rock anymore, some of the more subtle and textured atmospheric pop they were creating on Up and Reveal was really exciting, innovative and even rivaled indie mainstays like Yo La Tengo. Stipe and company always know their away around a song and if you like your R.E.M. with guitars turned up high and the rock on full throttle you will find lots to like on Accelerate. While there are moments that can feel a bit forced, and the more laid back tracks tending to please our ears the most, you have to give R.E.M credit as most of their peers who began in the early '80s either faded away or began making records that were totally embarrassing and cringeworthy, and while Accelerate is no Murmer or Reckoning, it's another strong and worthwhile album from one of the better bands of the last three decades.
We'd been digging the Religious Knives for a while now, but only just realized that RK featured two guys from aQ faves Double Leopards, which suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.
Don't be expecting the same sort of blown out abstract dronemusic as Double Leopards though, the Religious Knives are a whole 'nother proposition. The sound is more of a retro spacerock groove, druggy and stoned, laid back and psychedelic. Think Spacemen 3, Velvet Underground, Wooden Shjips, that sort of washed out groove, fuzzy and trippy and grooooovy.
This set recorded at Big Jar Books in Philadelphia, finds the band in almost straight rock mode, unfurling a lazy sun baked drugrock jam, all warm glowing guitars, simple shuffling drums, and reverb drenched vocals. Slightly twangy, a bit of a Dead vibe, some Neil Young, not super avant or experimental, more sort of just solid stoned drug rock. There's even a cover of ? And The Mysterions "96 Tears" transformed into something much murkier and muddy, less of a focus on that main keyboard lick, letting the song become more about the buzzing guitars and the propulsive rhythm, the vocals swathed in effects and buried in the mix, buzzy and gloriously laid back. The final track is a 14 minute psych groove, that eventually builds to a super looped cyclical climax, locked into a relentless hypnorock groove like a more mellow Circle or something, definitely makes to get high, sit back and let the music carry you off into the heart of the sun.
Definitely for fans of any of the above mentioned bands. And like all aRCHIVE releases, super limited, ONLY 600 COPIES! And of course exquisitely packaged. A four panel oversized foldover sleeve, the front panel shortened to reveal the disc face, which is etched around the edges with what appear to be shapes or characters. Cool.
If you're like us, then anything even tangentially related to psychedelia, shoegaze, or post-rock is worth investigating. Well, Ms. Rose and Mr. Saloman (1/2 of the Yellow Swans) recently came through our doors to drop off a small batch -- really small, at 5 copies -- of their self-titled and self-released collaboration. Of course, as soon as they left, we put it on and totally geeked-out and got them to come back and bring us more. Recorded straight to tape and mastered to warm, lo-fi analog perfection, the disc is a wonderful synergy of the two members talents -- drone, melody and improvisation. But be forewarned, this is not NEARLY as noisy as either's other work. It's almost odd how melodic it is, really. Those that have heard the last few Yellow Swans records might not be too shocked though, since there has been an increasing number of melodic parts and much more structured arrangements. Is this getting too convoluted? Need some more specific reference points for the cd at hand? Think of something like Cloaks meets Ash Ra Tempel, a free and freaky compositional structure that gels more as a whole rather than than any one segment. The way melodies overlap and intertwine, changing each other's time and swirling all about reminds us of some tripped-out shoegaze band trying to go psych-drone. Really, really beautiful and blissed-out, and definitely recommended. LIMITED TO 50 and we've got 20, so you know what that means.
We were quite lucky to have Jack Rose perform an instore last year, and it was amazing to see these steel string ragas performed live. We were all mesmerized by his unique take on Fahey-esque neo-Appalachia. It's unbelievable how in the right hands just a guitar can conjure up such a massive sound and so much emotion and Mr. Rose is definitely one of the finest examples currently practicin'. If you're familiar with the music of John Fahey you have a good idea of Rose's basic sound (he even covers Fahey's "Sunflower River Blues" here), but his years spent in the free drone group Pelt has definitely informed not only his guitar playing, but also his song writing. Some of the tracks on Kensington Blues are straight up stompers, sounding like they have to be standards, foot tapping hand clapping classic backwoods frontporch folk/blues. But others are dark and brooding, with intricate finger picking, producing all manner of buzzing overtones, and subtle harmonic coloring. Those are the tracks where Rose shines the most, when he digs deep, and explores the darker side of this music, and lets the notes stretch and buzz, sliding and scraping, letting notes drift and hover and eventually blur into shimmery drones and hypnotic stretches of cycle and repetition.
Another year, another Salt. In fact it's been way more than a year, maybe almost two, but it's always well worth the wait. No one does zines any more, which is a huge same, loosed from the binds of relying on advertising, and someone else's money, a zine can cover anything, explore music, art, even wrestling, can opt for any layout, but the problem is, that without that monetary support, sometimes you are forced to wait years between issues, which is criminal. Especially with zines like Salt. Every time we review a Salt, we always end up sending out a request for somebody, ANYBODY, to get in touch with Sal mastermind Kevin, give him a bunch of money and set him up with a real magazine. All the other mags out there can breathe easy since that is probably unlikely to happen any time soon. But if it did. Decibel, Terrorizer, the Wire, Signal To Noise, your days would be numbered�
So issue 8, as is the pattern, is even better than 7, which was already kick ass. On the cover, a super striking drawing of Diamanda Galas, done by Kevin Salt himself, and inside, well hell, it's like a zine custom made for aQ. A Pharoah Sanders live review, a Suishou No Fune / RKF South By Southwest tour diary, an interview with comedy grind masters 7000 Dying Rats, an interview with aQ beloved dronescapers Hywl Nofio, Finland's masters of hypnorock and kings of the NWOFHM, Circle, a handful of record reviews, an interview with Malefic from Xasthur, an interview with the Clientele, and since Kevin is strangely fascinated with Professional Wrestling, there is an elegy for the now defunct ECW, including an interview with author, journalist and ECW expert John Lister, and finally, an interview with our very own Andee about tUMULt, a follow up of an original label spotlight in one of the earlier issues.
The mind boggles what this guy could do with a real magazine. Not that we really want anything to change with Salt. But we sure wouldn't mind if it came out every month. Heck, every week!
And for the first time, this issue comes bundled with a super limited, exclusive 3" cd-r from Hwyl Nofio. A fourteen minute track called "Christ Distort", another gorgeously sprawling expanse of metallic shimmer and blissed out buzz. Exclusive to this issue of Salt.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Each mag/cd hand numbered.
