Matmos have that very rare and special talent of being able to turn endless creativity and playful spirit into something transcendental. While much of the press they get ends up being about their unique methods and approaches to gathering sounds (plastic surgery, semen, polish trains, rats, etc.) or the famous folks they have worked with (Bjork, Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, etc.) the truth is that ultimately it's the strength of their varied albums and engaging live performances that have made them one of the best and most compelling music makers of the last decade.
Supreme Balloon finds Matmos stripped down in a sense as they put their contact mic's away and decided to make a record made solely with synthesizers and samplers, and the results are pretty damn stunning! Showing that they could give the DFA camp a tutorial if asked ("Polychords"), keeping their playful spirit on high with their Switched on Matmos take on "Les Folies Francaises" as well as reaching outer orbits of pure psychedelic bliss on the 24 minute title track. They use their wide range of synthesizers to create a kraut-like sensation with bursts of fluorescence and a sense of adventure and eye on the multicolor sky that is so damn hard to resist. Matmos manage to find the hidden smile in Klaus Schulze's stern visage, the relics of a Tangerine Dream with a half dose of ecstasy we always wished was out there somewhere. Once again they've proven that you can be smart without being stiff, playful without being dumb. Supreme Balloon will be a definite contender for record of the year!
(P.S., vinyl fans should note that the double-LP version of this record comes with three extra tracks including a great collaboration with Terry Riley titled "The Hashish Master"!)
We reviewed the debut cd from this boy / girl black metal duo from Canada, a few lists back, released on the not typically black metal label Alien8, and gushed appropriately about its gorgeous drone drenched minimalist black buzz. We mentioned then that they also had a release on Tour De Garde, the label run by the guys in Akitsa, and we've now finally managed to track down a bunch of copies of that first tape.
If anything, this one is more metal (but in parts just as experimental), less minimal, with a sound much more intense, drums and vocals the focal point. The sound less blissed out and atmospheric. It's a strange sound, one that changed pretty dramatically for their next record, but we ended up digging this as much as the Alien8 release.
It's both the drums and the production that make this record so intense, the sound is super hot, the recording vivid and loud without being blown out, and the drums, programmed we assume, are furious and LOUD and pretty much drive all the action. Way up in the mix, pounding relentlessly, peppered with flurries of double kick and blasting fills, the guitar alternately unfurling clouds of harmonics, or grinding riff for riff right alongside the drums, turning the metal into something more looped sounding and trancelike, eventually exploding into a weird processed dronescape, all glitchy buzz, and streaks of hiss, whirring electronics, and bits of crumbling distortion, drums still there, buried now underneath this churning slab of fuzz and buzz and blur, until those drums lurch up of the murk, and the guitars lock back into a strange static riff, the rhythm more sparse, with dark throaty female vocals, suddenly the sound is some black gothic doom, still the guitars grind and soar, chunks of jagged melody are hurled back and forth, the sound is just so good, so intense, and so strange. This is so unlike any other black metal we've heard. Listening to this tape has us wanting to go back to the Alien8 disc and dig deeper into that one too.
Later on, the band dabble in huge trudging black doom, the guitars so processed and blown out, they emanate a warm fuzzy aura, the programmed drums monstrous and pummeling, making the rhythms sound almost like dance music at times, while sounding like a less lo-fi Nadja at others. Distant howled vocals, throbbing distorted low end. This shit is just so crushingly heavy but not at all in the way we're used to. Hard to describe. But we've listened to this tape about 4 times in a row now, and have no plans to stop�
Packaged in beautiful textured paper sleeves, some blue, some red.
Darren Tate has quietly been producing drone-based compositions out of smeared field recordings and electronics for almost two decades now, but the bulk of his productions have been tiny self-released editions. In the early '90s, he and Andrew Chalk released a handful of cassettes under the moniker Ora, often with help from Colin Potter, Jonathan Coleclough, Michael Northam, and Daisuke Suzuki. Around the turn of the millennium, Tate and Chalk parted ways under amicable circumstances from what we can ascertain, with Chalk focusing on the equally impressive Mirror with Christoph Heemann, and Tate beginning to record as Monos with continuing production support from Colin Potter. Promotion was the first Monos album. While many of the ensuing Monos records had the same dappled deep ambience and impressionist use of field recordings as Ora, Promotion was an entirely different beast. Here, Tate works with a comparatively caustic recording of him dragging a heavy metal object across a concrete surface with all of the abraded textures and rusted growls that one might expect from such an action. Against this, Tate interweaves several long-form electronic drones with off-set oscillation sweeps, recalling more of the bunker electronics of early '60s computer music. Originally, Promotion was released in three tiny editions of 50 copies each back in 2000. Of course, those are long gone; but Paul Bradley has rescued this gem from the dustbin, although this current edition numbers only 200 copies. And, no these won't be long for this world either!
Norwegian indie rock band Motorpsycho certainly have their fans. For years and years, several of our friends have been singing their praises, telling us to check 'em out. And some of what we've heard, we've liked. Poppy, psychy, sometimes sorta heavy, also rather quirky. But still, they never quite "clicked" with us. Until now. This new Motorpsycho album we're totally digging. (And no, it's not just 'cause it was released by Rune Grammofon, a label we usually like.)
Sparklingly melodic and super energetic and full of guitar guitar guitar... Motorpsycho really get pretty wild with the acid rock guitar soloing here, almost to Kawabata Makoto levels, whom we recall liked to say he played 'motorpsycho' guitar. Hmm. There's plenty of room for them to stretch out with the guitars and FX as this disc consists of four long songs (longest, 21:05, shortest 11:26). But they *are* ultimately pop songs, with vocals (in English) and hooks and all.
With that pop element going full bore too, they've (at last?) hit the sweet spot of successfully mixing '70s bombast with '90s college radio / indie rock. As long as you realize we mean this in a really good way, we'll go ahead and describe Little Lucid Moments as sounding sorta like the Foo Fighters gone prog. They've definitely got some little lucid Pink Floyd moments in there too, via Voivod perhaps, who themselves dabbled in the pop punk thing too...
As long as we're confusing things with seemingly random references to other artists, let's also cite Sloan -and- Circle as two more disparate bands this reminds us of, at times! Sloan for all the ambitious rockin' pop stuff here, while the spaced out guitars and motorik chuggery of "The Alchemyst" could easily be Circle or Motorpsycho's countryfolk Salvatore. And then in the track "She Left On The Sun Ship" it sounds like they're getting into the twisty, sinuous vein of rockin' post rockers Drive Like Jehu, with some little Champs-y licks thrown in too. Who else should we mention? 31Knots? Ok, another good prog-pop-indie blend. The Beach Boys? Yep, in the vocals sometimes. But all this successfully adds up to something cool that's uniquely Motorpsycho (and nothing like the gearhead garagabilly rock their name might imply).
So, it's taken a looong time but we're finally convinced. We're Motorpsycho fans. We know a guy in Holland (hi Frankco!) who will be very pleased. Now we'll have to go back and reconsider all the umpteen Motorpsycho records we'd been ignoring all this time...argh! No, that's a good thing. Always nice to have a not-so-new band to newly like... Highly, surprisingly recommended.
This is another one of those records that is almost beyond reviewing. A record that if we found out someone we knew didn't own it, we would simply insist they buy it immediately. No questions asked. Of questions were asked, we would respond with something like "Because it's awesome!" or "It's one of the best collections of songs EVER" or more likely "JUST BUY IT! IT RULES!".
But since that doesn't work on everyone, we'll do our best to describe what is one of our favorite records EVER, and arguably the best Mudhoney release EVER. Partially because it's not a proper album, but rather a collection of single tracks. Pretty much every one a perfect chunk of slithery filthy grungy punk rock genius.
When we first discovered Mudhoney, it was because we were super obsessed with Green River, the band that vocalist/guitarist Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner called home before Mudhoney. Both quitting as that band leaned more and more toward glam rock and late eighties Sunset Strip rock. But to our ears, Mudhoney didn't sound all that different from Green River. Maybe a little punkier, definitely less bluesy, but from the second we first heard Mudhoney, we were in punk rock love.
