The world can always use another great metal magazine. Sure we've got Terrorizer, Decibel, Salt and Rock-A-Rolla and definitely a few others, each with their own slant, and specific focus, but heck, there's plenty of amazing metal music happening so we'll always welcome another mag, and being the music nerds we are, we just love reading about bands and of course reading record reviews!
Thus we have Asgard Root, who specialize in "black metal / doom / dark ambient / drone / philosophy / literature / dark art" and indeed their inaugural issue is chock full of all of the above, and the list of the contents practically screams aQ!
Exclusive interviews with Wolves In The Throne Room, Ludicra, Abigor, Orthodox, Elysian Blaze, Forgotten Tomb and new-to-us UK doom outfit The River. Also an interview with Alex Kurtagic, the man who runs Supernal Records, and the mastermind behind weirdo black metal outfit Benighted Leams!
Plus there are tons of record reviews, lots of cool creepy photos, artwork and poetry, so obviously a labor of love, and the fact that they love lots of the same kind of stuff we do, makes this well worth investigating.
The layout is a little strange, but sure it will tighten up in the future, but a very small complaint, considering all the kick ass stuff in this first issue. We're already looking forward to the second...
This long sought after, long out of print cd-r, released originally on the Jyrk label way back in 2005, is available again for a limited time -- now as a super swank, ultra limited lp from Jefre Cantu Ledesma's (Tarentel) Root Strata label.
Triple threat SF free noise cd-r tag team match up between some names you should probably know by now, Axolotl, the Yellow Swans, and Gerritt. With three times the firepower you might think that would mean three times the noise, but be prepared to be surprised! And soothed. That's right, three lengthy tracks that lean more toward the dreamy minimal drone and the shimmering sheets of sonic skree than the all out noise attack. The first track is a slowly shifting gritty electronic soundscape of hazy melody and electronic buzz and hiss, eventually building into a louder, yet no less swath of drone and glitch hiss. Track two is a bit more in your face, with rich slabs of distorted chords and warm warbly drones, with swooping melodies and electronic mosquito buzz. The final track is twenty minutes of thick churning low end grind and grumble, pulsing with some buried beat, until the whole thing explodes into a huge wall of thick electrogrit and fuzzed out feedback screech. Wow. Really nice.
Limited to 500 copies we think.
Hot on the heels of their recent From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light lp, comes this super limited (only 120 copies) repress of a tour only cd-r, available again briefly on Jef from Tarentel's Root Strata label.
This SF duo (featuring new aQ employee Jon!) brew up dark swirling druggy drifts, the guitars languid, hovering and buzzing in wide open expanses of slow slithery ambience. Bands like this usually revel in loooooooong songs, but here, 5 of the 6 tracks are just over two minutes, the longest, the 6 minute opener is the most fully realized and song-like, guitars shimmering and wet with effects, the result is like some incorporeal 16rpm Spacemen 3, drumless, and with the propulsion-level set to near zero, leaving just weightless clouds of haunting metallic reverberation, steel stings vibrating in a gorgeously washed out blur. A track like this should take up all four sides of a double lp, druggy and deliriously dreamy, a soft fuzzy musical opium den.
The rest of the disc are brief little glimpses into some fuzzy alternate universe, where guitars glimmer like stars is a blueblack sky, long tones weep and moan like wind winding through desert canyons, melodies surface and fragment, sink into the murky abyss, rhythms coalesce out of creaks and thumps, voices materialize into ghostlike melodies, keening and mysterious, krautrock like grooves fall to pieces, bits of steel string Appalachia give way to barely there minimal guitar mumble, the shards and tendrils slowly grow into some languorous disembodied ghostly blue grass, a sea of soft slow motion twang, finishing off with a brief spate of sun dappled drone and warm melodious forestfolk drift, all smeared chimes and blurred tones.
Gorgeous stuff. But almost frustratingly brief, every one of these tracks would sound fantastic expanded to 10, 20, even 60 minutes, so for now, we'll just have to make do with these way too brief glimpses of the druggy dreamy sounds these guys are capable of...
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! Packaged in a super striking metallic gold ink on black tri-fold sleeve!
We listed this a while back, a gorgeous record of dark dronemusick from Steven Wilson, whose day job is as a member of modern prog combo Porcupine Tree. No prog to be found here though,. just deep mysterious haunting ambience of the highest order. Now it's been re-issued / re-released with a whole extra disc, featuring the entire album reconstructed / re-imagined by sometime Wounded Nurse Andrew Liles.
Here's what we had to say about the original disc when we first reviewed it:
With the last couple of Bass Communion, Steven Wilson continues down the darkly droning path found on his collaborative record with Jonathan Coleclough and Colin Potter. Inspired by the parapsychological investigations of Konstanin Raudive who claimed to have captured the voices of the dead on tape, Wilson manages an exceptional album of spectral dark ambience laced with the haunted crackle of old '78s struggling to gain a foothold amidst the billowing clouds of brooding drones. A perfect tide-us-over 'til the next Thomas Koner record.
And as if that weren't enough, Liles' disc is just as good, a lot more minimal and abstract, but retaining much of the original's dark spirit. The opening turns Bass Communion's slow drift into something much closer to the pastoral chorale of Arvo Part. The rest of the disc rumbles ominously, shimmers dreamily, occasionally interrupted by electronic glitches, blurred fields of crackle, burnished streaks of glistening sparkle, mysterious voices, intercepted radio broadcast, deep cavernous whirs and long stretches of near silence. The perfect compliment to the original's almost nearly perfect dark dreamy drift.
Packaged in super deluxe, very striking, mini-gatefold style full color sleeve.
Two man heavy riff-machine Black Cobra return with another pummeling release on At A Loss. Picking up right where Bestial left off, Feather And Stone shreds from the start. Brutally punishing circular riffs, heavy as all hell doomy moments, throat ripping screams, and incredibly hard hitting and precise drums. The fact that this massive sound comes from two fellas is pretty damn amazing. The album has all kinds of peaks and valleys. Amidst the constant time signature shifting, and brain-burning riff heavitude, there are a couple of beautifully dark intros and outros thrown in, giving the album a very balanced feeling. But it's mostly just crushingly heavy and ripping. If you can imagine a heavier, much more misanthropic Karp, that's kind of what they remind us of. Feather And Stone is a must for anybody needing a little taste of thrashing triumphant, sometimes doomy and dark, sometimes fast and techy, but always heavy and punk as fuck ROCK music. It tastes good. This is also an enhanced disc, including some pretty righteous footage of the Cobra ripping at Roadburn! Proving these guys really are that HEAVY, even with just the power of two! For fans of Cavity, Karp, Floor, Torche, and things that kill shit!
All right! Unlike Blues Control, who might mislead just a bit with their name, this band Blues Addicts ARE indeed just what you think they might be from the moniker. Yep, reissue label Shadoks brings us the real deal heavy hippy blues rock here. And that is the sort of blues we like! Acid-rock blues circa 1970 from a Danish outfit definitely influenced by Cream and Hendrix. It's badass stuff, full of crunching chords and wailin' solos, approaching Blue Cheer levels of distortion n' heaviness, though with a jazzy side too, and some mellow moments. Blues Addicts' big thing was improvisation, as on the ten minutes plus of "Hailow". There's a singer, but really these songs are about instrumental musical expression, as you can tell from track titles referencing modes and methods like "Jazzer", "Bottleneck", "Electric", and perhaps even "(4/4+6/4)/�4"...
We mentioned these guys in our review of Shadoks' earlier reissue of another acid-blues item from Denmark, the Terje, Jesper & Joachim album. They were originally on the same label, Spectator, along with another, even fuzzier, band called Moses, which we hope will show up on Shadoks' reissue schedule someday soon too! Anyway, this is in that vein, and also fits in with other obscure bluesy proto-metal acts of the era like The Human Beast, Human Instinct, Speed Glue & Shinki, Skid Row, N.S.U., and many other fave raves of the same ilk.
Speaking of proto-metal, there's a high-contrast black and white picture in the cd booklet of hot shot guitarist Ivan Horn, whose evil facial grimace, long hair and shadowy brow makes him appear very black metal indeed. A man ahead of his time. Though, for looking so tough, he's also credited with playing the kazoo. The cd booklet also includes other photos and two pages of liner notes talking about the history of the band. Unlike the previous cd reissue we've seen of this (a few years back on the Karma label) there's no bonus tracks of alternate takes and the like, oh well.
If you have any more room in your heart for Bonnie "Prince" Billy, the space will not be wasted on Lie Down In The Light, an entirely sturdy, mature, and compelling piece of work. If you've already got a few inches worth of Mr. Oldham's wax on your record rack, you may not need to make the journey. You know which camp you fall into. Unlike the new Spiritualized record, however, we wouldn't implore a virgin to Will's tawdry folk songs to dig deeper in the catalogue. Lie Down In The Light is a fine place to start, rife with the heartbreaking melodies and cunning witticisms that have formed the backbone of his catalog. Furthermore, there are some subtle variations on his tried and true techniques, including much more falsetto, some boss hand-drumming, duets with Ashley Webber, and a lyrical emphasis on issues like mortality, family, and transcendence, delivered with much more urgency. The record also shares a unique kinship with Baby Dee's Safe Inside The Day, the result of Will having learned a thing or two producing the diverse instrumentation used in those sessions. As usual, solid and meaningful fare from one of America's great living songwriters.
We almost didn't list this, as we only managed to get 5 copies of it, and all of our distributors told us it was out of print. But just for the heck of it, we contacted the label directly, and they still had a stash that they were willing to sell us, which is a good thing, cuz it's amazing! And it's CRAZY expensive, but when you see it (and hear it) you'll realize it's pretty much well worth it.
Never heard the name Karl Bosmann before, but he seems to be sonically aligned with the doomdreamdeathdrone crowd. And that's precisely what this is, although a bit more varied than usual, this one's definitely for the SUNNO)))-set (umm� sorry), a huge old chunk of low end drone. Multiple variations on the glacial near static crawl, some glimmering and effervescent, others grinding and thick, crumbling and abrasive, at least one seems to be all processed vocals, looped and smeared into some weird Steve Reich-ian drone and coupled with a wash of minimal low end shimmer, and one is all detuned guitar strum and disembodied buzz. Easy to hear some Wolf Eyes and definitely some Vulture Club. All of side 2 is a single slow burning sidelong epic, very Fear Falls Burning sounding, beginning as a whispery shimmer, building to a massive clamorous Sunroof! style din.
