First and final release from this now defunct UK trio who meld crushing slow motion doomdronesludge with haunting prog and drifting abstract ambience.
A swirling, slow moving prog-doom juggernaut. Massive downtuned riffage churns around fluttery flutes, while wheezing accordions whirl beneath angelic female vox and warm whirring organs, all wound into subtly complex expanses of slow motion heaviness and epic cinematic dronemetal...almost like a magnificent, hypothetical Boris/Bardo Pond collaboration.
Three looooooong songs, the shortest just shy of ten minutes, the longest clocking in at twenty, each a slow burning slow build, layers of drones and hushed shimmer, often taking upwards of half the song before the various elements coalesce into actual riffs, the drums kicking in and the band lurching into a massive ultradoom start / stop groove, explosions of blown out buzz giving way to long stretches of hushed whisper, only to be swallowed up again by another roiling onslaught, a heaving wall of downtuned guitars, a pounding barrage of thunderous percussion.
All the while, a simple, repeating motif, hovers above, or lurks just below the caustic grinding heaviness, floating like some sonic specter, the vocals dreamy and drifty, a subtle seventies pagan folk vibe infusing the otherwise crushing doom. The flute unfurling dreamy melancholic melodies over vast expanses of crumbling distortion, laced with glistening harmonics, and warm blurred soft focus shimmer. The drums slipping from abstract minimal crush to monstrous lumbering groove. Hypnotic, repetitive, mesmerizing, trancelike.
At once familiar, and essential listening for fans of SUNNO))), Harvey Milk, Earth, Monarch and all thing slow, low and heavy. But at the same time, strangely alien, with a subtle muted beauty lurking at the heart of LAKOM's gloriously epic crumbling black mass of sound, within each song a breathless subtlety, a deep haunting otherworldliness, transforming dense low end explorations into something much more expansive and divine. Even at its very heaviest, it still manages to sound woozy and dreamlike, haunting and pretty, and utterly breathtaking.
Anyone familiar with the Vinyl On Demand label is probably well aware of how utterly amazing their releases are, how well researched, gorgeously packaged, and of course how limited and difficult to track down. We managed to get three titles, all of them amazing, we only have one copy of each, and wanted to give some of our mailorder folks a shot and snagging one of these. So a brief description follows, and we only have a single copy so first come first served.
M.B. Maurizio Bianchi. Check the aQ site for tons of reviews, as we gush all about one of our favorite industrial music makers EVER. Dark drones, haunting buzz, primitive synths, busted tape machines, old turntables, delay pedals, all woven into something truly divine.
Contains all of MB's tape music from 1979 and 1980, for the first time ever on vinyl.
Five lps, housed in printed hand numbered sleeves, pressed on thick vinyl, all in a gorgeous printed, black box embossed with metallic text.
WE HAVE ONLY ONE COPY!!
It's only January but we're pretty sure we have a contender for record of the year on our hands! We're always so impressed with the rare examples of bands who have reached such heights of popularity yet still keep challenging themselves and their fans. Sadly there aren't many in that club, but folks like Yo La Tengo, PJ Harvey and Sonic Youth have helped demonstrate that even many many records deep into a career you can still make thrilling and rewarding music. With their latest, Stephen Merrit's Magnetic Fields have proven to be a full fledged member of that elite club as well.
While Magnetic Fields last album, I, found Merrit pouring it on pretty thick, this long awaited follow up (with plenty of extracurricular activity by Merrit in the meantime) finds Merrit stripping it down and finding the fun in layers, noise and yes...distortion. Many tracks feature the charming and beautiful voice of Shirley Simms, and the songs that Merrit sings find his vocals way more buried in the mix than usual. Distortion reminds us a lot of the early bedroom charm of Magnetic Fields records like Charm Of The Highway Strip and one of Merrit's many alter egos The Future Bible Heroes. We love how it sounds like they are tapping into the spirit of the New Zealand lo-fi pop underground of the '80s and even hints of the fuzzy and dreamy qualities of the heyday of Creation records. Not many people could get away with having a major label release such a non-slick and unpolished record. In fact there are moments on Distortion that sound like they could have been on some awesome cassette release from Shrimper back in the day.
Distortion is a timeless gem. While it does tip its hat to some of the most yummy and fuzzy pop of the last couple decades and boasts a wall of sound that's kind of like Phil Spector producing a twee-like Jesus & Mary Chain record, what makes the album so special is that you know it's going to sound as meaningful and alive twenty years from now as it does today. Merrit is still writing music for wry and broken hearts but he's injected new life into old pain and in doing so he's created another classic!
Whoa, heavy!! This is a whole-body vibrating, brain-melting, serious amplifier worship ceremony! The first time I (Allan) saw these guys, last year sometime at the Hemlock here in San Francisco, I was blown away... I'd been told the were a heavy 'stoner rock' outfit from Santa Cruz and worth checking out, but I didn't realize they were gonna be quite so AMAZING. Hairy backwoods hippy dudes, the drummer wearing what looked to be a home-made Whysp t-shirt, guitars turning the air to cottage cheese a la Blue Cheer while creating a trance-zone worthy of Finland's Circle!! So good that I immediately bought the live cd-r they were selling... we were gonna try to get some for the store, in fact, but then we found out that local label Holy Mountain run by our pal JW was on the case already and would be issuing Mammatus's debut studio full-length cd Stateside (with Rocket Recordings, home to the most recent UFOmammut, putting it out in Europe).
So yeah, heavy stoner rock this is, but waaay psychedelic and Hawkwindy, kinda like what maybe you thought Circle side-project Pharaoh Overlord was gonna (and sometimes does) sound like. Loud, massive and mesmerizing, swirling sludge psych! Their songs, often of epic length, are ever chugging skyward, dripping molten goo, full of feedback and fx. Their energetic riffage and warm drones are adorned by drifting vox (not unlike Dead Meadow, with whom they share certain proclivities) and fantastic, metallic, progtastic imagery. Take note of titles like "Dragon Of The Deep" (parts one and two!) and the Roger Dean-esque cover art by Arik "Moonhawk" Roper.
Further musical comparisions aren't hard to come up with -- Mammatus belong in the company of such bastions of cosmic heaviness as Sleep, Boris, YOB, UFOmammut, Earthless, old Monster Magnet, Acid Mothers Temple (at AMT's heaviest, like on Starless & Bible Black Sabbath), Tarantula Hawk, and even Amon Duul (especially on the druggy, krautrocky jam "The Outer Rim"). And of course they're now labelmates with OM, which also makes perfect sense. If you love many, or even just any, of those bands and the sounds they make, this comes highly recommended.
Time sensitive note: Mammatus are playing tomorrow, Saturday April 1st again at the Hemlock with AQ faves the Grey Daturas!
It's not everyday you hear samples of Hitler speeches and Nazi Marches over a pulsating glammy space groove next to an even wackier freaked out French version of Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming To Take Me Away". Throw in some warped 60's beat pop, zany space prog and the weirdest but most sublimely cosmic disco tracks you have never heard, and you are somewhat closer to wrapping your head around the skewed production genius of Jean-Pierre Massiera. Starting his career in the south of France and relocating to Montreal in the seventies, Massiera, best known for Les Maledictus Sound, a holy-grail record for collectors of sixties psyche-exotica freakiness has continued to explore for the past 40 years all manner of spacey and unhinged pop and dance grooves through a myriad of single-based projects, the best of collected on these two volumes. Like a surrealist Serge Gainsbourg mixed with Gong, Cerrone and Zolar X, Massiera never concerned himself with record industry pressures or making fame or fortune off his production efforts but instead used the studio to explore his love of surrealism, off-beat humor and some coke-addled (we presume) cosmic fantasy. Each record comes with a code to download mp3's and a bonus track.
The Discoid volume begins with Sex Conventions' "Toi Qui Reve de Baisers", a funky groover that owes much of its success to Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio" as they share similar riffs and breaks. Native American, and Brazilian rhythms come through on tracks by Herman's Rocket (who were also on the first volume) and Brasa Brasil & Helena. While Human Egg gives us "Onomatopaiea", a hypnotic vocal-only rhythm chant and the cosmic disco epic "Love Like This" that any DJ with a penchant for Italo or electro-funk should get this volume for that track alone! Of course The Starlights "Mao Mao" along with tracks by Mickey and Joyce and Venus Gang also make this essential for crate diggers and beatheads and freaky music collectors of all types. Psychoses Indeed!
It's not everyday you hear samples of Hitler speeches and Nazi Marches over a pulsating glammy space groove next to an even wackier freaked out French version of Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming To Take Me Away". Throw in some warped 60's beat pop, zany space prog and the weirdest but most sublimely cosmic disco tracks you have never heard, and you are somewhat closer to wrapping your head around the skewed production genius of Jean-Pierre Massiera. Starting his career in the south of France and relocating to Montreal in the seventies, Massiera, best known for Les Maledictus Sound, a holy-grail record for collectors of sixties psyche-exotica freakiness has continued to explore for the past 40 years all manner of spacey and unhinged pop and dance grooves through a myriad of single-based projects, the best of collected on these two volumes. Like a surrealist Serge Gainsbourg mixed with Gong, Cerrone and Zolar X, Massiera never concerned himself with record industry pressures or making fame or fortune off his production efforts but instead used the studio to explore his love of surrealism, off-beat humor and some coke-addled (we presume) cosmic fantasy. Each record comes with a code to download mp3's and a bonus track.