A lot of it has to do with Arm's raspy croon, so raw and primal, but managing to be super melodic and versatile. He's a bit like a mop topped grunge rock Iggy Pop, wiry and writhing while spitting out insane punk rock bon mots, wailing away on his axe, bouncing maniacally around the stage. His voice is definitely the defining feature of Mudhoney, but that wouldn't mean shit if the songs weren't amazing, and they are. Punk as fuck, but way poppy, hooks galore, but all wound up in super tight riffs, wiry melodies and wild drumming, the band careening wildly one second, pounding away through some doomy dirge the next.
No amount of flowery description, no review, no matter how well written, can possibly compare to just hearing this stuff. We're so jealous of anyone who gets to hear "Touch Me I'm Sick" for the first time, or their cover of the Dicks' "Hate The Police", or the slithery "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More". When we first heard these songs, our minds were BLOWN. Literally, we had no idea what the heck we were hearing. Punk rock. Grunge. Pop. But it was more than that. The energy, the spirit, the groove, the vibe, and holy shit THE SONGS. So with all of that to chew on, I think we're finally at a stage where we can unleash the "JUST BUY IT. IT TOTALLY RULES!!"
We get a little bummed out on reissues sometimes, thinking we have to buy a record all over again, for maybe a few extra tracks, or a dvd, or whatever, but then you have to realize, stuff like this is not necessarily for fans who already have the record, but for folks who might have somehow missed out, many of whom were maybe not even alive, or still toddlers when it first came out. So for you folks, this is absolutely a must have. Whether you're a metalhead, an emo kid, a punk rocker. Mudhoney are one of the few bands whose appeal transcends genre, and rightfully so.
For those of us who already have one or more copies of Superfuzz Bigmuff, well, the new version has three demo tracks, as well as an entire disc of live tracks, one live show, one live on the radio, new fancy pants packaging, deluxe six panel digipak, housed in a slipcase, huge booklet with tons of photos, liner notes, all the original single covers, so yeah, we're all gonna buy one, you might as well too, replace the old worn disc with this new remastered version, support a bunch of cool dudes who are still making kick ass records (in fact, a new one to be reviewed here real soon). But really, all that extra stuff is just icing, on a cake that already tastes better than any other sonic confection we can think of...
Chicago's psychedelic black metallers Nachtmystium have a full-length coming out on Century Media full-length (called, wait for it, Assassins: Black Meddle Part I... no really, get it? 'Cause they love that early Pink Floyd) and this ep is a teaser of sorts, maybe...
Originally meant to be a split with Leviathan, we don't actually know how much this ep is indicative of what's to come on that full-length. There's just two new songs here, one very very psych, slow and spacey ("Worldfall") and another much more traditionally black metally ("Depravity"). There's also a re-recording of an older tune of theirs ("Solitary Voyage"), and two covers: Death In June's "Rose Clouds Of Holocaust" and Goatsnakes's "IV", interesting 'cause industrial-folk and Sabbathy stoner-doom are not exactly Nachtmystium's core sound.
So, how does it stack up? We gotta say whoa, the blasting tracks two and three remind us a lot of With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness era At the Gates. Fucking rad! Also, the Death In June cover is shockingly faithful to the original, and the Goatsnake cover is pretty good too, even those of us who don't like Goatsnake that much agreed. Again it's pretty faithful, but has been black metallized with raspy vocals improving upon the original... so, something for everyone here, or maybe just for Nachtmystium fans.
Another missive of murky unblack energy from the mysterious Njiqahdda, another project from the man behind E.E.E. Recordings, as well as some of our favorite unblack bands: Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial, but for Njiqahdda, the approach seems to be much different that for the other more traditionally buzzy outfits. In our review for the last Njiqahdda, we described the sound as alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed UN-black metal, which still pretty much applies, but like in those other projects, the sounds and productions are so varied, it sounds sometimes like they were recorded in different studios, used different equipment, it even sounds sometimes like it was played by entirely different bands. Not sure how he does it, but whatever it is, every new record reveals a new facet to his sound, and on this new Njiqahdda, the sound is murky and hypnotic, not so much a buzz as a muddy blur. A main riff that is repeated over and over and over, a chord progression rendered almost dronelike, the vocals a layer of gurgling rumble over the top, the drums only audible as a distant throb or the occasional sizzle of cymbal shimmer. Definitely grim and (un)black, but with that distinct postrock vibe, and a weirdly catchy main melody, the whole thing locked and looped into an endlessly repetitive mantra.
Two tracks on the first disc, muddy and murky and dreamily washed out, almost like some minimal black metal record produced by Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck. Buzzy and beautifully blurred.
The second disc is a single hour long track of deeeeeeep black ambience. A haunting and mysterious expanse of distant whirs and cavernous rumbles, soft shimmer and high end streaks, super spare and sparse, headphones recommended, reverbed voices, the sound of some underground cavern, lightless and devoid of all life, an emptiness, a nothingness, beautifully austere.
Packaged in an oversized black cardboard box, with a candle and incense, a parchment insert, the cd-r's in plain white cardboard sleeves with paste on text on the front and back. Crazy limited. In fact, TOTALLY OUT OF PRINT, this batch made just for us, which means once these are gone, they are gone gone gone...
We're all geeks here at Aquarius. There is no way around it. Japanese this, Finnish that, some grim black metal album recorded in a garbage can in the Norwegian woods, whatever. But we still really love getting a great pop/punk/shoegaze album. And if you can stomach the idea of saying that for once, "the hype" isn't completely unfounded, then No Age might just be your band. Now, as we plod through Spring, looking toward Summer, nothing is more important than a good warm weather soundtrack! Enter Nouns, No Age's first full-length release brought to us by Sub Pop. Well, Fat Cat compiled the duo's first handful of 7"s in a full-length format, entitled Weirdo Rippers, but this is their first complete album proper. As you may know or guess, Weirdo was a bit patchy, which worked in its favor, really. The start stop action propelled it more than might be expected. So, for this release one could only be curious: What the hell will a No Age record sound like, and what kind of flow will it have? The width and breadth of their sound remains just as large - one part sloppy '90s punk and one part My Bloody Valentine - but there is a greater sense of cohesion. The qualities and characteristics of the recording itself are more consistent too. Also, there is a noticeable increase in the number of guitar layers as well, which means some more complex melodies. There's even a guitar "solo" at one point. Do it. Now's the time. Put on the new No Age record, go in your closet, grab your Chuck Taylors, grab a Mountain Dew - or some other highly caffeinated beverage - and have a pre-Summer Summertime party. Recommended.
If you're looking for the smarty-pants Mayo Thompson meets Van Dyke Parks meta-pop of albums like Insignificance or Halfway To A Threeway, you will not find it on Tamper. This album dates back to 1991, when a young Jim O'Rourke was emerging as a tremendously talented avant-garde composer bridging minimalist strategies with post-industrial intensity. At the time of this release, O'Rourke's name was always linked to his work in Chicago's stalwart ensemble Illusion Of Safety. His involvement with IOS lasted for a couple of years, having worked on two of the best Illusion Of Safety albums, Probe and Water Seeks Its Own Level. Throughout his chameleon-like career, O'Rourke has always worn his influences on his sleeve. Tamper is no exception, hedging itself between the electro-acoustics of Luc Ferrari, the grand minimalism of Phill Niblock, and the techgnosis of The Hafler Trio. The three long form pieces are exquisite exercises in synthesizing electronics with long-form tonal clusters from acoustic instruments, where the goal is a dynamic compaction of frequency and timber into a unsettling drone very much like those sounds from Niblock and the Hafler Trio. Even after almost 20 years, Tamper still sounds very impressive, making us wonder if O'Rourke would ever return to style. The only downside, the record's been repackaged with some stupid squiggly artwork.
A long overdue review of this insane and brutal chunk of Swedish UNblack metal. We've had this in stock for ages and� wait! What? Swedish? Yeah, you heard correctly, you thick the Christian unblack metal movement was only happening right here in the US of A. Nope there are Christian black metal bands all over the world. It just so happens that the hub of all things UNblack is stateside, E.E.E., who have been unleashing a never ending torrent of gloriously fucked up and totally demented UNblackness with no end in sight.
So Offerblod share not only an ideology with their US brethren, but also a truly fucked up sound. Hard to describe. It's definitely lo-fi, outrageously so, but it's also blown out, super distorted, in the red, some tracks are so muddy and murky, the riffs sound like a underwater rumble, the drums barely able to penetrate the muted buzz, other tracks are super brittle and high end, the cymbal wash a cloud of high end hiss, swallowing up all the sounds around it. The combination of Offerblod's raw primitive black buzz, and the insanely erratic, but totally crucial-to-their-fucked-sound production, makes this one of the coolest, weirdest and definitely one of our favorite black metal records of the year.