And let's not forget the packaging. Holy shit, it would be worth it even if the record sucked. Embossed metallic silver on matte black jacket, inside a metallic silver on black insert, a metallic silver on black sleeve, even the record labels are reflective silver, super striking and SO worth the extra scratch.
There's something magical about the original lineup of a band. The struggle to make it, the passion of music making. That's why debut records are often so powerful, and while many times it's the best record a band will ever make. Subsequent records are made over the course of a year or two, but that first record was the culmination of a lifetime.
In some cases, bands soldier on, when a key member departs. Sometimes the band reinvent themselves, instead of desperately trying to recapture a sound that was partially created by the absent member. But sometimes, when a member leaves, it's like a death knell for the band.
With Silkworm, when Joel Phelps left, the band seemed to falter big time. They made some decent records, wrote some killer songs, but Phelps was the spark, the magic went missing for the most part when he left. But they soldiered on, until the tragic death of drummer Michael Dalquist in 2005. The band wisely chose to hang it up, as Dahlquist was a founding member and his powerful idiosyncratic drumming style was a critical part of Silkworm's sound.
The surviving members resurfaced as Bottomless Pit a year or two later, and something happened. Not sure if it was going through the death of Dahlquist, or the new members, but this is the best Silkworm have sounded since the Phelps days. And while it may be called Bottomless Pit, sonically it sounds as much like Silkworm as ever. Which in this case is a very good thing.
A dark dark record. Moody and melancholy, introspective, but plenty rocking. The two Silkworms, Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen, still share vocals and songwriting duties, so in that way too, the sound is reminiscent of Silkworm. The drums are simple and solid, the guitars tightly wound, the vocals weary and warm, the second track "Dogtag" might be the best Silkworm song Silkworm never wrote. A muted chug holds the song down, never quite exploding into full on rocking, the tension building and building, the vocals managing to sound so worn and haggard, and yet so emotional The menacing groove of "Dead Man's Blues" sounds angry and bitter, with a jagged tangled chorus and a killer wall of gnarled guitar second half. "Human Out Of Me" is another brooding slow burner, all warbly falsetto vocals and simple cyclical melody. The record finishes up with "Sevens Sing", a real strange one, with haunting processed drums, shimmery talk box sounding guitars, space-y effects, all very spare and whispery, distant whirs and wheezing strings, the song never really getting loud or aggressive, just slithering along intensely, sounding like it might never end, a gorgeous, yet tripped out funereal indie rock sprawl.
Way recommended. Old Silkworm fans, this might be the one you've been waiting for...
Don't let the jaunty little Lawrence Welk ditty that opens Obey lull you into any sort of peaceful state, you'd best be prepared for the hateful murderous mayhem that Obey has in store for you. Then again, that's probably precisely what the Brainbombs had in mind. A gentle voice luring you into a dark alley, a shiny trinket distracting you while the burlap sack goes over your head and you're dragged kicking and screaming into the woods, a sweet piece of candy draws you just close enough so you can be knocked unconscious, tied up, and stuffed in the trunk. Those of you familiar with the brutal musical world of Brainbombs will know exactly what we're going on about. The rest of you, be very very careful. They traffic in a sludgey, jazzy garage rock scuzz stomp, repeated riffs, simple pounding drums, a lurching leering fuzzed out psychedelic dirge underpinning tales of murder and mayhem, murder and rape, death and dismemberment. This is probably their most overtly harsh record. Mostly because unlike the rest of their releases you can actually hear what these Swedes are singing about. All delivered in a sort of fey, heavily accented English. As if the song titles weren't enough,"Kill Them All", "Die You Fuck", "Anal Desire", "Lipstick On My Dick", "Fuckmeat", the lyrics are misogynistic, misanthropic and just plain messed up. The sound is like Melvins meets Whitehouse filtered through the fuzzy garage stomp of the Stooges but with a maniacally repetitive looped quality, that cranks up the tension, while the vocalist slowly unravels and gets meaner and meaner, more and more insane. And let's not forget the occasional warbly warped trumpet (!). What can we say? We love Brainbombs.
We've never listed this one before, as it has been seemingly out of print for ages. Thankfully a distributor managed to scrape up a bunch, but we can't be sure how long we'll have these.
Clay Ruby is one busy guy. He runs the awesome Skulls Of Heaven label. He fronts free folk weirdos Davenport. He also does time in Jex Thoth (aka Totem), albeit under a different name, and he produces his own brand or ritual musical blackness as Burial Hex.
The last record from Burial Hex we listed was an lp that bore the legend, "OPPRESSIVE NECRO ELECTRONICS!" which in fact that record was, buzzy and blurry and grinding and grim, but the opening of this disc is anything but, ominous strings, very cinematic, moan and drift, melodies abstract and spare, stretch out and sprawl like a graveyard fog. Slowly, other sounds enter the mix, percussion, rumbling drones, strange beastly growls, eventually, the tranquility is shattered by what sounds like a descent into hell, anguished wails, squalls of strings, screams and shrieks, more growling and grunting, which soon give way to an avalanche of crumbling distorted noise, feedback, and amp buzz, whirs and grinding glitch, a serious wall of intense blown out fury, but the track finishes off like it began, haunting strings, ominous melodies, dark and dramatic.
The rest of the disc (4 tracks total, all 18 minutes or more) slips between super minimal crumbling drone, murky buzz, throbbing industrial whirs, medieval sounding dark ambience, simple muted percussion, chanted voices, processed guitar, creepy carnivalesque keyboards, buzzing raga-like drones, swampy faux field recordings, skittery electronics, insect like chirps and twitters, shortwave radio broadcasts, shimmering fuzz drenched drifts, all very scary and filmic, in fact much of this, especially the more musical bits, sound like they could have been pulled from some lost Argento movie, or some lost Italian horror classic. Which is indeed a very good thing.
Packaged in a cool origami style folded and silkscreened sleeve, with multiple printed inserts.
It almost didn't matter what this Capsule band even sounded like. The packaging is so gorgeous and over the top, we pretty much bought one before we even heard it. On the same label, and similarly designed as the Torche 10" from a while back, a cd and lp, with the cd, mounted on the inside of a super deluxe gatefold sleeve, this time, it's all black, with the whole thing slathered in shiny varnish, except the name of the band which shows up as a matte void, a leering blue ghostlike face on the cover, all very tripped out and mysterious, much like the music inside.
And as we've posited in the past, bands who spend this much time and energy on creating super striking visuals, often back it up with super intense sounds as well. Not 100 percent by any stretch, but we tend to have pretty good luck.
And thankfully that luck still holds with Blue, from this band Capsule, who seem to be some sort of grind band, at least on first listen, and we mean grind in that the songs are twisted and gnarled, and there seem to be a million parts, and the tempos are furious and chaotic, the vocals are a buried in the mix howl, BUT, the guitars sound super clean, angular and abstract, but not blown out and distorted. Lots of melody everywhere, even at it's most complex and convoluted, the melodies shine through, And while the guitars do chug and grind, they also jangle and soar. It's petty strange, in lots of ways it sounds like some classic nineties indie rock, Polvo or Pitchblende, but supercharged, run through some sort of chaos grind filter, there is still plenty of loping minor key melody, and waltz like tempos, strange arrangements, but they're all wrapped around a much more intense and furious core. In fact the more we listen, the more we're gonna go with 'grindmetal Polvo' as the simplest descriptor, and if that doesn't sound like maybe the greatest thing ever, then maybe you're reading the wrong list.
The final track appears to be about 10 minutes long, but don't be fooled, the song is actually 2 minutes, another gloriously complex jangle drenched slab of grinding metallic indie rock, with about 6 minutes of silence, hiding what sounds like a live track at the end, more blown out loping indiemathgrindjangle, this one heavy on the midtempo buzz and woozy riffage. Fucking awesome!
All right, we'll admit that we were a bit doubtful about this at first, just from reading the hypesheet/liner notes, which claim, in part, that this is one of the "last great Kraut secrets" and because of its discovery, "the history of Krautrock has to be rewritten". And we're still not entirely sure if the person who wrote that was actually joking or not. But, while this is definitely not some undiscovered classic on the order of a Can, Faust or Neu! (or even the more obscure likes of Siloah, Kalacakra, Necronomicon, etc.) it IS pretty cool. And weird. Especially weird. Imagine Reynols or Yahowha 13 gone lounge, trying to entertain a bunch of jet-setters at some hip, swinging '60s party... It's called Fantastic Party after all and that's what it was meant as, a party record! Some cheesy German record label in 1970 put this together, presumably paying (with drugs?) a bunch of studio musicians to create a one-off psychedelic exploitation album by a nonexistent "band". A dime a dozen back then, maybe, but these guys really really went for it. It is pretty darn tripped out. Groovy but really off kilter and demented. Maybe we'd compare it to the children's songbook funk of Stark Reality, if you've heard the reissue of that. Or some totally dosed jazz combo doing porno music. Good times. Yup, it's got stinging fuzz guitar solos, flute warbling, hiccuping percussion, damaged "singing", bizarro titles... this has LSD written all over it. If you went to this "fantastic party" you'd know that Peter Fonda would be there for sure. And go-go dancers with dayglo body paint. And Timothy Leary, and midgets, and people who look like extras from a Terry Southern penned movie too.
A track from this appeared on the Kraut! Demons! Kraut compilation from a few years back, and if you have that, well rest assured, the entirety of this album is of the same high quality of fucked-upedness. So, true krautrock classic or not, we're glad it's been reissued, we're digging it! We only have to wonder, why did the reissuers hate the original cover so much that they felt the need to provide a new, totally ugly one?? Fortunately the LP's real (and actually quite rad, despite what they thought) cover is reproduced on the tray card, featuring a bevy of good-looking, polyester-clad partygoers truly having a FANTASTIC time.
Heavy progressive electric raga psychedelia here folks!! And it's soooooo good. All the songs here are long (there's five of 'em, between 7:16 and 13:09 in length) and you'll only wish they were longer. Described as "a two-man, all-British electric symphony orchestra", this album was originally released in 1969 on Decca and is utter nirvana for those into psych headswirlers. The lead electric guitar on here is incredible (and the bongo playing isn't bad, either!). While this duo came out of the '60s British blues rock scene, Mick Hutchinson's guitar playing displays tripped-out, classically trained chops and certainly also a strong sitar influence... percussionist Andy Clark plays guitar at times too, and between them they switch back and forth on a number of instruments.