The Freakoid volume begins with Basile, a novelty singer who was popular in the South of France for playing a rural imbecile who has two tracks, one being the skewed Napoleon XIV cover mentioned above. That there is no mention that this song is a cover ( both were released the same year) and instead claims to be inspired by an early thirties French recording just adds to Massiera's strange self-made mythos masking some pretty blatant appropriations. Other tracks by groups Les Monegasques and Piranhas venture into psyche beat and garage rock while tracks by Le Chats and J.P.M & Co. explore proggified Salvador Dali, with wigs and body paint, hermaphrodites, and tape collages over pulsing synths and rhythms. More cosmic space funk rounds out side two with alien fantasias from Visitors and more glitter wigs and body paint from Herman's Rocket and Venus Gang providing some late-era Mutantes / Nina Hagen zaniness. Add the traditional African and Indonesian folk groove of The Starlights and you're in for a druggy Euro-mind-trip that you might not be able to return from. Psychoses indeed!
Y'know, the Melvins have been one of our favorite bands for so long we practically take 'em for granted. But when a new album comes out, it's still pretty exciting. Almost like it must have been in the '60s when, like, a new Beatles LP would be released, that's what it's like for us and the Melvins... except heck the Melvins have been around now for, like, 100x as long as the Beatles' whole career lasted.
So, yes, yah, yay, it's a new Melvins! Again on Ipecac, which means it's yet another Melvins cd with the front cover on the back and the tracklist on the front. You think they'd be over that by now, but the Melvins are all about being quirky now aren't they? Well, being quirky and HEAVY. And we're pleased to report that Nude With Boots is plenty heavy! As expected, though with the Melvins you also have to expect the unexpected too. But from the get go, Nude With Boots hammers it down, maybe a bit more uptempo rockin' than typical, lead-off track "The Kicking Machine" being just that, ass kicking that is, a hooky slab of classic rockin' riffola. Replete with chunky guitars, catchy vocal choruses, and splattering percussion to spare. The next track up, "Billy Fish" is another big, bangin' number. And then when track three, "Dog Island" hits, though, it's CRUSHING. And you realize that the album's only getting started. That song's 7 and a half minutes of herky-jerky slo-mo heaviness, creeped out and melodically fist-waving too. Yep, this is shaping up to be a quite satisfying Melvins experience, one that so far stacks up with the likes of Houdini. No kidding.
How do they do it? The Melvins have such an *authoritative* sound. Heavier than thou for sure. Distinctively untouchable. It's like they have access to better stuff than anyone. Stuff? Dunno, gear, drugs, organic vegetables, whatever it is that makes them sound like they do, the Melvins are in a league unto themselves.
One not so secret weapon: Buzz's always amazing, melodic yet gritty vocals, which we realize sound like Gene Simmons crossed with Ozzy Osbourne. And, as well, his usual cryptic, imagistic lyrics.
Furthermore, there's simply so much geetar badassitude on this album, Buzz blasting riffs and sweet licks all over the place, and of course Dale's drum fills are sweet (and punishing) too. We defy you to try to listen to this album and not a) air-guitar b) air-drum or c) at the very least, headbang. Maybe even sing along! If you can figure out the words that is.
Of course, along with the rippin' rock, this also has its copious share of abstractly wacked weirdness, ambient interludes like the 1:05 "Flush" ferinstance. Or the atmospheric moody SUNNO))) styled murk of the cleverly titled "Dies Iraea". Or the bizarre bludgeon n' scrape of "The Savage Hippy" and the even more out there "It Tastes Better Than the Truth", a twofer in the extreme tradition of Melvins album-enders, the latter practically sounding like a chaotic Khanate on a ketamine bender. Or Wildildlife...
So, sometimes it almost sounds like this is a uber-produced Ozzy or Alice Cooper album from the '80s or '90s that's been taken over by the real inmates of one of the padded cell insane asylums that those two cartoon characters always were checking into/outof (on the album covers anyway, rehabs in real life), hard rock pop that's been utterly warped and weirded out...
Maybe it's just as well that Melvins never got as huge as pals Nirvana during the Grunge years. They had a major label dalliance, yes, but survived it, and are still with us to crank out what's simply the classic rock of our generation (with a heavy dose of weirdness). Nude With Boots makes you remember, oh yeah, ROCK MUSIC. We love rock music. Damn, it's good. We've been really into the rejuvenated Harvey Milk lately, a Melvinsy band for sure, but you've gotta give it up to the originals, the one and only Melvins. All hail.
Probably the most well known of the groups contributing to this most recent collection of limited 7" singles from Germany's Drone Records. Gorgeously packaged, matte black ink on gloss black sleeves, pressed on black vinyl, black on grey cardstock insert, the first edition and thus limited to ONLY 300 COPIES!
Two short tracks, the first an ominous ambience of deep rumbles and hushed atmosphere, haunting minor key melodies stretched into blurred streaks of sound, after drifting through a little cloud of percussion at the beginning, only to emerge into a bleak expanse of slowly unfurling low end and soft black shimmer. The flipside picks up right where the A side ends, growing less and less ominous, becoming more and more dreamy and blissed out, the ominous black clouds slowly parting to reveal a sprawling expanse of steel grey winter sky. So nice!
You would think a band that's twenty years into their career would be a whole different beast, a pale imitation of the snarling punks they were when they were young and hungry and all drugged up. But then there's Mudhoney, who sound just as vital and vibrant, snotty and badass as they did nearly two decades ago. Recent records dabbled with horns and more drone-y song structures, but even then they always remained not that far removed from the band they once were and apparently always will be: a kick ass, stripped down grungey, druggy, snotty, garage rock punk rock catchy as fuck head butt to the bridge of the nose.
Not sure if it's the big 20th anniversary, or the recent release of Mudhoney's seminal Superfuzz Bigmuff, but damn if the Lucky Ones doesn't sound like it could just have easily come out back in the early nineties. The guitar thick and gnarled, the riffing thick and super distorted, the drums off kilter but SOLID, and Mark Arm's distinctive wail, in such fine form it's like he just got finished recording "Touch Me I'm Sick" five minutes ago instead of nearly 20 years.
But it's not just the parts, it's the songs, and the songs this time around, as always, kick some serious ass. But they're super charged, blown out, heavy and buzzy, garage-y and WAY punk rock, with bits of tripped out spacieness, even some Green River style almost glamminess, and while there are nods to the more recent records, this is Mudhoney rocking it like it's 1990, and putting most, if not all of their current rock contemporaries to shame. Big time!
Don't know too much about Jon Mueller. Other than he plays in Collections Of Colonies Of Bees (who we know very little about, except that Jon Mueller is in the band), sometimes rocks his axe with Rhys Chatham, and more importantly has offered up a seriously kick ass slab of avant guitarism for his installment in Table Of The Elements' new guitar series of one sided etched 12"s.
Mueller lays down a looped stuttery riff, but more than stutter, it skips, a grinding chug, every three or four seconds, locked into a super hypnotic mesmerizing loop. The effect is spaced out and trippy, and not a little bit hypnotic. The spaces between are filled with a weird buzzing rattling sound, which if we're not mistaken, is the a snare drum vibrating sympathetically,
It takes a little while, but eventually that background buzz gets louder and louder until a second guitar joins in offering up a chiming melodic counterpoint to that static central riff. All of a sudden, everything drops out, leaving just a strange haunting little high end interlude, feedback and squawky squeaky abstract guitar noodling, before the main riff kicks back in all machine like and intense, locking immediately back into that buzz drenched anti-groove which plays out until the end.
It doesn't necessarily grab you all at once, but once your ears and your brain lock on, you are hooked, and want it to go on forever and ever and ever.
Pressed on thick clear vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass Savage Pencil etching, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!
Record number two from this grim one man nekronoise black metal horde from Australia. We raved about the first one, Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days, a few lists back, but we're led to believe that a handful of you may have not made it past the first paragraph, the intro, the hook. If that was you, well, you should be regretting it now, and when you finish reading this review, listening to the sound samples, and most likely buying one of these, go back to the No-Man's review, skip the beginning and jump right in and read the whole thing. And everything will be right.
The point of that intro, and that review, and to a certain extent this one too, was that adding noise is not always as simple as just, well, adding noise. Mixing to genres, even if they're related, just as often leads to something messy and pointless, as it does to some genius fusion. And there is definitely plenty of noisy black metal, but much of it is either thick noise over shitty metal, or just metal, with the noise an afterthought. One must have a serious handle on both THE NOISE and THE RIFF to make it work. And if you hadn't figured it out by now, Nekrosov is most definitely a master of both the noise and the riff, and manages to fuse the two into something blackly transcendent.
That said however, the opening one two punch here are a bit misleading, in that the noise and the riff are kept well separate, the first, an ominous glitched out landscape of bleak minimal buzz and drone, hiss and crackle, almost like a black metal Philip Jeck, and the second track, the furious buzzing blasting "Mountain Ash" sounds amazing, only noisy in as much as black metal is inherently noisy, super well produced, the riffs HUGE and heavy, the drums lightning fast, erupting in squalls of impossible blasts, the vocals grim and harsh, the melodies soaring, even some hooks buried beneath the buzz.
The next track however finds Nekrosov returning to more familiar blacknoise ground. Deep swirling waves of static buzz, the vocals stretched into sheets of abstract whir, churning and roiling, beneath melodies lurk and struggle to surface, held under by the buzzing blackness. It's almost like some black metal song was frozen, a single moment played over and over stretched into some sort of infinite loop, but it's not a loop as it slowly grows and sprawls and spreads out into something expansive. It's almost ambient, and strangely soothing in its droniness, without losing any of its grim buzz or black mystery.
