It's another outing from the reunited Absolut Null Punkt, the Japanese industrial-noise-electronic-improv duo of Seijiro Murayama (ex-Fushitsusha years and years ago), and KK Null of Zeni Geva fame. It's kinda weird that there's been so many (3) ANP albums released in the past couple of years and so few (0) new ZG. Too bad, we'd like some ZG too. But the ANP stuff is cool if you're in the mood for even noisier, less conventionally rockin' fare. It's not the riff-bludgeoning metallic math-rock heaviosity of the Zeni Geva juggernaut, it's more like Null's experimental solo efforts, the extreme electronics of those in live collision with chaotic pipe-fighting percussion... a distorted, dramatic deathmatch of drum pummel, electric pulses, distant cries, shrieking guitar and garbled FX. It's very three dimensional, noises coming from all directions, up close and far away. A very active and abstract soundscape. You get the idea that if you were to somehow enter into it, to dare to step on stage with ANP, you'd be running and dodging for cover, it'd be like being trapped on some hellish battlefield with artillery barrages and sniper fire all around. So much better to listen from the safety of your earphones (though that's not safe either if you turn it up too much!). Yet for all the darkness and mayhem, the three long tracks here (1 hour total) all have distinct identity and structure. There's memorable moments, in the way of zaps and beats. If you drew a line at Merzbow, this would be to the 'music' side of that line, maybe, with many fierce forays into the nomansland of noise.
It's taken 6 years, but finally, one of our favorite Acid Mothers Temple records is available again, with fancy new artwork and lots of extra music!
Originally released as the first (and only) installment in tUMULt's aborted picture disc series, 41st Century Splendid Man still ranks as one of AMT's finest moments as far as we're concerned. This stuff comes from WAY before these Japanese avant-hippy heroes began pumping out a brand new release every few weeks. When this psychbomb dropped, these guys were still cloaked in mystery, some fucked up weirdo psychrock commune whose sound was as mysterious and indescribable as whatever strange corner of the universe these guys and gals called home.
The sound is epic and tripped out and druggy, blown out and blissfully psychedelic, AMT at their absolute prime, and one of the tracks features special guest star Tatsuya Yoshida of the Ruins! The original was three extended tracks (35 + minutes) of ultra divine transcendental psych-drone. "41st Century Splendid Man" has to be the most beautiful track AMT have ever recorded. Uncharacteristically tranquil and captivatingly beautiful. Droning, shimmering chimes coalesce into some sort of cosmic Ur-drone, punctuated by simple caveman thuds and epic swooshes, resulting in a grand and gorgeous ambience! The other two tracks from the original 12", "Genesis Of Humanity" and "Dalai Gama", are almost like a single track separated into two movements. The first sees AMT back on more familiar ground, with swooping synths and freak out guitar. A stumbling kosmic krautrock, with motorik rhythms and free guitar, amidst a swampy wash of rumbling low end and squealing synths. The track erupts into bubbling atonal out-rock exploration splattered with mad scientist synthesisers as the whole thing slowly mutates into 'cosmic slop' of the nth degree, becoming gradually free-er and free-er. The second 'movement' is all slithery free jazz with bubbling cauldrons of synth sputter, wild keyboards and Can-like rhythms until the whole thing gets all dreamy, eventually blissing out completely.
For this cd reissue, from Brazilian label Essence, there are two extra tracks tacked on that perfectly compliment the three originals. The cd opener, "Ruck Zuck", is an unhinged Hawkwind style heart of the sun, black hole freaked out space jam, a motorik krautrock groove, buried in FX and clouds of shimmer and skree, strange squealing vocals, streaks of feedback and dense swaths of whir and bloop and bleep.
The disc closes with the bizarrely titled "Hell Eskimo Or Polyhedral Mu", a 14 plus minute abstract ambient epic, that twists and contorts, slithers and creeps, beginning as a full on brain melting drug jam eventually transforming into a blissy jazzy post rocky slither that floats hypnotically through glistening clouds of glimmer and shimmer and sparkle, a super nova dappled interstellar drift that sounds a bit like a more damaged psychedelic Necks. Fuck yeah.
Super gorgeous deluxe packaging, a full color Stoughton style paste on gatefold, with the original cover art subtly altered on the cover (sorry, no naked ladies) and some awesome psychedelic liner notes on the inside. And just to avoid any collector confusion, the notes mention the original 41st AMT being a 10", but as mentioned above it was in fact a picture disc 12"! This cd reissue, while not nearly as limited as the 12", is still limited, this time to only 1000 COPIES!
WAY WAY WAY recommended!!
*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert*
Heck, Acid Mothers Temple overload! Essence Music of Brazil has brought us not one but TWO Acid Mothers Temple discs this week: the expanded reissue of 41st Century Splendid Man originally released as a picture disc on Andee's tUMULt label, and also this brand new album. Well AMT fans are always ready for more product, aren't they? Better be! 'Cause the cosmic vibes of which Makoto Kawabata and friends are but the earthly vessels for are not waiting for you to pay off those student loans or get that raise... No, they mean to be heard NOW and probably again next week, even if their devotees need to start selling their plasma to keep up with AMT's releases. If you have to choose between paying the rent and picking up another AMT cd like this one, we're confident you'll make the right choice. And if it makes you feel any better, this IS a pretty great AMT album! Great song titles too, and we're not being sarcastic: "Na Na Hey Hey From The Cosmic Inferno", "Nipples In The Dream Woods", and "Golem Rock" are but three of 'em. These Japanese neo-kraut psychedelic voyagers offer up the jams to go with such titles, that's for sure. If AMT's Electric Heavyland is one of your faves, this ought to be right up your acid rock alley.
The disc opens with the wild, wah-wahed guitar excess of "Ecstasy In Hell" and really never lets up, pounding on through the nearly 19-minute "Nipples...", spacey fx in full effect. A darkly droned-out detour is however taken on the next 17 minute track, "Omen Amen", kind of a ceremonial-sounding, folky trance ritual, followed for the next 13 minutes by the riff-repetition of "Dark Side Of The Apocalypse", sounding something like a hypothetical Hawkwind / Les Rallizes Denudes summit. That brings us to "Golem Rock", a garagey number that cranks up the FUZZ big time. And then "Na Na Hey Hey..." provides a surprisingly quiet, spaced-out, and sorta silly coda to the whole thing, with electronically effected voices chanting you know what...
And this gets extra bonus points for the awesome packaging, the miniature LP-styled gatefold sleeve opening up to reveal a rad pop-up book style gimmick inside!
One of our favorite purveyors of what we've taken to calling FLOORcore (short for crouched-on-the-floor-core), the constantly evolving genre, which is marked by live shows featuring performers on their knees, surrounded by a kitchen junk drawer's worth of equipment, coaxing all sorts of noises from a battered assemblage of broken effects pedals, old synths, and homemade noisemaking devices.
Acre tends to weave all of his random noisemakers into gorgeous undulating walls of slow shifting drone, and on this two track 7", he does just that, but in dramatically different ways.
The A side is a creeping, thick, gnarled, grinding, looped, hypnotic, crumbling and superdistorted glacial riff, not sure if it's guitar or synth, but either way it sounds like sonic tar, it oozes and shifts and grinds and creeps, a thick black mass, a deep filthy doom-ed drone. It's the kind of sound we could listen to forever. Pretty sure that if we had this on cd, we'd just set it to repeat and listen to nothing else for a month!
The flipside is a dense slab of that sort of vacuum cleaner / hair dryer high end drone, upper register tones drifting in a field of ringing feedback and blurred white noise. The intensity builds and builds as if one at a time, some new appliance was being added to the mix, like a department store gone haywire, the result though is a very dreamy Sunroof!-like mighty high end ur-drone. Super minimal but with close listening strangely ultra maximal, with all sorts of stuff going on within the layered skree.
Packaged in cool white on yellow hand screened sleeves. Pressed on thick white vinyl with yellow labels, and of course VERY VERY LIMITED, ONLY 300 COPIES...
