Annoyingly infectious! You know the feeling. The minute it comes on, you roll your eyes and then a minute later against your better judgment you can't help singing along. Sassy Brits, The Ting Tings have created a nice buzz thanks to "Shut Up And Let Me Go" featured on a recent iTunes ad. Sort of like if Tegan and Sara invaded clubland or Le Tigre without the politics, We Started Nothing has some nice head-nodding moments where they pillage new wave, electroclash, and classic rock like it was a big tangled box of shiny bangles. Yet overall, it's pretty hit and miss. Most evident when the girl singer actually tries to sing. But if you like big summer jams to get your party on, there are more than a few right here.
Another killer, super limited cd-r from the ALWAYS kick ass Small Doses label. This one a split between Torso, who we've dug for a while, and Gack who are new to us.
Torso, who we last heard from on a split with fellow dronesters Unicorn, offer up six tracks of deep dark raw drone/noise music. Beginning with some super minimal shimmer, streaked with low end groans and shards of feedback, Torso wander through fields of power electronics, spaced out glitch, thick synthscapes, complete with super distorted demonic vocals and all sorts of industrial buzz and grind, to crumbling malfunctioning electronic dirges, to dense melodic drones culminating in a nearly 10 minute blast of sci-fi outer space abstract glitched out FX drenched dronoise.
Gack respond with something much more minimal and muted, but no less caustic and ominous, LOTS of low end, the sound smeared and blurred and crumbling, tons shimmer and drift, disembodied voices, creaks, and machinelike grunts and murmurs, jagged shards of industrial clatter, deep rumbling ambience, Gack's tracks here sound more like the foley work for some fucked up outer space sci fi horror movie, which is not at all a bad thing.
Fans of Wolf Eyes and other modern bleak post industrialism as well as folks into the current crop of abstract noise drenched drone cd-r-tists should definitely check this out.
LIMITED TO 103 COPIES. Packaged in a plain black and white sleeve, printed on heavy cardstock.
Hammers Of Misfortune fans strap yourselves in and get ready to bask Under Satan's Sun!
A while back, drummer and leader of the No Neck Blues Band, Dave Nuss, emailed us wanting to send us a copy of his new band's first record. He thought it was definitely something we would dig. We got it, threw it on, and were blown away. Big time! Classic, epic, blackened TRUE METAL, that definitely sounded a bit like local operatic metal heroes Hammers Of Misfortune. Well, we would later discover that not only did the band indeed LOVE and draw some of their inspiration from Hammers (one band member even sports a HoM shirt in the band photo), but they were in fact fronted by singing sisters from right here in San Francisco. Weird. But it sort of makes sense. SF's fertile metal scene has not only spawned Hammers, but helped nurture East Coast transplants Slough Feg, as well as spawning a whole bunch of bad ass metal bands like Weakling, Ludicra, Leviathan, Horn Of Dagoth, Asunder, we could go on and on. Needless to say, there is no wanting for metal around these parts. SO it makes perfect sense that two sisters from SF might go digging for likeminded metalheads in NYC. Who would have thought that some of those kindred spirits would be Nuss of No Neck and legendary underground painter Arik Mooonhawk Roper among others...?
Regardless of who or why or how, this is simply some seriously epic blackened true metal. Plenty of Sabbathisms abound, the riffs go from buzzing and blasting, to classic eighties crunch, with leads soaring, and some awesomely tangled Maidenesque harmonies, the drumming is powerful but simple. The songs are subtly catchy, epic and majestic, mysterious and classic. But as with most metal bands, it comes down to two things, the riffs, which here pretty much rule, and the vocals, which Under Satan's Sun have down cold, how could they not? Two female metalheads, one able to emit a hellish demonic screech, both able to croon in perfect harmony, occasionally weaving haunting Comus-y parts that totally captivate.�
The best tracks are the ones that sort of push the boundaries, taking the obvious Maiden / Sabbath / Hammers influences, and adding weird proggy workouts and haunting seventies folkiness, "Stand Up And Fight" and "Confessing A Murder" being the best examples, both total classics, the perfect blend of classic eighties metal, seventies style British electric folk, and modern blackened buzz.�
This should definitely hold you over until the next Hammers disc. Or at least until the next Under Satan's Sun record...