The next few tracks veer back and forth between, blown out soundscapes of samples and percussion, blurred into a windswept buzz, what sounds like ghostlike vocals underneath processed sounds of whipping winds and the click clack of a railroad, to noise drenched old school raw black metal crush, to slow burning deep ambience, to full on classic eighties style riffing, the old masters rendered in new shades of black and buzz, finally culminating in the twenty minute closer, which begins as some bleak, post industrial Wolf Eyes-an dronescape, all haunting whirs, and strange clanks and clunks, distant moans, bits of percussion and mysterious samples, building to a wall of white hot blackened buzz, sheathed in streaks of feedback and pulled apart riffs, this is the sort of shit that would put most cd-r dronescapers to shame, but it's not over yet, the wall of noise slowly takes shape, riffs emerge from the murk, drums explode from beneath the veil of hiss, the track barreling along churning wildly, riffing and blasting, but gradually sinking ever deeper into a morass of gorgeous textured noise, crackle and buzz and hiss, blown out and super distorted, eventually swallowing the blackness whole, leaving just a brief glimpse of the black buzz, before blinking out.
Fucking AWESOME! Absolutely essential. As is the first disc, if you haven't gone back and re-checked that one out already.
Killer handmade packaging too. The cd housed in a printed fold over black and white cardstock sleeve, that sleeve, housed in an oversized sealed envelope, hand painted black and red and silver, very abstract, and super striking. And as you might have guessed. ULTRA LIMITED!!! But the special print handmade versions are limited to 100 copies and we have the very last copies. Once these are gone, you'll get the normal version. Same music, mostly the same packaging, just minus the painted outer sleeve...
We had been hearing about this book for a while. While we were intrigued, we definitely had mixed feelings about it. What is it? Simply a list of metal band names. No logos, no information, other than names, lots and lots of names. More than 50,000. So the question is then, WHY? That's a tough one to answer. It's a pretty book, and the list is of course impressive. Page after page, silver metallic ink on matte black paper (of course), all housed in a gorgeous blue, black and metallic gold hardcover, it's not really readable, unless you're some sort of metal rain man, and it serves no real purpose, you could maybe look up some metal band you like and see if they're in there, but then what? Nothing really. The first strike is calling it All Known Metal Bands. Metalheads by their very nature are obsessive, so that's just begging for an onslaught from 'readers' of all the bands NOT included, and believe us, there are plenty. If Rolling Stone can't do a feature on the best song ever, or the 50 guitar gods, without getting THOUSANDS of people writing in telling them who they forgot and chastising them for leaving out so and so, well just imagine essentially telling metalheads, this is a list of all known metal bands. It might have worked better as a website, some sort of evolving online art project. But wait, there already is something like that. The Metal Archives, the ULTIMATE resource for metal, band bios, albums, album covers, logos, reviews, it's a lot like Wikipedia for metal. And we can't help but think, that -anyone- could have 'written' this book, after spending a few hours on Metal Archives. Which has us thinking that it's hard to believe the 'author' didn't do just that. And we're not alone. Have a look at Cosmo Lee's Invisible Oranges (one of the best heavy music blogs out there!):
http://invisibleoranges.com/2008/07/all-known-metal-bands.html
Yep, we're not alone. In fact when we first heard about the book, we all immediately thought "Oh, like Metal Archives." Except minus everything but the names of the bands. There is some sort of cool stuff, for instance bands with the same name just get listed as many times as there are bands, no way to tell them apart, no countries listed, just the name. Over and over and over. Normally that would be annoying, but in the context of this project, it's actually kind of cool. Bands called Hellbound? The list reads:
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Yep, there are eight. And so it goes. Ten Leviathans, etc. Interesting to see what the popular names are.
So take away the pointlessness, remove the hyperbolic title, and assume that these names weren't all just yanked from Metal Archives, and you've got a pretty cool, sorta dumb, little object, that as metalheads, we almost feel obliged to own. So yeah, we bought one. You probably will too. But then, we love metal, and we love books, we love lists, and even though we really shouldn't, and if called on it will claim not to, we sort of love this here book. But only sort of.
One of four new releases from Germany's Drone records. This one from the new to us group Noise Dreams Machina. And their name does not lie, especially the Noise part, as this is definitely some noisy business, especially for the more often droney and dreamy Drone records. Right out of the gate a growling super distorted wall of crumbling feedback and blown out electronics, churning and roiling and throbbing until it finally gives way to something slightly more subdued and muted, but still managing to be subtly noisy and intense. The track transforms into a constantly shifting swirl of sonic chaos, often so in the red it seems to seize up, clog the speaker, before lurching back into skipping stuttery noise. Right near the end of the A side it gets all rhythmic like a symphony of skipping digital clicks.
The flipside is much more serene, deep and shimmery, barring a brief squall of glitched out digital damage right up front. The track drifts abstractly from whispery hiss to muted thrum to washed out buzz and back again, never getting as fierce or as fucked up as the A side, but somehow managing to imbue its dark drone with plenty of noisy menace.
Packaged in a thick, black and white sleeve, pressed on clear vinyl, with a grey cardstock insert, and a first edition LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
The Nightfeeders is the newest release from Olympia Washington's, Nudity! This group of self-proclaimed astral travellers brings us a highly limited, vinyl-only 12" of heavy kraut freak-out! Their sound is huge and galactic, bluesy and blown out, the perfect formula for some solid psychedelic jams. Music that makes you want to knock over amps and take your shirt off. Get this one before it's too late, we only have a handful... you don't want to be shirtless without it.
Steven Stapleton has long appropriated those sounds which have interested him, recontextualizing them through the surrealist lens of Nurse With Wound. Robert Ashley's Automatic Music had worked its way into the minimalist masterpiece A Missing Sense. Brainticket begat Brained By Falling Masonry. Perez Prado and Jac Berocal feature in a pantheon of esoteric experimental music spelled out in the infamous Nurse With Wound list of influences that graced the first NWW record. There's even been a threat that Stapleton will produce a Nurse hip-hop record. Here on Huffin' Rag Blues, Stapleton turns to a familiar infatuation: exotica, easy listening, and lounge jazz records. Where the previous escapades had been deliriously fractured collages (i.e. The Sylvie And Babs Hi-Fi Companion), Huffin' Rag Blues is a bit more straight forward with slinky Martin Denny vibes and grooves dominating the album. Stapleton did make a pretty notable change in his production personnel as venerable technician Colin Potter takes a back seat to the occasionally brilliant Andrew Liles. The vocals which pop-up throughout the album hold the greatest sense of absurdity, as Diana Rogerson (aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd) and Matt Waldron (aka irr. app. (ext.)) offer their eccentricities alongside some vocalists we don't quite recognize. It must be noted that Waldron's contribution has been a regular occurrence in the recent NWW performances with him adopting a Tom Waits / Beefheart croon to junked percussion tossed around.
The second of two new releases on the always kick ass Paradigms label from the UK. The first being the reviewed-elsewhere-on-this-list latest release from 4AD ethereal drifters The Victims Shudder, the other, being this, the latest slab of crushing black ambience and deep dark dronemusic from Sweden's Ondo. Weirdly enough, we were already fans having dug heavily the cd-r released on 200mg a short while back, and were already pining for more, and voila. Whereas that cd-r was a single looooong song, this disc is split into distinct movements, each a bleak and caustic chunk of truly ominous ambience. Actually, there is so much stuff going on, and this is so dark and heavy, it's almost disingenuous to call it ambient music. This is cinematic abstract free noise drone music. Heavy enough to worm its way inside the ears of drone inclined metalheads, but dark and blissed out enough to keep the drone obsessed in downtuned druggy nirvana.
The label mentions early Earth, Raison D'Etre and Fennesz, and damn if all three of those don't definitely apply. Pretty melodies are buried under slabs of grinding buzz, chords are woven into undulating sheets of fuzzy sound, everything is hissy and glitchy, with a gauzy sheen. Imagine Earth 2 as reimagined by Christian Fennesz and you might be getting close. Chords and notes, churn and throb, blackened sounds pulse ominously enveloping crystalline shimmers and music box like melodies, voices and samples are chopped up and distorted, riffs are pulled apart into washed out smears of sound. Some of the tracks definitely border on serious doom territory, while others are blurred distorted dreamscapes, all skittery and smeared, dark pianos, radio distortion and amp buzz, distant melodic whir, all tangled into something creepy and beautiful, strings draped over crumbling industrial crunch, all woven around heaving heaviness, rendered in slow moving swells. Way recommended for fans of things slow and low, dark and doomy, murky and mysterious.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a white dvd style case, with a full color cover and printed black and white insert.
Huzzah! Another middle-eastern pop-psych gem! Like the John Berberian lps we featured last list, The Orient Express released their sole record on the Mainstream label in 1969. Played on electric versions of sitar. oud, melodica, and minitar, this trio comprised of French and Iranian musicians with deft skills of traditional instruments create an engaging fusion of east-west grooves. A little more than a third of the songs have vocals either in Arabic or English. Not as heavy as The Devil's Anvil, but more psych than the Berberian lps, these spellbinding pieces weave sitar funk and eastern pop like a sublime melding of Mogollar and The Byrds. The English songs may sound a tad naive at first, but there's not that many of them and on repeated listens have really endeared themselves to us. So Awesome!
We've definitely mentioned it before, in other reviews, but with every release it does seem more and more that Pelt are perhaps the only group of minimal dronelords truly occupying the dark mysterious sonic space vacated by the long lost legends. Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young, John Cale, Taj Mahal Travellers, Pelt sonically fall somewhere in that list, often leaning more toward one position than another. Sometimes unfurling whispered shimmers and deep crystalline metallic whirs, other times spewing thick sheets of upper register skree, or spreading thick layers of reverberating buzz over Eastern style ragas. Whatever they're doing, and however the hell they do it, the result is truly diving. Especially for the drone obsessed among us.