Wow, "Creator" is quickly becoming our favorite single of the year. Santogold has been getting lots of attention and winning high profile fans like Bjork, Spank Rock and Lily Allen. "Creator" for sure makes us think of her friend M.I.A. in both the vocal delivery and the splatter-of-color production by Switch (who worked on most of M.I.A.'s latest). The 'b' side finds Santogold in more of a new wave territory sounding kind of like Karen O singing lead on the first Cars album. While both the aQ faithful as well as her famous fans wait for her debut full length, we'll be laying the needle on "Creator" again and again and again.
It seems like maybe we're becoming a little predictable sometimes, letting the name of a band, or some insane cover art get us all gaga over a record before we even hear the music. But while it's only a theory, it seems like in most cases, the music is just as good as the artwork. Or the band name. For years, we've applied that theory to our record shopping and have rarely been disappointed.
So here we are again. You obviously know where this is heading since we ARE reviewing this record, AND highlighting it, but a while back, it was just a name, Fantastikol Hole. How could we not be curious, if not utterly smitten. A band called Fantastikol Hole? C'mon. SO we tracked down every shred of recorded music from these guys and got just a little bit obsessed. But this is the first one we could track down enough of to list. Four bands, all amazing, all totally different, all French we think, a record so heavy and weird it took TEN labels to release it. And after all that talk of Fantastikol Hole, they only have three tracks here, but it's enough to get you as obsessed as we are.
So what exactly are Fantastikol Hole all about? Super aggro, mathy, convoulted experimental heavy rock weirdness. Stop start stuttery arrangements, huge slabs of Neurosis-y sludge, bits of shimmer and drone-y ambience, wild tangled squiggly leads, angular atonal riffage, howled distorted vocals, long stretches of crumbling doomy buzz, and that's just the first song of three. The second is even more manic, a sort of proggy grind, with tons of space, and weird stops, jagged riffing, swirling dizzying bursts of buzzing fury, programmed drums, explosions of impossibly convoluted synth swathed hypergrind, shortwave radio interference. The third track is only two minutes, but they spend it plodding along doomily, a huge downtuned riff, wrapped around a simple percussive thud, the vocals processed and super distorted, so genius. Complex and confusional and mathy and heavy as fuck. We need to carry more Fantastikol Hole. We will remedy that as soon as humanly possible.
But what about the other fantastikol bands here? Well, there's Shall Not Kill, who offer up three tracks of their own brand of heaviness, a groovy stoned, heavy as fuck plodding midtempo post punk sludgy doom, rife with harmonized lead guitars, yowled vocals, super psychedelic squalls of twisted tangled leads, busts of furious octopoidal drumming, some super fast Maiden style jams, some blissed out droney dirges, but always returning to some sort of cracked classic doom sound.
Up next is Tekken, who are fast and fucked up and furious, a white hot metallic hardcore, bordering on grind, with weird samples, blasts of incendiary buzz, pounding chaotic drumming and snarling punk as fuck howled vocals. The last track finds their grinding punk chopped up and flipped backwards, slathered in static, turning it into some weird fuzzed out, stuttering soundscape of skipping punk rock cds and shortwave interference.
And finally, comes the band Moon, whose three long tracks fall somewhere between ultra minimal dronemusic, and the slow motion sludge riffery of Old Earth or SUNNO))), nearly ambient the slow low rumbles eventually build into a lugubrious downtuned crawl, the buzz occasionally receding, and revealing a glimmering glistening shimmer beneath the rumble.
A pretty weird combination, but a tough one to beat. We've found ourselves digging for more stuff from all four of these bands, although our heart still belongs to Fantastikol Hole.
WAY recommended.
Yeah, you've no doubt already heard all the hype about this new duo: She & Him aka Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. A knee-jerk reaction would be to dismiss this as another actress-turned-songstress hipster move, but we'd be so dumb to do so in this case! Besides the folks at Merge Records have a pretty darn solid track record for releasing awesome artists and for having the best music-lovin' intentions. Y'all know we adore Mr. Ward's music something fierce! And where Deschanel's concerned we can only speak about her acting for which she ain't no slouch. As it happens, she's got a decent set of pipes and graceful songwriting pen too -- nothing fancy or particularly distinct, simply soft, sweet and pleasant. The two definitely make a good pairing -- if not a grammatically sound one! The could easily take up duo-residency at the Grand Ol' Opry and the Brill Building. Volme One features ten country tinged pop Deschanel originals as well as three covers recalling bygone era (Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got A Hold On Me", The Beatles' "I Should Have KNown Better", and the traditional number "Swing Low Sweet Chariot").
NOW ON VINYL! Not one but two albums by this weird sorta jazz electronica group on Rune G. Here's a review cobbled together from our write-ups of the cd versions of the relevant records...
In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster was the 2005 debut of Shining, from Norway (not to be confused with the black metal Shining from Sweden). What be they if not black metal? Hmm, let's listen...good grief, dunno the genre for this even...it's jazz we guess...of sorts. Powerful and freaky and technological. Lead by Jorgen Munkby (ex-Jaga Jazzist, as is the Shining's keyboardist) who plays (on here) everything from sax to accordion to church organ to guitar to mellotron to synths, and does drum programming too. But Shining is a five-piece band so as multi-instrumental as Jorgen is, he's doesn't have to do it all at once. And they leave the tubular bells to a guest musician. So, you get the idea that there's potentially a lot going on. The requiste Kim Hiorthoy cover art, which kinda looks like a blown-to-bits website, implies as much. The ten tracks here veer from booming bombast to melodic moodiness. Energetic ADD explosions of horns and percussion are calmed with weird wordless vocal parts, rhythmic frenzies give way to eerie grooves, and the players' jazz chops are chopped up. There's plenty of tension, and release, let's say! Just imagine some hotshot jazz guys gone on a dark, cinematic bender, unhealthily obsessed with Carl Stalling cartoon scores and arty prog rock and all possibilities of modern electronics. Your ears will feel fully exercised (and dare we say delighted) after a session with Shining. Very cool.
Then in 2007, Grindstone came out. Compared to the debut, it seemed quite a bit harder and heavier than we remember! Some of this is almost industrial-metal, seriously. Herky-jerky rhythms one moment, sheer droning heaviness the next, with moody male and female vox amidst the instrumental/electronic onslaught. This has a sinister circusiness that makes you think that Mike Patton (Fantomas/Faith No More/etc.) must somehow be involved, though of course he's not. Doubtless he'd like how spunky, brassy, swirly, and dark this is, and that Shining haven't lost their any of their intense cinematic Morricone-ish sensibility.