Since 1991, Japanese label PSF has brought us six volumes in their essential underground psych-rock-noise-improv sampler series Tokyo Flashback. Now they've released a new compilation that's similarly cool, but broadens its geographic scope to include artists from Korea and China as well as Japan, most of whom we'd never been exposed to before. Some of the only familiar folks appear on the very first track, a live-in-Tokyo "improvised trio showdown" featuring Chinese guitarist Li Jianhong (of the noise band D!O!D!O!D! who have a disc out on PSF, and who also had his own awesome solo cd on aRCHIVE recently) teamed up with free jazz drummer Shoji Hano and High Rise guitarist Narita Munehiro, both from Japan. That's an amped-up freakout as you might expect. There's also a noisy D!O!D!O!D! track on here too, but beyond those, it's all new names to us. From Korea: Mustangs, Kim Young Jin, Amature Amplifier, and Soonie. From China: Mafeisan, Xiao He, Li Daiguo. From Japan: Kiyasu Orchestra, Sato Yukie, Yoshiteru Koga Jizo. Also there's a boy-girl Japanese-Korean project called 10, whose track "U-A-U" is a hissing, droning, throbbing backdrop to bizarre vocal expression.
All the tracks are interesting, it's an eclectic mix of experimental/underground styles, from full-on noise chaos to mellow, minimal acoustic guitar balladry, all sorts of stuff... ferinstance the energetic squawk of Kiyasu Orchestra's psychedelic free jazz exotica sits side-by-side here with the Mustangs' sixties style garage psych rock. And perhaps most surprisingly, there's even a dreamy, indie-folk cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" by Korean chanteuse Soonie at the very end of the disc.
The booklet boasts brief liner notes about each contributor, in four languages (English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese). Let's hope that this Asian Flashback is just the start of another series! PSF's antidote to all the mass market J-pop, K-pop, and HK-pop karaoke blandness out there.
Dust-To-Digital is quickly becoming one of the most important reissue labels going, and most definitely one of the most impressive, with every one of their releases, most extravagant box sets, a marvel not only of musical archaeology, but of ingenious design and impeccable selection.
How Low Can You Go is not actually brand new. It's a little over a year old, but it's one we've been meaning to list for ages, and are finally getting around to it. As the title alludes to, the focus of this three disc set, is the low end, the oft overlooked bass player, the band member who typically hangs in the back, but who holds everything together. For the purpose of this particular compilation, it's the string bass players, those who wielded the upright bass, an instrument that helped define the sound of jazz and dance bands in the early twentieth century.
Like all Dust-To-Digital releases, there's a huge book, with plenty of information, on the development of the string bass, its roots in 15th century Western European music, and how it supplanted the TUBA as low end provider of choice. It's a fascinating story, but it's the music that really tells the story. The focus is mostly on jazz, big band, ragtime, with brief forays into other sounds like gospel and bluegrass, but it's all fantastic, the hiss of old 78's wrapped lovingly around festive jazzy joints, folky funereal twang and soaring spirituals, smokey rhythm and blues and bustling big band jams.
Two discs packed with mostly recordings from New York City, while the third disc focuses almost exclusively on William Manuel Johnson, a ragtime and jazz pioneer, and master of the string bass. There's plenty of text on his life and musical exploits, which is great reading, but like the other two discs, the music speaks volumes, and will most likely have you wanting more.
Three discs in printed sleeves, a 100 page perfect bound book, with tons of essays and liner notes, notes on each track and every performer, a whole section just on William Johnson, tons of amazing photos, reproductions of old lp and 78 sleeves, newspaper ads and articles and lots more, all housed in a hardback book sized cardboard box.