And here, on their latest, within four long tracks they dabble in all of the above, the opener is all gongs bowls and bells, deep murky metallic sprawls, ringing out, tones drifting into the ether, but with a strange propulsion, not usually found in Pelt tracks, that makes it almost sound like the Necks, if all three of the Necks were playing cymbals and bowls. Dark and languorous and gorgeous. The second track is all scraping fiddles and moaning cellos, bowed and rubbed and sawed feverishly a la Henry Flynt, pizzicato melodies, distant melodies, LOTS of space, dense squalls of malfunctioning string quartet drones, bits of percussion and tinkling chimes, very abstract and obtuse but still quite hypnotic. Up next is the record's centerpiece, 31 minutes of deep multi-timbral drones, thick swirls of harmonium, and according to the liner notes, the only track that utilizes electricity, to power something called the New Jupiter Machine. No idea what that is, but we like it. Fiddles and cellos join the fray, until there are so many layers your ears a gloriously overwhelmed, all the various notes and tones vibrating, beating, interwoven, offering up all sorts of incidental melodies and mysterious sounds that only reveal themselves gradually. So transcendental. Worth it for this track alone. In fact we often say this, but we would have been just as happy if they stretched it out for another 30 minutes, or 60, or 90, well, you know.
The disc finishes off with a brief coda of glistening high end. Sounding a bit like an analog Ryoji Ikeda, all super high harmonics, bells and chimes, all glimmering in the impossibly high upper registers, like listening to ice crystals, or the sounds of stars sparkling, or a recording of sunlight reflecting of the water, or the sounds of dew on morning grass. Delicate, crystalline, and fantastic.
We had almost forgotten how divisive this record was when it came out way back in 1993. But we were quickly reminded when this reissue dropped just by observing the reactions from some folks, especially women, which is ironic as Exile In Guyville was meant to be this vitriolic girl power bash on one of Phair's exes (dude from Urge Overkill apparently), but lots of the women we know were really put off by this record. Not sure if it Was Phair herself, what she became, or just the whole concept, which could come across as a whinging bitterly about a breakup instead of a powerful kick ass fuck you to a shitty ex, but listening to this again just reminds us that Exile In Guyville is a pretty fucking awesome record. Dark jangly indie pop, with super intense, often harsh, sometimes hilarious lyrics, all wound up with dark melodies, powerful guitars, and KILLER hooks, and while Phair's voice is not necessarily super polished, it totally suits the material, raw, rough, but melodic and sweet, and with a definite edge, often straining for notes she can't reach, but instead of sounding wrong, it ends up sounding passionate and aggressive, sometimes dangerously sexy, other times wistful and sad. Supposedly a song by song reworking of the Rolling Stones Exile On Mainstreet, it's easy to get all hung up on the drama and the fallout, and the post Guyville shitty records Phair released, and the ALL the hype, but fuck all that, this record is awesome. As essential in terms of nineties college rock as the Lemonheads It's A Shame About Ray or a handful of other iconic releases.
Some standout tracks: the could-have-been-a-hit "Never Said with it's soaring chorus and big crunchy guitars, the swirling moody guitar/vocal workout of "Dance Of The Seven Veils" with it's swoonsome falsetto and the (apparently, at the time) shocking use of the word 'cunt' in the lyrics, and of course the most referenced Guyville track "Fuck And Run", and for good reason, a super stripped down jangle, with awesomely bitter lyrics and it's "fuck and run" refrain, the crunchy grinding guitar heavy "Johnny Sunshine", with its dueling vocals and almost choral second half, and maybe our favorite track "Stratford-On-Guy" a loping minor key groove with almost spoken vocals, but all woven around a killer minor key main melody.
What else can we say, we loved it back in the day, it sounds just as good now as it did then. The reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, not essential, but fans will certainly dig. Also included is a dvd featuring a documentary about the making of Guyville, as well as the reaction to the record featuring tons of (maybe not so) random folks including Dave Matthews, Ira Glass, Gerard Cosloy from Matador, Steve Albini and more, as well as Phair in conversation with the man who inspired the record! Interesting and fun, maybe a little self important, but ultimately, all the extra stuff is totally superfluous, as the record as it is, as it was, all on its own, is really all you need, and if you don't already have it, then you really do need it.
We go on and on complaining about the dearth of grime and dubstep releases in the US, but then we end up sitting on a handful of kick ass titles that have been getting serious playtime in the shop and on our headphones. Well, as we've said before, there are only so many of us, and so so so so many records to review, so some things take longer than others. Like this double disc from Pinch. Not brand new, but easily one of our favorite dubstep discs of that last little while, and easily the darkest and most stripped down.
Split into two discs, one with vocals, one without, we definitely prefer the instrumental disc, but the vocal disc is definitely growing on us. A few tracks we could maybe do without, but for the most part still pretty kick ass. But not nearly as intense and mysterious, murky and skittery as the instrumental disc, well worth the price of admission all on its own.
Each track is super cinematic, the drums skittering and shuffling, the basslines rubbery and dubbed out, synths buzzing and warbling, shards of haunting melody drift by, what vocals do remain, are just ghostly traces and are washed out and blurred into strange streaks of sound. The sound seems to swirl and drift and wash over you, so evocative and creepy and darkly beautiful. Take "Brighter Day", the bassline almost continuous, undulating, rumbling and whirring, the drums locked into a head nodding dubbed out groove, the song anchored by this disembodied melodic fragment, that is somehow a total hook, thick slabs of buzzing synths surface here and there, backward swoops, gristly digital crunch, but for the most part it's dark and smooth, groovy and slithery, a sexy dubbed out crawl, sort of like the Tricky of old dabbling in dubstep. And the rest of the instrumental disc follows suit. Sprawling dubscapes, of fragmented stuttery rhythms, deep rib cage rattling bass, drifting ethereal melodies, lots of buzz and fuzz and rumble and whir, bits of Eastern raga, some more classic dub sounds, a bit of modern dub a la Pole, all woven into blurred bleary eared landscapes of lurch and groove. Absolutely essential.
The vocal disc is not too shabby either really, our only complaint is that the tracks are already practically perfect in their ominous minimalism, so sometimes the vocals almost seem superfluous. But even so, the vocal disc is still pretty bad ass. The opener "Punisher" is a stone cold classic, a rubbery dizzying bassline, streaks and swoops over that classic dubstub groove, totally grime-y and dubby, but also alien and abstract, the vocals a looped toast practically buried under the murk and mire. "Brighter Day", the standout from the instrumental disc, gets a vocal makeover, a super catchy sing songy toasting, that definitely changes the vibe of the song, making it much less ominous and way more poppy, but even as much as we love the instrumental version, this one is definitely still pretty great. A few of the tracks verge on the diva-like, and manage to transform the originals into something a little too croony, but there are only a couple of those, and one of them slips easily into that classic Tricky / Martina sound which is actually pretty nice. The rest of the disc just sounds like more classic modern dub, the vocals going from smooth and melodic to rough and raspy, but still underneath, the music remains gloriously slithery and skittery.
Like we said before, you could just listen to the instrumental version over and over and over (we certainly have), and we'd give this big ups just on the basis of that disc, but give the vocal disc a try to. We've been spinning that one more and more everyday. And as if we even needed to say it, WAY recommended.
Over the last few months we've been systematically going through our warehouse (read: not very big back room) and unearthing all manner of gems, limited cd-r's misplaced box sets, long out of print lps, and getting them back in the store, or if there are enough, getting them reviewed and onto the list. That way, even though we'd normally try to have 30 or 40 of something, at least a handful of you can get your hands on something instead of it sitting neglected on some shelf.
So here's another recent discovery, a cd-r from a long time aQ fave, Quetzolcoatl, aka Timothy Hurley, who also does time in Taj Mahal Travellers worshipping outfit Bonecloud, both hailing from Ireland. Released on Phantom Limb a while back, and limited, to, oof, 90 COPIES! Which of course means WAY out of print, and these are the very last copies.
The sound of Quetzolcoatl is dreamy delicate stuff, Warm washed out landscapes of high end tones, blurred into cloudy streaks, spread out over angelic voices and tinkling chimes, gritty buzz over distant percussion, and haunting ghostlike melodies, gentle swells of fuzz and hiss, sun dappled and ethereal, murky stretches of low end crawl, and majestic lo-fi chorales, smeared into long indistinct stretches of stained glass sound, glimmering and prismatic and so gorgeous.
Amazing packaging, a full color insert, with printed vellum sheets on either side, a small printed vellum insert, each one hand numbered, limited to only 90 copies. Again, already out of print, last copies ever�
So fresh, so lush, and so totally breezy that we've been glowing in summer's warmth with this as our soundtrack, on constant repeat. Quiet Village are a DJ Shadow style sampling duo who take full advantage of their crate digging expertise and a great ear for the softer sounds in life, to create a really rewarding record that effortlessly skips through all sorts of musical landscapes. With nods to everything from the grandiose orchestration of David Axelrod, the smooth and soulful vibrations of Stevie Wonder, the exotica charm of Martin Denny, the new-age lightness of Andreas Vollenweider, the dreaminess of Air, and the more wistful and melancholic side of Ennio Morricone. In lesser hands what Quiet Village do would and has ended up being likable yet pretty innocuous 'chill-out' music, but with Silent Movie QV have created an album that has soul and a core and the perfect musical ingredients for a blissed out afternoon.
New York's guitar/synth duo Ratatat hits us hard with another hefty dose of instrumental electronica, the follow up to 2006's summer jam Classics. Very similar to that album indeed. Not veering far from their usual sound, catchy synth and guitar melodies woven within a bright world of danceable sounds and beats, LP3 is a sure pleaser for any fans of radiant electronica. As familiar as LP3 sounds, there are glimpes of a more refined Ratatat here. Accoustic, steel-stringed intruments and eastern rythyms bring some spice to the album. Charming and vivid, you can't help but wonder if this is the music an arcade would make if it came to life after closing. These guys really conjure a nice balance between pop sensibility and musicianship. In a genre so heavily reliant on machines and buttons, they create a sound so organic and sincere.