Latest in Table Of The Elements new one sided etched 12" series of modern guitar music, and certainly a collection of modern guitar music would not be complete with long time aQ fave Oren Ambarchi. Whose mastery of the guitar seems to know no bounds, teaming up with the Southern Lord stable for various exercises in extreme heaviness, but just as often crafting delicate dreamscapes of hushed strum and blurred riffing. His solo records tend toward the latter, but this piece is something else all together.
Still essentially a dronescape, A Final Kiss is rife with sonic activity, so much so that in lesser hands it would be more of a mess, a sort of pretty-ish noise record, but Ambarchi, takes all manner of buzz and glitch, of scrape and hum, and weaves it into a strangely lyrical arrangement. The core of the piece is a thick, undulating low end drone, a muted Niblockian shimmer, that seems not to change so much as shift, reflecting different colors and sounds depending on the angle. Over this nearly constant thrum, exist a veritable universe of strange sounds, streaks of feedback, cricket like electronic chitter, moaning throbbing swells of guitar rumble, brief blurs of warm soft focus fuzz, layers of crumbling distortion, all of the various elements constantly shifting and blossoming, collapsing and then blooming again, creating a super organic flow, another instance of leaving the instruments on the stage, guitars against amps. amps cranked, although here it seems the instruments have come to life, and we are glimpsing their secret lives, as the communicate musically, telling some sort of story, exchanging mysterious messages, which while indecipherable to human ears, still manage to sound magical.
Guitardrone freaks will, well, freak! Subtly heavy, darkly drone-y, slightly noisy, rich and dense and textural. Really gorgeous. And totally recommended.
Pressed on swirled turquoise vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass etching, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!
Now available on vinyl!
From his work with Deerhunter to his excellent solo project Atlas Sound to other various artistic projects, Bradford Cox has some serious creative consistency. It seems like part of that reliability is based on the fact that all of his work seems to be approaching the same types of emotions from slightly different angles. That's not to say the sonic spectrum he occupies is not varied, but there is the feeling that everything operates based on the same type of tension. Well, Atlas Sound's Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel is no different. In Deerhunter, the more upbeat '60s influenced indie pop and the glistening analog landscapes seem more distant from each other. Here, Cox seems to have fused the two into a more singular package, in a good way. All of the songs are in a similar range, but the presentation of various melodies is interesting enough for everything to stand alone. Ah, let's see, maybe those hungry for specific band comparisons can take faith in an impressive list. For instance: Jesus and Mary Chain, Seefeel, Ulrich Schnauss, Caribou, and ... White Rainbow and Valet, which is interesting. Why? Well, because Adam Forkner of White Rainbow and Honey Owens of Valet are two members of the Atlas Sound live band. Alongside the crew are also Brian Foote of Nudge (along with Ms. Owens), and someone we just don't know named Stephanie Macksey. But in company like that, we're sure she's done great stuff too! If you, like us, occasionally need to embark upon an interstellar journey into emotions both inspirational and bleak, look no further, here's your guide. Recommended.
Brand new 7" from one of our favorite soundmakers, Japan's Aube, whose modus operandi involves utilizing a single sound source for each record. In the past he's used water, fire, even pages being torn from a bible!
This time it's not so easy to discern what the source material is. Not that it is really normally. But often the title or the artwork will hint at it, but here it's not so clear. A field of holes on a purple and red background. A drain? It sure sounds like that could be it, as the music is a muted burbling, a distant gurgle smeared into something softly percussive, a haunting underwater field of percolations and glitchy hum, going from barely there whisper to intense frenzy, to then what sounds like an airplane passing through the sky way off in the distance.
A bit of research reveals that the source material here is actually some vintage synth, but even as obvious as that sounds, in the world of Aube it sounds more like processed field recordings of a drain than an actual synthesizer!
The flipside betrays the sound source a bit more, as after a hushed start, the track transforms into a glitched out tangle of analog electronics, squiggly and chaotic, a flurry of bleeps and bloops and buzzes, glitch and hum, but all of that quickly fades into something much more tranquil, a warm static drone, bathed in an electronic rainfall, the preceding squall relegated to a place off in the distance, like sitting on an old rickety porch and watching a lighting storm dance in the sky. Nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, we only have a handful. Pressed on clear vinyl in full color sleeves...
We're not all that sure who Banks Bailey or Ian Holloway are, but Darren Tate has long proved to be a reliable source for long-form dronemusik thanks to his previous collaboration with Andrew Chalk as Ora and his ongoing work with Colin Potter in Monos. Not to mention the multitude of self-released cd-rs under his own name. Tate's aesthetic for sculpted drones through field recordings, pedal manipulation, and occluded processing is central to Summerland, as it has been noted that Tate proved the treated guitar drones with Bailey contributing some of the field recordings and Holloway reconfiguring everything at the end. Thick shadowy tones hover ominously alongside fluctuations of tactile crackle, sounding more like some of the earlier Ora recordings than anything that Tate has produced recently. Elsewhere, tinstrung guitars splutter with atonal resonance, which stretch, elongate, and blur into drifting dark ambience.
Summerland is a limited production. There are only 150 copies of these in existence, and Summerland is already out of print at the two labels who released this.
While Beck's last album, The Information wasn't all that bad, it sure didn't leave much of a lasting impression. Which broke a streak of very memorable and eclectic releases from the all-grown-up-now wonder-kid from LA.
With Modern Guilt he's enlisted the services of Danger Mouse for production duties and has crafted a really solid West Coast pop record. We can't help but be reminded of Spoon, not only because of the cover art, but also some of the hooks and melodies in many of the songs are definite Spponisms. But ultimately this sounds like a really solid Beck record without any kitsch but with lots of catchy and earnest songs throughout. Very nice.
Easily one of our favorite magazines, published by McSweeney's of course, super esoteric, funny, clever, well researched, beautifully written, always with cover art by Charles Burns(!), covering music, art, politics, culture and anything else that strikes their fancy. As much as we love and try to read every issue, we look forward to the special music issue every year the most, but this time maybe more than usual.
That's 'cause this time around, there's lots of black metal. First, an essay on American black metal from aQ pal and Pitchfork contributor Brandon Stosuy, maybe to eventually be expanded into a book. And then an oral history of US black metal featuring folks from Krieg, Inquisition, Vrolok, Cult Of Daath, Nachtmystium, Wrath Of The Weak, Brown Jenkins, Negative Plane, Velvet Cacoon, Averse Sefira and loads of others, as well as our very own Andee, whose answers are much longer, funnier, and less grim than his blackened brethren (heck he even admits to still loving the first Cradle Of Filth record!). Later on there's an epic and exhaustive piece on the mysterious and mercurial Souled American, their history, and their long in the works new album. As if that weren't already enough, there's three essays on jazz from author Haruki Murakumi, Rick Moody on spending two weeks at music camp, an interview with Alan Bishop (of Sublime Frequencies/Sun City Girls fame), an interview with Ian MacKaye, an interview with Irma Thomas, a defense of '70s progsters Gentle Giant, and an advice column featuring guidance from your favorite Canadian superstars: the Weakerthans, Final Fantasy, The New Pornographers, Hot Hot Heat, Barenaked Ladies, Tegan And Sara. Phew. But that's not all. This issue also comes with a cd, featuring tracks from Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Madlib, Gang Gang Dance, Aceyalone, Lucky Dragons and more. As well as the various musics from around the world that influenced their music. And finally a cool creepy diecut cover, with Irma Thomas' mouth cut out, her teeth printed on the cd, showing through the hole in the cover. Wow. We love the Believer.
"I never expected it to be, like, a big phenomenon." So sayeth Archie Bell about his 1968 mega-hit, "Tighten Up," a buoyant funk exercise that managed to accomplish the one thing that eluded James Brown: a #1 hit on the pop chart. "Tighten Up," the song, started out as a B-side but it found such favor with DJs that it caused Atlantic to move it to the A-side (backing it with "Tighten Up pt. 2") for a subsequent pressing. When the song pushed its way to the top position, Bell's label found themselves in the position of having to rush out a record for a group whose front man was currently stationed with the US Armed Forces in Germany. The result? A record that, despite the fact that Drell doesn't sing on a number of tracks, blends covers and originals into an appealing mix of upbeat funk, sweet soul ballads, and southern R&B. This is a breezy, uplifting collection of songs that sounds more like a well put together mix tape than it does like a cohesive record by a single band, and as far as we're concerned that's no knock against the Drells. In fact, this is a perfect record for kicking back on a lazy summer afternoon, so we highly recommend you pick it up and do just that!