A friend of ours is a Canadian MC who often introduces himself with the line, "I'm quite popular in France... a country renown for its terrible taste in music." With that in mind, it's unsurprising that the treasures found on this latest compilation of French minimal/cold/new-wave and post-punk from the fine folks at Born Bad Records in gay Pareee never found much favor in their homeland the first time around, as a country immersed in accordions and Edith Piaf may not have known what to do with Warm Joe's synth-bleep-infused, art-damaged, poppity punk skronk ferinstance.
If you've been following the slow but steady trickle of French reissue compilations that we've been fawning over for the past year here at aQ HQ like So Young But So Cold, BIPPP, and Les Jeunes Gens Moderne (that one coming soon on an expanded double cd by the way!), you'll be pretty familiar with the basic formula for many of the tracks: primitive beat box drums pushed to their limits + fuzzed out guitar + synths that provide everything from squidgy bass to massively hooky lead lines to disco lasers to de rigeur blips, bloops and bleeps + vocals that manage to sing, scream, coo, croon and yowl all at once = insanely melodic, freaked out french synth-punk that hybridizes everything good about early electro, new wave, disco, punk, pop and even chansons francais. So yeah, if you liked any or all of those other comps then save yourself the trouble of reading any further and just buy this already. It rules.
Not convinced? Ok, fair enough. What if we told you that IVG not only digs as deep as if not deeper than the other comps (honestly, when a track you've never heard by Ruth is the most familiar thing on the tracklist, then you know that you're in for some serious obscurities...), but it also pushes the weirdo factor up exponentially? For starters, Dead Heat have a baby laying down vocals on their contribution, "Damnee Petite Sophie" and every single part of Crise de Nerf's over-caffeinated fuzz freak out, "Rock A La Tele," honestly sounds like it's about to explode spectacularly. Toss in some alternate reality soundtrack work by Stabat stable, not one BUT TWO soundscape-y tone poems by Theatre Commercial, and a song by Ruth that sounds frighteningly like Dr. Know from Bad Brains jamming with Sonic Youth and you know you are headed somewhere fantastic. Seriously, mes amis: up the volume, up the speed, up the fuzz, up the fucked up French punks. ALLONS Y!
Living Is Hard. Indeed. Truer words were never spoken. The plight of Africans in Britain in the beginning of the twentieth century, was indeed one of hardship and strife, of persecution and destitution of unspeakable violence and unfettered racism. And the songs on Living Is Hard perfectly capture the spirit of the time. The anger and resentment, but also the hope and happiness, the frustration of constant harassment and the dreams of something better.
As the liner notes mention, these songs were a "disruptive late entry into the history of black music in Britain", a music that owes very little to any white listenership. A hybrid of African spirituals, blues and plantation songs, with hints of Carribean music, bits of highlife, mostly vocal, with minimal instrumentation, managing to be simultaneously complex and musically dense, but also simple and heartfelt.
A few tracks are immediately recognizable as a sort of highlife blues, simple acoustic guitar and seemingly celebratory vocals, but much of the music on Living Is Hard, is truly unique, unlike anything we've ever heard, even as fans of wondrous and mysterious world musics, there are strange acapella tracks, where the rhythms are created from grunts and mumbles, the main vocal line, strangled and guttural, peppered with occasional percussion, some tracks have a Western folk vibe, even hinting at some Morricone-ish twang, others sounds a bit like doo wop, rich harmonies and gorgeous hummed melodies, but most of the tracks here are just vocal and percussion, chanting, crooning, call and response, voices sometimes rough and raw, sometimes smooth and silky, the rhythms backing them up ranging from simple and spare to dense and tribal, so varied and moving and simply wonderful.
As with all Honest Jons releases, Living Is Hard is gorgeously packaged, with a thick book of liner notes, lots of photos, translations of the lyrics and more.