A handsome gatefold package, limited to 500 copies.
If aQ was sitting somewhere in the midst of Ontario, or Nova Scotia, or British Columbia (and not smack dab in the middle of San Francisco), this would be a really easy review to write: Singer's Unhistories is a fractured, post-rock take on the blueprint laid down by The Rheostatics and Wooden Stars. However, given that most folks aren't walking around with Canadian passports (and we mean the gov't documentation, not the haircut...), that probably doesn't mean much to you. SO...
Picture a band trafficking in the best kind of snaking, Beefheartian, guitar skronk, add some seriously bad-ass drumming, then throw some four-part harmony into the mix and you're in the ball park. Unhistories is a cacophonous, ramshackle affair, with sounds and ideas crashing into each other, overlapping, crumbling apart and reconstructing themselves. The song structures are atypical; the guitar work is atonal; and the vocals manage to warble, flutter, and dip from falsetto to guttural growl and back again within the space of a few notes. That there's a lot going on in these songs would probably come as no surprise to anyone with even a superficial familiarity with Singer's pedigree: guitarist Todd Rittman and drummer Adam Vida did time in U.S. Maple, while bassist Robert Lowe (who also seems to be handling the majority of the vocal work) was a member of 90 Day Men and currently makes top notch drone-raga vocal/guitar improv as Lichens (look elsewhere on this list for a cool new art book + 3" cd collaboration from him).
Unhistories is definitely a not-for-everyone affair (but then again, what on this list is?), but for those with a penchant for this particular brand of art-damaged post-whatever rock this is top notch stuff.
We first heard Sitaar Tah!, Tokyo's amazing 22-piece all-sitar "orchestra", a couple years back on another limited (and now out of print) aRCHIVE release, the sprawling, droning two cd set Animamima on which they collaborated with Japanese dark psych lord Keiji Haino! And we've been eager to hear more from 'em ever since. Now aRCHIVE presents a Semimimimimin, a 43-minute studio recording from the group. Sitars are GO!
So.... You like dense drone. You like exotic, Eastern raga-like stuff. You like psychedelic, pulsing, shimmering beauty. You like ghostly Phillip Jeck-like lo-fi surface hiss. Well what more need we say? You're gonna like this!
One long, trance-inducing track that weaves the sound so many massed sitars into complex patterns of rhythm and melody, modulating and building to more abstract and organic, swarm-of-insects levels... absolutely as soothingly nice as you could imagine.
Beautifully presented in the aRCHIVE tradition, in their usual oversized format, with art by SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, 4-color silkscreened cover, LIMITED TO 700 COPIES ONLY!
Sons & Daughters take it in a new direction for This Gift. No longer drenched in the molasses blues folk dourness we'd come to expect from former Arab Strapper David Gow. Sounds like the present in question was a healthy dose of mood liftin' and energy pumpin' vitamins... or maybe this is simply what happens when Gow's partner in crime Adele Bethel takes center stage! The results are sleek gal-fronted modern rock with hooks far more akin to bands such as Metric, Elastica, Veruca Salt than their Scottish pop brethren. While we dig their newfound punchy drive, suckers for melancholia that we are, we can't help but miss a bit of the murder balladry!
Harmine Korine tapped both the Sun City Girls and Jason Pierce (aka J. Spaceman of Spiritualized and formerly of Spacemen 3) to write the soundtrack to his film Mister Lonely. No, it's not a collaboration; but rather two opposing forces that may or may not work within the context of the film. As of the release date of the soundtrack, the film has not been released, so we can't comment on how it work in the film. Much like the restrained interludes on recent Spiritualized albums, Pierce offers lushly cinematic arrangements with spectral guitar crescendos, pretty-pretty pastoral tunes from string and woodwind ensembles, and sustained eerie ambience; and the Sun City Girls don't. These tracks do account for the final recordings ever to be made by the Sun City Girls, as drummer Charles Goucher passed away shortly after their completion. That said, these SCG tracks are not as absurdly weird as some of their soundtrack ventures (e.g. Dulce, Juggernaut, and Piasa: Devourer Of Men), but Alan Bishop's off kilter croon emerges alongside the rickshaw guitar picking of his brother Richard, plenty of out of tune piano ditties, and some cacophony between a transistor radio and a harmonica. It goes without saying that the Girls had to deliver a spectacular cover of the Bobby Vinton tune "Mr. Lonely." Hey, is that Werner Herzog issuing some demonstrative claim between a couple of the tracks? Why yes, it is!
Yes, they do make solid quirky rock like they used to! Standing Nudes latest full length is the proof! You might recall their last release, a punchy post punk-y vinyl 7" from earlier this year. Since then they've kept the energy level up and their wah pedal well-oiled, but tailored their sound into something that's still weird and angular, but maybe a little more direct and emotive. The moody female vocals and overall tone of the album is quite reminiscent of Throwing Muses actually. Still the guitarist is allowed free rein on a lot of the record, including the fifth track, "Fight Song" (featured on the aforementioned 7"), and he noodles up a trippy storm! All and all an excellent psyched out, fuzzed up POP record. Solid song writing with enough freaked guitar weirdness to make it a more delicious bon-bon out of the musical bon-bon box where most of the bon-bons are kind of good but not as good as the really good one. This is one delectable bon-bon! There's also some summer of love, Nuggets type of shit in operation here among the general angular jangle, which is a combo that works out quite well. Killer jams to be sure!
It's another, like-no-other, claustrophobically constricted creepy-crawl through the mists that seemingly, steamingly enshroud the Tasmanian rainforest lair of that far off island's major (only?) one man black metal export, Striborg. Mists that buzz with fuzz, like a metallic miasma, a sonic cloud of fog-smog composed of atomized Burzumic bits. Damaged, droning distorted fuzz. If Fuck Buttons or Growing listen to black metal, we bet they'd like Striborg! And as far as we're concerned, a new Striborg disc is always cause for grim celebration... this one, following both Ghostwoodlands and Solitude from 2007, is fresh for spring 2008 (remember, that's fall below the equator, hence Striborg's current Autumnal Melancholy).