The first track, "Improvisation On A Modal Scale" has got a heavy-riffing acid folk sound, sounding like early Wishbone Ash, sitting crosslegged off on an Indian ashram, or Comus if they ever plugged in and cranked it up. "Acapulco Gold" (hmm, the only song here not given a technical musical title is named after marijuana!) follows in a more acoustic, Spanish-guitar flavored mode. Lovely. Then "Impromptu in 'E' Minor" is another mellow number, yet darker, incorporating tribal percussive throb and jazz-inflected piano improvisation. "Textures In 3/4" also has a moody, jazzy vibe, with some saxophone coloration, and of course extended electric guitar improv, gorgeous and glorious. Very krautrocky, stuff that fans of Amon Duul II and Agitation Free would certainly love. And then Hutchinson's playing gets even more sitar-y on the epic "Improvisation On An Indian Scale", the track that wraps up this amazing album of Eastern-tinged, psychedelic instrumental interplay. He's endlessly spinning out slippery, sinuous melodies over a quietly galloping beat that brings to mind Spaghetti Western soundtracks. Wow. We'd been wanting to list this for a long time, but the previous cd edition on Repertoire has been out of print for years and years. Stoked are we that Sunbeam has reissued it again, on compact disc and vinyl, both versions coming with an entire bonus disc to boot!
That second disc, however, is full-on 12-bar blues rock, total chooglin' boogie stuff, with song titles like "Bad Loser" and "Someone's Been At My Woman". So... maybe for blues lovers only, that one. If you're really into Clapton/Cream and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. But it's just a bonus disc, the A=MH2 album on disc one is worth the price of the package alone. And the guitar playing on the blues disc is of course ace.
It always kinda seems like the British blues rock bands, the ones we really like anyway, we like 'em especially for the one album they did where they got away from the basic blues template (stuff they might have done really well) and weirded out, got all beardistic and beyond-blues improvisational and Eastern and freaky and proggy. Say, Steamhammer's Speech. Or the Groundhogs' Split. There's always one. In this case, it was Clark-Hutchinson's debut, A=MH2. But, beforehand they'd been way more bluesy, as that bonus disc here proves (it's material from their unreleased -first- first recording sessions in March of '69, laid down just a couple months prior to the two days in the studio they spent recording their actual debut).
EVERYONE we play A=MH2 for, or who hears it in the store, has been blown away. You know how the "ragadelic" acoustic folk guitar playing of folks today like Jack Rose and James Blackshaw is something we love? If you like that sort of thing too but want it a bit more druggily psych-rock, Clark-Hutchinson doing it electric way back when should satisfy! So very recommended (along with another obscure classic of the era, by T2, also reviewed this list).
Geeze, that crusty doom label 20 Buck Spin puts out sooo much cool stuff we have trouble keeping up! Here's a split release we've had in stock since, uh, last summer, but forgot to list.
Coffins are of course the Japanese doomic death metal band that's been getting more and more popular lately (especially among the population of people wearing Celtic Frost or Autopsy shirts right at this very moment). On their half of this split, they churn out three brutal trax, including appropriately enough a Pungent Stench cover ("Bonesawer") in keeping with their old school death metal sickness. And I guess we hadn't ever looked at the credits before where it says who plays what in the band... doing so now leads to this terrible joke: Hey I didn't know You played drums for Coffins! hahaha.
On the other "side" of this, SoCal band The Arm And Sword Of A Bastard God, offer up their debut recordings, three songs of utter stoner death doom heaviness, sludgy with guttural vokills. Goes pretty well with Coffins!
Nicely packaged with rad cover art in an oversized folder thingie, a la stuff on aRCHIVE (or Half Makeshift's L'Anse Amort previous on 20 Buck Spin).
A lot has changed since we first listed Paso Inferior nearly a decade ago. Here's our very short review from way back then:
"Japanese crust-sludge band, super slow, super heavy. Their new disc. Some facts: 1) they just toured the States. 2) their lyrics are all sung in Spanish. 3) the drummer used to be in Omoide Hatoba, Boredoms guitarist Yamamoto's weird jazz/pop project, but he quit when Omoide signed to a major. 4) this album features only one song, it's 40+ minutes long... Great vegging-out music for fans of Earth, Sleep, Eyehategod, Swans, etc."
Well, all of that stuff still applies for sure, but this is not, as we thought, a vinyl reissue of the original cd. Instead this is a rerecorded version of Paso Inferior, recorded in 2002, utilizing the same themes and melodies, but a whole new song, the A side sonically similar to the original, the B side, a droney blissed out drift, which is in fact an 'ambient version' of the original Paso Inferior!!
Since the original release, the group has released several more records, each slower and more epic than the last, even incorporating piano and acoustic guitar. And you can hear that in the reimagined Paso. Their appeal spread way beyond the punk rockers and hardcore kids who held them so beloved. Metalheads are Corrupted obsessed nowadays, as are the new breed of dronedirgedoom fanatics. But back in the Paso Inferior days, they were the underground kings of sludge, sharing splits with pretty much every power violence band that was up for it. A band that was spoken of in hushed reverent tones, but whose actual recorded output, included only a single full length, Paso Inferior.
The spirit and power of the original are definitely present, but the sound is better, heavier, and weirdly pretty in that way only Corrupted seem to be able to pull off.
One sidelong doomsludge crawl, the guitars black and viscous, the track laced with squealing washed out feedback, the vocals a growled gurgle, the drums a loping lumbering pound, recent talk of a single 3 hour song don't seem at all far fetched when listening to the reimgined Paso Inferior, there's something magical and mysterious about the music of Corrupted, no matter how slow or sludgey or stripped down, it never gets boring, it sucks you in and soothes your spirit, while it crashes and pummels, mesmerizing, hypnotic, so heavy, but weirdly transcendental.
The other half of the new Paso Inferior is another sidelong epic, this one dark and ambient, all shimmery drones, haunting melodies, mysterious voices, a dreamy drift rife with long tones, layered chords, but all muted and blurred and stretched into something more dark and lovely than grim and ominous, perfectly balancing the sludgey sprawl on the flipside.
All new artwork to go with the music, black on black, shiny on matte, the band logo and flames or drips or streaks of some kind, inside a printed insert, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and of course CRAZY limited. In fact pretty sure this is out of print now and we might be one of the only places with copies. Which means, as always, these will go FAST.
Seventeen Seconds from 1980. Faith from 1981. Pornography from 1982. These three Cure albums marked a steady descent from jet-black detachment into one of the most violently claustrophobic visions of all pop music. It was a trilogy of records that The Cure have always hoped to reproduce, and with the exception of their masterful Disintegration, this was a goal never attained. You may recall that several months back, Rhino Records reissued the first Cure album, Three Imaginary Boys, with plenty of demo material and live tracks from the same period to the acclaim of Cure fans around the world. Well, Rhino have done it again in reissuing this trilogy of goth-pop landmarks, again with bonus material of live cuts, studio outtakes, alternate versions, and rare cuts.
Seventeen Seconds began the creative partnership between Robert Smith and bassist Simon Gallup which is essentially the foundation for all of the great work from The Cure. Where the previous bassist Michael Dempsey gave The Cure a spry, punchy sound that fit more in line with contemporaries like The Jam, Gallup's lumbering basslines presented themselves as a counterpoint to Smith's manic-depressive jangle. While much needs to be said for Smith's unmistakable whining voice, hurricane-shock hair, and smeared eyeliner in defining Goth rock, there is a clear reason why The Cure has been the salvation to millions of dour kids everywhere: Smith and Gallup came up with some damn great songs. "A Forest" has long been a favorite for anyone who at one time or another sported a little black lipstick, and one cannot overlook the minimalist pop bleakness of tracks like "Play For Today," "Three," and the title track. Of the rarities on Seventeen Seconds, the most intriguing tracks come from the side project Cult Hero, which produced more punky-pop tracks similar to those heard on Three Imaginary Boys. Along with this, you'll find plenty of live tracks and a couple of studio demo tracks.
Regular list readers will instantly recognize the name Deepchord, whose tripped-out, stoned version of minimal techno has filled the gap in our hearts left by the absence of the Chain Reaction and Basic Channel labels. Here at Aquarius, we've never really focused on techno as much as other genres, but our general interest tends to orbit somewhere out in the distance, near the intergalactic debris left in the wake of the rave. Detroit and Berlin minimalism, experimental noise makers Astral Social Club, or even the bedroom beats of Finland's Fricara Pacchu. However, this release bears witness to the side of Deepchord that we're really just less familiar with: actual techno. But, at least one of us has spent time digging through dance music crates looking for techno main players like Carl Craig, Kenny Larkin, or Kevin Saunderson. That's exactly where this tends to go, away from the celestial droniness of the majority of their work and back to the Detroit soil. As we listen, we're hearing a lot more of the city's second wave minimal tendencies, albeit married to the spacey grit of other Deepchord releases. In other words, this is a pretty seamless, thoughtful blend of what techno had going for it about 10 years ago, and what's happening now. It's actually really nice to hear this duo branch out a little from what they've been doing, and continue offering an exciting alternative to the now ubiquitous big-room, yawn-inspiring minimal techno that's been popping up the last couple of years. Fans of the project fear not, this isn't exactly a foray into trance synths and cheesy vocal samples of obvious classic soul or '80s pop songs. This is still instrumental, still experimental, and really pretty great. Fans of artists like both Sleeparchive and William Basinski can find something here to love too. Once again, Deepchord: recommended.
Vladislav Delay has a thing for cologne (this is a true fact) -- not the city as you may expect from one whose aesthetic parallels that of Cologne's Wolfgang Voigt and Thomas Brinkmann, but rather the mens' perfume. It may be a stretch to qualify his complex percolations of dubbed-out ambient techno as musical equals to his cologne fetish, but there must be some connection between the two. Where Thievery Corporation reeks of AquaVelva, thus smelling like a soft-core porno, Vladislav Delay has the aroma of something infinitely more sophisticated, like the clean citrus scents from Hermes. "Anima" is his lightest and airiest production to date, almost abandoning the rhythmic proclivities of his dense Chain Reaction record in favor of skittering abstraction that loosely follow a subtle ambient dub rhythm (one complaint: a two-note synth pad sequence that is practically identical to the Twin Peaks theme, and thus Moby's early techno anthem "Go!"). One continuous track.