The first mix cd from dubstep diva DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, Warrior Dubs, was a sort of greatest hits snapshot of the dubstep/grime scene at the time. Lots of well known names, tons of aQ faves: Milanese, Burial, Kode9, Bug, and loads more. And while it was an incredible comp, for those of us who had already been obsessively tracking down as much grime and dubstep as we could get our hands on, it was a little light on new discoveries, a terrific mix for sure, but one we might have made ourselves. Which is ironic considering that dubstep, like jungle and garage and techno before it, is a genre that thrives on the newest thing, on the latest tracks, so much so that all the great DJ's tend to spin dubplates, unique copies of discs that have yet to be commercially released.
This latest collection from Miss Hobbs is something completely different though. And precisely what we were hoping for. Not only does if feature a whole mess of new names and never-heard-of's amongst the usual suspects, it also spreads out sonically, way beyond the realms of grime or dubstep, incorporating all manner of other electronic musics, but all somehow woven into something incredibly cohesive, and darkly groovy.
Much of this collection is super minimal, laid back and downtempo, lots of murky production and slowly skittering beats, some haunting almost completely ambient tracks, but some serious bangers as well. But before we get to all those, we might as well talk about the biggest surprise here, "Theory Of Machines" by Ben Frost, a nine and a half minute slab of slow burning blurred dronemusic, that over the course of its 9 minutes builds from soft shimmer to dense crumbling Tim Hecker style blurred beauty, to thick caustic blown out soft noise, to an super distorted almost-trip-hop. The sound is immense and epic, and so gorgeous, wreathed in crackle and underpinned by buzzing downtuned lowend, streaked with soaring synths, the track's climax, all skittery beats beneath clouds of hiss and whir and crackle and fuzz is totally intense and gorgeous. And the fact that it's dropped right between a super spaced out reverb drenched out chunk of muddy dubstep and some sun dappled Boards Of Canada style downtempo shuffle, speaks to Hobbs' skills as a DJ. Song choice, arrangement, segues.
Even with the artists we know, Hobbs didn't necessarily pick their big hit, instead opting for the song that best suited the mix, and it pays off. Opening with Ital Tek's glitchy dubby stutter, and closing with Claro Intelecto's hushed techno whisper, a soft washed out dreaminess over a barely there pulse, the tracks in between manages to be all over the map, without sounding random or just thrown together. A grinding buzzing synth heavy grime jam from Wiley follows hot on the heels of Cult Of The 13th Hour's Kode9-ish slow dub, replete with a motorik pulse, some muted muddied skitter, and some deep spoken word vocals. DJ Pinch offers up some super abstract dubstep, the usual synth buzz relegated to a distant murmur, the main rhythm, surrounded by little flurries of tribal shuffle, which is quickly followed up by Magnetic Man's electronic dub, that minus the dubstep synth warble brings to mind On-U-Sound or the Dub Chemists. Surgeon offers up some awesome Kompakt style techno, all looped and hypnotic, minimal and murky, which quickly gives way to a Boxcutter track that almost sounds like some electronic dub infused free jazz, all abstract skitter, crooned vocals, throbbing bass, strange space FX, bits of free freakout, even some whirring organ.
Definitely not the mix for someone looking for a dubstep greatest hits, we've got the recent Steppa's Delight collection among others for that, this is more a collection of modern electronic music, a glimpse into the future of sound, how these various tracks fit together, how electronic music continues to change before our very ears, dub becomes dubstep but what will it become next, techno and grime and downtempo and trip-hop seep back into the 'new' sound and makes it even newer, hybrids of hybrids of hybrids, how these sounds look to the past to reach the future. But more importantly, you can dance to them. Well, sort of.