As is Striborg's wont, this album consists of either epic-length (several close to 15 minutes each) black metal numbers, or somewhat shorter, more "experimental" isolationist electronic interludes. On those pieces, such as the "The Scrying Mirror", the quietly lovely "In Oppressive Silence", and "The Manifestation Of Black Residual Energy", Striborg could be mistaken for some particularly scary 20th century classical composer or ambient soundtrack artist. But even when he unleashes the full black metal attack, with drum machinery and anguished rasps, it's still pretty darn "experimental"!
With plodding tempi and enervated emotion, the likes of "As A Hermit Hiding In The Trance Of Night" and the title track trudge forth like a sleepwalking zombies, with each step forward, sinking slowly into the quicksand-like foundation of the ever-present fuzz, which really comes to an unholy, catastrophic climax with the Merzbovian noise blow-out of album-ender "Transfiguration Of Terror", a two-minute track following the one here with perhaps the album's most metal-est riffing, "Meandering In Sorrow", a well-named 14:35 indeed. As with all Striborg releases, recommended!!
Yay! Another old favorite finally reissued and back in stock. We first listed this back in 2000, and we still love it more than ever. First we had a Drone Syndicate edition, then a more expensive one on Walhalla, and now the DS version has been repressed, at the same cheaper price (though it lacks the liner notes, photos, and overall fancier packaging of the Wahalla one).
In the AQ canon of all time essential artists, of groups who have shaped all the music that followed in their wake, somewhere very near the top spot would be Japan's Taj Mahal Travellers. This sprawling seventies psych drone unit led by Fluxus legend Takehisa Kosugi, were crafting gorgeous abstract drone drenched ambience long before most of the current crop of dronesters were even born.
The Taj Mahal Travellers were masters of the organic, of vibration, texture, timbre, utilizing bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material, this collective created some of the most enduring and unique psychedelic music ever recorded. Their music and performances were the physical embodiment of a philosophy, a way of life more than just simple 'playing music.'
It's hard to imagine the Skaters or Birchville Cat Motel or the Yellow Swans or even Wolf Eyes without the Taj Mahal Travellers. Often referred to by the press as "La Monte Young on acid", in a review of another, unfortunately out of print TMT album, we described their sound as "epic higher key improvised drone extravaganzas performed on beaches, deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated into the sound. Feedback, time-space lag, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound."
The music of the Taj Mahal Travellers thought is stubbornly indescribable. No words can possibly do justice to the spirits they were able to invoke, the atmosphere they were able to create, dark and dense and mysterious and ominous, but at the same time beautiful and brilliant and epic and spacious.
This double cd features nearly 100 minutes of improvised droning captured live in Stockholm, Sweden in 1971, the group (minus Kosugi for some reason) run stand-up bass, tuba, trumpet, select percussion, violin, flutes, mandolin, harmonica and synthesizer through primitive tape loops and delay effects for an awesome ritualistic performance, predating the likes of Zoviet France and about a million others by decades!
The live sound is just as amazing as their records, which makes sense since their albums were essentially documents of live aktions.
The first disc is a single nearly hour long low end ritual, strings buzz and reverberate, as do voices, and bits of bowed metals, all beating against each other and creating all manner of cosmic vibrations, all accompanied by simple bells, or a single plucked note repeated over and over. Near the end, the vocals are soaring, and the tones have become long buzzing streaks, with plenty of spacey echo and strange damaged FX, it's hard to hear this and not wonder where in the hell Sunburned Hand and No Neck get off, these guys were creating the same sort of primitive primeval sounds, nearly 4 decades earlier, and with so much more depth and emotion. The fact that a music so minimal and abstract can be so utterly moving is testament to the Travellers' unparalleled skill.
Disc two is much less low end rumble, and more a dizzying swirl of strange sonic events, here the horns are in full affect, sounding like a herd of alien elephants, moaning and bleating, the tones stretched out and draped across all manner of lower register rumbles and whirs. Percussion surfacing now and again like an angry rattlesnake roused from a midday nap, or a swirling cloud of tiny buzzing insects. Vocals drift in and out, shamanistic and chant like, moaning out strange melodies, mostly low and throaty but sometimes like curious feline mewling, all intertwined with the various other drawn out sounds. An incredibly intense organic ritual, purified by its intransitive nature, the improvisation guaranteeing that each performance belonged to the time and the place as much as the players. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking.
Absolutely essential, and probably more recommended than nearly any record we've ever reviewed!
So very "K Records"! One gal band Tender Forever is such a perfect fit on this Olympia, WA indie pop label. Melanie Valera makes her low-key sweet Casio-festooned pop on an assortment of keyboards, drum machines, a tattered acoustic guitar and drumkit and a bunch of other noisemakers from the kitchen cupboard (chopsticks, wooden spoon, rice, saucepan). Her softly emotive multilayered vocals meet at the crossroads of Sinead O'Connor, Mirah and Tegan & Sara. Folks around hear were reminded of The Blow and Mates Of State too!!
BACK IN STOCK! We had this very rare record many moons ago; and we've managed to get a handful back in stock. Here's what we had to say about it way back when...
The specialization of language offers the ability for those acquainted with certain phrases, words, and even verbal inflections to communicate with a greater efficiency. Here at Aquarius, we've coined such neologisms as "dronology" and "fuckery," simply because we hope that such words offer enough connotation even without a lot of context. Sure, we make references to obscure movies, books nobody read, and composers that never really got heard outside of some tiny state-funded electronic music institution, but hopefully we explain things in a language that can be understood. On the other hand, Italian composer / musicologist Giancarlo Toniutti communicates in nothing even close to a common vernacular; instead, his writings are a confounding display of specialized academic language and are composed within extended run-on sentences that make Aquarius look like the saints of brevity in comparison. There may have been a time when I had the patience to read Derrida, but not anymore.
Given that ridiculous prologue, I have to say that the collaboration between Toniutti and Andrew Chalk (who in contrast to Toniuitti has always been painfully quiet about his work) is truly fantastic. As the language in the massive liner notes is too convoluted to decipher with any certainty, I'm guessing that the two artists collaborated upon long thin wires which they set up in natural settings. They then took these recordings of windswept scrapes, amplified creeks, and bowed metals to ICR Studios where Colin Potter helped them mix their recordings into that eerily angelic drone which emanates from all Andrew Chalk recordings. As Chalk doesn't entirely dominate the proceedings, Toniutti's penchant for gritty textural striations does add an important aural characteristic to the recordings. In spite of the difficult-to-impossible liner notes, the music which it attempts to describe is transcendentally beautiful.