After listing and loving and shouting from the hilltops about Caetano Veloso's, Gal Costa's and Gilberto Gil's self-titled 1969 records, we got another to add to the bunch, this stunner from Jorge Ben. Ben was more sympatico with Tropicalia than a full fledged member but he was held in high esteem by all involved including Rogerio Duprat who produced this record (And all the others mentioned above!). Unlike the Tropicalistas, he never turned his back on the traditions of samba, instead infusing it with soul, psychedelia and funk rhythms (provided by Trio Mocoto, the top shelf Brazillian rhythm section). The original version of "Pais Tropical" which was covered by Gal Costa, appears here, and the Theremin that introduces "Descobri Que Eu Sou Um Ajo" puts that track on par with Os Mutantes' best material. A beautiful revolutionary jam that will make your summer even more worthwhile!
There's a certain kind of electronic music we used to love that seems to have gone M.I.A. lately. That kind of off kilter abstract experimentalism that seemed to be an offshoot of IDM, like IDM's deformed younger sibling that was kept locked up in the basement, thankfully with a full complement of recording gear and electronics. Lesser was one of our favorites. And at times, so too were Blectum From Blechdom. A motley crew who sort of skirted the 'mainstream' creating their own sound, their own scene, taking the electronic music of the day and twisting it all up. While Lesser seemed to do no wrong, or if he did wrong, it was so gloriously wrong it was right, BfB were a bit more hit and miss. The two personalities pulling in two distinctly different directions. And to be honest, we much preferred Blevin's trajectory to Kevin's. As later records demonstrated, Kevin leaned more toward the bratty and puerile, a much more Chicks On Speed vibe, mixing Karaoke with damaged versions of commercial pop, while Blevin (aka Bevin) was much more academic, and experimental, with an ear for texture and rhythm not that far removed from her hubby Lesser.�
Apparently the two have reunited and are once again a going concern, but more immediately, Blevin has finally released a new solo record, the first in 4 years, and it's pretty damn great. And actually, the fact that the opening track is a cover of a song by the mysterious Reverend Fred Lane just blows our minds. We've been trying to track Lane down to reissue his long out of print Shimmy Disc records, some of the most twisted genius EVER. And BB's version is equally twisted, but in a whole different way. Lots of rhythmic skitter, thick throbbing bass, she sings too but here voice is twisted and processed into strange stutters and streaks, the whole thing has a weirdly prog feel, a bit like a damaged Squarepusher covering some obscure lost seventies prog rarity, but all chopped up and reassembled. It definitely doesn't sound that much like the original, but the concept! And the sound. Fucking awesome. The rest of the record holds up pretty well considering there are no more Fred Lane covers, "Cygnet" with its snippets of soaring strings layered over dark meandering beats and ominous whirring ambience, "Foyer Fire", a glitchy, hiss, static flecked 8-bit carnival jam, each track is totally unique but manages to link to the sounds before and after seamlessly, from chaotic cut and paste, to woozy backwards warble, to hiccupping warbly fractured jungle, to blissed out smears of skitter and flutter, reminding us quite a bit of a more subdued (slightly) and�less caffeinated Stock, Hausen And Walkman.�
The record finishes off with the truly haunting closer "Avian Enamel", with its chopped and processed harmonies, muted rhythmic thump, mysterious voices, weirdly groovy beats, all peppered with little flurries of glitch and crackle, buried samples, woozy loops, everything smoothed out into a drone-y beatscape both moody and mesmerizing. A fine return for sure. Now if we can just tempt Lesser out of hiding...
Back in the nineties, for a while there, it was all about No Depression. Or Alt-country, or perhaps the worst genre identifier ever, Y'alternative. Painful to even type. Whatever you call it, modern country folks bands were everywhere, born of a love of punk rock, and classic country, blue grass and indie rock. THE No Depression band was of course Uncle Tupelo, who would go on to spawn Wilco and Son Volt, but back in the day, Uncle Tupelo were the shit, heavy and super rocking, raucous and wild, but always with plenty of twang and able to strip down to straight bluegrass at the drop of a hat. Their album No Depression is where the genre got its name (and that record of course was named for the Carter Family song), and Uncle Tupelo and their record, and the legion of bands that followed in their wake even inspired a magazine covering all the various No Depression bands. Richard Buckner, Whiskeytown (featuring Ryan Adams), Freakwater, Old 97's, Bad Livers, Jayhawks, Waco Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys, Pernice Brothers, Robbie Fulks, �Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Handsome Family, the Sadies, Tarnation, Be Good Tanyas, Split Lip Rayfield... We could go on and on, many of those bands continue to play today, a bunch broke up but various members went on to record on their own. Then there was Blue Mountain, a band that had brief flirtations with success, but seemed to continually hover just shy of the mainstream, which is a huge shame, as they were (and are, as far as we know) just as good as any of those other bands, if not better.�
Fronted by the husband and wife duo of Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt, Blue Mountain hewed sonically close to the No Depression blueprint created by Uncle Tupelo, that killer mix of crunchy guitars and classic twang, but where UT came from a much more punk rock background, Blue Mountain seemed to be much more purebred country. Hudson and Stirratt's vocals sounded perfect together, amazing harmonies, crunchy guitars, incredible hooks. Blue Mountain's first proper record, 1995's Dog Days, still ranks as one of the best record of the whole No Depression era. Some of the songs were dark and brooding and heavy, others were twangy and acoustic, folky and almost straight bluegrass, most were a mix of the two. But like always it was all about the songs, and the songs here are fantastic, totally catchy and timeless, and on top of the killer songs, Hudson has one of the best rock voices since Jay Farrar. Listen to the sound samples. If you dig Uncle Tupelo and any of the above mentioned bands, odds are you're gonna dig this. Definitely sounds as good as it did in 1995.�
The reissue tacks on a whole mess of bonus tracks, new liner notes, extra photos, and comes housed in a slipcase.
Gui Boratto's full length Chromophobia came at such a perfect time. For a while we had been a bit unimpressed with the current state of electronica when it showed up. Along with records by The Field, Lindstrom and Burial, Chromophobia reminded us that there was in fact a renaissance of creative and rewarding electronica being created in a myriad of styles. But no doubt about it Chromophobia has become a unanimous AQ favorite, a record that we listen to in the store all the time. The fact that Boratto has a background in architecture sorta makes sense with all the in the amazing shapes and colors that his sounds and songs suggest. Teamed up with Martin Eyerer on this 12", the duo have a firm grasp on crafting unforgettable melodies within the music they make. Much more rich and bold than most minimal tech-house yet sharing nice parts of that sensibility. Nice to see the Brazilian Boratto and German Eyerer joining forces to show that a thread of forward minded electronic music runs across the globe.
Here's a heavy, hairy hippie band from the late '60s, early '70s British blues/psych/festival scene whom we've never really written about before, but since some cds of their albums just got a domestic reissue, we ought to mention 'em, starting with Wasa Wasa. You could maybe call the Edgar Broughton Band "proto-metal", or maybe even "proto-punk", at least on this album, their 1969 debut, which features such ragged riff sloggers as "Evil" and "Love In The Rain". Their proto-metal never got much harder than here, although their later, less fuzzed/more folked albums are worthwhile too, on their own merits.