There is absolutely no doubt as to the importance Strut Records' 2001 compilation, Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970s Funky Lagos, played in bringing about the current flood of interest in afrobeat, highlife, disco, soul and (of course) funk from Nigeria and other West African nations. It was the first compilation to really pay homage not only to the songs of that era but to the entire culture that allowed the music to come into being. By doing so, it laid the blueprint for the kind of lavishly packaged, meticulously researched, insanely detailed reissues coming from labels like Sound Ways, Honest John's and Analog Africa. It's hard, even just 7 years later, to remember how mysterious the world of Nigerian funk seemed at the time; it was a an entire world of sound that outsiders had access to only through bootleg LPs and traded tapes with giant question marks next to everything from song titles to the performers themselves. Now sadly out-of-print, the original triple cd Nigeria 70 comp was a revelation - an unparalleled wealth of sights and sounds that showed how much more there was to Nigerian music than just Fela.
If, like many of us here at aQ, you are still reaching for the original every time you make a mix tape, then you'll be happy to hear that Strut Records has not only risen from the grave but issued Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump, a second installment to the Nigeria 70 series (no doubt spurred on by the massive success of its many imitators). Rather than try to outdo the first volume, Strut have taken a decidedly lower-key approach to this single disc of astoundingly funky cuts from Nigeria's finest. The liner notes are slim but densely packed: John Collins' introductory essay traces the evolution in Nigerian popular music alongside the changes in the country's cultural and political climate, while the liner notes provide brief but informative notes for each cut. Musically, the collection is an immaculately compiled and sequenced mix of everything from the traditional highlife bounce of Ashanti Afrika Jah's "Onyame" and Rex Williams' soulful "You Are My Heart" to the swaggering afro-rock of The Immortals' "Hot Tears" and the afrobeat/ju-ju mashup of the leadoff track, Sir Shina Peters and His International Stars' "Yabis." Furthermore, we'd be remiss if we failed to mention Chief Checker's "Ire Africa," which manages to balance riddims cribbed straight from Studio One with proto-Rick James disco funk (check out the bassline!) and straight up afro sounds. Amazing!
If you've heard the original comp, it's a safe bet that you've already deemed Lagos Jump an essential purchase. If you missed out but have been loving the Nigeria Special comps even half as much as we have, then this disc will freak your beak. If your exposure to Nigerian music of the '60s and '70s subsists solely of the odd Fela Kuti song slipped in between segments on Democracy Now!, then this compilation could be the jump off point for a new musical obsession. This is raw, soulful Nigerian funk compiled by a label with an obvious reverence for the music as well as the culture and people that made it happen.
Dronevolk is a new documentary focused on the burgeoning underground dronefolk scene in Belgium, made up of a handful of bands, aQ customers will no doubt be well familiar with: Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, Bear Bones Lay Low, Silvester Anfang and Ignatz. By now, most faithful readers of the aQ list own at least one record by some or all of those groups, but this disc takes advantage of the format, not only offering up more of the music we love so much, but glimpses into the creative process, allowing the viewer to see how and where the music was recorded, to see the groups perform live, on big stages, in little clubs, in bedrooms and practice spaces, and allows the groups themselves to discuss their music and influences.
Kiss The Anus start things off, recording track by track, tambourine, guitar, vocals, harmonium, watching the song slowly take form. From a bedroom and a computer, the disembodied parts coalesce becoming something more magical and mysterious, eventually taking form as a song, being performed by a full band on stage. Plenty of interview footage, live performance, home movies, backstage, on tour, and like us, you probably wondered where the heck he came up with that name, well now's your chance to find out.
Up next is Bear Bones Lay Low, a super young guy, moved from Venezuela to Belgium, he now also plays in Silvester Anfang, but for Bear Bones it's serious floorcore, hunched over a bank of effects and keyboard, swaying back and forth, hair in face, black pants and a green Izod (!), the sound a thick coruscating drone, haunting vocals drifting in and out, cool to see those sounds coming from such an unassuming figure, the transformative power of music. Other footage of him kneeling with a guitar, unfurling wavery fractured folk, shots of practice space sessions, recording and rehearsing, some super intense live performance, or at as intense as one mop topped dude kneeling on the floor can be, but the music is dark and drone-y and intense!