We have loved Torche from the very first time we heard them. Rare is the band who seem to effortlessly create a sound, that whether we all realized it or not, was exactly what we had always wanted to hear. We haven't met a single person who wasn't immediately smitten with Torche, their sound, the one we had all been hungering for, some kind of perfect pop, made impossibly, and irresistibly heavy. A dizzying collision of incredible hooks and downtuned pummel. And Torche were, and are, the undisputed masters of that very unique heavy catchiness, or catchy heaviness. Their debut sounded like a super charged heavier than Heaven Nirvana, or maybe the Foo Fighters crossed with the Melvins. That was the sort of shit we should be hearing on the radio. And seeing on MTV.
Torche's recent ep, In Return, while still awesome, found the band ditching much of the pop in favor of a much heavier sound, embracing their inner Melvins, yet thankfully never completely losing that pop side, just obscuring it beneath riff after riff and furious skull splitting drumming.
So here comes the long and anxiously awaited second full length, and while maybe after In Return, we were expecting them to move even further away from the pop, we really needn't have worried. Somehow they managed to make a record that falls somehere right in between. Easily as catchy and hook filled as their debut, but even heavier than In Return. The riffs are massive, the guitar sound HUGE, the vocals keep getting better and better, still way down in the mix, but perfectly complimenting the sound, not too melodic, but none of that pointless caterwauling. The drums too, are LOUD and incredible. And the songs, shit, strip away some of the distortion, and we're talking top 40. Sort of.
The opener is an instrumental blast, that sounds like the late great Karp, super dense churning hyper riffage, and super complex drumming, dizzying guitar harmonies, almost like some Fucking Champs / Melvins mashup. But the second is all pop, right out of the gate, an awesome melody, big thick riffs, soaring vocals, over the kind of drumming that is as catchy as any of the other instruments, not since Nirvana would we find ourselves humming the fucking drum fills, but this is Torche, what do you expect? It's like pop punk given a sludge doom makeover.
The whole record is an exercise in extremes, coexisting impossibles. No record this poppy and this catchy could possibly be this dense and distorted and downtuned and heavy, but it is. And no metal record, or sludge record, should be able to be so hook filled and catchy and still retain it's sheer fury and intensity, but again, the proof is right here.
"Across The Shields" sounds like a primo slab of nineties college indie rock, a main vocal melody that sticks in your head the second you hear it, a killer bassline that on its own is as catchy as anything any of the other instruments are doing, but here it's wrapped around super metallic harmonies, dense squalls of tribal drumming, and some chest rattling downtuned chug. "Without A Sound" begins like some sort of early SST jam mixed with dirgey Melvins jam, but deftly transforms into a crazy catchy pop song, "Amnesian" seems to take the obtuse melodic sludgery of Harvey Milk, and turns it inside out, offering up soaring harmonies and a totally majestic main riff, but separated by atonal slabs of slow motion dynamics and pounding percussion, as well as wild FX drenched psychedelic leads. We could probably go song by song, and talk about how heavy and/or catchy each one is, because they are. ALL of them. Some tracks do veer in one direction or the other, but even then, the band seem incapable of sounding anything but both heavy AND poppy. There are certainly worse problems.
But like any band worth their salt, they do delight in confounding, so the record finishes off with the 4 minute, VERY un-poppy title track, incredible sludgey and dirgey title track, beginning with a roiling miasma of guitar buzz and hum, eventually a riff kicks in, the drums stuttering and staccato, the riff a churning start stop, lurching and hypnotic, a dark slithery groove, the guitars crumbling and wet with FX, in the background clouds of glimmering whir and twinkling reverb drenched guitar squiggles, a primo classic Melvins era trudge, and while not overtly catchy, Torche still seem unable to commit to full on pummel, so even in this climax of primal riffage, lurk some unexpected, very subtle hooks. Whether you realize it or not, hours, days, weeks later, you'll find yourself humming along to what ostensibly is the least catchy song here. And if that's not a sign of pop genius, well then we don't know what is...
INCREDIBLE packaging, borrowing its main concept from that Open Hand record from a few years back, the booklet cut into overlapping layers, the tray card, covering only half of the jewel case revealing the art on the inside, the booklet folding out into a massive sprawling, garishly cartoon horrorscape, but beware, if you take the booklet out, it's a bitch to get back in!
Maybe you don't know it yet, but (IF you buy these Bobb Trimble albums) you have just been handed the key to a secret realm, an alternate rock n' roll universe of dark despair, fragile hope, and gossamer beauty, a haunting personal soundworld that will always stay with you, within you... these two albums are reissues of exceedingly rare, DIY pop-psych-prog holy grails from the unlikely time and place of early '80s suburban New England. Bobb Trimble is singer-songwriter and would be (shoulda been) rock star from Worcester, Massachusetts. Born in 1958, he was in his early 20s when he recorded the two self-released albums that constitute his obscure discography, and which over the years have developed a small but devoted cult following among those lucky enough to have encountered these gems. There's been bootlegs of one of them (Harvest Of Dreams), and a hard-to-find anthology that came out 12 years ago drawing material from both Bobb LPs, but now Secretly Canadian, bless 'em, have at long last brought out legit reissues of both amazing Trimble records, on compact disc and vinyl (unfortunately, the vinyl went pretty quick, we only have a couple copies of each LP left in stock at the moment, though we're told there will be a second pressing sometime soon, hopefully). As far as we're concerned, this is one of the most significant musical events of 2007!
Influenced by the Beatles (on the back of his debut LP, he politely asks if he can someday become the 5th Beatle), Bowie, Pink Floyd and other psych and prog rock of the '60s and '70s, Bobb boldly brought that sound into "a world he never made", the malaise days of the late '70s and the new wave Reagan '80s, creating homemade timeless tracks that could just as easily have been recorded today, or tomorrow, too. We're reminded of those artists, yes, and also the disparate likes of Ariel Pink, Antony & The Johnsons, Richard Youngs, Ed Askew, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Roy Harper... but Bobb Trimble's music is also like nothing else we've ever heard.
Both albums are highly recommended... though weird enough to perhaps not be for everyone, we'll admit. If you like 'em at all though, chances are you'll LOVE them. It's about time they were reissued, we expect that they'll do MUCH better today than they did when they were first (barely) released. The world, or at least the indie-rock scene, is finally ready for Bobb's unsung outsider genius, and it's nice he's getting a second shot at recognition now. And also especially nice for the new audience that's gonna flip out over this music (we predict).