The first thing you'll notice about the Edgar Broughton Band are Edgar's vocals, which rasp and wail in an exaggerated, eccentric backwoodsy way, often reminding us of Captain Beefheart, or sometimes a blend of Beefheart and Iggy from the Stooges (check out lead off track "Death Of An Electric Citizen", amongst others, for that). He's great at maniacal ranting too, as on this album's lysergic, 14 minute finale, "Dawn Crept Away". Combined with the heavyish, bluesy guitarwork and general pungent atmosphere n' attitude of radical longhaired freakdom, this is a disc that should appeal to fans of bands like the Groundhogs, Pink Fairies, and Hawkwind, comrades all. Arthur Brown's Crazy World and/or Kingdom Come too. Maybe even the Doors and the 13th Floor Elevators as well.
Definitely a tripped out classic of the era. You surely oughta pick this up before you get that Endless Boogie album we listed last time.
Includes 5 previously unreleased bonus tracks, including a nine minute "Untitled Freak Out"...
Hard to believe it's been 5 years since the last Bug full length. We were so obsessed with Pressure, it was exactly what we had been dreaming of, a disc of dancehall, but supercharged, the beats bigger, the toasting more tongue twisting and agile, the flows sick sick sick, the loops and music darker and more fucked up. Makes sense when you have a look at Kevin "The Bug" Martin's resume, having recorded as God, Ice, Techno Animal and Curse Of The Golden Vampire, so imagine classic dancehall filtered through all that cracked and noisy business. Fucking mind blowing. And it's not like Martin has been doing nothing since Pressure. There's been a steady flow of ep's and 12"s, singles and one-offs, but we were long overdue for another batch of damaged fractured fucked up and funky dancehall, and finally, here it is!
And it's so so good. Not quite as hard as Pressure, much more musical, but somehow all the better for it. The beats are still bangin', and the vocalists Martin has gathered are pretty top shelf: Tippa Irie, Ricky Ranking, Flowdan, Killa P, Warrior Queen, Spaceape and Roger Robinson. All of 'em on fire, and the tracks, total dancefloor destroyers, groovy, funky, a wild dancehall mashup, that stuttery beat in all its various permutations, simple looped Double Dutch repetition, skittery almost jungle, murky stripped down dubstep, pounding buzzing gabbery crunch, rubbery woozy shuffle, groovy late night minimal throb and several other variations.�
It's hard to pick favorites, all the tracks are pretty amazing, although we're pretty partial to the songs featuring Ricky Ranking, the super hooky "Murder We", with it's growled buzzing verses, but then an insanely catchy chorus, with gorgeous vocals and lazer gun style FX, then there's the closer "Judgement" a sort of slow jam, but so washed out and fuzzy, menacing and sinister, complete with soulful breakdowns, which shift effortlessly into the growly buzz drenched verses (stick around too, after a few minutes of silence, there's a really beautiful outro). The Warrior Queen tracks are awesome too, especially "Poison Dart" with its school yard flow and rib cage rattling synth buzz, unfurling a weirdly catchy melody beneath pounding simple rhythms and WQ's wicked flow. "Fuckaz" with Spaceape is a pulsing throbbing groove, the vocals a sing songy flow, not nearly as murky and mean sounding as his collabs with Kode 9, and the opener "Angry" with Tippa Irie, is a super bouncy ragga jam, the beat so simple but so infectious, and the vocals again raspy and raw, perfectly balancing the wild bounce beneath. Hard to know what else to say. We're such suckers for dancehall, especially when it gets revved up a bit. Here's hoping we don't have to wait another 5 years.
The violin is probably the last instrument you think of when you think of underground cd-r noise drone music. Okay, maybe not the last, but it's pretty far down the list for sure. Yet Mr. C. Spencer Yeh has forged a career with his trusty violin, creating a sizable body of work, ranging from full on blown out noise assault, to breathless delicate beauty, to propulsive krautrock infused space rock, and various mixes of all three. We even Record Of The Week-ed his Operator Dead album a while back. But where that record was more of a group effort, this latest disc, Challenger, finds Yeh returning to his solo roots, getting a minimal amount of assistance on just a couple of tracks, but handling the bulk of the soundmaking himself. And while there is no list of instrumentation, we have to assume that violin is not the only instrument present. NOBODY is that good. But even so, Yeh is really really good, and with a violin and whatever else he has in his soundmaking arsenal, he has once again conceived something of great beauty and import, a collection of sounds, of SONGS, an album that is cohesive yet varied, personal and introspective, yet somehow epic and expansive. If anything, this new disc finds Yeh moving his BSC into the rarefied world of spaced out Krautrock. Neu!, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, A.R. & The Machines, Brian Eno. Much in the same way aQ faves Expo '70, channel seventies space kraut, so does Yeh, but where Expo '70 create thick heavy spaced out dronescapes, the sounds on Challenger are much more melodic, and drifty, dreamy and mesmerizing. There is plenty of noise to be found, but it's doled out sparingly, melodies are sometimes halo-ed in buzz, or delicate rhythms wreathed in feedback, but it's always muted and minimal, allowing the melody and arrangement to shine, and shine they do, each track, a gorgeously repetitive stretch of space-y abstract groove, looped, but slowly shifting and changing shape, propulsive but subtly so.
The opening two track salvo is some of the most blissfully beautiful soft noise we've heard. In fact, even calling it noise might be doing it a disservice. The opener is a slow burning slab of minimal murmur, laced with soft tinkling chimes, an abstract ghostly melody over a softly pulsing drone, eventually augmented by some shimmery hiss and random sampled ambience, but instead of distracting, these sonic events, cars driving past, wind, tape hiss, they only add texture to the glimmering drift beneath.
The second track begins with a riff (played on a violin?) that is quickly wrapped up in corrosive swaths of warbly effected buzz, the two elements twisting around one another, creating a strange churning soundscape of stretched out space rock riffage and crumbling distorted drone, that manages to be absolutely riveting.
The next few tracks offer up some more experimental fare, brief chunks of ambient weirdness, one of plastic cup percussion, heavily reverbed, in a wide open stretch of distant whir and tangled electronics, another a symphony of processed vocals, looped and chopped into a hiccupping stuttering soundscape, eventually joined by soft shimmery chords and warm chordal buzz, yet another a collection of crinkles and crackles, like someone stepping on bubble wrap, balling up wrapping paper and a campfire, all draped over the sounds of children laughing and playing.
All before returning to the blissed out dronedrift of the opening few tracks. Reverbed jaw harp floats in a field of static hum and twinkling fragmented melody, deep tones are woven into gentle lilting melodies, symphonic snippets are looped and assembled into a slow building drone, underpinned by fuzzy droney melodies, totally stirring and epic, haunting and mysterious, a bit of Jeck mixed in with BSC's usual glorious buzz, maybe one of the most moving (and possibly one of the best) tracks we've ever heard from Yeh and his 'Core. The final track is an Avarus like coda, sheets of hiss like rainfall (might very well be), bits of percussive chime and clank, plenty of hiss and whir, over the top, a shimmering high end electric melody, that drifts and stutters dreamily, like some alien lullaby.
Absolutely stunning. And thus, entirely and unequivocally recommended.
We like the name this British doom metal band picked for themselves, it's making references to both ancient history and supernatural phenomena, and more importantly, sets one up for a story to be told... at least we're curious about who the centurion was and why they're now haunting the place. This, the band's second album for the doom-centric Swedish label I Hate Records (whose records we definitely -don't- hate, as recently reviewed and recommended offerings from the likes of Jex Thoth and Fall of the Idols should attest) doesn't answer those questions, but it does sound in keeping with the general spooky concept, though it's not as 'old school' doom as you might expect. With lurching riffs, rhythms like a Roman legion on the march, cathartic screams (a bit Neurosis some of this), it's heavy and doomy all right. It rages more than it plods, the pace here often fairly fast and thrashy, the vocals often anguished and angry.
Previously (in our review of their A Sign Of Thing To Come debut a few years back) we'd said that this band sounds a bit like a weird Cathedral and Celtic Frost hybrid. Now we'd say they've got a lot more noisecore in their doom. Tracks like "In Defiance", for instance, sound like Isis with a more classically metal approach to melody (and guitar leads) as well as a dose of hardcore brutality. Or we could say that this band has more in common with the likes of Village Of Dead Roads, Mouth of the Architect, and Today Is The Day than it does, say, Revered Bizarre or Gates Of Slumber.