Then along comes Silvester Anfang revealed to be much more of a proper rock band, and a bunch of goofy dudes judging from their interview, especially considering their provocative cover art and mysteriously heavy sounds. Much of the interview concerns metal, specifically how there is NO metal in Silvester Anfang, and how just because they LIKE metal, does not mean that they play metal. Also discussion of the artwork, and how it gives people the wrong impression, and how FUN is a big part of what they do, no matter how dark and intense the music is. Lots of pre-show ritual, setting up, tuning up, eventually giving way to full on dronejam, with nearly the whole band hunched over on the floor, strange, but sort of ritualistic and cool looking. Also some improv street corner jams, with kids and homeless folks, all super percussive and chaotic and exuberant
Last up is Ignatz, another pretty unassuming dude, his segment opening with a gorgeous live performance, on a stage in the woods, afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees, the vocals a ghostly mumble, the guitar ragged and abstract. Exactly how you might imagine it would be. Some very low key interview footage, and a glimpse of the home, the studio, where this mysterious music takes shape, which then helps you realize that these places are not so different than where we live, and play, and that much of the mystery comes from the person, and their connection to whatever spirit compels them to make these sounds.
Beautifully packaged in a slimline dvd case, full color covers, the opening and closing credits feature some amazing black and white animation, and for those of you who still aren't sure you need one of these, it also includes bonus unreleased MP3's from all four groups!
All region. NTSC.
The launch of yet another cd-r label, this one, cleverly titled Seedy R!, is a sub label of the already kick ass PseudoArcana label run by Antony Milton. This disc is supposedly the result of a van trip up the Eastern coast of Australia, in one tiny van, packed to the rafters with Milton as well as the dronepsychrock band 6Majik9, and of course musical instruments, fast food containers, dirty clothes, sleeping bags, lots of pot, and most importantly, a tape recorder!
The result is an abstract lo-fi tribal jam, a stripped down Wicker Man on wheels, a Sunburned No Neck road trip, the air thick with smoke, as well as dense swirls of keening snakecharmer like melody, detuned guitar scrabble, tin can percussion, fuzzy kazooscapes, long dreamy drones, but instead of any sort of effects, the entire recording session is swathed in that immediately recognizable 'driving-down-the-road-with-the-windows-wide-open' sound, a natural delaychorusreverbdistortion, that adds a fuzzy hiss and a whipping whir to these skeletal psych jams. Pretty dang cool.
Packaged in a brown paper sleeve, with a hand stamped 'R' on one side, and a map of said van journey on the other.
After an amazing tribute album and a recent statewide tour with Jack Rose, here is the first official cd release of new material in over 40 years from one of the more underated masters of acoustic guitar, Peter Walker. Best known for a couple of mid-'60s records on the Vanguard label, Walker was best known for a fusion of Eastern and Western, mixing raga with classical and jazz- inflected styles. On Echo Of My Soul, Walker explores his love of Flamenco as the original bridge of Eastern and Western music. A connector of Spanish and Arabic music developed from Kinartic Indian music which is arguably the world's oldest system of music, Walker handles the style well with a lot of inspired passion blowing the dust off the typical traditionalist notions of Flamenco music. This is no Carlos Montoya or Charo, so no puffy sleeves or rose in teeth. Instead Walker steers closer to the intuitive earthiness of the music's multifarious cultural origins, similar in spirit to how Sir Richard Bishop handles the genre. We'd still very much love to see Rainy Day Ragas reissued, but until then, this is a pretty nice listen.
You should probably pick this up every month, regardless of the precise details of who's on the cover and what exactly's written about inside, 'cause even if you've never heard of the artists interviewed and reviewed, you probably will find them interesting. And you probably DO pick this up every month. But, for what it's worth, this month's installment of this essential British magazine of "adventures in modern music" features a nasty-looking Mark Stewart (of crucial post punkers The Pop Group) on the cover, along with AQ fave drone-jazzers The Necks, trumpeter Bill Dixon, .snd (taking the Invisible Jukebox test), 'aquacrunk' artist Rustie, (another) trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, a Cecil Taylor epiphany, and lots more...