Fans of Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Ancestors and other practitioners of ultra buzzy raw blackness will definitely dig! Packaged in a plain black digipak, with pasted on front cover image and printed black and white insert.
The Oh Sees have changed a lot since they were the OCS. Back then, Oh Sees frontman John Dwyer had his Coachwhips, a wild sweat soaked, garage stomp party, furious and frenzied, throbbing and in-the-red, so OCS was the outlet for Dwyer to explore the other sides of his multiple musical personality. The debut OCS record (released on tUMULt) was two discs, one of mostly solo acoustic guitar, a super intimate bedroom folk, all dusty and crackly, warm and super intimate, bits of damaged Casio, warbly old vinyl, damaged FX, lovingly crafted into some sort of heartfelt lo-fi sonic loveletter. The other disc was more noisy, super abstract, blown out blasts of free jazz weirdness, drones and rumbles, howling feedback, white noise, pink noise, and every color in between. OCS 2, 3 and 4 followed a similar pattern, a sort of lonely lo-fi homebrewed indie folk, off kilter and melancholy, wistful, damaged and dreamy.
But with the dissolution of the Coachwhips, came a name change for OCS, now The Ohsees, or sometimes The Oh Sees, a change in sound, and a transformation into a full band.
While not as freaked out and furious as the Coachwhips, the Oh Sees new record sounds more like the long lost CW's than any of Dwyer's records since. Garage-y jangle, shuffling drums, the vocals distorted, the songs simple and stripped down, but the big difference is that here Dwyer splits the vocals with bandmate Brigid Dawson, the result is truly endearing harmonies, with Dwyer often the wailing counterpoint to Dawson's sweet angelic croon. And songs that sometimes sound like alien versions of that classic Phil Spector girl group sound. But at its heart, the sound is still fuzzy and buzzy and skeletal, groovy and garage rocky, wouldn't be hard to imagine this disc on In The Red, or see these guys on tour with the Dirtbombs or the Country Teasers or the Husbands. (Bonus points for having a song about aQ pal and local artist extraordinaire Maria Forde!)
Weird too that it's out on Tomlab, it IS blissy and fuzzy and poppy, but not nearly as much as everything else on Tomlab, which is why it's only -through- Tomlab and is really on Dwyer's just launched Castle Face label�
Big booklet, with lyrics, and kick ass eye popping artwork on the front and back!
We only have a dozen or so of these, and it's unclear whether we can get more of these, so we won't bother going into too much detail. A split release, from the Skaters' Pacific City label, this one featuring new aQ faves the Monopoly Child Star Searchers on one side, the new to us Pacific Rate Temple Band, who we will assume is another Skaters side project.
The MCSS are in fine form as always, creating a sound so fantastically alien, we're still unable to pinpoint how much of it is played, how much is sampled, what instruments are used. Regardless, it's a gorgeously tripped out tribal dronejam. With way more guitar (?) this time around keening and waiting over that distinctive Monopoly murky tribal rhythm. The sound sometimes hiccup when the tape jogs, but it only adds to the weirdness. Warbly and dizzying and another recording towards convincing us we just might dig MCSS more than the Skaters!
Pacific Rate Temple Band have a similarly hazy sound, but the percussion is more distant or buried, instead the focus is on long drawn out high end tones, a sort of upper register skree, layered notes, overlapping tones, all shifting and beating subtly against each other, very primal and tribal, sun dappled and shimmering. It almost sounds like a high end remix of the other side, or if it were possible, the two sides played simultaneously would probably sound amazing.
Either way, this is some gorgeous stuff, and is of course limited, and again we only have a dozen, so be warned...
Not to be confused with the heavy sludge doom of Pale Horse, local San Francisco duo of Kyle Ranson and Kimberly Pierce channel apocalyptic doom through a completely different sensibility. Using mainly just spare acoustic guitar, tambourine, and beautiful two-part vocal harmonies, The Gospels is a sermon of haunting southern gothic songs filled with death, despair and hard-living. Their sound reminds us at times like early Palace brothers, or a way stripped down Brightblack (before they added the Morning Light to their name), occasionally conjuring up dusty images in our minds of small town buskers singing for their supper and salvation. Thankfully, Pale Hoarse do not play up the vintage Americana card too heavy-handedly, instead using spare arrangements to tread on dark but universal themes. Perfect for Sunday Mornings coming down from the sins of the previous night and you just can't make it to church. Housed in a silk-screened paper bag with hand sewn leather envelope for the cd and insert with lyrics and drawings. So Beautiful and VERY LIMITED!
In recent years, Peter Rehberg has been teaming up with Stephen O'Malley for the data-crunched doom of KTL; but Rehberg has began crafting atomic noise as Pita since the late '90s. His first album Seven Tons For Free won him the Ars Electronica Prize for innovation in new music in 1996; and by 1999, his second album Get Out emerged to global acclaim. After a few years absence, this classic has finally been reissued.
The album is almost entirely an exercise in laptop generated abstraction, with a ring modulation filter firmly bolted to every bit-splatter, pixelated squiggle, and jagged edge. Such DSP tricks were developed in a huge explosion of avant-garde electronics, with Pita leading the way alongside fellow Mego artist Fennesz, Ekkehard Ehlers, AGF, and Stephan Mathieu. Occasionally, Pita's fizzing digital static colludes with subtle rhythms, structures, and harmonies for some truly sublime pieces of electro-shock mantras. The bulk of the album enjoys a clownish randomness from dial twisting tomfoolery and fist-pump noise generation. This must have been an album that Autechre encountered and forced them to radically change directions, lest they become obsolete.
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One of our favorite far out noise records, from Israel! Back in stock, but probably not for long...
Noise is always a tricky proposition. Some folks just want that harsh, brutal, paint peeling, speaker shredding white noise aural assault, while others (like us) like their noise with a little bit of structure, and texture and -gasp- maybe even some melody and dynamics. Our favorite noise records tend to be those that do something special or original with noise. There's plenty of Merzbow we could do without, but a handful of his discs are truly innovative blasts of gorgeously crafted corrosive sound. Gate's Golden is another example of a 'noise' record that manages to be as pretty and mysterious as it is harsh. And there are a bunch of noise(y) discs that completely kick our asses, records from Hijokaidan, Hototogisu, Hanatarash, Gerogerigegege, Incapacitants, Nerve Net Noise and more, sure we love us some full bore NOISE!!, but typically, of that stuff, the discs that gets the most play, are the ones that aren't just a straight wall of noise.�
We recently reviewed a killer disc of remixes, various artists reinterpreting and recontextualizing tracks from�Kurdish Melodies On Zorna by Zadik Zecharia, a pretty solid AQ fave. The Zorna is�a traditional Kurdish instrument like a longer more narrow trumpet or Scottish bagpipe, and Zecharia got work magic with his, weaving dense tapestries of joyful sound. The highlight of the remix record was Israeli noise unit Poochlatz's mix, turning Zecharia's playful Zorna into an instrument of doom and gloom! It definitely had us hankering for more.�
So�here it is, the latest release from Poochlatz, a single nearly twenty minute track, and it's pretty caustic. Harsh and bleak and distorted and blown out and indeed very very noisy. But there's a lot going on, within the noise and beneath the surface. The whole track exists in a black cloud of squealing feedback, moaning slabs of downtuned guitar, jagged slabs of glitched out electronics, everything muddy and murky and crumbling, but beneath this wall of abject brutality, hover strange barely audible majestic melodies, what sounds like snippets of songs buried way way down,�howled blackened vocals, distant demonic roars, streaks of sound all tangled up with smears of disembodied percussion, some almost black metal riffing pulled apart into weird blurry buzzes. On first listen, it's like sticking your head in a hornet's nest, but once your head is firmly lodged in there, the buzzing and constant stinging begins to feel soothing, almost tranquil, you head begins to swell, your ears swollen shut, all sound reduced to thick slabs of whir and shriek, so intense and strangely alien. Think Whitehouse versus Skullflower versus Wolf Eyes versus Prurient with some strange shoegazery pop ambient referee trying desperately to keep the fight fair and failing miserably. A beautifully brutal slab of dreamy (nightmarish?) noise. Recorded live too!