This record, 1982's Harvest Of Dreams, is the one with a grainy photo of Bobb pondering what appears to be a unicorn-goat on the cover, apparently found at some RennFaire petting zoo. Looks a bit like a Jandek album cover, doesn't it? It certainly is a wonderful indication of the magical mysteries and sheer oddity of the album's musical content. Of Trimble's two LPs, Harvest is where his dreamy visionary aesthetic reached its absolute pinnacle (at age 23!). Bobb has his helpers on various tracks here, several of 'em recorded with The Kidds -- a bunch of 12-year-olds from his neighborhood he befriended and taught to play! So maybe he felt there was more hope for the future. The mood here isn't quite so dark as side one of Iron Curtain Innocence, though certainly a continuation of that style, and just as emotional and moving, moreso even... Bobb, his high fragile pixie voice (one reason for the Ariel Pink comparison) caressing like fairytale kisses, takes you by the hand and leads you into his heart, on this masterpiece of bedroom recorded lovelorn proggy psychedelic weird gentle beauty. Track two, "If Words Were All I Had" is likely to be one of the best songs you'll hear all year. One of the most aching, affecting love songs ever, actually. It could make you cry. "Armour Of The Shroud" is another highlight. A nearly 8 minute epic woven from Bobb's angelic voice, chiming bells, guitar strum, a bed of electronic swirls, and such droning "environmental" sonic textures as a beeping disconnected dial tone and falling rain. It's not all as mellow as that -- for instance an outburst of distortion and swearing at the end of the otherwise lovely "Selling Me Short While Stringing Me Long" leads into the backwards-effected intro of this album's biggest anomaly, "Oh Baby", a primitive garage-punk number sung by one of the Kidds, with lyrics that seem to reference the Saturday Night Live character Mr. Bill. Backwards effects and children's voices are in fact all over the place here on this densely-layered disc, along with swirling psych guitar, distorted electronics, and Bobb's heartfelt lyrics and melodies. Yep, definitely there's an Ariel Pink vibe, also we're even reminded of the folky pagan weirdness of Comus at times, & also the damaged new wave psych of the Happy Dragon-Band, if you've ever heard them.
Urgh it's hard to do this justice in a mere review. Words are all we have... This is the sort of album that it really seems that someone (a better writer than any of us here) could, should write a whole book about. Like one of those 33 1/3 volumes. It's that deep, that unique, that compelling.
This reissue again includes enthusiastic, enlightening liner notes, this time from Florent Mazzoleni. And more vintage photos, including another one of Bobb sitting with the spooky unicorn-goat from the cover, this time serenading it with an acoustic guitar. And on this cd there's also another three bonus tracks of unreleased songs!! Nicely put together, way better than any bootleg version of course! So, again, both albums are highly recommended (obviously, as we made 'em both Records Of The Week) but if you're gonna buy just one, maybe start with Harvest Of Dreams... but we'd say get both!
Maybe you don't know it yet, but (IF you buy these Bobb Trimble albums) you have just been handed the key to a secret realm, an alternate rock n' roll universe of dark despair, fragile hope, and gossamer beauty, a haunting personal soundworld that will always stay with you, within you... these two albums are reissues of exceedingly rare, DIY pop-psych-prog holy grails from the unlikely time and place of early '80s suburban New England. Bobb Trimble is singer-songwriter and would be (shoulda been) rock star from Worcester, Massachusetts. Born in 1958, he was in his early 20s when he recorded the two self-released albums that constitute his obscure discography, and which over the years have developed a small but devoted cult following among those lucky enough to have encountered these gems. There's been bootlegs of one of them (Harvest Of Dreams), and a hard-to-find anthology that came out 12 years ago drawing material from both Bobb LPs, but now Secretly Canadian, bless 'em, have at long last brought out legit reissues of both amazing Trimble records, on compact disc and vinyl (unfortunately, the vinyl went pretty quick, we only have a couple copies of each LP left in stock at the moment, though we're told there will be a second pressing sometime soon, hopefully). As far as we're concerned, this is one of the most significant musical events of 2007!
Influenced by the Beatles (on the back of his debut LP, he politely asks if he can someday become the 5th Beatle), Bowie, Pink Floyd and other psych and prog rock of the '60s and '70s, Bobb boldly brought that sound into "a world he never made", the malaise days of the late '70s and the new wave Reagan '80s, creating homemade timeless tracks that could just as easily have been recorded today, or tomorrow, too. We're reminded of those artists, yes, and also the disparate likes of Ariel Pink, Antony & The Johnsons, Richard Youngs, Ed Askew, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Roy Harper... but Bobb Trimble's music is also like nothing else we've ever heard.
Both albums are highly recommended... though weird enough to perhaps not be for everyone, we'll admit. If you like 'em at all though, chances are you'll LOVE them. It's about time they were reissued, we expect that they'll do MUCH better today than they did when they were first (barely) released. The world, or at least the indie-rock scene, is finally ready for Bobb's unsung outsider genius, and it's nice he's getting a second shot at recognition now. And also especially nice for the new audience that's gonna flip out over this music (we predict).
This one, Iron Curtain Innocence, with a striking photo-studio shot on the cover of Bobb armed with both an electric guitar and a Tommy gun, was his debut, a private pressing in an edition of just 300 copies! Side one, credited to Bobb Trimble with The Violent Reactions, was recorded in 1980 and represents the darker, more apocalyptic material on the album, the songs dramatic, melancholic, and laced with much mysterious sound FX. The very first track, "Glass Menagerie Fantasies", starting off with some shortwave static, establishes Bobb's special talent for fragile and melodic otherworldliness, utilizing weird "glitch" textures long before electronica made that a rock-crit term. His multitracked vocals, ranging high, are of translucent beauty throughout this record, yet so much of the musical mood is one of dread and psychosis, lyrics touching on fears of WWIII, the gothic likes of "When The Raven Calls" heavier with sizzling synth drones and volume-cranked psych guitar.
Side two, designated Soliloquize, was recorded two years earlier, in 1978, and features what Bobb considers the more "straight" songs on the record, simpler perhaps, but with Bobb's vocals just as delicate and the mood just as melancholic... and definitely of psychedelic bent, note ferinstance the backwards guitar on "Through My Eyes (Hopeless as Hell: D.O.A.)". On side one Bobb is accompanied by a drummer and bassist, on side two just a drummer, Bobb handling vocals, guitar, and all other instruments, credited also with "interference patterns" and "hope".