Finally, after listing Continuum Volume TWO, way back in August of 2007, we've managed to get our hands on some copies of the elusive Volume 1 (newly repressed by Soleilmoon). The various volumes constitute the ongoing collaboration between Dirk Serries, of Fear Falls Burning, and Steven Wilson, of Bass Communion. A perfect low end dronescape match for sure, but whereas the second volume explored sounds at the heavier end of the spectrum, skirting the sound world of folks like SUNNO))), the music here is much more ethereal and ephemeral. Glistening and glimmering more than creeping and crawling. Still suitably dark and mysterious and in some places a bit heavy, but much more aligned with the sort of ambient cd-r folks we tend to dig, who craft long slow moving expanses of hushed whir and swirling blurred drift.�
Three loooooong tracks. The first features extended tones, soft shimmery high end streaks, wreathed in what sound like chimes, the tinkle of guitar strings plucked above the neck, a �sparkling constellation of starry sparkle, spread out into a gauzy layer over lonely piano plinks, and a deep, fuzzy soft focus thrum. The second is a bit more gritty. A swirling cloud of hiss and hum surrounds the dreamy melodic drift beneath. The sounds building to an almost industrial din (but even then still soft and fuzzy) before slipping back into a murky, whispered outro. The final track, another 20 minute epic, is the darkest of the bunch, a dark fog of crumbling rumble slithers above a landscape of hushed murmur, and buried melodies, a murky burbling sonic cauldron, lit by a black sun and cloaked in shadow, eventually blossoming into something else entirely, a soaring melody, wreathed in a cloud of glitch and buzz, hauntingly majestic, a sun dappled coda to an otherwise fairly dark sonic journey, but wait, the sun is soon snuffed out, the darkness returns, as the record closes with several minutes of abject industrial buzz, a creeping shadowy black drone winding it's way slowly into the blackened depths.�
Gorgeous packaging, much like the second volume. Housed in an oversized full color dvd style digipak, with 4 full color post card inserts.�
Germany's Daturah return with a second album of magnificently, majestically moody post-rock. As before, it's mostly instrumental, with just some spoken voice samples (Godspeed style) buried in the mix, occasionally punctuating the sweep of Daturah's spacey songs. Mostly it's repetitiously reminiscent of Mogwai and Isis and Sigur Ros and Pelican and the like, with five long songs (nine and a half to thirteen plus minutes) going on and on, all very sad and pretty. The guitars swell and chime, drums metronomically keeping time, and as we mentioned time does pass, during which Daturah's quiet parts yearn always for the crush to come, when they heavy it up - sometimes almost achieving a black metal buzz (burz?), or hint of one, that could make you think you were listening to part of a recent Katatonia album for a moment or two. Atmospheric and/or heavy, and always melodically, melancholically tremulous, Daturah slowly dive in and out of the loud-soft dynamics thing with grace and gravitas, if not utter originality. Nice, though.
Perhaps more so than the revolving door project This Mortal Coil, there was no other band in the '80s that embodied the 4AD sound more so than Dead Can Dance. Their labored, heavily orchestrated songs hinged upon a dark, neo-romantic reading of medieval leitmotifs and Renaissance melody with plenty of Celtic flourishes tossed in for good measure. Firmly linked to the Dead Can Dance sound were the voices of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry - the former epitomizing an ethereal swoon counterpointed by the latter's exacting baritone. Their first album found the two Australian transplants living in London and showcasing much more of their Australian post-punk roots than on later albums. Gerrard had recorded a couple of singles with her unfortunately forgotten band Microfilm, and Perry had a stint in a band called The Scavengers.
Joy Division and 154-era Wire were the springboard for much of Dead Can Dance's ideas on this album through the bass-driven post-punk songs dappled with spectral guitar work and primitive electronic underpinnings. If it weren't for the instantly recognizable twin vocals from Gerrard and Perry (the latter of whom carries the bulk of this album), Dead Can Dance's debut could be mistaken for anything that would have come out on Factory at that time. Hints of their more well-known orchestrated sound appear on this album in the form of some hammered dulcimers and tribal percussion spiralling around their songs. Altogether, it holds up surprisingly well.
On this reissue, 4AD has repackaged the album in a cardboard gatefold with a nicely cleaned up / remastered version of the album, which had always suffered from a murky sound. However, they left off the Garden Of Earthly Delights EP, which had been included on previous cd versions of this album. Whoops!
In recent years, Chicago's Kevin Drumm has unleashed an impressive cacophony through a handful of recordings of gnarled distortion and tempestuous noise. Having collaborated with the black-clad noisemonger Prurient and the power electronic technician Lasse Marhaug, having released an album for Hanson Records, and having composed a kick-ass disc called Sheer Hellish Miasma should be enough to let you know what the man is capable of. But listen closely to each of those albums, you'll find hints of glinted melody and a subtle beauty just below the surface of the chainsaw buzz. Here on Imperial Distortion, Drumm focuses entirely upon the contemplative and introspective gestures in the form of the huge longform drones similarly embraced by Eliane Radigue, Andrew Chalk, BJ Nilsen, etc. Gone are the attack, the aggression, and the noise; but the dark, the doom, and the hellishness are what remains in these icy drones. His strategy is pure hypnosis through slippery layers of elongated electronic drones and bell-tone like resonance. On first listening to disc one, the subterranean gong clatter soaked in reverberation could easily tear themselves apart into digital chaos, but Drumm molds the gritty klank into an ominous dronedirge. This softening of potentially destructive sounds becomes Drumm's modus operandi throughout the first disc, with each modulation toward excess pregnant with malcontent energy reigned in for a severely dark moodscaping. On disc two, Drumm sets up soft transmissions from controlled feedback undulate with a slow moving rhythmic pulse, which gradually doubles upon itself into a topographical drone with the all of the same-but-different patterns of wind swept sand. Here, Drumm most recalls the unnerving minimalism through refined feedback manipulation that Nurse With Wound concocted on Soliloquy For Lilith. By the end of the record, the shadow and disease which could be read into some of the tracks on the first disc dissolve into a shimmering ambience that's just damn pretty.
Let it be known, Imperial Distortion will be one of the best drone records of 2008.
Best death metal album of all time? There sure are some runners up. Morbid Angel's Covenant? Deicide's Deicide? Carcass' Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious? They're all fucking brilliant, but let's not forget Edge of Sanity's phenomenal, ground breaking, and completely bizarre third album, Spectral Sorrows from 1993. Not only does it have some of the heaviest riffs of all time, not only does it feature signature production work from the band's legendary vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/mastermind Dan Swano (also of Pan.Thy.Monium, Bloodbath, and a million other projects), and not only does it stand up as one of the least dated death metal albums ever. It can also claim to have killer prog moments and a dark wave/goth track ("Sacrificed"). Oh, also a triumphant cover of Manowar's galloping "Blood of My Enemies."
This is Edge of Sanity before their famed single track 40+ minute long epic-journey opus Crimson (1996), and way before their rad Led Zeppelin-esque swan song Cryptic (which stands in opposition to the rest of their catalog as it does NOT feature Swano). If any of those points fail to sell you on this record, it's probably not for you. But if you're like us yet haven't heard it, then you're in for a treat. For fans of death metal, black metal, or any other conceivably heavy music, you absolutely need this. Best death metal record ever? Who can say. Probably biggest-death-metal-head-at-AQ Cameron's favorite. Honestly, no possible combination of superlatives could express exactly how vital this is. Necessary. Essential. Brutal. Recommended. Do yourself a favor...
Much will be made of the strategies that Einsturzende Neubauten used in making The Jewels. Frontman Blixa Bargeld devised a series of Tarot-like cards which represented the vast collection of materials which are at Neubauten's disposal - steel, tin, zinc, wood, plastic, glass, ceramics. The entire band would then draw cards, and the compositional process would begin. The tracks tend be a bit shorter than the typical Neubauten opus, and the songs follow the recent aesthetic shifts towards quieter, controlled orchestration for their unusual materials. On a few tracks, there are hints of their formerly infernal selves, glancing back to one of the last true masterpieces Funf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala. Originally released as a subscription only download through their website; now available with a 40 minute film as a Quicktime movie and large book with lyrics and Blixa's insight into the process.