On their second full length outing, Memory Drawings, The Drift engage in an even larger oceanic expanse of sound than before. Incorporating blurry hints of dub, Afrobeat, and free-jazz without straying too far from their post-rock dynamic roots, the songs slowly pulsate and bleed, building subtle layers of guitar and piano patterns, kinetic drumming and majestic horn-playing that soars high like a bird over choppy waters. Like The Necks or Circle's more organic recordings (Miljard or Tower), Memory Drawings is best experienced as a whole rather than a collection of individual pieces. In this sense the title is appropriate. Artist Colter Jacobsen who did the cover art, draws pictures from photographs then re-draws the same drawing from memory, letting subtle deviations through mental assumptions to occur and perpetually alter the drawing process. The Drift approach their process similarly, starting with a base musical template that subtly shifts and alters in dynamics as the pieces progress, sounding similar on the surface but never quite the same. Lovely.
Droids is the '70s French space disco project of Fabrice Cuitade, former Barclay Records employee and founder of their Egg imprint - which released the likes of Vangelis, Conrad Schnitzler, and Heldon, among others. The back of this disc claims Droids to be "the Daft Punk of the 70's," but even a quick listen will prove that claim reductive. Neither will the typical Giorgio Moroder comparison suffice. So the story goes that Cuitade saw Star Wars for the first time, and then decided to make his own musical interpretation. As we first listened to the album, we heard something much more nuanced than some sort of filtered French House prototype. Maybe if you picture Battiato partying in the studio with Patrick Cowley then you're getting close. That's right. This is nothing short of some seriously progged-out space disco. But whereas many artists in that arena seem to be cold, calculated, and sterile, Star Peace is an album that manages to hold on to the funk that disco originated with. Cuitade even foreshadows the piano stab-driven funky house of Chicago's Traxx label, while hinting at the celestial impulses of Italian cosmic-groover Daniele Baldelli. Fans of disco, prog, new wave, house, or anything electronic, arpeggiated, or dancey will positively need this. Essential. (Note: includes a track you might have heard already on the now sadly out of print compilation So Young But So Cold that we love love loved...)
Want some honey with your tea? Want a little bitter with the oh so sweet? El Perro Del Mar follows up her debut with a record of songs that glow in that open space somewhere between sadness and hope. With a sound and voice as breezy as a lazy afternoon drive, when you just have to get away so you can figure some things out, El Perro Del Mar has made a record that we'll be listening to on long drives as well as long nights inside our bedrooms for years to come. From The Valley To The Stars comes across like a collection of heart melting pop-hymnals that fall somewhere between Beach House, The Concretes, Camera Obscura and Spiritualized. We love the sparse quality of so many of the songs on this record and even when she is backed by the Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Choir it always feels so tasteful and never overdone. This Swedish chanteuse is makes perfect moody pop that has her sitting comfortably at the same sonic table as Francoise Hardy, Isobell Campbell and Victoria Bergsman.
So elegant, tasteful and tasty!
Also now on vinyl!
The grindy political punk metal brigades have a new iron gang of northernmost killers in their ranks now! Toronto's The Endless Blockade brings 13 brutal tracks to the attack on their 20 Buck Spin debut (and 2nd full-length overall). If you liked the Iron Lung album we raved about earlier this year and want more of that brand of modern power violence brutality, a pissed off blend of hardcore, noise and sludge, look no further (in fact, the two bands recently shared a split 12").
Jello Biafra puts in a cameo vocal appearance on the title track, which is funnier than most Jello guest spots 'cause that song is all of 4 seconds long, Napalm Death style, and the lyrics in their entirety consist of: "The Endess Blockade!" (which Jello puts his unmistakable stamp upon).
And here's the other new live album from the what is also in fact the *other* Faust (mentioned a couple of lists back when we reviewed Faust's Kleine Welt cd on the Ektro label). Od Serca Do Duszy was recorded in Krakow, Poland at the wonderfully named Loch Ness Club on November 15th, 2006, by a Faust "power trio" lineup consisting of Zappi Diermaier (drums, metals, tools), Jean-Herve Peron (voice, guitars, horns) and Amaury Cambuzat (guitars, keys, voice). Note that this is an entirely different lineup than the one responsible for Kleine Welt, also recorded on tour in 2006. We'd like to think that Faust has splintered into these two different touring groups (both featuring original '70s members as well as new blood from the band's initial reunion era in the '90s) in an amicable fashion, but we don't really know. Maybe they hate each other. But we also wonder if it's just 'cause their individual schedules didn't work out to all play together, or so they could cover more ground, or 'cause they had different interests in terms of what songs should go into the band's current set?
For Diermaier/Peron/Cambuzat, that means doing some of Faust's famous old songs like "A Bit Of A Pain" and "The Sad Skinhead" alongside newer stuff and full-on improv jams. We figure that if you were AT the show, you'd want to hear a few of those old favorites. But listening to this at home, it's probably the new material that will actually be most of interest... although hearing how they mutate and reinterpret their own "hits" is cool too.
Anyway, either way, this excellently-recorded, lengthy live set is one for Faust fans, and also those into the likes of Acid Mothers Temple, really anyone looking for experimental explorations of clattery murk, with feedbacky psychedelic guitar, quasi-industrial improv chaos, plodding drums, and noisy textures! The raucous Krakow crowd certainly is into it, stoking Faust into further frenzies, including shouted vocals (in French?) among them some yelling about "George Washington!" and "George Bush!"... it must have been a memorable night. Disc two begins with two tracks (20 minutes) of pure, heavy-duty improv, which the band follow with a fairly wild rendition of their classic "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" to make even the old time fans happy... and then for their encore, for good measure, they launch into "Schempal Buddha", an urgent and repetitive number that fans will recognize from The Faust Tapes album.
It's been over a decade since Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Yoshimi (Boredoms) and Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore) joined forces for a Free Kitten album. They've finally gotten together again and made maybe the best Free Kitten record yet! While they still display their scrappy and punky/bratty side on a couple tracks, the majority of Inherit finds them way more focused, smokey and rocking then we ever remember. Sharing much more in common with the sound of Sonic Youth then past Free Kitten outings, this is a must have for folks who have been digging the recent output by SY (some of us here are big fans of Rather Ripped, Murray Street, etc!) and Kim's contributions to those records. There is such a natural and free flowing feel to Inherit, with Kim rocking out all warm and smoky. The lead off track "Erected Girl" makes for such a perfect companion to the equally simple yet entrancing opener on the latest Breeders album. With new records lately by The Breeders, Mudhoney, Spiritualized and now Free Kitten it's feeling a lot like the '90s around here but we aren't complaining one bit!
A few months ago, we reviewed I am Providence, Frostmoon Eclipse's entry in God Is Myth's series of 3"cd-r tributes to H.P. Lovecraft (we have a very few copies left!) but way before that ep, this Italian horde's most recent full length dropped, and we're only finally getting to it now.
Another Face Of Hell, their fourth full length in 13 years, finds the band continuing their gradual development into something much more than a buzzing black metal band, incorporating long acoustic guitar passages, more midtempos, LOTS of melody, in fact, a lot of the time they sound more like a dark rock band with blackened tendencies, than an all out black metal group. Some tracks are gloomy and gothy and depressive, loping tempos and grunted vocals, wrapped around haunting minor key melodies, others are all acoustic guitar and drums, some, the vocals a wraith like rasp, the sound almost more like the Swans or some other doom dirge outfit, but then, the band will explode with a full on furious old school black metal attack, all insectoid riffing and blinding blast beats.
Frostmoon Eclipse is probably losing favor with the grim hordes, as their sound progresses, and that's definitely the right word, as the sound is getting more and more progressive, but who cares, as a band, they sound better than ever. They're still blackened and buzzy, but the songs are killer, and catchy, the guitar parts, the riffs, the melodies, all manage to be super catchy without losing any of their power. The closest comparison we can come up with, and we've mentioned this before, is Opeth. The balance between melody and heaviness, between electric and acoustic. But of course, Frostmoon have their own distinct take on that mix, less complex and prog, yet much more black, and at the same time much more ROCK. Frostmoon once again offer up a killer mix of brutal black intensity, folky flutter, brooding dark doom, and classic heavy rock. Excellent!
Indiana's The Gates Of Slumber, by dint of sheer old school "trueness" are quickly becoming the most happenin' American traditional doom metal band around, with a weighty onslaught of releases, this latest coming our way via Canada's equally happenin' Profound Lore label. It's another slab of sludgy yet melodic heavy metal in the downer-psych tradition of St. Vitus and Reverend Bizarre... with all the usual ye olde cult metal and pulpy literary influences. What makes 'em so true is that they play for a very defined audience of likeminded souls, caring more about doing their doom RIGHT than any other more conventional measure of rock n' roll success (radio play? magazine covers? groupies? no, definitely not, this is way too geeky). It's almost emo that way. So serious and sincere.
Vocally this has got strains of Wino (Spirit Caravan, The Obsessed, you know), and lyrically TGOS are inspired mainly by Swords & Sorcery fiction, though topical subjects like the genocide in Darfur are also addressed. The album's grand finale is a 16 and a half minute long "Dark Valley Suite" dedicated to Conan creator Robert E. Howard, even including a section with words taken from a Howard poem... we like that the song is really more about Howard the tragically mortal human being, and is not simply another celebration of his mighty and barbaric fictional hero.
The cd booklet is interesting, in addition to lyrics for every song, a detailed track-by-track commentary is provided, almost making review-writing redundant when the band's vocalist/guitarist is describing each song as having certain influences or whatnot. For instance, talking about the track "Ice Worm", he says "the riff reminds me of Orodruin and Cirith Ungol fighting with Budgie and Quartz... Ross The Boss steps in playing a Dio hook for the chorus"... well that's all of course too good to be true but still if you know and care about the artists he mentions there, then there's a good chance you're gonna dig The Gates Of Slumber!! Likewise, if you're into R.E. Howard & Conan and stuff like that...
It's generally a pretty bad idea to have a pun as a band name. Once in a while, if the band is pretty good, and you put some effort into it, eventually you can get used to it and forget it's a pun (Jucifer), sometimes you don't even realize it's a pun until you finally say it out loud (Vulture Club), sometimes it never gets any easier to say or type (Cream Abdul Babar), and once in a while, VERY rarely, it's actually a pun that makes sense, and suits the music, and thus is actually a perfect name for the band. That just so happens to be the case with Genghis Tron, who combine a punishing super complex grinding downtuned metallic onslaught (like a musical Genghis Khan) and tons of synths and video game sounds, and electronics and glitchery (like the video game Tron?), which is a chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo that is tough to beat.