Hope? Maybe. Bobb dedicates this album "to a children of a dynasty destined to ruins who build their dreams on the darkness they buy... and steal." You can see where he's coming from, his despairing musical mood. It's fairly certain that back in 1980 he could have never imagined that his music would be being re-released in 2007, not just because such lasting "success" seemed elusive but also 'cause it seemed doubtful, in those days preceding the Ronald Reagan vs. "Evil Empire" face-off at the height of the Cold War, that world would survive this long. Thankfully, it has, but sadly, though, times haven't really changed that much regarding this civilization's and this planet's long-term prognosis, Mutual Assured Destruction replaced with global warming and WMD and another Evil Empire (ours, or Islamofascism, take your pick), so Bobb's sentiments on Iron Curtain Innocence still seem unhappily relevant as ever... but this reissue is also a token of hope, since we, Bobb and this music are are still here.
This reissue also includes three bonus tracks, reverb-drenched solo demo versions of songs from side one, recorded by Bobb in his parents' basement. The cd booklet contains extensive liner notes by Eric Weddle, as well as lots of photos and a newspaper clipping of a review in the local newspaper at the time.
Psychedelia in film and Psychedelic music sometimes serve at cross-purposes. In films, trippy visuals and dreamy passages often define the strangeness of the music, a factor that is often missing when hearing the music out of context. While true psychedelic music can overbearingly take center attention, a quality that doesn't work with most narrative films. Take for instance this new Cherry Red collection of obscure Italian soundtrack pieces from master composers, Morricone, Umilani, Rota, Piccioni and others from the strange and trippy side of their filmography. While the films, such as Fellini's Toby Dammit (An Eli Roth horror favorite) and Polanski's What? featured creepy sub-plots, surrealistic dream interludes, drug freakouts, as well as off-beat comedy, spy capers and other absurdities, the musical approach was less psychedelic as we know it and more of a liberal cross-pollination of musical genres and forms. Eastern raga and jazz? Why not?
Baroque harpsichord and creepy organ dirges? Sure! Multi-tracked flutes and wah wah guitar? Awesome. While not everything here is as trippy as you would expect, this is a pretty extensive survey (28 tracks!) of little heard soundtrack music that will serve the creepy and surreal moments of your life quite well.
The Numero Group goes digging deep once again and come up for air with some mighty fine disco and proto-hip-hop jams from the super obscure vaults of an early '80s NY label called Tap. From start to finish this lavishly packaged collection offers up helping after helping of killer grooves and funky jams, from that magical era where funk and disco were the seeds that would blossom into the hip-hop scene that would soon blow up bigtime.
While names like Jackie Stoudemire, Magnetism, Arnie Love & The Lovettes and Fabulous 3 MC's might not have become household names, after listening to their tracks on this comp you will be wishing you could get your hands on more of their goods. Every time we put this on we start to have fantasies about being in NY during this era and blasting these songs on a playground while we do some double dutch and then catch ESG playing a show in the Bronx, and afterwards heading to the Paradise Garage where we dance the night away with Larry Levan.
This is going to go right up their with The Third Unheard, Big Apple Rappin and the new Funky Nassau collection as one of our favorite party perfect comps of all time. And of course there's a massive booklet with liner notes detailing the full of the story of the Tap label and all the trouble and adventures it took to actually get these amazing sounds into the world. We are so glad they did!
Were you one of the unlucky millions who got to witness the most recent American Idol where contestants brutally butchered classic Beatles songs? We had to wonder if any of them had actually heard the originals or were just played the songs by the studio band. Maybe that's why you don't see too many contemporary artists tackle Beatles covers today. The originals were either so much better due to their deceptive complexity or perhaps they were covered so much during their time that their familiarity has become more of a liability than an asset. Does anyone really need to hear an emo version of "Eleanor Rigby" or an R&B version of "Long and Winding Road" (or for that matter, The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton's version)?
You gotta figure most rock fans during the Beatles' heyday probably felt the same way about this particular set of Beatle covers from the sixties and seventies' softer side: Brothers Four. The Letterman. Nancy Wilson. Dick Hyman, Earl Grant, The Sandpipers. Shirley Scott. Nancy Ames. Just a few of the pop-jazz, pop-vocal, soft-samba, jet-lounge, bachelor pad, easy-listening artists that took a run with the fab fours' immense songbook. Probably aiming at a hipper, younger audience given many of the hyper-upbeat tempos and / or smooth vocal delivery here, most acts really just managed to broaden the musical awareness of their older listeners, like our parents. However, time's a good friend to kitsch, and as we become further distanced from the context of the original songs and era, these songs take on a different feel. They actually sound pretty good, dare we say, better than some of the overtly familiar originals. Some versions are crate digger gems like Ella Fitzgerald's backwardly funky "Savoy Truffle", Gary McFarland's scat samba version of "She Loves Him" and Clarence Wheeler & The Enforcer's organ groover "Hey Jude". Other songs are sheer novelty such as Gershon Kingsley's Moogy "Paperback Writer", The Assembled Multitude's muzak take on "I Want You (She's so Heavy)", and the overly-enunciated delivery of The Brother's Four, "We Can Work It Out". Yet, the best covers are of songs that fall the closest to the easy listening model, The Sandpiper's soft Latin-tinged "Things We Said Today", easily trumps the original, and The Lettermen's sublime string-driven "I'm Only Sleeping" comes really close. Most choices in this collection wisely steer clear from the more rocking or druggy side of the songbook. No "Helter Skelter", "Tomorrow Never Knows", "I Am The Walrus" or "Come Together", though Arif Mardin does us a service by doing an instrumental version of "Glass Onion", a late period rocker whose lyrics (mostly Beatles inside jokes) we never really liked. We think Lena Horne and Gabor Szabo's "Rocky Raccoon" and Bossa Rio's "Blackbird" deserved inclusion here, but we shouldn't really complain. There are probably enough interesting Beatles covers out there to make for a tight second volume. Just don't even think that we'll be having a similar change of heart towards the American Idol versions thirty years from now. Shiver.