For some mistaken reason, we thought this was gonna be really noisy. Maybe 'cause it's on Hanson (home to such earhole excruciators as Wolf Eyes, Metalux, Smegma, and Hair Police just to name a few of the noisniks on the label). But we were wrong wrong wrong. Instead, this is totally calm and lovely electronic space music in the 'kosmiche' vein of '70s and '80s Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and Ashra and the like. It won't harsh your mellow at all, quite the opposite! This is bliss-out droney stuff produced by a Midwestern trio using the equation: analog synthesizers x 2 + (electric guitar + effects). Something like that. Earlier in their career (this is the cd debut after lots of limited cassette and cd-r action) they used to use only TV sets as sound sources! Glad they gave that up, as Solar Bridge wouldn't be nearly so soothing if there were, like, breaks for commercials. You'd have to Tivo it.
Seriously, though, this is a droning delight. There's just two tracks here, but they are 'side-long' ones. The 12:34 "Magic" and the 14:14 "The Quaking Mess". It's almost New Age-y (as so much indie, experimental music is turning out to be, when you think about it) but not too too New Age-y. Though nicely mesmeric, it also has a quietly creepy edge to it, and a real grinding, full physicality at higher volumes. Emeralds create waves and layers of subtle, gently pulsating electronic gurble, but not in an overly wispy way. For instance, feedback whispers and glimmers through the cracks in the drone at the start of "The Quaking Mess", which then builds into more of a dense, fuzzy drone-sheen. The kind that radiates light, and that you want to wrap around yourself and your ears like a blanket. Definitely one of our faves from Hanson thus far, noisy or not!
This mystical new collaboration from Helena Espvall of Espers and Masaki Batoh of Ghost comes beautifully packaged, adorned with elusive scribblings of various mushrooms and flora, torn out pages from the field journal of a botanist. The album sings with a pastoral nostalgia for a time when tilling the land and preparing for winter were the bread and butter of folk music. Haunting melodies recall deep rooted traditions with a modern sincerity that longs for the simplicity and innocence of rural living. Something about the album invokes the feeling of waking up at the crack of dawn to an endless horizon.
The record is evenly weighted between the two soft winded minstrels, and both have distinct stylings that are easily recognizable. Masaki's songs stand out as a bit more angular and dimly lit while Espvall's songs are distinctly lush and serene. The two make a solid team. On the album's second track, "Kristallen Den Fina", Masaki's steel stringed embellishments align perfectly with the gentle vocal whispers of Helen Espvall. "Death Letter", a melancholy Southern hymn, features Masaki on vocals while Aspvall offers serene accompaniment, long-winded orchestral swells of bellowing cello.
Together the pair sculpt a gracefully simple, traditionally arranged collection of folk songs. Highly recommended for fans of Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier, or Ghost.
Latest from aQ faves Expo '70, masters of modern krautdrone, every record another chapter in their expanding sonic history of the universe, a tale in sound, of suns and planets, of drifting in space, of galaxies expanding, of stars dying, of black holes, and endless expanses, of timelessness and infinity.
Two tracks, each a slow building epic, the first rife with deep chordal swells, simple strummed acoustic guitars, crumbling distorted leads, mournful melancholy melodies, distant streaks of feedback, abstract whir and deep minimal rumble, a gorgeous slab of outer space drone folk, like a more spaced out kraut version of Kiss The Anus, or like a new weird America Santana fused with Hawkwind at their most acoustic and blissed out. The second track is a much dronier affair, a spaced out soundscape of rumbling, buzzing, shimmering synths, layered and textured, rhythmic and hypnotic. Like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, but much darker and buzzier, but just as blissy and space-y. The sound building and building into a heaving wall of synths and guitars, various whirs and rumbles and tangled up minimal melodies, all wavering textures and timbres, eventually joined by strange outer space FX, and more pronounced funereal melodies. Some truly gorgeous spacey shit for sure.
For this cd-r, Expo '70 have teamed up with Italian drone rockers Be Invisible Now, who have a similar sound, but definitely manages to make it their own. Beginning like some Goblin Argento soundtrack, all creepy synths and swells of black ambience, delicate little spacey melodies and swooshing FX, that swirl and build, the track begins to distort and crumble, the effects becoming more agitated and intense, the whole track thickening, until drums come in, offering up a tribal framework, around which the sea of synths swirls and shimmers, a mysterious rhythmic space rock ritual, which quickly fades out, leaving the various layers of synths to slow down, to slip away, to darken and crumble, leaving just a soft, fading buzz.
The second BIN! track begins all heavy and distorted, almost like some spacier Wolf Eyes, wrapped in swirling effects, anchored by simple pounding percussion, the synths getting more intense and more buzzy, thick and blown out, the programmed rhythms growing skittery and chaotic, everything louder and more dense, more distorted, FX everywhere, the track erupting into some strange noise drenched new wave, like the soundtrack to some French new wave horror film, or some New Order remix rejected for being to noisy and fucked up and scary. Awesome.
A pretty good intercontinental space rock, krautdrone matchup for sure. Packaged in a full color eco-wallet digipak style sleeve, and of course LIMITED.
We weren't all that into Fleet Foxes when we heard this record the first time. Not sure if it was us reacting to the usual way-too-much-hype that seems to surround so many debut releases these days. Or if the music just didn't move us. So we had sort of written them off as another 'whatever' band, decent enough to carry, but not special enough for us to worry about reviewing. But then we saw them perform live, and something changed. It was a revelation. It's difficult to pinpoint what it was exactly, but they sounded amazing, lush, timeless, sort of rocking, the vocals impossibly beautiful, harmonies to die for. It might have been hearing them LOUD, it could have been the fact that they were performing in a sun dappled glade, surrounded by tress and green grassy hills, probably a little of both. Whatever it was, it opened our ears, and the beauty of Fleet Foxes was revealed to us. A lush seventies Laurel Canyon sort of countryish pop folk. Crosby, Stills and Nash are the obvious reference, maybe the Eagles too. But also mix in some Beach Boys, some Big Star, the pop element is undeniable, the sound fuzzy and sun dappled, the percussion orchestral, the arrangements grand and epic, but somehow, it all sounds so intimate and personal. Sunshiney, melancholy, dreamy, intricate steel string guitars, shuffling drums, hand claps, all just a background for the lovely vocals, a high crystal clear croon, that easily slips into a falsetto, before swooping back down again, and the harmonies, oh the harmonies, absolutely divine. So much so we sometimes find ourselves just waiting for the parts where the band pulls back leaving just the vocals, perhaps an acoustic guitar, those are the moments that make this band so fantastic. Thus returning to the record, we have a whole different take. All of the above describes the sounds within, pretty perfectly, not sure why it took seeing them play live, but for whatever reason, we're glad we did. Otherwise we would have missed out on Fleet Foxes' lush loveliness. Just listen to "White WInter Hymnal" and if you're not sold, well then, figure out a way to get these guys to set up and play for you in some field or forest, it will be well worth it.
Trauma finds long time no wave free jazz attackers the Flying Luttenbachers doing their usual brutal best to channel the spirits of Brotzmann and Ayler and Takayanagi and the like. It's primal stuff originally recorded in 2001, newly reissued on cd for those that missed it the first time, and want a taste of that intensely improv Luttenbachers phase (before their more recent forays into tech guitar mutant metal prog scifi spasms). On this disc, squealing saxophone and rumbling bass vie with the frenzied percussive pummel of bandleader Weasel Walter, the whole screaming machinegunning shebang never really letting up (the eleven tracks on this nearly 70 minute disc are aptly titled "Trauma 1" through "Trauma 11").