We've always dug Genghis Tron, but something seems to have happened since the last record. The way we remember it, the old Genghis Tron wielded a non stop torrent of super spazzy buzzy synthgrind, we even described their sound as "synthcorespazzmetalfusion", but Board Up The House, while retaining plenty of spazz and buzz and grind, is a much more mysterious beast, much darker and dronier, with the gnarled blasts of hypergrind, peppered with awesome fuzzy synthy Gary Numan style new wave, all dour and moody, with crooned robotic vocals, tangled swaths of minor key synthdrone, Autechre like skitter, super spare minimal old school electro, some gorgeous washed out dreamy drift, and while some of those sounds end up tangled up with jagged shards of downtuned chug, or churning Neurosis-y sludge, or chaotic screamo freakouts, much of the time the band lets those sounds sprawl, creating gorgeous darkened soundscapes, very cinematic and epic, intense and majestic. It's like John Carpenter jamming with Pig Destroyer sometimes. Very few of the heavy songs make it to their ends without being awesomely complicated by the band's weirdo electronic proclivities, but somehow, instead of sounding like pointless genre hopping, or some infuriating ADD drive aggro rock band, the diverse parts are fused seamlessly, to the point where some soft synth shimmer couldn't sound more perfect than sandwiched between a wall of stumbling grind and a blast of hyperspeed Iron Maiden style guitar harmonies. And actually, the ratio of electronic weirdness and dark droned out synthscapes to full on mathgrind leans WAY more heavily toward the former this time around. And it definitely suits them.
The clincher is the 11 minute closer, "Relief", which is a gorgeous, post rocky dirge, all clean vocals and languorous riffing, the track builds to some serious chugging crescendos, and even offers up a few breathless skittery ambient interludes, but when the band lock into THE RIFF, the one they pound away at for the last 6 minutes, it's total drone-doom-kraut-groove nirvana, a loping seasick drum part, underpinning a slithery minor key riff, thick and relentless, glistening with harmonies, the various melodies slipping in and out of the churning groove, vocals and synths soaring in the background, another one of those parts we wish would go on for another 40 minutes, so much so that we've been driving everyone crazy by playing this track over and over and over.
Like we said above, we always dug this band, but even so we definitely weren't expecting a record this dense and epic and melodically mature. Fans of heavier stuff, of groups like Pelican, Conifer, Isis, Tides, Ice Bound Majesty, as well as dronerock combos like Pharaoh Overlord, Circle, Cave, might get WAY into this record, assuming they can dig some of the more manic freaked out stuff. And this just might be the disc to get Genghis Tron out of the synthspazzgrind ghetto. That is if they even want out.
WAY RECOMMENDED!!
You can definitely tell a lot about a band by the names of records and song titles. Case in point: Gnaw Their Tongues. Some song titles: "My Body is Not a Vessel, Nor a Temple. It's a Repulsive Pile of Sickness", "And There Will Be More of Your Children Dead Tomorrow", "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Sound the Horns, the Water is Poisoned". Some album titles: Spit at Me and Wreak Havoc on My Flesh, Preferring Human Skin Over Animal Fur, Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh, Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladders Emptying, Vomiting, and now this, An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood. But then what is it exactly that we can glean from these titles? That the men in Gnaw Their tongues are demented? Sick? Depraved? Probably. But where titles like this might lead one to assume the music attached to the above words would be some sort of hateful harsh white noise, or some sort of near unlistenable Whitehouse worship, the truth is, Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the few bands with an utterly distinctive and recognizable sound. There are very few bands we can think of, even amongst our favorites. You will absolutely never confuse the music of Gnaw Their Tongues with any other outfit. And conversely, you will never hear something that is not them, and assume it is, because NOTHING sounds anything like Gnaw Their Tongues.
So much so that even explaining their sound in a review is fairly difficult. The last GTT review, we resorted to a tale of hell and hellbound journeys, of total annihilation and utter destruction, of death and decay and misery, all in a bid to evoke the same sort of images and visions, thoughts and feelings that are evoked by the sounds these guys produce.
It's definitely not black metal, but it is most certainly black. If forced to describe their sound in some succinct, and non-rambling manner, it might be cinematic operatic orchestral avant industrial doom. But since we can ramble, it might be easier to dig a little deeper.
Every song is epic, like little films, sounds evoking images, evoking thoughts and emotions, horns and orchestral stabs, flutes and strings, are as much a part of the sound as guitars. Probably more so. Thick gristly slabs of buzzing low end, crawl beneath pummeling percussive plod, operatic vocals soar and wail, bits of electronic glitch and whir drift in and out, guitars are downtuned and allowed to spread like toxic oil spills, tracks are peppered with bits of dialogue, and snippets of films, found sounds and mysterious textures, occasionally, harsh hellish blackened shrieks join the fray, as do bits of dark ambience. There is plenty of space, the sound managing to be expansive and open, as well as claustrophobic and suffocating.
It's a bit like a black metal Arvo Part, scoring a lost Hitchcock thriller, so totally intense and emotional and epic, rife with nervous tension and extreme dread. Whenever the sound verges on white noise, or total implosion, the sound abates, leaving Bernard Hermann-ish strings, or some bit of cryptic dialogue, or some strange disembodied rhythm, before spilling forth again like black vomit. The layers of blasphemous sound piling up like blackened bodies, buzzy and filthy and grime-y but so composed, not really that chaotic at all, a controlled chaos perhaps, each sound painstakingly placed to help paint that blood red picture.
An impossible blend of metal, choral, industrial, electronic, ambient, drone, noise and blackness, a gorgeous, and gorgeously infernal concoction, every record, another chapter in some sick saga, hell swallowing the surface dwellers, misery and mayhem overtaking humanity, death and pestilence, the world a graveyard for humanity, such utter depravity conveyed in such epic and dementedly brilliant sounds, which is precisely why Gnaw Their Tongues is quickly becoming one of our favorite bands going�
Grails just keep on getting better and better! Over the last few years there is no doubt that a musical maturation has taken place, their ability to blend many unique influences into a coherent whole has made Grails a band that we've grown to love.
Take Refuge In Clean Living is such a great example of how Grails have found common themes and sounds within a wide array of influences ranging from Turkish folk, Japanese psych to spaghetti westerns. Grails have this wonderful ability to sound both monumental and subtle without ever relying on cliche formulas. While they were once lumped into the 'post-rock' movement, they have made it clear that they are far more creative and confident sounding then many of their former more predictable peers. With their mystical and engaging sounds these five instrumental tracks take us to a faded landscape filled with ruins and diamonds, a dusty old castle lurking in the distance. Mysterious and magical. There is something very cinematic about this record, almost like Morricone scoring a Jodorowsky film. With an Eastern influence used sparingly but oh so effectively, Grails lets the mood and mystique grow at an organic pace without having to resort to easy explosions or typical tension. The peaks and valleys they create end up being so much more rewarding that way. Highly recommended!
We gotta go way back for this one. A serious slab of black metal history. The first time on cd for Graveland's infamous third demo, originally released on cassette in 1992, Drunemeton, and while it is way more grim and lo-fi that we've come to expect, it's also way weirder, and you know how we love that.
From the very Graveland like intro, tape hiss and church bells, whirling wind, huge buzzing swaths of primitive synth and harsh whispered vocals, you know this is gonna be good, but you definitely can't possibly be prepared for how weird and fucked it's going to be as well. This is so awesomely lo-fi, machine like drums (drum machine we presume) are the focus, WAY up in the mix, louder than everything else except maybe the vocals. The guitars are a churning throbbing pulse more than actual riffing, the vocals a harsh growl laid over everything. The only time you can actually hear the notes and riffs are when things slow down to a dirge and the blast beat becomes a mechanical plod. But the second the blast beat begins again, the guitars become a muted blur and suddenly it's some strange alien industrial jam.
In fact, in a lot of ways, it's hard not to hear Godflesh or Pitchshifter in these songs. The drums are so industrial and relentless, a pounding that defines the sound here. Imagine if Godflesh had been into black metal, this is almost what it would have had to sound like. The slow parts are equally strange, with huge sweeps of ultra cinematic keyboards nearly swallowing up everything else, making the guitar buzz seem tiny, and the drums sound like throwing rocks against an aluminum garage door, everything during those slow parts is about the epic synths, moody and melodramatic, before the drums kick back in and we're back in black metal Godflesh territory.
Some of the best moments are when those two sounds mix, the sweeping synths, and the industrial pound, and during those stretches the drum machine seems to stumble, struggling amidst a black sea of synth swells and crunchy guitar buzz. Elsewhere, there are weird backwards gongs (at least that's what it sounds like) strange circusy piano melodies, haunting chantlike vocals, the sounds of birds, mechanical clanging and clatter, all wrapped up in the record's machine-like black pound.
As if it wasn't obvious by now, this is most definitely the weirdest Graveland record, managing to push both our old school industrial buttons and our grim damaged black metal buttons, AT THE SAME TIME!! The more we listen to this, and we can't seem to stop, the more it seems inevitable that Drunemeton is quite possibly our new favorite Graveland record.
When we tell you there's a band from Sweden, a bunch of longhairs who look liked they just stepped out of 1973, playing heavy, psychedelic, blues-based rock n' roll with sinister, occult themes, who do you think we're talking about? And then what if we tell you, nooooo they're not Witchcraft. And not Burning Saviours or Dead Man either. Meet another excellent Swedish stoner-doom outfit, Graveyard, who sound something like Witchcraft meets Monster Magnet. The vocals are very Wyndorf (with some hints of ol' Glenn Danzig too).
Unlike Witchcraft, and the first two Burning Saviours albums, Graveyard probably wouldn't entirely fool anyone told this was allegedly a long-lost '70s proto-metal gem. Not that it sounds modern, but it does sound like they've heard their share of '90s stoner rock (the singer also sometimes reminds us of John Garcia from Kyuss). And then there's the aforementioned Monster Magnetism. Nothing we don't like, though! Perhaps you remember another band of Swedes, heavy psych throwbacks Roachpowder? Graveyard are in that tradition, and if there's one thing that Swedish bands can do, is uphold tradition! Whether it be with the warm, analog-recorded guitar tones, dark riffs that run from Sabbath to Samhain, and the general bewitched and bellbottomed vibe, Graveyard have got the goods.
This here's the third ear-boggling duo offering from the titanic team-up of Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha) and Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), two of the most masterful and distinctive artists in the Japanese psych/prog underground, you know 'em, you love 'em (if not, you're in for some bizarre, bewildering listening if you pick up this disc - what the heck, do it!).