The debut double disc from long time aQ metallic post rock faves Rosetta, was a massive dose of high concept heaviness. A disc of proper songs, all churning heaviness and doom drenched math rock blow outs, and a second disc, a companion of sorts, more ambient and abstract, it was unclear whether the two were meant to be played simultaneously, of if they merely complimented each other, two sides of Rosetta's sound. Not sure it mattered. Both discs were amazing, both sounded great on their own or played in tandem.
We originally assumed that this disc was a companion to the newly released Wake/Lift (reviewed elsewhere on this list), but on closer examination, and after repeated listens, it seems to be something entirely different. The liner notes explain that this disc is made up of EVERY sample the band collected or manipulated over the course of the last 7 years or so, with the final declaration "I Am Starting Over". It's hard to tell if these sounds were indeed actually used on the records proper, or if this disc is merely a clearing house for cool left over and unused sounds, but it hardly matters, as these 4 extended sound collages function just fine on their own, as their own record, and it's the sort of sound that most cd-r noise bands would kill for. Dense and dark, evocative and atmospheric, crumbling and chaotic, dreamy and droney, layered and rife with fuzzy buzzy texture. Rhythms surface from strange looped sounds, melodies buried beneath constantly shifting walls of sound, massive chunks of super distorted heaviness, streaks of glitch and hiss, wild dubbed out drumming, mysterious voices and samples, an expansive organic whole, the four tracks functioning as one epic, seamlessly woven together, slipping one track to the next, the track markers seemingly arbitrary, as it all sort of bleeds into one massive textured slow motion abstract doomdrone. So divine. If this was a limited cd-r released on some super cool underground microlabel, limited to 100 copies, people would lose their living shit. So don't let the fact that it's a real cd released on a real label keep you from checking it out. Fans of stuff like Acre, Tunnels, Expo '70, Birchville, Axolotl, Black Boned Angel and other purveyors of buzz and murk and drone, should absolutely check this out.
Metal. Post rock. Metallic post rock. Post metal. It matters not what you call it, there are so so so many bands who play it. We haven't seen a movement of similar sounding bands since Slint launched a million imitators. That said, there are plenty of bands who do it well. And it's a sound we love. Isis, Pelican, Tides, Conifer, Mouth Of The Architect, we could go on and on. They all play some sort of hybrid of post/math rock and metal, each giving it their own spin, some spinning it more than others. At some point it's really a matter of degrees, what separates one group from another can be some ineffable something, the way they arrange their songs, the instrumentation, even just the vibe. And as much as we love the above mentioned bands, we can help but feel like one of the bands who have most captured that sound and made it their own, is Rosetta.
They simultaneously embody all the things we love about THAT sound, while pushing the envelope, their songs sprawling and expansive, even their releases, often split up over two separately released discs, their songs are loooooong, their sound is heavier more furious, the pretty parts are more complex, again it's something that's hard to pin down. Their records are just so totally overwhelming, the perfect hybrid of epic majestic beauty and utterly crushing heaviness. Brutal and pounding, furious and frenzied, at their heaviest, they almost sound like Converge or Coalesce playing post rock, heaving massive chunks of sound, tangled guitar lines, insane hammer of Thor drumming, and vocals as guttural and animalistic as they get. All wrapped up into songs that manage to be dizzyingly complex, ridiculously epic, but still weirdly catchy and groovy.
Wake/Lift is no different, in fact, if anything, it's everything we already loved about Rosetta, but more. Heavier and prettier, more convoluted, more varied, and intense, more epic, more dense, it's definitely the best thing they've done, and maybe about as far as this sound can be pushed. The guitars jangle and ring out as often as they are downtuned and grinding, often whipped up into crazily hooky soaring harmonies, before collapsing back into a churning sonic black hole. Long stretches of loping maathy meander wrap around dense rhythmic tangles and sludgey doomic roars, riffs chug and crunch, sometimes give way to whispered tranquility, other times becoming more and more intense until the band threatens to collapse under the sheer heaviness of their ever expanding sonic sprawl.
Absolutely essential. Required listening for fans of all things post, rock, and metal, in whatever combination you prefer.
Let's just start by saying WE LOVE RUDIMENTARY PENI. Easily one of our favorite punk rock groups EVER. Murky and muddy and furious and freaked out. If you somehow don't already own Death Church or Cacophony, you must go try to track them down immediately. Those two records are as near flawless as something fucked up and punk rock and gloomy and demented can actually get without ceasing to be all those things.
Much has been written about Peni frontman Nick Blinko, who has spent most of his adult life in and out of asylums, and who is responsible for the band's super striking album covers, super intricate pen and ink drawings, which must take forever, and could only have been drawn by someone either truly inspired, truly demented or both. And somehow, those drawings perfectly and impossibly reflect the music on the inside. Where the drawings are incredibly detailed and complex to the point of mania, the music is stripped down and repetitive, often with just one or two parts, the vocals often just a few lines repeated over and over.
Listening to No More Pain, the first RP record in almost 4 years, we were struck by how much all of the super raw and stripped down primitive black metal sounds like Rudimentary Peni. Akitsa, Bone Awl, Ancestors, Ildjarn, plenty of D-beat stuff, slow it down to a more garagey punk rock pound and it's uncanny. In fact, the mind boggles at a black metal Peni, imagining these tracks sped up and blackened, wow.
Anyway, this is classic Peni, 10 songs, less than 20 minutes, simple, stomping riff heavy crusty punk, the drums pounding away, the riffs repetitive and mesmerizing, the vocals growled and howled and crooned, the lyrics mantra-like, the songs weirdly catchy too, almost poppy, but just 'off' enough to remain dark and mysterious and intense.
The only true weirdness is a very unexpected cover of Pachelbel's Canon, which to be honest, sounds pretty good, the guitars all warped and twisted, but it almost sounds too happy, but everything is slightly off enough, and just a little bit cracked that is manages to sound just a bit demented, which we can only suppose is the point.
Sebadoh's fourth "studio" album, Bubble and Scrape, is oddly overlooked, perhaps because of its explicitly transitional status.�Fans of the band's earlier output tend to gravitate toward the endearingly scattershot scrappiness and excess of III or the lo-fi confessionals of the first two records, while fans of the Bob Fay-era can turn to Bakesale to hear the band at their most polished, streamlined and direct with Lou Barlow's pop songwriting at its most masterful.� Bubble and Scrape falls somewhere in between the two, and what makes it so remarkable is that when you listen to it you can hear all the disparate strains of the band perfectly complementing and foiling each other at every turn.�On this record, moreso than perhaps any other in the band's catalog, Sebadoh really sounds like an actual band on every song rather than a strange vehicle for three songwriters whose styles are so different that it's hard to imagine what interest they actually had in playing with each other.� Honestly, can you think of another band that would follow up "Two Years Two Days" with "Telecosmic Alchemy?"�Can you even think of another band who would make a record with both those songs on it?� We can't either, and that's part of what makes Sebadoh so special to us and Bubble and Scrape such an important part of their catalog.
Barlow's contributions to this record are some of his best work - tuneful, heart-wrenching, sappy, confessional and catchy as all get-go - but the ragged feel that Jason Lowenstein and Eric Gaffney bring to the performances keep them from becoming too saccharine or mechanical (arguably, the downfall of Sebadoh's later output).� Similarly, Gaffney's acid-damaged freak-outs perpetually throw a wrench in the works - just as you're being lulled into thinking that this band is all about sensitive indie croon, out comes "Elixir is Zog."�Bubble And Scrape is also the record where perpetual "third guy in the band," Jason Lowenstein really began to shine as a more than capable songwriter; in fact, "Sixteen," "Happily Divided," and "Sister" are far and away some of the strongest songs on the album.�Rather than coming off as wishy-washy in their unwillingness to as fully commit to a particular and identifiable style as his bandmates, Lowenstein's refusal to be as plaintively emotional as Barlow or as blatantly fucked up as Gaffney allows him to pick and choose elements of both and write some fantastic songs as a result.
While the bonus tracks are a nice edition to this "deluxe" repackaging of the original, the core album still shines as a rough gem from an era where polish was still regarded as something of which to be wary.�Bob Weston's 'production' is as ramshackle as the band itself and complements the record perfectly - all the elements are audible in all their flawed, contradictory glory; thankfully, the remastering retains the spiky imperfections of the original mix.�Domino and Sub Pop have filled out the reissue with 16 additional cuts, most of which are demos of album songs.�"Reject" stands out as a solid b-side, and the home recorded version of "Soul and Fire" is perhaps the most interesting of the demos for the glimpse it gives into the evolution of the song.
We here at aQ love this band, and listening to this reissue over the past few weeks has reminded us just how much we also love this record.�We have no idea why we let it slip into the cracks as the years following its release went by, but we guarantee that it won't happen again!�If you were a fan back in '93, this is as good a time as any to remind yourself why; if you're new to Sebadoh, this record displays everything that made this band so amazing; if you're the rare bird who's kept this record close to his or her heart for all these years, this reissue gives you a healthy dose of demos to keep your interest piqued.�Capricorn rising!� We're going to ride with the Flood tonight!
Anyone familiar with the Vinyl On Demand label is probably well aware of how utterly amazing their releases are, how well researched, gorgeously packaged, and of course how limited and difficult to track down. We managed to get three titles, all of them amazing, we only have one copy of each, and wanted to give some of our mailorder folks a shot and snagging one of these. So a brief description follows, and we only have a single copy so first come first served.
Another collection of rarities unearthed by VoD, all of the earliest recorded material from the legendary Severed Heads, recorded between 1977 and 1981, as well as some unreleased bonus material from 83-85. Five lps, housed in printed hand numbered sleeves, pressed on thick vinyl, all in a gorgeous printed embossed box.
WE HAVE ONLY ONE COPY!!