Looking at the line-up of Tompkins Square's new Imaginational Anthem volume, you would think they were focusing on the more experimental side of the solo guitar genre. Featuring R. Keenan Lawler, Shawn David McMillen, banjo mystic George Stavos, electronic musician Greg Davis, Ben Reynolds, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Berkeley guitarist Matt Baldwin, and Richard Crandell amongst others, we were half-expecting (hoping for?) a more way out approach towards the instrument. But alas that's not the case and that isn't really a bad thing either. While the sounds are more in line with the previous volumes, and other compilations of solo guitar work, this compilation stands up amongst the best of the genre with some fine finger-picking by some unexpected sources. Though props go to Lawler, McMillen, and Stavos for pushing the envelope the most. LIMITED ADDED BONUS! The first ten purchasers get a free bonus 7" of two songs by Max Ochs from 1969, featuring the tracks "Imaginational Anthem" and "Oncones".
Another super limited lp installment in Sublime Frequencies' ever expanding collection of fantastic and mysterious world musics. It's unclear, why a few releases have been vinyl only, and if the shelf-life of the last Sublime Frequencies lp was any indication, these won't last long at all.
So what is Shadow Music Of Thailand? Well, it's Thai pop heavily influenced by UK instrumental rockers The Shadows of course. More specifically it's a strain of sixties Thai guitar pop heavily influenced by Western music, rock, garage and especially surf. The guitar being the most obvious influence.
So here we have a collection of some of the most notable purveyors of "Shadow Music": The Son Of P.M., P.M. Pocket Music, P.M 7 / Jupiter and Johnny Guitar. You may have noticed the recurring P.M., well that stands for Payong Mukda, one of the most prolific composers and performers of the time and the music genius behind all of those P.M. groups.
On first listen, the Shadow Music here doesn't sound all that different than much of the Thai Pop we've heard before on other collections, and no doubt there is some overlap. But keep listening, and all sorts of strange and unique little sonic flourishes reveal themselves. Really, where else can you hear gamelan percussion with super fuzzed out ? And The Mysterions style organ and wailing surf guitar? From groovy garage rock to shimmery surf, lots of organ, and plenty of gamelan, vibraphone, xylophone, gorgeous vocals, strange harmonies, mysterious melodies, but it's those guitars, it buzzes and howls, chugs and twangs, woven into all of the songs here, creating this strange hybrid, Thai Pop, Bollywood, surf rock, blues rock, latin, soul, all woven into a wild groovy psychedelic fuzzy funky garage folkpop that will totally hit the spot for fans of exotic grooves and wild and wonderful sounds.
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF ONLY 1500 COPIES. 180 gram vinyl, super thick, gatefold sleeve, full color with tons of original Thai artwork and extensive liner notes.
The pride (or is it "the scourge"?) of Columbia, MO, the slippery spazzy sludgy spacy (post)rock combo known as Warhammer 48k return with this crazy 3" cd-r limited to 666 copies. Knife Hits picks up where they left off on their recent full length, Uber Om, which was a massive hit 'round here; packing all the nooks and crannies with a big smear of gooey dripping chaos. Pounding rhythms and thick sludgy guitars, a sort of indie rock but dipped in heavy metal and rolled in jagged shards of punk rock and then splashed in the face with a bracing cup of icy cold POP. Heavy but not metal, catchy but not poppy, sludgy but not 'sludge'. The bastard offspring of all the 'rock's, post, math, space, indie and of course HARD!
This (literally) compact disc comes nestled in a 3" petri dish, the top half has a transparent sticker that makes it look like a little piece of stained glass, the bottom half is layered in colored wax drippings, over some abstract artwork that makes it look kind of creepy and smeary - but perfect for the music (barely) contained within!
We love music. But even so, it's not like we love everything. Here at the store, we've all got different tastes and enjoy different things to varying degrees. Regular readers will notice there are only a few unanimous picks, but pretty much everyone here loves Windy & Carl!
This release veers into way different territory than might be expected, but will still please plenty of W&C's more adventurous fans. Before hearing the record, rumors were circulating about how harsh it supposedly was, and how it sounded nothing like what we'd expect. Well, after checking it out, that's true, and then again it's not. Many of the same sonic qualities are present: warm drones, whispy guitars, etc. But it's in the melodies where this really diverges from the norm. Whereas W&C typically go for major-key, pretty drones, this work has a truly sinister quality to it. To really engage with the music, you need to at least become acquainted with the general concept.
On the surface, I Hate People sounds very unlike what we'd expect from the kindhearted dog-lover, musician, and Michigan record store owner we've come to know and love. So let's talk more about this specific release. Well, the cover sports her 1987 passport photo, which shows a very Siouxsie and the Banshees-esque, punk-meets-goth Windy. On the inside there is a short musing on Sirens, which can be summed up by one particular line: "at one point or another, we've all wanted an island." I Hate People is a record that openly paints human relationships as being a Self versus Other paradigm, and then juxtaposes that with the relationship between sailors and sirens. Windy hates people because people are the only thing that can truly hurt us. Okay, you get it. We don't want to get all pedantic. So what does it sound like? Sonically, the release definitely reflects a musical exploration of those ideas. At times more or less frustrated, but throughout it evokes a certain feeling of anxiousness and alienation, but never apathy. This record maybe be best suited for Windy & Carl fans who can stomach the idea of truly disturbing drones, or possibly even fans of leftfield, ambient black metal. Yeah. So if none of that scares you, dare to delve in! This is a great release, and we hope to see more solo work from both Windy AND Carl! Recommended!
Seems like only yesterday, but it's Wire time again. Another heaping helping of modern music, from free jazz to dark drone to minimal techno to noise rock and everything in between.
On the cover this month Wolfgang Voigt, to coincide with the forthcoming GAS reissues (YES!), inside: trumpeter John Hassell, Dexplicit, practitioner of a new house music sub genre called 'bassline', Frans De Waard of Beequeen, Goem, etc., Global Ear on Vancouver, an overview of this year's AV festival, Invisible Jukebox with techno legend Carl Craig, New Zealand guitarist and soundmaker Dean Roberts, artist and improvisor Max Eastley, legendary Japanese guitarist Kan Mikami, and of course reviews by the bucket full, cds, lps, videos, dvds, performances, installations, books, reissues, 7"s, cd-r's and anything else worth reviewing, Inner Sleeve this month features one of our favorite records (and one you might not expect to see in the Wire), Iron Maiden's Powerslave, and a back page Epiphany from Lawrence English, on quelling boredom in Australia with an explosive Boredoms performance...