This time around, we'd say it's a bit more Ruins-y than their earlier efforts Until Water Grasps Flame and New Rap, perhaps because it was edited and mixed by Yoshida, in somewhat the same manner though not quite to the same extreme degree as his computer-assisted collaborations with Imahori Tsuneo. Both Haino and Yoshida are accomplished improvisers, but this process of improvising and then later composition via computer edits is not something typical of Keiji Haino's work at all, in fact normally he doesn't even do overdubs. It's a "forbidden area" according to Yoshida's Magaibutsu label website! Here's the entire, somewhat confusional description they provide:
"Yoshida studio sessions to demolish and rebuild. Haino Keiji is playing Yoshida edit, it is a forbidden area depth issues that I think works. Contemporary, piece acoustic number, hard-core and edited by extreme impossible to reproduce surprisingly pop songs... Two wide variety of music to unite and condensation. New possibilities could look at things."
Of course, Yoshida is playing as well (drums, keyboard, bass, vocals), while Haino does his thing on electric and acoustic guitar, flute, soprano laute, and vocals. And the results should appeal to fans of either/both (and for that matter, also sounds something like an Acid Mothers/Melt Banana hybrid). There's both hectic and lumbering rhythms, weird vocal warble, frantic noise, tangled blasts of no-wavey guitar, fucked up grooves, chiming math-rock complexities, spooky synth ambience, droning chant ranging from silly to sublime, and echoing psych weirdness... basically a blenderized mix of Yoshida and Haino's musical tendencies, that despite the seeming chaos, Yoshida has structured into 16 remarkably cohesive individual song identities. For instance, take a track like "Loksooidgiifj". It could easily BE a hyper Ruins track up til about the 1:50 mark, when Haino's void-treading guitar makes its atmospheric entrance, transforming the piece into a more stark percussive space. Or "Lakdddffkouwwe", an extreme example of chopped-up prog skitter, with piano and fluttery flute o'er the top.
If you liked the Yoshida/Tsuneo discs on doubtmusic, you'll definitely like this, and it's got that special Haino mystique as well. Also look out for another Haino/Yoshida duo disc, Uhrfasudhasdd, to come out on Tzadik really soon, it's apparently a continuation of these sessions, 'cause they were so into it they recorded much more than the 50 minutes found here. And no, we don't know what's with the random letter explosion alphabet soup album and song titles, that's a Yoshida thing...
UK garage psych space rockers The Heads have a little cottage industry going, a series of ultra limited cd-r's, usually limited to 100 copies or less, in super elaborate packaging, often, the music inside are studio experiments, outakes and the like, and thus are sometimes the freakiest, wildest psychedelic blowouts these guys have ever committed to tape. We're doing our best to get the scoop on the next disc in the series, but in the meantime, the friendly folks at Invada have decided to reissue one of the best discs as a massive double lp set.
With killer Jaws ripoff artwork on one side, this gatefold lp is massive, thick, and gorgeous, the vinyl too is ultra thick, red, white and black splatter wax! In fact the whole package is so striking it almost doesn't matter what's inside. Lucky for us, it just so happens to be some of the most ferocious, druggy, freaked out space psych we've heard in ages.�
From the second the needle touches the vinyl, it's a speaker punishing super blown out ultra aggro wall of druggy psychedelic space garage stomp. Guitars soar and wail, emitting impossible dense clouds of notes and chords, it sounds like the best parts of every Monster Magnet song, the sort of post-song-proper section where the band just freaks out and heads skyward, so think ALL of those parts woven together into seriously EPIC JAMS, everything wreathed in swirling space FX, the drums pounding and guitars EVERYWHERE. Or imagine the relentless psych jams of Earthless, only seriously supercharged and acid fried. So great.��
While we missed their recent show here in San Francisco we kept hearing rave reviews and many of our most trusted customers felt similarly, so much so that we knew we had to hear the new record. We're very happy we listened because Free Gold grabbed a hold of us on the very first listen and we've been hooked hard ever since.
Falling somewhere between Spacemen 3 and Jesus & Mary Chain, Indian Jewelry totally hit the spot in creating sounds that are both shoegazy and dangerous sounding at the same time. If we do get to see them live in support of this record we would want it to be in a really sparse room with nothing but a shitty PA and a really intense strobe light. Free Gold is one of those records that no matter what your history with the band is, you can tell that this is a record that finds the band really hitting their stride. They tap into so many things we love but with their own slight tweak on things that makes it totally their own. Like Loop or Wooden Shjips with a dash of mascara or a more fucked up and DIY version of the latest Raveonettes record that we've been so into. And much like the two Psychic Ills records we love so much, this hits the spot big time, especially when you are looking for that up to no good, slightly drugged out and sexy late night soundtrack.
By now, most folks are so obsessed with Mississippi Records, the vinyl only reissue label (and vinyl-only shop) of Portland, Oregon, that they'll buy ANYTHING those guys put out. And rightfully so. Mississippi has a knack for unearthing absolute treasures, and in most cases, issuing them on vinyl for the first time. The covers are gorgeous, the sound, the mastering, all top notch, The collections, assembled by the label, are like the best mix tape you could ever hope for. So every time there's a new Mississippi release, we get as many as we can afford, as many as we can fit in the store, and even then it's still usually not enough.
So on this week's list we have not one, not two, but THREE new releases on Mississippi. Actually two are represses of records that came and went in the blink of an eye and thus never made it on the list. But this one, Skip James' 1931 Sessions, is brand spanking new and this is the first time we've had it.
James is a legendary Delta Blues singer and guitarist, and unlike some of the other subjects of Mississippi reissues, his music has been fairly well documented, but this disc, originally released on Yazoo in the mid eighties, is available on vinyl for the first time (or at least the first time in 20 years), and features James' earliest work, and is considered some of the most unique and essential pre-war blues, and is often viewed as his finest work.
And hearing it again, who are we to argue. Not just a singer, or a guitarist, he also played a mean piano, and these songs demonstrate his various talents quite nicely, a gorgeous smooth high voice, rolling honky tonk piano, some awesome guitar picking, the songs timeless, classic, the recording quality varying from crystal clear, to all warm and fuzzy and crackly. His playing is incredibly unique, as is his voice, while he influenced many, few were able to emulate his style. You can read plenty more about James on the internet, but needless to say, this record sounds and looks beautiful.
Awesome jackets, each with original artwork and an actual photographic print affixed to the cover, and with all Mississippi releases, these will probably go fast, and if we are able to get more, we'll probably have to wait for the label to repress it, which they seem to do at their leisure (to be fair, they're also juggling the release and repress of about 5 or 6 other records at any given time) which means, don't dawdle, or you might be in for a bit of a wait...
Limited to only 100 copies and long sold out, we realized we had a bunch of these and never actually reviewed them, so figured we'd get it on the list so at least a few of you free noise cd-r obsessives could get your grubby little paws on one of these. If you're quick that is!
Jarvis is a fixture in the UK noiserock underground, and unlike his usual soundmaking, Tectonique Du Corps is more of a drone-y skittery percussive freejam, organic and a bit tripped out, very free, but rife with layers of buzz and strange rhythmic arrangements.
We won't go into too much detail, since we have less than 10 copies, other than to say this is some pretty kick ass shit. Drums are haphazard and abstract, very free, almost like some free jazz drummer sitting in with a noise outfit, which as far as we know could be exactly what happened. While the drums stumble and lurch, streaks of feedback swirl above the fray, while beneath and within a thick fuzzy drone holds it all together, the second track is way more drifty and abstract, a meandering bassline beneath a layer of wheezing harmonies, super mesmerizing and strangely groovy, track three is some more buzzy drift, overlaid with gnarled little tangles of distorted guitar squiggle, everything drizzled with effects and creaking ambience, and finally, the disc finishes off with a 12 minute slab of almost jazzy freedronedrift, murky and muddy, but with a distinct groove and a propulsive krautjam buried beneath the whir and buzz, super druggy and tripped out. Killer stuff.
Already out of print. We have just a handful so once these disappear, they will never reappear!
We discovered a stash of these cd-r's, and we're guessing that these are WAY out of print as it came out months and months ago, but we have a bunch, and we know there are lots of Jazzfinger obsessives out there, so for a handful of you, here's your chance to grab one of these rare little gems.
Grief To Grind The Fire bucks the trend of later JF releases, eschewing the short sound experiments and song fragments in favor of two epic drone workouts.
The opener is nearly 40 minutes, and is a killer. Dense and buzzy, lo-fi but thick as a brick, the track covers lots of ground, but seems centered on a constant static drone, while all around tones screech and skree, hum and pulses, rumble and whir, it's a bit like a more caustic Sunroof!, mixed with plenty of Dead C ambience. The track swells and sways, slipping into stretches of more muted melodic buzz, but then right back into exercises in high end urdrone, it's rally one of the most musical pieces we've heard from Jazzfinger, it's almost like some sort of krautdrone ambience, but rendered in 4track and busted Casio, damaged guitar and short circuited amplifier. Ramshackle but very lovely, almost like some lost Xpressway band.
The second track, the shorter one, clocks in at nearly 26 minutes and is almost like a variation on the first. The backdrop is a grinding corrosive rumble, all hiss and skitter, distortion, and crumbling whirs, while over the top a strange playful Casio melody surfaces now and again, the whole track growing hissier and more distorted one second, more washed out and tranquil the second, it's a bit like listening to a remix of the first song transmitted via a shortwave radio with terrible reception. The result is surprisingly warm and tactile, dense and raw, and just as mesmerizing as the opening track.
Too bad we waited so long to review this, as it's fast becoming one of our favorite JF cds ever. But at least a bunch of you will get to pick this up. Dig it!
It's been a while since we've heard from UK experimental drone/noise duo Jazzfinger, but that just means we probably missed about 20 super limited cassette and cd-r releases. This here is the very first 7" from JF, and offers yet another side to their sound, this one a gorgeously minimal buzz drenched lo-fi raga.
The A side is all warbly guitar scrape and scrabble, over some wheezing lo-fi buzz, the sound warped and woozy, bits of electronic grit and glitch, very hypnotic, like some alien Appalachia, but minus the twang, and way more whir and buzz.
The B side opens with a keening high end drone that sounds like a feeding back bagpipe, unfurling a strange stately raga over a buzzing static drenched melody, the sound like some crumbling tape being played back on a dictaphone, everything wreathed in glorious grit, buried beneath a lo-fi hum, very reminiscent of the more rag-like recordings of Dan Higgs, but much more minimal and abstract. Really cool.
Gorgeous full color artwork, hand assembled, pressed on clear vinyl, and of course SUPER LIMITED!!!