The Reverend Bizarre may be dead. But The Puritan lives on in his place. The Puritan being the new group founded and fronted by RB's S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), this being their second missive, the first, another quite limited 12", that managed to go out of print before we could nab any. For part two though, we did manage to grab a bunch, but be warned, it too is crazy limited and there's a good chance these will be the only copies we can get. So doom obsessives, dig in...
But, this is no ordinary doom. And it's quite far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre as well. The record begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlour music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us more of Midwestern thud rockers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly Amrep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift.
The B side begins with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed.
Needless to say, fucking awesome! (btw, those new to The Puritan, or doom in general, might want to pick up the last Reverend Bizarre double cd too while you're at it, So Long Suckers, that band's mighty doom swansong).
We're kicking ourselves for missing the first 12", as this, our first experience in the strange doomy world of The Puritan most definitely has us wanting more...
Like some dusty old 78, left in the basement for 20 or 30 years, wet and warped, gritty and scratched up, thrown onto the ol' Victrola as is, and allowed to unfurl a warped and warbly, rickety detuned slow motion blues crawl. That's exactly what this latest disc from the Reveries sounds like. Recorded live in Italy in 2004, the Reveries, fronted by Eric Chenaux (who for those of you up on your nineties indie math rock, fronted Toronto's godlike Phleg Camp), magically create this sound from another time. But there's more to it than that, the sound is strangely damaged, alien even, and for good reason. The band employ a technique as bizarre as it is brilliant. Each player, in addition to wielding guitar, harmonica, bass, saw, nose-flute and thumb-reeds (!?), holds a tiny cell phone speaker IN THEIR MOUTHS!!! WHILE THEY PLAY!! OR EVEN SING!! So each of the instruments is sent first to the speaker in the mouth of another player, who much like a Jew's harp, is able to shape and warp the sound with the shape of his mouth. So you're hearing guitar come out of the bass players mouth, the bass coming out of the guitar player's mouth, the flute through another player's mouth, and on and on...
Then there's the singing, which all three members do, and as you might imagine, it's pretty difficult to sing with a speaker in your mouth, and a speaker cable trailing out of your mouth to an amp or a bandmate's mouth. The result is a mumbled and warbly, mush mouthed drawl, fuzzy falsettos, a garbled croon, often sounding like a toothless old Nina Simone, but just as often, like some strange buzzing growl, perfectly complimenting the band's detuned twang flecked scrawl.
It's almost like the Starfuckers playing Django Reinhardt at 16 rpm, with a countrified Derek Bailey on guitar. Cracking, wheezing and skeletal, a demented yet lovely underwater slow motion Western Swing, plenty of downtuned buzz, scraping and shuffling, whispering and whistling, seasick and gorgeously woozy. There are stretches of garbled instrumental chaos here and there, but the majority of the set is spent slithering and shimmering, meandering drunkenly through some strange sonic haze, an old timey radio broadcast, from some strange musical alternate reality, bits of classic blues and jazz muted and smeared pulled apart and tangled up into haunting and perplexing shapes. So gorgeous.
The last time we reviewed a Ben Reynolds disc was way back in 2005, and even then we were sort of lamenting our inability to keep up with the constant deluge of amazing cd-r's and the proliferation of cd-r microlabels. We're still trying, but it's fighting a losing battle.
And with Reynolds, we've fallen even further behind, this being only the second release we've managed to review out of the probably twenty or so we've missed, but what the hell, let's make the most of it. Thankfully this is a real cd-r not a cd-r, which is a god thing as this is way too good to only be heard by a handful of folks.
Reynolds weaves a magical lower case world of buzzing synths, strange percolating rhythms, disembodied psychedelic guitars, simple folky strum, and dense sheets of processed drone and whir. Occupying a sonic space somewhere between the freaky forest folkies and the spaced out drone-y drifters, Reynolds wanders freely back and forth often pausing with one foot in each, wrapping sweet little bundles of buzzing steel strings in tripped out sci-fi buzz and bleep, while conversely taking washed out smears of outerspace ambience and spreading them out beneath melancholy acoustic guitar melodies. Fans of all thing Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, PseudoArcana, Digitalis, Last Visible Dog and the like will absolutely want to get a hold of this....
We were heartbroken after the dissolution of German black metal outfit Nagelfar (not to be confused with the Swedish e-less Naglfar). Their all time black metal masterpiece Virus West, has been a huge favorite of all the metal heads around these parts (and has just been reissued, and will be reviewed on the list soon!) but a few years after the death of Nagelfar, a new band was born out off the ashes, a strangely monickered beast called the Ruins Of Beverast. Purveyors of, in their own words, "oppressive black metal", and indeed, the sound of RoB was totally unlike the blazing Scandinavian style of buzzing black metal, instead, they offered up a sprawl of midtempo misery, as doom as much as black.
And this, their second album continues on a similar sonic path. There is of course plenty of buzz, this is grim black metal after all, but RoB have a much more expansive vision. Out of the seven tracks, five clock in at around 15 minutes (the other two are brief ambient interludes of cavernous whir and crumbling subterranean drones) and find a grim black buzz stretched waaaaaaay out into long stretches of Burzumic doom. The guitars are thick and spacious, not just buzzy and compressed, the production is massive, each song is like a journey through some massive underworld, drifting through firelit caverns, along some viscous black river. The rhythms are loping, seasick waltzes, sometimes slowing down to glacial dirges, with arpeggiated chords spread out over thick backdrops of warm blurry buzz, howled vocals, simple pounding drums, all wrapped in huge swaths of reverb, making all the edges bleed together, turning buzzy black metal into fuzzed out doomdrone metal. The oppressive blackened crush lets up once in a while, allowing brief bits of shimmer to shine through, a weird post rocky slowcore crawl, some minor key jangly clean guitar, slow building Godspeed like ambience, bits of epic synth, always returning to the relentless buzzing dirge, allowing off course for brief flurries of furious blasting black metal, but those always seem to give way to still more slow and sorrowful blackdoom beauty.
Here's another tough one. An amazing black metal band. A gnarled convoluted blackened blowout equal parts Watain, Funeral Mist and Deathspell Omega, insane blasting drumming, super complex riffing buzz, tons of parts, all tangled and dizzyingly serpentine, laced with strange spoken word interludes, bits of choir, stretches of ambience, little bits of folk flutter, a seriously over the top chunk of black metal majesty, as epic and expansive as it is utterly grim and cult.
BUT, these guys have some seriously fucked politics. Although they claim to not have any specific agenda, and claim to not be an National Socialist Black Metal band, that's a little hard to believe, the lyrics implying master race / white pride stuff, and other similarly distasteful subject matter. Lots of concern with the supposed purity of their "Nordic blood" and the shame of bowing down to those their "race" once conquered. Not hard to read between the lines here.
But if you can manage to ignore what's between the lines, as we are sometimes forced to do, with some of the more problematic black metal hordes, one will be rewarded with some of the most abstract and musically forward thinking extreme blackness we've heard in ages. This isn't new or anything. We've had copies for ages, but we have never been able to get enough copies to list properly. And then the more we dug into the lyrics and the politics, we figured, we oughta just list the ones we have, so at least a handful of folks who are so inclined can hear this stuff. And the thing is, minus the above bullshit, this band is mind blowing. SO fast and furious, their black metal layered and lush, so much stuff going on all the time, headphones are a must, every blast is laced with all manner of background noise and texture, the brief interludes are rife with sonic weirdness, the riffs sound bent and fractured, a little Voivod, a little Greg Ginn. In addition to claiming they are not in fact an NS band, they also claim to not even be black metal, which in some ways they might not be, they are definitely pushing the boundaries of that specific BM sound, but it many fundamental ways, they are, which is not at all a bad thing. Still they most definitely incorporate enough musical eccentricity to be far from typical, enough that we, while despite despising their philosophies, dig their music, a lot.
So, you've been warned. If you order this, we'll hopefully assume you're like us: into the music, not the bullshit beliefs.
We only have 7 cds and 11 lps (the vinyl is super deluxe with amazing packaging) and since we haven't been able to get more in, what? Three years or so? We'll just assume that once these are gone they are gone for good.