For those of you who missed out on the limited edition double cd version of the Wooden Shjips debut release on Holy Mountain, here's a proper reissue of that bonus disc, now in a digipack instead of a paper sleeve, and with the addition of the Shjips' now out of print Summer Of Love 7" (never available on cd before!).
This disc has the three tracks from the Shjips debut Shrinking Moon For You 10" and both cuts from their Dance, California / Clouds Over Earthquake 7". We'll try to summarize what we said about these songs before. The music from the 10" starts off with the title cut, a fuzzy garagey stomp, a groove that locks in and plows forward relentlessly. We began to feel like we were listening to some sort of garage rock Steve Reich. Guitars just sort of buzzing along, blooping new wave bass right underneath, simple solid drumming. But then in swoops some super feedback guitar that sounds like a demented horn section, and before you can examine it more closely it disappears, and we're back to the groove. That happens a few more times before the vocals kick in, sort of sing songy, but SO drenched in delay that the words get all jumbled up and are sort of jettisoned into outer space. There is also a subtle wash of fuzzy keyboards giving the whole thing a sort of Loop vibe. the second track is quite similar except the vocals are a bit more distinct, sort of laidback and mumbly. After a few listens, it became clear that there is some sort of minimal thing going on, but it's more like some lost Velvet Underground track arranged for Reich and Riley. Droney and drifty and druggy and totally mesmerizing. The third track bucks the trend and instead veers off into some tripped out ambience, with drifting motes of guitar fuckery, random sounds and noises, and some cool creepy backwards vocals. Sort of like an indie hipster freenoise "Revolution #9." Cool.
The two tracks from the 7" are also quite sonically similar to the 10" cuts. First up, surprise surprise a buzzy lo-fi garage groove, beneath bizarre super distorted insectoid guitar leads, buzzing WAY up in the mix and sounding almost like some primitive malfunctioning synth. But the whole time, beneath the alien buzz, the groove just hums along, like some extra baked Velvet Underground outtake. "Clouds Over Earthquake" is way more laid back, some blown out sun baked riffage, a super lazy groove, like Loop played at 16rpm, decorated with warm hornlike melodies that eventually stretch out into some serious outerspace psych rock explorations. The vocals we loved so much on the 10" resurface here too, laconic, drawled sung/spoken and super affected, very Lou Reed sounding albeit buried way down in the mix and absolutely drenched in thick reverb and fuzzy delay. Awesome!
So those tracks are all here (not in that order though) along with a radio edit of "Dance, California" for completists.
But unlike the bonus disc that came with the first pressing of the Shjips' debut, this disc tacks also on the Summer Of Love 7", an 11+ minute slab of everything we love about these guys: a relentless, neverending blown out fuzzy groove, all warm whirring organ, fuzz guitar, and throbbing bass, the drums a super solid motorik framework, the vocals sort of sung / spoken, reverb and delay EVERYWHERE, the strangest addition are the haunting horns that drift and moan ghost like over the fuzz jam below. By the second half of the track, the band have locked it in and sound like they are never gonna stop. A looped cyclical minimal fuzzrock jam that sounds almost like some crazy crossbreeding of the Doors and Spacemen 3, which should appeal to Circle, Salvatore and Magyar Posse fans as much as all the druggy psychrock dronesters out there.
Anyone who missed out on that bonus disc NEEDS this. For everyone who DID get it (and there are a whole lot of you), you just have to figure out if it's worth buying again to get that extra S.O.L. 7" material on cd.
Either way, killer stuff and absolutely essential!