We've gotten to a really weird place in our music obsession, as evidenced by the fact that sometimes a recommendation against, is almost stronger than a recommendation FOR. Sounds weird but it's true. We have friends at other stores, who will tell us something is terrible, they hated it, but then will add "you might like it though." And the weird thing is, they're usually right (that we'll like it). We've developed such a taste for the bizarre, it's sometimes hard to tell if something is bad, or so fucked up it's genius.
However, one of those friends recommended against buying this very record, very vehemently in fact. Hard to recall, but it was something along the lines of it not being very metal and being all jangly and wussy. Fair enough. But they are from Finland, and they do have a song called "Discover The Pigtail"! Those two pieces of critical info were enough to overrule our friend's warning, and we're so glad they were.
This latest ep from Finnish black metal, psychedelic post rock horde Jumalhamara is AMAZING. Three songs, all on the long side, with a sound that is pretty difficult to pin down. It is easy to see why someone questing for serious black metal grimness might be disappointed. The record begins with the sound of children, laughing, playing, and what sounds like oinking pigs, a field recording of some village, until the band ROAR into action, pounding out a fierce blast of blackened buzz, grinding and intensely heavy, but it literally only lasts for about 10 seconds, then the band drifts off into some washed out hippy psych territory, all crooned reverbed vocals, lazy sun baked melodies, simple hand drums, slippery minimal bass, streaks of dubbed out distorted guitar, but for the most part, this is almost like some blackened Finnish Grateful Dead. Near the end there's even some fuzzy organ, the guitars get a bit heavier, the vocals moaning and chant-like, but it never really explodes, just gets thicker and more dense, while still seeming jammy and druggy. So awesome. Almost like a slightly heavier, way more fucked up black metal version of the recent Dead Man record.
"Discover The Pigtail" begins with glistening harmonics, which are soon joined by some strange off kilter drumming, tangled riffing and howled vocals, the cool thing about this track is that those harmonics never go away, so even as the band slithers and sprawls, spewing out a sort of buzzy blackness, the glistening shimmer totally shines through, diluting the heaviness, turning what might be something raw and heavy into something way more bizarre and trippy, at times it almost sounds like two records playing simultaneously, they drift in an out of sync, all very dizzying and gloriously tweaked.
The final track is the briefest of the bunch, and begins as a grinding gnarled and blackened doomic dirge, but not typically sludgy and murky, instead it's super dense and layered, the drums doing much more than pounding away, stumbling and skittering, beneath streaks of high end guitar, and chugging blown out riffage, the cymbals sizzling, the whole track recorded super hot and in the red, blasting and pounding and twisting until it fades out.
Definitely not really black metal, more like some sort of twisted doom-ed post rock avant psych, but still plenty heavy and really fucking great!
Fans of Beirut and Arcade Fire, imagine the uplifting spirited energies of both those bands taken out to the dusky country plains for a spell. If that sounds delightfully intriguing to you, then maybe you should lend this band your ear. Langhorne Slim & The War Eagles. Frontman Sean Scolnick's untethered, outpouring-of-emotion vocals are a close kin to the abovementioned bands', but they're also in turn quite reminiscent of Neil Young, John Fogerty and Van Morrison. If he looks and sounds a tad bit familiar to you, it may be because you've spotted him over the years touring with the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. It's by no means a stretch to suggest that if you dig them, you'll probably find much to love with Langhorne Slim, and vice versa!
Some records are worth it for just one track. Even if the rest of the record is amazing. It's that one moment of sonic perfection, that almost renders the rest of the songs, and all of the other music, an afterthought.
Which is the case with this, the debut from The Last Shadow Puppets, a barely disguised homage to the orchestral pop of the legendary Scott Walker. Which is precisely why the opening track, "The Age Of The Understatement" is so irresistible. The strings, soaring and dramatic, the shuffling militaristic snares, the main hook, a swirling cinematic, almost Morricone-ish chunk of moody continental classic pop music. Fuck Amy Winehouse, these guys should be doing the theme to the new Bond movie. This is mysterious, stuff, evoking, cobblestone streets, tweed overcoat, wandering lonely villages hands in pockets, head down against the cold wind, everything steely grey, winter skies, brooding clouds, fleeting shadows, little corner cafes, a missed rendezvous. Even the video taps into that, a lonely ice skater, tanks trundling through some winter landscape, the natty band members looking all sixties and mod, in overcoats and turtlenecks, astride the tanks, amidst soldiers, neon, empty concert halls, long Soviet looking hallways, huge empty town squares. Which makes it even more surprising to find out that the Puppets are in fact, Arctic Monkeys lead singer Alex Turner, a guy from Simian Mobile Disco, the guy from Final Fantasy and a member of UK pop band the Rascals.
It's not just that track either, the whole record is subtly over the top but perfect, dark, shimmery, chunky and rocking here and there, but more sort of brooding and mysterious, channeling the same sort of pomp and drama of classic Walker while giving it a slight modern tweak. The vocals are obvious, Turner's twang is so distinct, and he doesn't do much to disguise it, singing exactly how he would (and did) in the Arctic Monkeys, but it works, even in this new sonic landscape.
And even with the opening track being that good, the rest of the record holds up pretty well, introducing horns, vibraphone, sizzling synths, and all sorts of subtle sonic mystery into their dark string laden pop. Some tracks are sunshine-y and jangley, but even then, they are infused with a certain amount of foreboding. The more rocking tracks are thick with buzzing synths, and propulsive drumming, but those too, never lose their cinematic moodiness. And the strings, arranged by Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett, who would have thought he had it in him, it's really the defining sound of the record, they soar and shimmer, shooting out high end streaks here, unfurling moaning cello like drones there, swirling into little climactic frenzies or drifting into lush minor key backdrops.
Every song is a like a little glimpse of some mysterious cold war spy movie, starring some dashing mystery man, rife with chase scenes, assassins, spies, murder, love, loss and betrayal, all set to The Last Shadow Puppets' pitch perfect chamber pop.
Lau Nau's Nukuu walks an incredibly fine line between the expansive forms and consistent density and texture of drone music, while also hiding within that density many structural shifts more akin to folk music. Watching her music vibrate between these two poles is the main attraction on this record, but remarkably, she finds an incredible amount of detail and freedom to explore between them. The songs often anchor in centrifugal clusters of tone and texture, looping and feasting on themselves, while occasionally a lyrical vocal passage, or a particularly noteworthy electronic or acoustic phrase will emerge to a more singular position in the mix. Other songs however, are less roiling and give the listener the opportunity to bask in the delicacy and winsome precision in Lau's voice, sometimes creaky and childlike, other times whispered and ghostly. Lau's decisions regarding the modalities and textures of her instrumentation, as well as the cadences of her lyrics, sung in Suomi, all reflect Finland's liminal position between the influences of Europe and Asia. That said, given her lo-fi recording approach at times, she can sound eerily similar to some of the '78s we've been graced with in the past year from Dust-to-Digital's Victrola Favorites and Black Mirror collections. The obvious comparisons to Islaja and Kuupuu, her collaborators in Hertta Lussu Assa, yields Lau a more innocent, gentle, and dare we say motherly distinction, as opposed to the bewitching dark humor of the other two. Without indulging her biography too much, it is worth noting Lau gave birth to a son in the interim since her last album. Apparently much of the record was written while her child was sleeping, and so too it is titled, "sleeps." Naturally it follows that there are a few lullabies in the mix, but there is also a keen sense of independence, as though these songs are about digesting much more than motherhood, a feet in itself. Like another Scandinavian luminary on this list, El Perro Del Mar, Lau butts up against an almost hymnal like intimacy at times, though her work is naturally more feral, and less controlled and crystalline. Fans of all things Finnish will obviously be pleased, but those who've enjoyed Natural Snow Buildings, acts from the Dronevolk compilation, and even Valet will also find themselves gently coaxed into a similar but challenging musical terrain. All told, atmospheric and entrancing, subtle and intelligent, composed and vulnerable, Nukuu comes highly recommended.
We talk about 'long awaited' releases all the time, records we hear about well before their actual release date, forcing us to wait and wait and wait, but few records have been as eagerly anticipated, or generated so many emails from customers as this, the latest from SF black metal behemoth Leviathan. Especially considering the rumors circulating that this may indeed be the final recording from Wrest and his one man band, Leviathan. If it is indeed a swansong, it's hard to imagine a more fitting or more powerful farewell-and-fuck-off.
Even being a huge fan and voracious devourer of black metal, we would be hard pressed to tell lots of BM bands apart. It's the nature of the beast in some ways. But the second we threw this on, even if we hadn't known what was playing, there's no mistaking the sound of Leviathan, the guitar tone, those demonic croaked vocals, the dizzying lush black buzzscapes, the convoluted song structures, the weird mathy rhythms and the incredible riffs.
Massive Conspiracy is not a huge departure from the sound of Tentacles Of Whorror, if anything, it just takes all the elements of that record and pushes them just that much further out. The sound is a bit more dense, more epic, the drumming is amazing (especially after the switch from electronic drums to real drums) the compositions more sprawling and expansive in scope. Which is saying a lot since past Leviathan records were pretty dang epic and sprawling already.
The sheer hatred of the titles is certainly expressed in the music as well, this is some scathing, hateful furious sound.
The record begins with some strange static, hissing drone-like buzz, ominous ambience beneath it, a haunting melody, then Wrest's howl and the record explodes in a flurry of rapid fire riffing and relentless blasting, but only briefly, the song immediately switches gear into a lurching lope, then right back into the blast. The song is peppered with super dense squalls of high end buzz, streaks of ultradistorted skree, while beneath all sorts of murky melodies lurk, almost like some old 78 was left playing in the background, giving the track an incredible creepy vibe, the last half of the song wraps itself around a slithery downtuned staccato riff, a gorgeously grim dirge that pounds its way to a burst of black chaos at the finish.
The second track is all whirring synths, loping drums, and Wrest's gurgling growl, a weird skeletal ambient dirge that is soon swallowed up by keening high end guitars, crunching downtuned churn, and some super freaky almost operatic vocals, the middle of the song is all full speed freaked out intensity, before again, the song locks into a super riffy groove, much like the opener, before finishing off in another black blaze.