Go to YouTube to watch this (http://youtube.com/watch?v=PU4pVVM5wb4) brilliant video for a track from Trauma, depicting panic in the streets and the nightmarish effects of multiple nuclear blasts, for which the Luttenbacher's freeform blasting is the perfect soundtrack. The images, so scary in the '80s (they're all edited together from the TV movie The Day After, remember that?) hilariously, horrifically fit the music and vice versa. No more need be said by us, that should do the trick.
Another timeless gem from Chicago's Josephine Foster. Her third full length, This Coming Gladness is a heartfelt collection of breezy folk tunes that don't veer too far from Ms. Foster's usual stylings. Her wavering, Shirley Collins-ish voice we know and love is accompanied by Victor Herrero on lead guitar and Alex Nielson (Richard Youngs, Jandek) on drums. The two do a fine job of creating a warm, relaxed environment that perfectly envelops the voice and words of Ms. Foster. And inside on the sleeve is an awesome picture of the beautiful Ms. Foster herself, posing wearing a plastic armor breastplate, like an ancient warrior. What a charming gal.
Ben Frost was a total unknown to us until just a few months ago, when we heard his track on the recent Mary Anne Hobbs Evangeline mix cd, which was soooooo good, a huge surprise, a totally left field electronic drone jam stuck in the middle of a dubstep mix. Some of us were definitely thinking jam of the year, even though the record it was taken from had come out the year before, but holy crap, it totally stole the show, and we knew we had to hear more. So we tracked down the full length, but then, to be honest, became a little nervous before digging in, worried that we might discover that THAT track, the one we were already obsessed with and already had, might be the only good one on the record. Thankfully nothing could be further from the truth. And in fact, a few of the other tracks are now vying to knock that one out of the top spot.�
Theory Of Machines is a tough one to describe. It's electronic, but rife with strange glitches, with deep buzzing drones, blown out psych jams, mysterious murky minimal techno, all somehow woven into something totally cohesive, ultra dark and ominous, and so fucking kick ass. The record begins with the title track, the one from the Hobbs mix, but for those of you who might have missed that one, here's how we described it:
An extended slab of slow burning blurred dronemusic, that over the course of its 9 minutes builds from soft shimmer to dense crumbling Tim Hecker style smeared gauzy beauty, to thick caustic blown out soft noise, to an super distorted almost-trip-hop. The sound is immense and epic, and so gorgeous, wreathed in crackle and underpinned by buzzing downtuned lowend, streaked with soaring synths, the track's climax, all skittery beats beneath clouds of hiss and whir and crackle and fuzz is totally intense and gorgeous.�
Indeed! If lots of folks didn't already own the Hobbs mix, we would be declaring this worth owning for that track alone. But the follow up, "Stomp" is just as good. A shimmery minimal glitchscape, tons of space, swells of hissy buzz, and off kilter fractured beats, drifting in and then out, leaving long expanses of whispery hush, a blown out electric guitar, super processed, is smothered and muted into a stuttered decayed riff, struggling to let loose, the drums begin to pound, the guitar grinds out a noisy crunch, before retreating again, leaving just that soft almost techno skitter finally culminating in a super fuzz drenched industrial pound, a looped rhythm beneath that same damaged riff filtered through all sorts of static and short wave interference. It's so intense and weirdly ominous and sort of exhausting to listen to. So cinematic and fraught with tension. When the song ends you almost feel like you just crawled up from the sewers after being chased over rooftops, having the shit kicked out of you, leaping from a helicopter, saving the damsel in distress, and discovering that the city before you lay in ruins. So evocative and dramatic.�
The next track, while still dark and haunting, is a bit of a respite, a moody trawl through a glitched out low end drift, peppered with a mysterious sonar like single note high end pulse, a subtle shuffling beat hovering just below the surface, the hiss and static swirling and crunching while a distant melody floats in an expanse of soft shimmer. A quick two minute arrangement of big beats, grinding electric guitar, whirling ambient buzz offers up the record's most 'rock' moment before slipping into the final jam, which is not so much a jam as it is an extended drift, deep resonant tones, ring out, decaying ever so slowly, the various sonic ripples blending into one another, creating soft, shimmery minor key melodies, underpinned by deep pulsing bass, that you almost feel more than you hear, very tranquil and serene, eventually jazzy drums come in, melodies coalesce into something much more tight and arranged, becoming a sort of dreamy jazzy slowcore, softly dramatic, with what sounds like swoonsome strings and warm organ warble, a surprisingly dreamy and sun dappled finish to a record that is otherwise pretty caustic and dark. Which is precisely why it's so good. Totally unpredictable, a jarring mash up of rock elements all fucked up and processed, glitched out electronics, of dark brooding drone and cinematic ambience, all woven into a creepy, menacing, beautiful batch of sound.
Managed to get a handful of these SUPER LIMITED lathe cut 7"s from New Zealand noise rockers the Futurians, and it's a doozy. Already they were a sludgey, garagey, noisy, a bit damaged, freaked out and arty, some mix of Chrome, the Stooges and the Brainbombs. If anything this 7"s pushes them even further out. Adding sheets of white noise distortion, some old school Butthole Surfers style vocal processing, and a production that barely surpasses tin can and twine through dictaphone, the band churn out a super repetitive hypnotic groove, the guitars not so much riffy as chunks of static, the drums a muffled barely there throb, the two elements that hold it all together, are the buzzing low end that pulses and throbs beneath the surface, seeming to fade out completely before exploding back into motion, a blackened rumble, and the vocals, a skipping, stuttering, hiccupping high end chirp, that almost sounds more like a malfunctioning synth than an actual human voice. The result is pretty fantastic though, a fucked up garage sludge noise rock wetdream, equal parts Buttholes, Siltbreeze, Brainbombs and shitgaze.
Hand painted sleeves, clear lathe, INSANELY LIMITED. Already out of print. We have 7 or 8. Don't blink...
Originally released in 1972, Expresso 2222 was Gilberto Gil's first recording after his two year exile in London. The record opens with a truly riveting, playful, and festive flute and drum instrumental, that harkens to the ceremonial flute music of the Andes. Sadly, it's the last stylistic foray on the record into the spiritual heights of the high mountain tops, but for those uninitiated, let it be the delectable hors d'oeuvre that sends you on your hunt for more. Luckily what is to come is by far one of the greatest statements in popular Brazilian music of the '60s and '70s. When the second track rolls in, we're thrust back, deep into the midst of a more archetypical Tropicalia sound, though the movement itself was considered to be properly dead at that point. It is clear Gil is looking to Africa for inspiration more than classic American '60s rock and roll and pop, a hallmark of the Tropicalia movement. In all cases however, Gil continuously mines funky indigenous rhythms and melodies, and reinvigorates them with a contemporary urgency. Gil's vocal delivery is always vividly commanding, with plenty of flare and pomp alongside a general purity of form and intention. Gil's frantic guitar playing is a true feat to behold and always rich in craft. Anyone who hasn't spent a little time watching Gil shred in his prime on YouTube should do themselves a favor, it is a real pleasure, and frankly a gift. Gil's supporting cast is in fine form as well on this outing with Tutty Moreno providing crisp, inventive drumming and Lanny Gordin delivering a great chugging and supple bass performance. The production is not as wild or intensely psychedelic as Gil's most immediately previous records at that point in his career, generally emphasizing clarity and separation ahead of the sometimes schizophrenically boisterous psychedelia he also dabbled in. Perhaps the record's most luminous moment occurs on "Cada Macaco No Seu Galho," wherein Gil and sometime collaborator Caetano Veloso launch into a frenetic and roiling duet over one of the most gorgeously sturdy yet lyrical Latin guitar riffs ever recorded. Seriously, go there.
After all these years Al Green still has the smoothest voice in soul. With this new secular album, the Reverend Al Green teamed up with Ahmir '?uestlove' Thompson (The Roots) who helped produce the record and help gives it a very warm and tasteful feel. All of that, along with the mighty horn section of The Dapkings, helps make this a really great and classic sounding Al Green record. With Gnarls Barkley biting Green's vocal style and the onslaught of soul reissues we've all been going crazy over, it's so nice to hear one of the original soul superstars showing he's still got it. Like many of his best records, it's not about stand out singles as much as it is about an overall fluid vibe. Forty-one years after his debut, Al Green shows that he's still filled with a special kind of sensuality!