Another surprisingly noisy missive in the latest salve of 7"s from the always impressive Drone Records. This one comes from a one man outfit called Shrine, and as with all Drone discs is gorgeously packaged in a full color sleeve, pressed on thick black vinyl, with a printed cardstock insert printed with metallic ink, and as with the others, first edition, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
The record begins all glimmering and glistening, a slowburn of keening feedback and grinding metallic shimmer, the sounds thick and corrosive an caustic, fuzzy, blurred and distorted, with what sounds like filed recordings underneath, dark and dense but still quite lovely. The flipside is the big surprise though, a creepy soundtracky drift, deep pulsing bass notes, and fuzzy Goblin like synths, all ominous and mysterious, plenty of whirring ambience beneath, but over the top those sweeping epic minor key melodies and those haunted house synth swells keep the mood foreboding and a little bit frightening. The track gets more and more intense and distorted as it goes, but never loses its grim chill.
NOW ON VINYL!
David Berman's Silver Jews have hit the half dozen mark with their album Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. As you might recall, album #5 (Tanglewood Numbers) left us cold. It seems we must've missed being warmed by the malt beverages that the band sounded like they'd been enjoying in abundance. This full length pretty much picks up where they last left off, but now with Berman's wife Cassie on bass and vocals. Still unapologetically ramshackle and unravelling. So why do we keep anticipating goodness from this band? Why do we keep wanting to like them? Sure the roster over the years has been an indie rock kid's wet dream (including HRH Malkmus, Nastanovich, Denison and Oldham), but there is more to it than that, right? On each Silver Jews album there are always bright flashes of dark awesomeness from Berman's songwriting pen. They're just very fleeting and you have to wade through an often frustrating logjam of murk and shambles to spot them. Where are they on Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea? We caught glimpses in the trippier moments of songs such as "Candy Jail" and "My Pillow Is A Threshold" as well as on the surprising cover of Maher Shalal Hash Baz's "Open Field".
We reviewed the debut cd-r from this Belgian deep drone one man band way back, but sold out in a blink as it was limited to 96 copies. Well, don't blink this time, as we just got a brand new 3" cd-r from Simulacra, the project of NOTHingness Records main man Miguel Boriau (who now runs Consouling Sounds, whose first few releases we'll list here next time), again WAY too limited, this time 100 copies, and we got about a quarter of those.
Gorgeously packaged in an oversized full color folder, adorned in blacks and rusty browns, with a photo print inside, each sleeve hand numbered, this latest disc from Simulacra, is a 22 minute expanse of hushed cavernous rumbles, and blurred melodic shimmer. Definitely dark and ominous and haunting and intense, but weirdly beautiful, and almost soft. It's like the sound of candlelight flickering in deep dark caves, the sound of sunlight struggling to filter through cracks and fissures to reach some subterranean underworld. The sounds are sprawling and drawn way out, it's drone music for sure, but arranged into soft swells and abstract melodies, cinematic and soundtracky, veering from intense low-end murk, to a sun dappled drift. It's like the soundtrack to a late afternoon stroll through the ruins of some ancient keep, as you wander along the walls, through the courtyard, into the depths below, sometime passing through shafts of sunlight, or stumbling into some cavern undisturbed for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. So evocative and dreamlike. As soothing and mesmerizing as it is eerie and grim.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, hand numbered, these are the only copies we'll be able to get...
Anyone familiar with the Vinyl On Demand label is probably well aware of how utterly amazing their releases are, how well researched, gorgeously packaged, and of course how limited and difficult to track down. We managed to get three titles, all of them amazing, we only have one copy of each, and wanted to give some of our mailorder folks a shot and snagging one of these. So a brief description follows, and we only have a single copy so first come first served.
SPK, Industrial legends. This over the top, already out of print box set is a doozy. Compiling recordings that document the band's first 5 years, the box includes 6 lps, all housed in printed numbered sleeves, collecting several long gone tape only releases as well as a handful of live performance. Also included is a shirt, with the same image as the box, size XL, a 36 page booklet, all housed in a gorgeous hinged wooden box.
LIMITED TO 800 COPIES. OUT OF PRINT. WE HAVE ONE SINGLE COPY! On your mark, get set, go...
It may be surprising that one of the godfathers of hip-hop and DJ culture was a former ad-man who in response to a Tommy Boy remix contest in 1983 delivered one of the best mastermixes of all time. "The Payoff Mix" (aka Lesson No. 1) along with Lesson No. 2 (James Brown Mix) and Lesson No. 3 (History of Hip-hop) are legendary examples of Steinski's (and sometimes partner Double Dee) fast and furious collage style of song snippets, movie dialogue and cartoon bits over an array of classic drum breaks. More amazing because they weren't products of turntablist wizardry but painstakingly put together using a box of records, tape machines and hours of studio editing. Taking cues from of all unlikely places, the novelty records of Dickie Goodman ("Flying Saucer", "Mr. Jaws"), whose interview style parodies using snippets of popular songs as humorous responses provided Steinski with readymade samples of sixties and seventies hits. Steinski would also follow the same path as Goodman in terms of legal troubles from record companies, giving early rise to the debate over sampling and issues of fair use. Which is apropos since this 2 disc reissue is being released on Girltalk's Illegal Art label. What Does It All Mean? collects those early singles along with later production work including darker collage forays into the assassination of JFK and 9/11, with the second disc containing the entire mix album "Nothing to Fear: A Rough Mix" which was made for the Coldcut-associated show Solid Steel on the BBC. That second disc alone will jump-start any party, which you will need after the first disc schools your ass on early hip-hop history!
We got a handful of these limited cd-rs from Karl Bauer aka Axolotl and we're not sure we can get more so don't hesitate!!
Recorded in 2000 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in Bauer's apartment which was around the corner from the actual Sunset Park School of Music and directly above the apartment of Michael Gira of Swans, these recordings feature members of Axolotl, Mouthus, Black Dice, and Nick Bohn who passed away a few years ago and this disc is dedicated to him.
Nine tracks of noisy electric skree featuring a microphone once inserted inside GG Allin, pots, pans, pot, tons of effect petals, mushrooms, pills, and youthful vigor that represents a crucial early chapter in the musical development of most involved. Fans of any of the above bands, Skaters, early Animal Collective, Starving Weirdos, and Burning Star Core should definitely check this out.
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If you're gonna call your metal band The Sword (not just Sword, of which there have been a few, but THE Sword) you've got a lot to live up to. So maybe it's not such a surprise that lots of folks in the scene have been hatin' on this band 'cause somehow they're not "true" enough. And/or they got just too darn popular. Ironic hipster metal they get called. We've probably said it ourselves. But of course what's ironic is how 'cause a band gets big, suddenly they're not cool anymore. Now, it does seem that Austin's The Sword live charmed lives, young undoubtedly hipster dudes bringing the heavy to a maybe not entirely metal audience, getting all kinds of hype with only one album (well, now two) to back it up. That there's OTHER bands out there equally worthy who don't get on MTV or Guitar Hero, we won't deny! Better bands, even. Heck, the world ain't fair. But that doesn't mean that The Sword aren't good fist in the air fun. C'mon, their High On Fire meets The Fucking Champs brand of HEAVY, guitar harmony laden, stoner/doom rumble, replete with swords & sorcery fantasy metal '80s influences, might not be the most original or imaginative thing ever but sounds pretty good to us, even if they're certainly no Slough Feg.
And this sophomore effort, Gods Of The Earth (oooh, full of themselves, are they?), is probably up a songwriting notch or two from their Age Of Winters debut two years ago, though following the same general template, so if you liked that one you'll like this too. There's a couple melodic acoustic guitar intros and interludes, but mostly massive amps to 11 guitar crush and drum pummel the rest of the time. The Sword's seriously stentorian riffage rules, conjuring images of conquering armies sweeping savagely across ancient bloody battlefields. Kings and wizards, rogues and rangers populate their lyrics, and they even do a song about an axe. It's all very D&D, straight faced no joking (which should be a point in their favor). If The Sword's songs were airbrush artwork they'd go great on the side of your van.
'Tis true, sometimes their rather relentless (or shall we say epic?) chugga-chuggery and lackadaisical singing/shouting (Sleep style, as is much else of their sound) can eventually sound a bit been there done that. But not when you're fully engorged with headbanging lust, which you as a redblooded metalhead ought to be! That is, as long as you're not being a scene policeman too worried about what's metal and what's poseur to have a good time. What do you want to be, high school hall monitor or sword-swinging barbarian berserker?? The Sword offer you the choice of either role we suppose.
PS we don't have the vinyl of this yet, but we DO have a few copies of their recent picture disc 10" with album track "Fire Lances Of The Ancient Hyperzephyrians" backed with the non-album cut "Codex Corvidae"!
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
Twink is back! No, not the psychedelic band from the '60s, but perhaps just as trippy and mind-melting. This Bostonian (aka Mike Langlie) is a mad wizard of utterly tweaked and twisted toy piano based compositions (self-dubbed toytronica)! Some tracks on A Very Fine Adventure are dark and sorta menacing like a theme to some cartoon villain, while others are so deliriously toothsome and playful you'd swear cream soda flowed in their veins. Delight to the sounds of Mr. Langlie tickling the tiny ivories, and then masticating them artfully into some sheer madness that'll surely appeal to fans of Bruce Haack, Raymond Scott and Quintron!
Each Twink release is packaged in an imaginative eye-catching way, and this one is no exception! It comes in an adorable diecut sleeve featuring bunnies, fishies, candy canes and an octopus! Recommended for anyone whose inner child is allowed to come out and play!
"Feedback-laden West Country psychedelic free-noise garage metal" eh? Released by the record label division of druid rock dude Julian Cope's indispensable Head Heritage website? Gotta check that out!! And so we did, and so here it is... Urthona's I Refute It Thus.