There's been a batch of cool releases recently from this underground Tokyo flashbackin' "bleak-folk" duo, including live albums on both the aRCHIVE and Important labels. How best to follow those up? How 'bout with a two-disc, two-hour studio set on Holy Mountain, all the more room for the Suishou two (Pirako and Kageo, both on guitar and vocals) to sprawl out and let their heavy lidded (if not quite heavy) psychedelia bleed so bleakly and beautifully, including a few tracks previewed in live versions, like "Cherry" and "Til We Meet Again". Even if you haven't heard those, if you've heard any Suishou No Fune chances are you know what you're in for... the usual Suishou blend of fragile vocals wailing ever so gently over meanderingly melodic string strum and amp hum, a downer droney trance-out that's super languid and echoey, relaxed and Rallizesized.
The extended, lethargic and lovely lo-fi shimmer that Suishou No Fune conjures is embellished by some percussive rattling ritual at the opening of "Prayer", and enhanced elsewhere by occasional amped-up moments of distortodelic heaviness ("Resurrection Night" being a solid sixteen-minute example), though it's generally far to the softer side of countryfolk Boris and Acid Mothers Temple (for instance). We can guess you'll be filing this with your Shizuka, LSD-march, and Nagisa Ni Te cds... that is, filing it only after playing it over and over quite a bit, lost in a hypnotic reverie each time.
Prayer For Chibi was recorded with the help of Steven Wray Lobdell (David Redford Triad, Faust) and the cd booklet features Japanese-to-English translations of all the lyrics by the always helpful in that regard Alan Cummings, lyrics full of flowers, dreams, rain, stars, fireflies, and la la las...
Not sure how we discovered the Basses Frequences, and yes that is correct. Basses Frequences. Maybe an email, a recommendation, a chance discovery on the web. It hardly matters, what is important is that we DID discover them, and with the first handful of releases, we're already convinced they might be one of our new favorite cd-r labels.
Not only is the music amazing, but the packaging is totally elaborate and handmade, and quite original, some of the releases in metal tins, this one, the first release from a person / group called Tamagawa, comes in an oversized envelope, with an assortment of small cards and a huge folded cardstock replica of a mini stage lamp, which you can cut out and assemble and store these three mini 3" cd-r's in. Wow.
But cool packaging is never enough, the music on these here discs is divine. And quite varied, from warm washed out ambient dreaminess, to buzzing crumbling drones, to squiggly spaciness, to gorgeous glistening sun baked post rock, to reverb drenched guitar drift, to thick super distorted dirgedrone, and each of those allowed to shift and shimmer, change shape, and alter sound, transform from one into the other, and then back again, the drone is definitely the root of the music here, but even that is sometimes relegated to whirring way off in the distance, while harmonics sparkle and rhythms shuffle, but just as often, the drone wipes the slate clean, and all the OTHER elements drift and whirl in the background while the drone rumbles and buzzes.
The recordings are gorgeous, the sound crystalline, even at its heaviest and most distorted, the music still glows warmly, the edges soft and rounded, the vibe gentle and tranquil, meditative and hypnotic.
Way recommended for fans of drone and drift, of post rock and abstract ambience, and folks who are obsessive about releases from PseudoArcana, Digitalis, Students of Decay and other like minded labels, might just have to add Basses Frequences to that list.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! Packaged in an oversized sealed envelope with printed cards and a replica cut-out-and-assemble stage lamp!
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Number 11 in Die Stadt's ongoing reissue campaign of the Asmus Tietchens back catalogue. Originally released in 1988 on Dom America, Aus Freude Am Elend is Tietchens response to the Plunderphonics campaigns of Negativland and John Oswald, sans the culture jamming context. It's all voice stolen from the bargain bins of throw-away pop tunes and re-engineered through looping devices, ring modulators, and pitch shifters into what has long been claimed as one of his better releases.
We've been fans of Unicorn for a while now, not nearly as long as we've been fans of -unicorns-, but close. On their Playing With Light� record, we began our review with these words: "Goddamn this record is beautiful. We mean seriously beautiful. So beautiful it sort of has us at a loss for words." Needless to say, we sold tons of those, and it remains an AQ favorite (and we'll hopefully soon have more copies, thanks for being patient). So since then we would snap up anything those guys (or that guy, we're not sure) did.�
This latest one is no different. Well, no different in that we snapped it right up, but definitely different sounding. At least the first Unicorn track here, a hissy high end drift, all upper register whir and shimmer and skree, what sounds like balloons and compressed air, very strange, but after that it's back to the Unicorn of old, with deep resonant drones, strange electronic glitches, haunting rhythmic loops, really quite beautiful, but Unicorn here are all over the place, the next track is another abstract industrial soundscape of low end whir and rhythmic hiss, some more high end weirdness, then back to more dark droniness finishing off with some super minimal hushed drift. Not as straight up beautiful as the other discs, but way more varied and interesting, intense and unique.�
Unicorn are paired off here with Torso, who we had never heard before, but we're led to believe features members of Man Is The Bastard / Bastard Noise, and it sounds like it could be true, Torso's take on the drone is much more raw and abrasive, gritty and buzzy, with the tones blown out and crumbling, verging on power electronics, but remaining just on this side of noise, like a much heavier more lo-fi Niblock, with long drawn out notes layered on top of each other, allowed to pulse and beat and subtly shift and change. Torso also add all sorts of other sounds to the mix, random slabs of distant buzz, electronic crackle, what sounds like a drill of some kind, creepy voices, warbly turntables, bits of found sound, distorted vocals, feedback, all woven into the mesmerizing fabric of Torso's harsh drones. Really cool. Definitely need to hear more.�
Packaged in a gorgeous, multi colored, metallic ink, screen printed fold over cardstock sleeve in a thick vinyl pouch. Nice!
We reviewed the debut recording from these metallic post rockers almost three years ago, and spent a good portion of the review talking about the cover art. Well here we are years later, and it seems they took our advice and ratcheted it up a notch. The new artwork is all woodcut and classical looking, a gorgeously drawn stormy sea, all blacks and greys and browns. A look much more mature and dramatic than the cover of their debut, which makes sense as the music here is much more dramatic and mature as well.
When we first encountered these guys, they were all over the map, from groovy Helmet like start stop groove, to Iron Maiden harmonies, SUNNO))) style sludge to epic Godspeed drama, all woven into a sort of metallic post rock framework. Three years down the line and those parts all seem still present, but are much more seamlessly integrated into the music. The core sound is a churning majestic downtuned Neur-Isis like groove, Howled vocals, drop-d riffing, huge pummeling drums, synths too, but used much more judiciously than on the last record (which is not necessarily a good thing, it's part of what made that record so weird). There's also some clean vocals, that croon over the same riffing, giving those songs an almost Faith No More vibe. A few songs drift moodily almost all the way through and end up sounding a bit like the Deftones (not a bad thing btw), but even those tracks eventually explode into Neurosis like crush.
So if you're a fan of the epic and majestic brooding heaviness of bands like Isis, Neurosis, Pelican, and more modern metal/post rock hybrids like Irepress, Angel Eyes, Mouth Of The Architect, Rosetta, Tides and Conifer, and don't mind a little extra moodiness or melody, then Transmission 0 just might hit the spot.
Last year we totally raved about this Norwegian black metal band's Cold Core Collection, which was a double cd anthology of their eldritch early works, from back in the mid/late nineties before they changed their name to Khold and became our favorite grunge-inflected (Nirvana, anyway) buzzing black metal act.
At the time, we mentioned that Tulus had just reunited (with Khold going into hibernation or something), and had a new album out too, called Biography Obscene, which we promised to review soon... well you know how things go. But the truth is, we really did dig their new album, so better late than never! Unlike the lo-fi necroness of the earliest Cold Core material, the *new* Tulus is in the more polished vein of the Khold stuff, but with some twists.
Biography Obscene is a cruel yet catchy slab of rockin' grimness and (dare we say) grooviness that takes the thick, chugging, killer riffage that Khold was known for and drags them into much weirder, artier, proggier territory. They've got a "chamber metal" thing happening, with piano, violin, organ, and even some non-sucky (really) saxophone on a couple of the tracks. In fact, what sounds like a veritable horn section on the title cut. It's never wimpy, though! They may be tickling the ivories or playing flamenco guitar licks, but it's always in the midst of ultra serious, pounding black metal filth. It's kinda like Darkthrone, Mayhem or old Samael mixed with a bit of '70s progsters Van Der Graaf Generator. Maybe hint of post punkers w/ sax Essential Logic too for a few moments on that title track when the usual gravelly vokill delivery is doubled by some screechy new wavey female vox... well we could be stretching it there. But anyway we think AQ customers into weird black metal (that would be quite a few of you) will find Biography Obscene of interest. Heck, this ain't just "interesting", it's darn headbanging too!! Recommended.