Record number six from this far out fractured one man black metal horde hailing from Virginia. There's some serious significance to the numbers in the world of Wrnlrd. Check out his website for some truly mind bending numerology, and maybe you will understand the non musical significance of the unveiling of Oneiromancer, the first vinyl release, and sixth overall in a proposed nine part cycle. We've raved about the music of Wrnlrd on past lists, and judging by how difficult it is to keep in stock, you all feel the same. We'd been hearing about Oneiromancer for a while now, rumored to be the best and most fully realized Wrnlrd disc yet, and we're inclined to agree.
Much of Wrnlrd's sound is improvised, in the spirit of automatic writing, and most of the vocals are spontaneous wordless vocalizations, with the lyrics incorporated later, which definitely adds to the mystery and goes some way to helping explain how unlike most black metal Wrnlrd's black metal really is.
The record opens with what we can only describe as high end doom, upper register chords allowed to ring out, left hanging, abstract with tons of space, a slow churning soundscape of chiming chordal shimmer. Which quickly gives way to some old school metallic chug, peppered with ultra lo-fi buzz, the skree of feedback and simple pounding drumming. The next track explodes in a frenzied blast, machine like rhythms beneath riffs so distorted and blurred they sound like static drones, occasionally interrupted by stretches of black ambient shimmer and whirring minimal drones. There are some dark haunting doomy bluegrass hybrids too, steel string twang drifting over deep resonant rumbles and throbbing black murk.
All of side two is taken up by the epic "War", with distinct multiple movements, woven into one organic shapeshifting whole. Beginning with acoustic guitar, melancholy and slightly atonal, stumbling tribal drumming and soft static guitar buzz, interwoven with subtle backwards loops, which gives way to a dirgey blast of primitive and raw blackness, which is quickly pulled under a tripped out FX laden drift. After that it's a loooong stretch of muted buzz, all murky and muddy, buried drums, like suddenly the speakers blew, until the track shifts once again into a super distorted in-the-red blowout, finally fading out, leaving a minute or so of swirling warped backwards warble to lead us out. Schizophrenic and deliriously damaged, some of the most far out "black metal" we've heard. We can only imagine what record 7,8, and 9 hold in store!
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed in metallic ink, and includes a download code to get you the whole record digitally for your iPod.
Oh how we love Minneapolis' Michael Yonkers. Especially for the acid fried, outsider garage psych guitar excess that he unleashed on the all time AQ fave Microminiature Love, originally recorded back in 1969 (and which he's still a master, witness the Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons album he waxed with backing band The Blind Shake not too long ago, which stomped and throbbed like '69 was just yesterday). But also we dug the weird acoustic folk bag he got into on another long lost, recently reissued 1969 set, Grimwood.
Turns out we hadn't yet heard all sides of Yonkers... here's a brand new recording, a limited edition cd released by the Portuguese experimental label Ruby Red Editora (who recently brought us a cool disc by Tabata Mitsuru of Acid Mothers Temple). Taking the "psych guitar excess" mentioned above as a starting point, this is a full-on solo guitar, instrumental NOISE album. Really extreme and out there, the loud blasts of distortion on here putting Yonkers into the league of such heavy hitters as Rudoph Grey, Jojo Hiroshige, Keiji Haino, and Lou Reed (on Metal Machine Music only). This isn't "garage rock", unless the garage in question was collapsing under the weight of an apocalyptic UFO invader (summoned by the automatic door opener?) landing on the roof and spraying the neighborhood with death rays...
This 11 track assault lasts 37+ minutes, and it's all an echoing, swirling, billowing miasma of sheer amped-up volume n' distortion... some tracks are sooo utterly droning and destructive that it'd be hard to tell what sort of electronic device was used to produce 'em - it's not necessarily recognizable as guitar. Others, like "Steer It" seem to hint at something a bit more "musical" (and may involve either overdubs or live looping). Either way it's clear that Mr. Michael Yonkers, when appropriately armed with a guitar and amp and electricity, is still darn dangerous and extreme even 38 years after Microminature Love, an underground guitar hero as far as we're concerned. We can see fans of everything from Wolf Eyes to the Dead C to Solmania to Howlin' Magic bowing down to this.