The cover of this disc bears a picture of a giant granite outcropping on a remote moor in England, beneath white clouds and a curiously pink sky. These massive, lichen-encrusted rocks have loomed over this particular Dartmoor hilltop for untold ages. If you look closely at this photograph, you'll see the figure of a long-haired man standing amidst the stones, facing the dawning sun, holding an upside down electric guitar, headstock jammed into the earth. Now imagine that his guitar is actually powered up, feeding back, plugged in somehow to the cyclopean stones, themselves both a source of earth-energy and also an obvious visual parallel to a wall of Marshall amplifiers... well, that's just about what the music on this cd sounds like!! Rock, from the rocks. (Except, Urthona use Fender amps not Marshalls... the liner notes also tell us Urthona play Les Paul guitars, and "make frequent use of the Durham Electronics Crazy Horse fuzz pedal", aha.)
There's three long instrumental tracks on this mystic silver disc... beginning with the woozy, vertigo-inducing electric strum and howl of the ten minute "Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed", which sorta sounds like the Dr. Who theme being played on primitive feedback guitar by krautrock hippies Amon Duul... nice. Track two, "The Bright Burst Of Morning" (19:34) is dronier, calmer, yet expectant with doomic potential. And finally, the third track, "Sun And Moon So Heavy" (21:44) does indeed do justice to its title. Waves of deep, grinding, spaced out guitar, so heavy indeed. Blissful at low volumes, vibrationally destructive at louder ones... seriously you need to be carefully turning this disc up! It's certainly heavy, but in an in-the-red atmospheric way that can reward a quiet listen...
The primal sheets of shrieking skree and dense distortion unfurled by Urthona's guitars (multitracked, as it's a one-man-band; Neil Mortimer take a bow) are also intertwined with pretty, folkish melodies, with also brief bouts of hand percussion or field recordings of gurgling waters mixed in... We're put in mind of the gritter moments of Steven R. Smith's Ulaan Khol I. Or perhaps a heavy Keiji Haino session, if he were channelling some cosmic acid-folk concept in his mind's ear. The other Neil (Young) and SUNNO))) could be further comparisons.
This cd comes in a unique eco-friendly tri-fold cardboard sleeve, with card inserts bearing details of art by William Blake and quotations from Walt Whitman and Albert Einstein, amongst other thought-provoking text found here. The photograph of the "Hound Tor" on the front is by J. Cope himself... The packaging, designed by like minded pagan droner and fellow Cope associate, Holy McGrail, is fantastic, except that we have preferred if the cd itself had been given its own paper sleeve. The pocket it sits in, along with the two inserts, isn't snug enough to hold it completely securely, and some minor cosmetic scuffing might occur to the disc's playing surface as a result.
Bah, but that's a minor complaint, and interferes not a whit with our enjoyment of Urthona's glorious shoegazing freeform rural-psych-noise-guitar-drone!! We love this, and a lot of you are sure to, too.
The mighty Sound Way label (the fine folks who brought us the killer Nigeria Special compilations) is back with another fantastic reissue of classic West African popular music, this time documenting the mid-1970s output of the enigmatic and flamboyant Sir Victor Uwaifo, the guitar-boy superstar! You might recognize Uwaifo from his appearance on the Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump compilation where his track "Dododo (Ekassa 1)" was a real skirt blower. These days, when most of us have access to this kind of music only through curated compilations featuring dozens of performers, it's a rare treat to get a more well-rounded picture of a single artist; big ups to Sound Way for delivering the goods!
The majority of tracks on this collection are based around Uwaifo's unique hybrid of the traditional rhythm of the 'ekassa' coronation dance with highlife instrumentation. The result is something joyous, funky, and soulful that manages to maintain a laid-back, upbeat feel that is distinct from the frenetic rush of Afrobeat and the other scenes happening in mid-'70s Lagos. In fact, there's a sweet, classic pop element to Uwaifo's songwriting that has more in common with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens than it does with the American funk, soul and disco that inspired his contemporaries. Valens is actually a pretty good jumping off point for comparison, as the electrified version of the ekassa rhythm lends a Latin flourish to the music that recalls Valens' Chicano rock styles saturated with fuzz, wah and a distinctly Nigerian rhythmic sensibility.
Unsurprisingly, it's Uwaifo's guitar playing that stand out as the real centerpiece of the record as it skips from traditional highlife accompaniment to psych-tinged, fuzzed-out solos to primitive delay and wah-wah experimentalism, sometimes all within the same song! Uwaifo's jangling open-string solos, jarringly nimble riffing, and ability to switch effortlessly between rhythm and lead again recall Buddy Holly and also classic US surf rock (in fact, the track "Agho" goes so far as to quote parts of "Tequila" - weird, but fantastic!), but there's a lot more going on than that. Check out "Igboroho (Ekassa 24)" to hear Uwaifo pushing his guitar into fractured, no-wave territory; given that it still sounds completely freaked out now, it must've been thoroughly mind-expanding at the time.
As with all things from Sound Ways, this disc comes with lavish packaging; meticulously researched and compiled liner notes replete with archival photographs, album art; and song-by-song gloss by Uwaifo himself. It's a fantastic package highly recommended for anyone who's been enjoying the goldmine of reissues of African popular musics we've been seeing over the past year. So good!
Chances are lots of us here at AQ are like you in that we can get a bit overly obsessed when we fall in love with something. Case in point: this mind melting electro-disco compilation from the new Troubleman Unlimited offshoot label Italians Do It Better. There are thousands of amazing records here in the store to listen to everyday yet we can't stop putting this on. Day after day and often multiple times during the day this always seems to find its way back to the cd player, making us feel like we're dancing on clouds, floating high in the sky, never to come down. Influenced by the best moments of early disco, Giorgio Moroder and the whole Italo-disco scene (of which the label name is a tip o' the hat to) this comp is a collection of tracks from 12"s, LP's and demos that have been pretty impossible to come by in these parts. Folks like Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, Professor Genius, and more have channeled their inner Moroder and captured that perfect late night dancing on air sensation after a long night of consumption and exertion, dancing your ass off, dressed to the nines and never wanting the party to end. Whether they're covering Kraftwerk or R.L. Crutchfield's Dark Day (a legendary and sadly obscure project by DNA co-founder!) or creating their own songs that fit perfectly into this after dark wonderland, all these artists have totally dialed into a sound and style that we find so irresistible. Where electro-clash was cold and calculated, these sounds channeling a heartfelt love of vintage disco have a seductive and sensual quality that's been making lots of us swoon. So highly recommended!
Basic Channel began in 1993 and produced nine 12" singles of hyperminimal techno, with very little information on the labels, very little of what information there was being easily legible, and no real marketing campaign to speak of. If anything, the Basic Channel duo of Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald seemed to propagate the mystery of anonymity behind their project, aggravating rumors that Basic Channel productions were based out of Detroit (and possibly by Mad Mike of Underground Resistance) rather than their native Berlin. By 1993, both Berlin and Detroit had formed an unusual axis through their mutual appreciation for the other's techno sound, so such a claim wasn't impossible; but over time, Ernestus and Von Oswald had to fess up to authoring these singles. Between then and now, Basic Channel (the label) re-emerged as Chain Reaction which released works outside of the Ernestus / Von Oswald collaboration; and Basic Channel (the ensemble) transformed into Rhythm & Sound for an equally hypnotic form of hyper-minimal dub. As such, Basic Channel became something of a godhead with the techno mythology. They promoted an aesthetic that always worked on the dancefloor but never dated, and always sounded adventurous without being too weird. In other words, Basic Channel made perfect techno.
In 1995, the duo released their first cd, consisting of exclusive edits and remixes from a handful of those 12" singles, mostly highlighting their abstracted ambience highjacking the 808 rhythmic underpinnings. Some 13 years later, Basic Channel has finally unleashed a collection of complete tracks from those nine singles! Despite the full 80 minutes of music you get on this disc, there are only 6 tracks (each track well over 10 minutes); hopefully leaving the door open for future compendiums. But the chosen tracks are all corkers. Throbbing techno 4/4 beats cut through the clouds of accumulated metallic hiss, reverb, and delay which have all been processed in accordance with the percolated patterns of acid house electricity. Often times, Ernestus and Von Oswald set their electronics in cruise control, just letting a small squiggling refrain and walloping beat run before they tweak their arsenal of filter banks or slide in a high-hat in the mix. It's breathtakingly hypnotic and endlessly propulsive.
Along with the Gas 4cd box, this Basic Channel compilation is an absolutely essential techno album.
There hasn't been a dud yet in the Numero Group's superb and ever ongoing Eccentric Soul series and this latest two disc offering is no exception, in fact it might find itself a special spot near the Big Mack and Deep City collections as one of our favorites so far!
This time out they dig up gems from two woefully obscure labels out of Atlanta in the late '60s. While there are some uptempo shakers sprinkled amongst the tracks on these two discs, what's swept us off our feet is the totally devastating heart broken soul that just drips with honesty and warmth. We just can't get enough of it. And it's the ladies who really shine the brightest on this collection, we now want to get our hands on everything and anything that Eula Cooper, Franciene Thomas and Sonia Ross have ever released. The kind of richly orchestrated soul that sounds so perfect when you're alone in your living room with the lights dimmed, a cocktail to lessen the pain of a broken heart and these songs to let you wallow with class, yet still enough uptempo tracks to let you cut a rug when your tears take a break. So great!