Portland has been a veritable hotbed of underground dronefolk, floorcore and free noise lately, even with the dissolution of the Yellow Swans, we're left with Valet, Dark Yoga, Tunnels and lots more. Tunnels, when we first discovered 'them', was in fact a one man band specializing in rumbling droning buzz, static black ambience, that eschewed melody and arrangement for texture and mood. And we loved it. But over the last few Tunnels releases, we watched as the sound has gradually developed from that minimal low end blur, to something much more varied and songlike, prettier and way more musical. We're tempted to think that Tunnels is no longer a one man band, as the sound now sounds like some foresty folk collective, feeling their way around lilting melodies, and fractured song structures. Regardless, it still sounds fantastic, just now it is more in line with stuff like Avarus, or No Neck, or Kemialliset.
The drone is still ever present, but now it's just a tiny part of a much more sprawling and expansive whole. The sound lo-fi and home recorded, but deep and dense and warm and lush. Guitars drift, distorted melodies surface here and there, percussion is erratic and playful, stumbling and not always specifically rhythmic, voices moan and croon, wreathed in effects that don't distort as much as they just soften and blur. Some tracks sound distinctly African, with a distinct Konono vibe, others remind us of Amps For Christ, haunting jaunty buzz drenched hoedowns, while still others are soft serene soundscapes, that shimmer dreamily, all the distortion and buzz allowed to remain, just way off in the distance. The sound of Tunnels now is much less specific, and certainly harder to define, but it's probably exactly what makes this disc so compelling, and keep us wanting to hear more and more.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
Been waiting for this for a while! While their collaboration with Lento on the Supernaturals Vol. 1 disc (last year) was excellent and sure sounded a heck of a lot like an "actual" UFOmammut record, technically these Italian lords of druggy doom-from-space haven't released an album of their own since 2005's Lucifer Songs. So it's about time we heard from them again.
Reeling from the impact of opening ritual "Stigma", we are immediately made aware that Idolum finds the band's heaviness intact (of course it's heavy, did bears stop shitting in the woods? is the Pope no longer a Catholic??). UFOmammut are still a psychedelic juggernaut, their trance-inducing riffing aswirl in a densely layered, lysergic morass of outer space FX that the Acid Mothers Temple would envy. It's certainly up there with their previous output, we can't praise it much more highly. Found amidst the seven tracks (66 minutes, 6 seconds total, how 'bout that?) of Idolum are a few new twists, including a guest female vocal performance on a few tracks, adding an extra haunting element to the proceedings. Overall, this album manages a hard-to-beat, skull-smashing cosmic balance of tripped-out melody, ambient hypnosis, and utter crushing sludge dirge destruction equal to our high expectations. Definitely worth waiting for!
The cd we have is packaged in jewel case, the kind with rounded corners (same as the Lento debut that Supernatural Cat also just released, reviewed this list too). We didn't get any of the incredibly expensive limited cd version, but we did get a couple (really, just 2) copies of the even more incredibly expensive super limited numbered 2lp vinyl box edition. It's hefty and handsome enough to be worth the money to huge UFOmammut fans, so act fast if you want one (please). Otherwise, the cd version is more than recommended.
First dvd release from both Up-Tight and Last Visible Dog, sees (or allows us to see) one of our favorite heavy Japanese psych trios kicking out the jams live in Tokyo. There's 52 minutes of footage here, the band performing four songs: "Day Dream Believer", "Cool Eyes", "Never Come Morning", and "Sweet Sister".
Musically Up-Tight are their usual dark and distorto-delic selves, some of this an amped up assault, some of it achingly beauty displaying their softer side, all in all a pretty awesome performance from them. And visually this is very cool too, the raw video having been given a psychedelic special FX treatment done tastefully enough to enhance, rather than distract from, the experience.
And no matter where you live, this all-regions dvd should be compatible with your TV, as it's double-sided, PAL on one, NTSC on the other.
FINALLY, the long awaited follow up to Usputuspud's "Liturgical Alcoholik", the side project of the mighty Wildildlife's, and Aquarius' own, Matthew J. Rogers. It actually hasn't been that long, but the otherworldly allure of his first tape had more than a few of us wondering where he would go next. With his new tape, Disco, gone is the delicate, breathy, gauzy, and windy washes of harmonica, replaced by much more muscular and present tones, as well as an entirely new commitment to rhythm. Anyone who has enjoyed the last couple Astral Social Club releases will be pleasantly surprised by this tape, as it has a similar angle on club music, but stretches the palette elsewhere. Where ASC has employed a program of smooth digital disorientation, Usputuspud invigorates the 4/4 dance tradition with incredibly warm, tapey washes of distorted harmonica, accented by the skitter and sputter of rhythmic clusters careening through the mix.
The A-Side, "Cherished Wig," begins with a spare collection of dubby rhythmic ingredients, all persistently staking their claim to the track, before the 4/4 beat and harmonica washes flood the stage. As the track progresses the harmonica builds and bleeds through the entire spectrum of the track, resulting in a droney bedlam of bleary eyed tones, wandering the far reaches of the red. The b-side, "Fetish Ball", begins with an amazing and infectious loop of what sounds like a heavily distorted gamelan instrument. It's an entirely globular and bulging phrase, occasionally giving way to warm waves of distortion and losing its phase, but then coming back with buoyant and propulsive revolutions. In the loop's periphery Usputuspud accents the rhythms with surging bass tones, and watery percussive paddling sounds. As the song progresses, the variety and intensity of peripheral sounds grow, to include exalted vocal howling, and more established percussive counterpoint. The track ends with a fantastic and surprising coda that employs a more diverse array of tones, and a production approach that removes the distorted obfuscations from his sometimes belied interest in dance music. "Disco," is a nuanced affair, finding a soft spot between the ethereal drone of his previous work, and the uhhh... post-proto-motorik gabber he has infused it with! The results are mesmerizing, and recommended indeed. And to boot, it may be the most handsomely packaged tape we've received this year, with a beautiful layout, accented by vintage black-ink stamps, and some seriously decorative hole punching.
We've been waiting for this one with all kinds of excitement and anticipation. The always eclectic and forward minded folks at Tigersushi have compiled one of the more intriguing and rewarding comps of recent times. Digging deep into the vaults of the slow and drugged out side of disco's past they have miraculously connected dots that we always dreamed would finally be joined together. Dirty Space Disco brings together folks from the more avant and krautrock worlds like Roedelius (of Cluster), Conrad Schnitzler, and Clara Mondshine, setting their tracks up alongside disco luminaries and obscure dance floor burners from Sylvester, Fern Kinney, Odyssey, Undisputed Truth and more. This is all about the moody, seductive and way late night side of disco.
We've been big fans of the current movement of artists tapping into this seductive sound (Lindstrom, Chromatics, Prins Thomas, etc.) but we're so happy to have the blueprints and origins of those sounds all on one disc. Though he's not included in this collection we know Arthur Russell would be so happy to see this disco / avant-garde match up finally happen. We're in love with so much of this comp but it's pretty much worth it alone for Sylvester's "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight" one of the greatest spaced out disco gems of all time, from his amazing Stars LP which came out in 1979 and features the innovative production of Patrick Cowley, one of the unsung heroes and pioneers of the San Francisco electronic/dance scene.
Luckily just about every other track is just as fantastic. This collection has been at the top of the charts on KUSF (our local college radio station, where both Irwin and Andee have shows) ever since it went into rotation and it's no surprise because it's the kind of collection that easily wins over folks who thought they just weren't into disco just as much as it pleases those of us who are huge disco freaks!! Highly recommended!
In the time since we highlighted the original volume of Flogsta Danshall's Museum Of Future Sound (in the fall of '07), there have been literally hundreds if not thousands of records reviewed on our list. And while among those hundreds of records there have been a great many we really really liked, plenty of great music, the fact remains that NONE of it has been skweee.
And that just won't do. We need more skweee!!!