The rest of the record follows suit, weaving super elaborate soundscapes of black metal buzz, and moody mathy meandering, dense black ambience, and swirling low end drones, the tracks rife with parts and bridges and confusional changes, all masterfully wound up into dense convoluted blackened, that while on their own are strange enough, are also peppered will all manner of sonic weirdness, be it slippery peals of woozy, dizzying melody, garbled vocal fragments, soaring harmony guitar melodies, super obtuse dynamics,
All culminating in the final two tracks. "Vulgar Asceticism" is definitely the most fucked, and maybe most amazing song Wrest has ever recorded. Even the opening, with its muted riffing and murky bass throb, staccato riff, and weird Greg Ginn-ish scrape and grind, before the song takes off. And the main riff is super warbly, almost sounding like he's playing with a slide, the notes wavering and detuning, only to be yanked back in line, and then bent way out of tune again, the result a blurry seasick lurch, exacerbated by the dynamics, the riffs often slipping into strange start stop stutters, until the song reaches it's middle stretch, the bass and drums locked into a relentless midtempo blast, while layers of guitars, and various riffs slip and slide, waver and warble, a super dizzy expanse of funhouse mirror blackness that is as fucked up and far out as it is amazing and masterful.
The closer, "Noisome Ash Crown" is an appropriately somber end to Massive Conspiracy, maybe even Leviathan itself. The whole first half a funereal crawl, a bleak grim landscape of whirring thick black ambience, and strange squalls of processed vocals, squiggles of distorted guitar, the drums a solid framework for the drifting abyss above. A strange washed out, gauzy black ambient bridge, gives way to a crushing almost industrial dirge, the melodies majestic and sorrowful, the vocals harrowing and harsh, the drums furiously flailing before transforming into muted little tangles, the rest of the song following suit, a dark minor key outro that gives way to the same black static that started the record.
The first limited pressing comes in a red digipak, featuring some seriously twisted original artwork from Wrest on the cover. Inside lurks a 12 page full color booklet, with more freaky drawings, lyrics and no liner notes.
NB. this officially comes out on Tuesday (3/25) so we can't sell any in the store 'til then, but of course mailorder folks can go ahead and order it now, to get in the mailorder queue...
If you are anything like some of us, you probably still haven't stopped playing M.I.A's latest album Kala. One of those records that we have listened to hundreds of times by now and it still gives us that charge of strength, splash of color and push towards fun like almost no other record can. While we love every song on the record there is no denying that Paper Planes became a runaway hit with its infectious rifle shots and perfect sampling of "Straight to Hell" by The Clash. So it makes sense that lots of folks wanted to try their hand at remixing that song, and these Homeland Security Remixes finds five very capable and varied hands doing the original justice and breathing even more life into that great song. DFA turn it into a vintage sounding disco jam, Adrock uses little kids with glorious results and Scottie B. cranks up the adrenaline even more for a B'more slammer. Diplo and Blaqstarr also turn in super good remixes of their own making this one a keeper and instant party starter!
We've joked in the past about the uber prolific nature of Machinefabriek, but then every time we still manage to write a HUGE review, describing each song and all the sounds in explicit detail, but as this is the second of TWO new Machinefabrieks this week, and the 22nd we've reviewed in 2 years, not sure we can pull it off again. But we'll give it a go.
What we can say, is that much like the A Room Forever lp box reviewed elsewhere on this list, the sound of Machinefabriek seems to be moving in a much more melodic direction, not that there wasn't always plenty of melody, but these latest forays into soundmaking sound less purposefully experimental, less abstract, and more songlike, more melodic, the opener is downright lovely, and sounds like it could be Godspeed or some Godspeed spawned outfit, a luxurious slow burn, and deep warm chords and glistening sprinkles of high end over the top, haunting and ominous and cinematic, might just be the best track we've heard from Machinefabriek. But heck, the rest of the disc is some pretty great shakes too.
Long stretches of weary acoustic guitar, deep droning shimmer, warm reverbed piano, soft muted static, all culminating in the 17 minute closer "Zink", a pastoral underwater dronescape, that glimmers like sunlight through water, muted and effulgent, everything washed out and blurred, it's like Machinefabriek's version of Oval's Diskont, a dreamy extended drift, only where Oval kept their looped landscape going right until the end, Machinefabriek turns the track all dark and creepy, before fading to near silence, and finishing up with a brief stretch of whispered barely there melody.
Quite possibly the prettiest Machinefabriek yet!
This long in the works vinyl project finally sees the light of day, and the results are more fantastic and striking, both sonically and visually, than we could ever have imagined. We'd been hearing about this series, a boxed set of vinyl records, each with one side of music, one side of field recordings, a sort of physical extension and manifestation of a long running podcast, both the podcast, and these lps, an experiment in the art of listening.
Each lp is limited to 300 copies, comes housed in an oversized box, with a gorgeous actually photographic print affixed to the cover, inside a metallic inked, letter pressed insert. You have to see them to believe them, well worth the price, as they are visually stunning, and the music is breathtaking.
The first volume is from a long time aQ fave, Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek, who handles the music on the A side, while someone called Matt Davies handles the field recording side. Zuydervelt is definitely up to the task, as he comes up with the dreamiest most beautiful Machinefabriek piece we've heard, a distant glistening shimmer, over a warm whir of slow surfacing melodies, muted buzz, and breathless soft focus drift. A looped landscape of pastoral shimmer. Part way through the track builds in intensity to a sort of soft cacophony, but quickly drifts back into bleary eyed dreaminess. The track goes on for what feels like forever, ending with a stretch of serene low end murmur, laced with muted sonar pulses and a deep ominous blurred melody that sprawls right beneath the surface. So lovely.
Davies' side is pretty much a straight field recording, sounding like some sort of wilderness, but not too far removed from civilization, the sound of wind and water, the twitter and tweet of birds, car horns (?) far off in the distance, traffic, wind and rustling branches, eventually some more close up sounds, something rubbing against the microphone, the crack of breaking branches, then a warm hiss that sounds distinctly like rainfall, the recording is sort of lo-fi and gives the ambience a washed out vibe, almost as if it was made, not recorded. Once the rain comes in, the other sounds fade to a distant hum, and the sound is not unlike falling asleep on your back porch on a warm, wet summer afternoon.
The cover photo is gorgeous, an ice field crisscrossed with tire tracks and other striations, all dark blues and washed out whites, the insert is silver ink on letter pressed textured black paper.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We got a bunch, but they've been flying out of here, and once the batch we got is gone, it's unlikely we'll be able to get more�
The folks at the Mellotronen label (who brought us Solid Ground, Life, Charlie & Esdor and other Scandinavian 'progg' treats) told us we'd want to get a bunch of these and boy they were right! It's the long-awaited reissue of the eponymous 1967 debut album from Swedish swingin' sixties psych-pop combo the Mecki Mark Men... We've had Mellotronen's other couple of MMM reissues, especially liking Running In The Summer Night, but this is even better. It's got the original MMM lineup, featuring of course band leader Mecki Bodemark and also drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, later of International Harvester and Trad Gras Och Stenar. Definitely influenced by the heavy psychedelic excesses of Jimi Hendrix (with whom they toured, briefly), Mecki Mark Men also conjure a groovy hipster nightclub vibe, with Gartz's jazzy drumming, and Bodemark's woozy organ jamming. Woozy too are his wasted, druggy vox, which sound a bit like Hendrix too. There's also doses of buzzing sitar, shimmering vibraphone, flute, and some fat sax blat. It's a wild, wonderful blend of fuzzy freaky drone and finger snapping, toe tapping catchy pop songwriting, wrapped into one psychedelic, shambolic whole. There's just something indefinably genius about this. Recommended, definitely for fans of Baby Grandmothers and Hansson and Karlsson and today's retro Swedish psych-pop sensations Dungen as well. This reissue is remixed and remastered, presented in a digipack with four bonus tracks.
A new album from our favorite (favorite!) Scottish sadsack. We lovingly compare his music to an abandoned puppy in the rain... lapping up the last drops from empty pint glasses outside the neighborhood (neighborhood!) pub. The all-acoustic songs on Sleight Of Heart, a mix of originals and covers (including a great, unflinching slow creeping rendition of Madonna's "Stay"!), sound more off the cuff and barebones than those on his last album 2007's A Brighter Beat. His haggard voice is once again joined by the dulcet pipes of Jenny Reeve as well as Mogwai's Barry Burns on piano and The Delgados' Paul Savage on drums. Five years down the line Middleton's first solo album 5: 14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine still continues to slay me (Cup), but each of his subsequent full lengths have plenty of woeful weepers to delight any craving for that unmistakable Scottish melancholia. Go on, slip into this bummer goodness!
While not a 'new' record per se, Touched, by AQ dreamdoom faves Nadja is in fact their newest release, a collection of older tracks, from a long out of print cd-r, reworked and retooled into arguably one of the prettiest, heaviest, most blissed out doom records of recent memory.
Which makes sense when you consider the fact that Nadja mastermind Aidan Baker, spends the rest of his time creating gorgeous, fuzzy dark ambient soundscapes, all of which end up informing his more metallic alter ego, turning what could have been a run of the mill funereal downtuned trudge, into a mind bending, ear melting psychedelic drift.
Quite possibly the heaviest Nadja record yet, this is a serious slab of spaced out, acid fried, FX drenched doom, all wrapped in thick swirls of soft fuzz, and dense clouds of blurry buzz, a monstrous caveman plod through a thick, smeary sonic storm. It's like Godflesh wrapped in My Bloody Valentine filtered through some Wolf Eyes, or the Swans covered by the Jesus And Mary Chain, remixed by Tim Hecker. Or even Mogwai's Young Team run through a bank of effects pedals and played back at 16rpm. Heavy and pretty, punishing but strangely serene.
And then there are the vocals, soft and lilting and dreamy, fluttering and floating amidst the crash and cacophony, like mysterious spectres, an amazing juxtaposition of industrial throb and glistening shimmer, which ends up sounding almost more Jesu than Jesu.
The guitars are massive, but instead of sounding like the black tar rumble of impossibly downtuned strings, or the jagged crunch and black buzz of other purveyors of metallic slowmotion, Nadja transform their guitars into thick washes of textured sound, constantly pulsing and throbbing, changing shape and color, thick and dense and suffocating, like being submerged in some strange viscous liquid, warm and syrupy, heard from inside this strange sonic cocoon, the outside world becomes a buzzy blur, all the beats and vocals, when they finally make it to your ears, are dull murky plods, or distant wisps of melody.
Each track, at its center, contains a perfect little pop core, some gorgeously melancholy melody, a seriously sublimated hook, which is summarily stretched and twisted into long black stretches of blown out sound, an impossibly heavy slowcore, the poppiness, all but totally obscured by the coruscating sheets of sonic rumble and whir, the pumelling pound, and the gauzy swaths of dreamy shimmer. A never ending (we wish) trudge through epic landscapes of black beauty and bleak mystery.
Doom was never meant to sound this pretty, but we're sure as hell not complaining!