Bet you don't have any Black Hebrew soul in your record collection. We sure didn't! But leave it to the folks at the Numero Group to extract this amazing document of the diaspora of black folks from Chicago and Detroit who converted to Judaism and made the pilgrimage to Israel, and more precisely to a city located just west of the Dead Sea called Dimona. When in Israel it was the music and spiritual soul that many of these people brought with them from Chicago and Detroit that would become the soundtracks to their new lives. Musically this is very much in line with the best of spiritual soul and gospel of that era (early '70s) and you can hear the influence of many of their Chicago brethren (Pieces of Peace, The Dells, Earth Wind & Fire). But of course what makes this so cool is the totally unique context that these songs came out of. On a few tracks they even sing some lines in Hebrew and the amazing pictures and in depth liner notes of this very obscure movement and moment in time makes not only for a great record but an even more amazing historical document.
Moll-Selekta brings us its second collection of Bunny Lee productions, this time a compilation of roots reggae tracks dating from 1973-79. The Mighty Striker Shoots At Hits is a solid group of songs that balances classic hits from big names such as Horace Andy and Delroy Wlson with more obscure cuts such as Hortense Ellis covering her brother Alton's smash, "I'm Still In Love." Depending on your inclinations, the fact that this disc focuses on shorter, 7" sides rather than extended DJ and dub cuts may or may not be to the record's benefit. The concision of the tracks is refreshing and highlights the strength of the vocal performances and songwriting, but unfortunately means that the engineering prowess of frequent collaborators like King Tubby are largely underrepresented. That said, we're of the opinion that the heartbreaking beauty of tracks like Cornell Campbell's soulful "Give Me Love" benefit from the unadorned presentation they receive here.
What this disc does best is document the early stages of the transition from ska and rocksteady to the more Rastafarian-oriented themes of the Roots movement that would come to define Jamaican music's most celebrated era. Likewise, the vocal performances on display in these cuts show Bunny Lee's unparalleled ability to coax beautifully emotional deliveries out of his singers that are at once simple, sweet and massively evocative. While the collection is hardly perfect (as with so many other reggae compilations, the liner notes and packaging leave a lot to be desired) and definitely not recommended for those interested mostly in dubby tape echo workouts, it still serves as a fantastic introduction to the production skills of one of the most important figures in Reggae's mid-'70s rennaissance. For fans of lover's style roots ballads, classic rockers and sweet Jamaican soul, there is more than enough here to make this a highly recommended purchase!
The problem with a list like this (well one of them at least) and with bands who release a record or two every year, after a few years, you begin to run out of things to say, you end up wanting to just say something along the lines, of "read that old review" or "sounds like that other one we loved". Which is sometimes fair enough, as some bands do continue to mine similar ground. But in the case of Venetian Snares, it's not that easy. We thought we had him pegged, as a mash up jungle drill and bass freak, but then he learns how to play strings, and hits us with a gorgeous elegiac suite of moving Eastern European gypsy jams, with only a tiny bit of manic drum programming, the focus on actual songs, on mood and melancholy, then he'll flip again and kick out a disc of old school rave jams, then some old school raga jungle. The thing is, it's ALL great, and somehow it all sounds distinctly like Venetian Snares, which is especially difficult with this kind of music, sample based, chopped rhythms, but VS has such a distinctive vibe, the rhythms impossibly complex, the samples usually goofy, but sometimes freaked out, other times creepy, all the various elements seamlessly smoothed into something not really seamless or smooth at all, but wild and chaotic and well over the top.
This latest disc is all over the map, but the focus seems to be a mash up of classic hip hop, nineties rave music, and as always furious rapid fire jungle rhythms, often bordering on gabber. Listening to this, it's easy to just get lost in the flurry of beats, the chopped up and reassembled loops and samples, without asking "how the fuck does anybody make this shit?!" One can only imagine he assembles it measure by measure, slowed down to quarter speed, painstakingly assembling each beat, but then somehow being able to visualize it all revved up and lightning fast. Even then, it boggles the mind. It's like trying to figure out the working methods of a mad scientist. It's almost better not to think about it at all, just to revel in the madcap, kick ass blown-out-beat demented dancefloor world of Venetian Snares.
So how does Detrimentalist! stack up? Well obviously it's not at all dark and brooding like his two string-ed records, but it fits pretty well amidst is other dancier discs, this one somehow seems more of a party record, with lots of vocal bits, fragments of raps, bits of toasting, all chopped and tangled up within the impossibly convoluted rhythms, which here are as funky and impossible sounding as ever, thick slabs of buzzing snarling synth, even a bit of a dubstep vibe here and there, some definite nods to that classic Aphex sound, a handful of 8-bit videogame jams, dizzying rave collages wrapped around classic Amen and Apache breaks. There's an awesome ravey raga jungle jam that goes from almost traditional sounding to some sort of video game rave with some of the most awesome drill and bass all synched up with stuttering rave synths, and a toasted refrain about some motherfucker wanting to see his dogs die (?). There are a handful of the tracks laced with minor key melodies and have some serious musical weight to them, moody and intense, droney and atmospheric, even peppered with dizzying squalls of rapid fire rhythms, they still feel like more than dancefloor fodder. But it wouldn't be VS without some seriously cracked and wacked sonic wickedness, and there's plenty of that too. Once again, ESSENTIAL Snares, as it's quickly becoming one of our favorites, and for newbies, as fucked up and freaked out as Detrimentalist is (then again they all are sort of), it's a pretty excellent introduction to what will no doubt blossom into a full blown obsession.
For the follow-up to their 2006 debut Mourir C'est Facile, The Very Hush Hush take a bold and unexpected turn away from the Interpol moody rock territory into a less song-structured and much more varied and discordant album. In fact, the seventeen songs and noisescape interludes almost seems cut-up and randomly reassembled. For instance, at one point a solemn piano number nudges into something that resembles a dismembered M83esque shoegazerly track that builds into fuzzy prickly blasts. Definitely as dark in tone as their previous album but the dour male swagger is now tempered with non-anthropomorphic ominous presences. Cool.
While many assumed that Paradigms was an exclusively heavy music label, seeing as many of its early releases were metal, and that it was born out of the death of the truly kick ass Rage Of Achilles label, in fact, from the very beginning, Paradigms has been releasing drone records and free folk records, weird prog records, along side the heavier metal and black metal and noise records, discs by bands like Gnaw Their Tongues, The Angelic Process, Throne Of Katarsis, Titan, Utlagr were balanced by discs from Plants, Tropes, Amber Asylum, Somnam, Snowdrift, this latest from California's The Victim's Shudder definitely fits more with the latter group.
Long dreamlike expanses of synthesized shimmer, drifting female vocals. The obvious reference is Cocteau Twins, maybe Dead Can Dance, TVS would have been right at home on 4AD, or at their most bleak and drone-y on Cold Meat Industry. TVS is essentially a one man band, who weaves massive reverby drifts of soft sound, shimmery and dreamlike, ethereal and New Agey at times, flurries of delicate piano drift over synthesized strings, cooing vocals hover in wide open expanses of sun dappled ambience, everything is gauzy and soft around the edges, bleary eyed and blurred.
A few tracks up the ante heaviness-wise, like "For Francesca" with its buzzing synths (or could they be real guitars?), growling demonic vox, lots of distortion and crumbling rumbles, grit and interference, all draped over a soaring chunk of stately neo-classical, or the cinematic drift of "A Godless Serene", replete with the sound of water and wind, field recordings layered beneath quivering strings and mournful melodies. The disc closes with the 13 minute "One Last Fatal Suite", beginning as another delicate crystalline blur, vocals indistinct and wordless, piano, simple and pointillist, eventually joined by strange electronic specters, high end streaks, grinding bits of crunch, static, hiss, building to a haunting caterwaul before drifting away completely. Beautiful and haunting, definitely for the 4AD inclined, and fans of neo-classical dark ambience. Maybe not heavy enough for some of the Paradigms faithful, but quite pretty nonetheless.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a white dvd style case, with a full color cover and printed black and white insert.
Words can't describe how fuckin' happy we are to see this! Finally, The VSS's long out of print (and pretty hard to track down even when it was in print!) 1997 album Nervous Circuits has been remastered and reissued... and how! The new edition is bursting at the seams in sound and visuals with tons of bonus historical documentation packed on the cd and dvd!
The VSS = a short-lived yet incredibly influential and genre defining band from Southern California / Colorado in the mid-90s.
The VSS = Josh Hughes' deeply textured apocalyptic air-raid guitars, Andy Rothbard's lithe double fisting of snaking bass guitar and Juno 60 synthesizer, Dave Clifford's fevered muscular drumming, and Sonny Kay's clenched spewed vocals delivering cryptic wordplay and caustic socio-politically charged lyrics (mind you, due to his impassioned expulsionary singing style they're pretty unintelligible, you'll need to refer to the lyric sheet!).
The members of The VSS surfaced from the ashes of legendary post-punk band Angel Hair, burned incredibly hot and bright for only a couple years, and then later went on to other mighty bands Slaves, Pleasure Forever, Year Future, Rabbits, Red Sparowes and solo projects (Andrew Douglas Rothbard!) and an independent record label (Gold Standard Laboratories).
These days on paper, the marriage of post-punk, hardcore, synth-wave, electronic rock and metal is nothing short of commonplace. It's become a hip lifestyle genre, but this wasn't the case back then. And even so, this album still sounds fresh and immediate eleven years after its original release! Seeming at once wild and untethered and totally in control, it's a remarkably composed aural assault with plenty of quick shifts in mood, atmosphere and tempo that still stands head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.
The dvd offers what criminally few were able to witness in person back in the day... a young band who absolutely slayed in the live setting! There's nine song clips from various stops on their '97 U.S. tour as well as three sets in Brooklyn (six songs), Boulder (seven songs) and Berkeley (four songs). Be forewarned though, the quality of a lot of the footage is pretty poor -- having been culled from many fans' handheld home camcorder vhs tapes -- but our eyes have become accustomed to this sort of grainy, shaky stew a la murky cellphone-shot YouTube clips. Nevertheless a welcome electrically charged video document.
Yeah, definitely recommended!