Thank god Flogsta Danshall has at last released "the next level" of the Museum Of Future Sound, volume two, 18 more tracks of pure skweee! Skweee, if you weren't paying attention back when we listed the first Museum Of Future Sound, is the cutting edge new Scandinavian electro-funk sound that's sweeping the globe. Well we maybe not quite sweeping. Or even skweeeping. But we're really into it, and heck it SHOULD be blowing up big, if we have anything to say about it.
Why do we love skweee so much? It's both atmospheric and groovy and sorta silly (it sometimes -sounds- silly plus there's all the skweee-punning potential), it's very DIY and has that video game chip-tune retro-ness that you know we'd think was cool. It's funky, goofy, pretty much always instrumental, full of Kraftwerkian melodies, ridiculous nasty crunching bass, and glitched-up hiphop rhythms, skweeeird broken-machine beats tailor made for your most skweeetarded robotic poppin' and lockin' dance moves. It's immediately recognizable, when someone here starts pumpin' the skweee on the stereo we all know what it is. And the whole MySpace-based, internet "nation of skweee" Nordic b-boy (skweee-boy?) community, small as it is, seems pretty cool. A whole little scene (skweeene?) of skweee-obsessiveness to get into.
Museum Of Future Sound vol. 2 is a good place to start (if you have vol. 1 you already know you want this, right??). There's cuts from a few vol. 1 superstars such as Mesak, Randy Barracuda, Claws Costeau, and Daniel Savio, plus tons more tracks introducing such skweee powers-to-be as Eero Johannes, Mrs Qaeda, Joxaren, Spartan Lover, Limonious, Wankers United, Rigas Den Andre, and more... some we already knew from our internet skweee-search, others totally new to us. All these museum exhibits are pretty fantastic!! Each with their own idiosyncracies (idiosyncraskweees?). Ok, stop! By the way, while the first volume came in a slim plastic case, this one is packaged in a cardstock sleeve with three skweee stickers as inserts.
Also, volume one of the Museum is being repressed, so we're out of them now but will have it back in the next few weeks hopefully. Also, we do have a handful of skweee 7"s still in stock, ask us about 'em... maybe we'll try to get some 12" vinyl at some point in the future too.
It's a strange time to be reviewing a disc collecting various Burmese radio broadcasts, considering the recent natural disaster and the extreme and heartbreaking loss of life. But in some ways it's quite timely, as even in the face of nationwide disaster, the Myanmar government continues to be suspicious of outsiders, refusing international aid, and making recovery and rescue even more difficult that it would already be.
This collection addresses a similar situation, the Burmese government's obsession with controlling everything people outside of Myanmar read or hear about the country, to the point of draconian rules and regulations, and near total control of TV and radio. So, like the liner notes say, here is a rare glimpse of real Burmese life, music, news, commercials, all of the sounds one might experience in an urban center in Myanmar, car stereos, shops, street corners, a gloriously varied collection of sounds and music, voices and broadcasts.
It's tough to make peace with these collections. We've written extensively about it in other reviews. On the one hand they are totally fascinating, the sounds are weird and wild and wonderful, but one must be wary to not objectify and exoticize the people and cultures represented. It's definitely a fine line, and this series and others like it constantly toe that line, but it does seem like these are respectfully assembled and they do seem to help bring people together, to help us familiarize ourselves with worlds we would otherwise never experience in our day to day lives.
And from a purely sonic standpoint, these recording are dizzying, fantastic, so varied and wondrous. It sometimes seems depressing to think about US radio, if we're getting a glimpse of real life in Myanmar, what would people think about us? Car commercials, Madonna, sales, shock jocks, hmmm, then again maybe it is an accurate way to get a feel for a place...
Anyway, all of the politics aside, world music obsessives and field recording geeks will have a field day. These Radio comps are definitely an acquired taste as they have a serious short attention span vibe to them, like driving in a car while some little kid in the front seat randomly switched stations. But unlike here, pretty much every stopon the dial reveals something amazing, or at the very least interesting. All kinds of music, classical Burmese, Western style pop songs, schmaltzy ballads, country, surf, fuzzy psychedelia, commercial jingles and every possible stop in between. But it's definitely not just music. Lots of news broadcasts, some in Burmese, lots in English, commercials, what sound like radio dramas or soap operas, and then a whole bunch of sounds and voices where it's difficult to tell what they are. All in all, an absolutely fascinating sonic document, and another excellent Sublime Frequencies release. But if you're still feeling a little bit weird, maybe if you buy one of these, you can also send a little scratch to the Burmese cyclone relief effort. In fact even if you don't buy one of these you still should...
Dronevolk is a new documentary focused on the burgeoning underground dronefolk scene in Belgium, made up of a handful of bands, aQ customers will no doubt be well familiar with: Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, Bear Bones Lay Low, Silvester Anfang and Ignatz. By now, most faithful readers of the aQ list own at least one record by some or all of those groups, but this disc takes advantage of the format, not only offering up more of the music we love so much, but glimpses into the creative process, allowing the viewer to see how and where the music was recorded, to see the groups perform live, on big stages, in little clubs, in bedrooms and practice spaces, and allows the groups themselves to discuss their music and influences.
Kiss The Anus start things off, recording track by track, tambourine, guitar, vocals, harmonium, watching the song slowly take form. From a bedroom and a computer, the disembodied parts coalesce becoming something more magical and mysterious, eventually taking form as a song, being performed by a full band on stage. Plenty of interview footage, live performance, home movies, backstage, on tour, and like us, you probably wondered where the heck he came up with that name, well now's your chance to find out.
Up next is Bear Bones Lay Low, a super young guy, moved from Venezuela to Belgium, he now also plays in Silvester Anfang, but for Bear Bones it's serious floorcore, hunched over a bank of effects and keyboard, swaying back and forth, hair in face, black pants and a green Izod (!), the sound a thick coruscating drone, haunting vocals drifting in and out, cool to see those sounds coming from such an unassuming figure, the transformative power of music. Other footage of him kneeling with a guitar, unfurling wavery fractured folk, shots of practice space sessions, recording and rehearsing, some super intense live performance, or at as intense as one mop topped dude kneeling on the floor can be, but the music is dark and drone-y and intense!
Then along comes Silvester Anfang revealed to be much more of a proper rock band, and a bunch of goofy dudes judging from their interview, especially considering their provocative cover art and mysteriously heavy sounds. Much of the interview concerns metal, specifically how there is NO metal in Silvester Anfang, and how just because they LIKE metal, does not mean that they play metal. Also discussion of the artwork, and how it gives people the wrong impression, and how FUN is a big part of what they do, no matter how dark and intense the music is. Lots of pre-show ritual, setting up, tuning up, eventually giving way to full on dronejam, with nearly the whole band hunched over on the floor, strange, but sort of ritualistic and cool looking. Also some improv street corner jams, with kids and homeless folks, all super percussive and chaotic and exuberant
Last up is Ignatz, another pretty unassuming dude, his segment opening with a gorgeous live performance, on a stage in the woods, afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees, the vocals a ghostly mumble, the guitar ragged and abstract. Exactly how you might imagine it would be. Some very low key interview footage, and a glimpse of the home, the studio, where this mysterious music takes shape, which then helps you realize that these places are not so different than where we live, and play, and that much of the mystery comes from the person, and their connection to whatever spirit compels them to make these sounds.
Beautifully packaged in a slimline dvd case, full color covers, the opening and closing credits feature some amazing black and white animation, and for those of you who still aren't sure you need one of these, it also includes bonus unreleased MP3's from all four groups!
All region. NTSC.
Cover records can tread into dangerous territory. If the song choices are too obvious or well-known (for example: Patti Smith's "Twelve"), it's torture on the listener. But if all the choices are too obscure, it misses the whole point of doing a cover. You want a sense of familiarity, but with enough reinterpretation that the song is re-energized and sounds new again. Vetiver's new record treads that fine line rather gracefully, offering up tracks by familiar enough artists, even if the songs themselves are not the most well known. An avid record collector, Andy Cabic of Vetiver has selected twelve songs that have inspired his folk and roots musical leanings, with a track by Hawkwind being the most left-field. Songs by Louden Wainwright III, Garland Jeffreys, Townes Van Zandt, Biff Rose, Michael Hurley, Ian Matthews, and Norman Greenbaum, may harken back to a day when all these records used to be easily found in second hand shops, where surely most of them were purchased. But the surprises are from the most obscure tracks such as "Sleep A Million Years" by Dia Joyce (from an album by Kathy Heideman) with guest vocals by Vashti Bunyan (!), and "Houses" by Elyse Weinberg. While we would have loved to have heard more diverse genre-busting choices (The Vetiver/Neighbors 12" remix really whetted our appetites for new possibilities with Vetiver's sound), Thing of the past feels just like that, a well worn and dusty artifact that still charms after repeated playing.
In reality, this was recorded live at the Great Hall of New York Hall of Science in New York, November 8th 1987. But listening to it, you could easily imagine it being part of some mysterious & portentous religious ritual, enacted high on the slopes of some vast Himalayan mountain by horn-blowing, drum-beating Tibetan monks... these monks perhaps being part of an aktion under the direction of dramatic drone artist Hermann Nitsch. Seriously. Well it's not Nitsch, it's Yoshi Wada, and there were no monks involved, but we're sure it was an impressive performance to witness in its own right. Certainly to hear, which thanks to EM Records, we all now can.
This is the sequel to EM's previous reissue, some months ago, of Yoshi Wada's first album, Lament For The Rise And Fall Of Elephantine Crocodile. While that 1982 LP may have more rare record collector cachet, and be more historically significant chronologically speaking, we have to say that this one is at least as amazing. As we explained in our review of Lament, Wada is a Japanese visual artist and sound sculptor who relocated to New York in the '60s, where he aligned himself with the Fluxus conceptual art movement and definitely got deep into dronology. (He now lives in San Francisco, and for more information on his career, check out the June '08 issue of The Wire, #292, which features an interview with Wada conducted by AQ's own Jim Haynes.)
The Appointed Cloud, a composition/sound installation "designed specifically for the acoustics of the cobalt blue cathedral of the Great Hall", utilized a massive Wada-designed soundmaking assemblage controlled by a computer interface, this unusual "pipe organ" constructed from compressed-air powered pipes, a suspended 20 foot long sheet of metal, and a steam pipe gong. In addition, Wada and the other musicians involved play timpani, tam tam, sirens, and a trio of keening bagpipes. All this in the majestic, modernistic stained-glass setting of the Great Hall.
As alluded to above, this is somewhat suggestive of Buddhist ritual, and reminds us of Nitsch's large-scale symphonics as well. Rather than give a minute by minute play by play of this piece's hour-long duration, we'd encourage you to experience it for yourself. Experience the thundering drum vibrations, the percussive rattle, the quiet gentle tones and hushed rustle that erupt into dense bagpiping drone squeals and resonating rumble... it's grand and gorgeous.
Physically this cd reish is up to EM's usual high standards, packaged in a gatefold sleeve with color photos, a reduced reproduction of the piece's graphic score, liner notes by Wada as well as the original program notes, in both English and Japanese. Soundwise, it's also up there with that first Wada disc among our favorite stuff that EM has yet released -- in other words, highly recommended!! Even moreso for those especially dronologically and/or 20th century classically inclined.
At this point, the saga of Greg Sage and the Wipers is so much a part of the American rock canon that it hardly needs restating: maverick, hermetic genius shuns the mainstream; makes a holy trinity of blown out garage punk; leaves an indelible influence on every young turk with a guitars and chip on his/her shoulder over the next two+ decades. Similarly, the story behind Youth Of America itself is equally well known. After being pressured by their label into a professional studio to re-record their debut, Is This Real, prior to its release, Sage and Co. opted to record Youth of America entirely on their own in Sage's home studio. The result is a sprawling work of guitar sturm und drang layered over wiry pre/post/peri-punkitude that references everything from Neu!-style space riffage, to vintage '80s new wave skitter, to the best possible blissed-out-fuzz-soaked psych. There are faint touches of Joy Division and The Buzzcocks lurking in the shadows of this record, what you'll be struck by more than Sage's influences is the degree to which this record (perhaps moreso than any other in the Wipers' catalog) has influenced others; it's hard to imagine bands like Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, or Hot Snakes (to name but a few) existing without the groundwork laid down on the first three Wipers LPs.
It's a shame that the backstory behind The Wipers is perhaps more oft-heard than the band's records, but this wicked nice deluxe LP reissue provides a great chance to rectify that. You get heavy 180g vinyl and a version free of the terrible gradeschool-quality goth/ghoul painting that has inexplicably graced the covers of previous reissues. If your exposure to the Wipers is limited to watching The River's Edge or hearing them name-checked ad infinitum by Kurt Cobain, then pick this up immediately and discover exactly why Youth Of America is a seminal work by one of the most important and influential bands in the American punk canon.
Realistically, if you all are anything like us, a one line review is all it will take for you to know in your heart of hearts, that not only do you HAVE to own this, but that it will rapidly and immediately become your favorite record. OF ALL TIME!!
So here we go: Xexyz are a black metal band who use a Nintendo Entertainment System as their "keyboard" and who essentially have composed black metal songs around the 8-bit themes to Nintendo classics like Metroid and Rygar's Quest. Yes!! We were right, weren't we?
Anyway, Xexyz are a grim buzzing lo-fi horde of black warriors who just so happen to be video game nerds and who have decided that there is nothing more grim or more cult than the instantly recognizable buzz and beep of their favorite Nintendo themes. And you know what, it's sort of true. And it definitely works. Some folks here thought this sounded like the Muppets and Stereolab playing black metal, but it's so much more grim than that. A haunting 8-bit refrain bleeps maniacally under moaning black guitar buzz, while hateful hellish vocals rasp and growl over the top. The theme from Metroid rings out, one of the coolest, and weirdest video game themes ever (second only to Rastan maybe), the weird electronic pulse underpins a thick slab of distorted guitar, when the song finally kicks in, it almost sounds like a lo-fi version of THAT Burzum track, the black fuzz with the haunting keyboard figure in the background. But you know... with Metroid instead. And "Nightmare On Elm Street", is so awesome, the Nintendo theme is super fuzzy and haunting, and perfectly lends itself to some Burzumic buzz, creepy crawly and pretty damn black.
So totally amazing and weird and thus of course absolutely fucking recommended...
As we sit in the middle of an atypical heatwave here in San Francisco it's made us think hard about what our summer jams are going to be, and luckily the debut album from Yelle has just hit stateside and we can officially proclaim that this will be one of our party records of summer '08! Hailing from France, Yelle evokes that special infectious magic of French pop in all its incarnations with a healthy dose of electro and a fun hip-hop disposition. It's sort of how we would imagine a collaboration between Stereo Total and M.I.A. would sound. Yelle is fun and full of color but sharp and strong enough sounding so it doesn't just become disposable fluff. This is exactly what we hoped would be playing everytime we ever walked into a dance club. Suave and and so damn sassy!
Picture yourself in Mali, watching a ceremony unfold in front of you wherein a group of mysterious men dressed in mudcloth robes and jodhpurs gather behind a central figure playing a ngoni (a traditional African stringed instrument that looks and sounds like some stinging, buzzing, droning cross between a banjo, a lute and an oud), while another grinds out a rhythm on a nkerenye (a ridged metal cylinder that is scraped with a small metal rod). The men all carry huge, ancient, crude muskets which they fill with gunpowder by the goathorn-full as they snake through the crowd, firing balls of flaming powder and wadding into the air. The central figure begins to sing and the rest of the men fall in behind him - sometimes repeating lines, sometimes responding with a repeated chorus, sometimes simply adding a shout of praise or acknowledgment. The men are donsos, and they are the traditional hunters of Mali, living on the edge of society, shrouded in mystery, hunting animals and humans alike; the songs they sing are epic tales passed from generation to generation and are meant to inspire and energize the donsos before a hunt.
This is the scene into which the latest release on the Yaala Yaala label drops us, with this record from Yoro Sidibe, a donso who has released around 20 albums over the last 32 years. Like other Yaala Yaala releases, this is a raw and captivating aural snapshot of a world very unlike our own. The music is rough, droning and cyclical; the vocals are fevered, intense and powerful; and the combination of the two is thoroughly mesmerizing. This is a record full of dark and mysterious sounds that are unlikely to appear on a Putamayo compilation, recorded with every pop and distorted moment left untouched. This very likely one of the most hypnotic, evocative, and absolutely breathtaking records you'll find on this week's list. Essential.
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