We've said it before and we'll say it again, but oh how are grindcore hearts were broken when Discordance Axis called it a day. Sure there were plenty of grind bands, but few were able to capture the magic, and conjure the sort of grind metal magic those guys could. Even the briefest songs were jammed with intricate rhythms, and incredible melodies, so impossibly fast and furious, but catchy as fuck. Various Disc Ax members went on to do other things, most notably drum god Dave Witte, but even with him behind the kit, none of the post-Disc Ax bands pulled it off in quite the same way. Until recently. Until vocalist Jon Chang joined the living, returning with his insane Japanese hyper metal outfit, Hayaino Daisuki, who melded the techgrind of DA with total over the top power metal. Seems like a bad idea, but au contraire, we hadn't heard anything that fresh, that fucked up and gloriously heavy in forever. So here we are with another of Chang's new bands, one that has been in the works seemingly since the death of DA, seeing as there was a Gridlink track on that posthumous DA collection that came out way back in 2005. Even then we were thrilled at how much Gridlink seemed to channel the sound of DA, they seemed to be THE band poised to carry on Discordance's art-grind torch, but then nothing. For three years. But now. Shit. We feel silly saying it was worth waiting three years for 11 minutes of music, but the more we listen to this the more we're convinced it actually was.�
This is mindblowing. So heavy and insanely fast, so complex and furious, more than 12 minutes would probably kill you. Or maybe not, as we've been listening to this on repeat nonstop. Beyond just being brutal and lightning fast, it's also insanely dynamic, and so catchy, little squalls of grinding metallic mayhem offer up unlikely harmonies, killer hooks, some Maidenish guitar parts, Chang's vocals a hysterical banshee like shriek. And actually, Gridlink does seem to be the sonic link between Discordance and Hayaino, the over power metalisms of Hayaino tempered into something much less over the top, and the obtuse artiness of DA reigned in a bit, both sounds forced into one swirling sparks-spitting white hot ball of mind melting metallic art grind genius. So recommended. As is setting your cd on repeat and listening to this 5 or 6 times at each sitting!
We knew John Hill as producer of the stunning folk funk lps of Susan Christie and Margo Guryan, but this concept record is where his producing genius is on full display: an epic electronic space jazz composition featuring Susan Christie, Jimmy Valerio, Gerry Mulligan and Walter Sear. Based on a poem by Ian Michaels called "I Am The Storm of Dawn" that suggests life on Earth originated on one of the six moons of Jupiter, Europa (the only other place in the solar system with water and ice), the 6 Moons of Jupiter features Susan Christie reciting the poem with Moogy electronic drones, cellos,� delayed flutes, and percussion. While we're not always huge fans of spoken word, somehow it works here, adding some serious tripped out drugginess to the already pretty far out proceedings.�
According to the liner notes, this was the first part of a proposed 13 piece concept performance, with each piece written in a distinctly different style, somehow combining poetry, electronic technology, classical, jazz and of course 'space rock' (quotes required!) Not sure sure how that would have panned out had they stuck to the plan, especially since it seems that for this first volume they jammed all that stuff together, into one single awesomely mind melting sonic hodgepodge.�
The tracks range from shimmery free jazzscapes, all abstract percussion and buzzing raga like drones, haunting and mysterious, to full on groovy keyboard drenched space-y garage jams, complete with fluttering flute, wheezing organs, creepy chanted vocals, and wailing psych leads, to strange off kilter chamber music, heavy with reverb and long lonesome tones, to pounding sixties style stomp, but all twisted up around jazzy horns, and jaunty Springtime shuffles, to haunting solo strings, dour melancholic melodies over buried soft buzz, to total acid wah guitars, laced with creepy pizzicato strings and warbly rubbery funhouse melodies. Mix in Christie's deadpan spoken word and this becomes a serious jazzy groovy musical mindfuck. And you know what that means. BUY IT!
Newest disc from this long running depressive funereal black metal outfit. Originally formed in 1995, This Midwestern one man band has averaged about one record every four and a half years, although it seems that the band actually spent a good long stretch inactive, since the other two ISB records we reviewed were both recorded before the turn of the century, one under a different monicker.�
So, in fact, this is the first full length in almost a decade, and it sounds fantastic, even better than the other two discs, the sound beefed up and much more produced, but without losing any of the sound's miserable grimnity, a record of swirling murky buzzy slow motion doomscapes, distinctly USBM, very reminiscent of Xasthur actually, but ISB is even more blurred and indistinct, most songs having only one or two parts, locked into a mesmerizing looped crawl, the guitars buzzy, but blurred into soft waves of low end, churning and throbbing, everything bathed in a warm gauzy patina, a sea of shimmering keyboards, all very epic and majestic, but so layered and washed out, that it barely sounds metal at times. Instead sounding like some drone drenched super distorted Godspeed, huge crashing waves of sound, everything bleary eyed and smeared into shadows and shapes, even when the metal components drop out, leaving a simple keyboard line to repeat hypnotically or a minor key guitar melody to loop over and over, the sound is more akin to Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker than any sort of black metal, and when the guitars and drums and buzz do return, that doesn't really change. It's still some sort of hazy smoky impressionistic ambient black metal, washing over you like dreamy soft black waves of buzz and whir. Sometimes this feels like the sort of black metal band those guys would actually start. Imagine Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, Christian Fennesz and William Basinski, all in corpsepaint, lurking in a wintry forest, hunched over their instruments on a dimly lit stage, unfurling these roiling waves of gauzy blackness and looped blur. So intense and hypnotic and beautiful. If you ever wanted to get someone into black metal, this could very well be the record to do it with. WAY recommended.
Heralded as supposedly the first Japanese female singer-songwriter, Sachiko Kanenobu's debut solo outing from 1972, Misora (Beautiful Sky), has an aura of legend. A hard-working presence in the burgeoning Osaka folk scene in the '60s, Sachiko worked for record labels and various bands before striking out on her own. Since it was rare for a woman to be playing her own songs, she quickly managed a record deal. But her love affair with American music critic, Paul Williams, forced her to decide to move to America three months before Misora was released. Without her in Japan to promote it, the record sank without a trace. While in America, she tried to revive her career with the help, of all people, sci-fi writer Phillip K. Dick (!!!), who had become friends with the couple through a piece by Williams for Rolling Stone. Dick, a longtime music obsessive, had always wanted to produce a female songwriter, but unfortunately died of a stroke before that could take place. Her major revival didn't occur until the early '90s when musicians from the buzzing Shibuya-kei scene, such as Cornelius, Takako Minekawa and Kenji Ozawa began citing Misora as a major influence and Misora as a favorite record. The music here is soft and dreamy reminiscent somewhat of Joni Mitchell but with her own innocent flair along with nice arrangements of flute and guitar. One can definitely trace Sachiko's influence on the dreamy sounds of Japanese female vocalists Takakao Minekawa, Tujiko Noriko, and Mineko Itakura from Angel'n Heavy Syrup. Beautiful!
Not sea shanty, but space shanty. Great title for a space rock record, right? And this 1972 album, newly reissued on cd with two bonus tracks, is definitely space rock - there's even a crazy looking space ship on the cover. But how come it's not called Space Shanties? There's eight tracks here after all, including the bonus ones. Anyway this is a classic, classic prog record, the first and only album from the UK's Khan, a band formed by guitarist Steve Hillage, just prior to his stint with those self-proclaimed "pot-head pixies" of the planet Gong. While Hillage is probably best known for playing in Gong after Khan passed on, he also had a successful post-Gong solo career as a prog rock guitar hero, and later found favor with the trance/techno/ambient crowd in the '80s and '90s. But you don't have to be down with The Orb or The Ozrics to enjoy this album! And actually, Aquarius customers just as likely might know Hillage from his appearance in an even earlier, college-daze outfit, the obscure but beloved heavy psych act Arzachel. Khan, while more polished and "pro", isn't that far off from Arzachel, really, at least in terms of the amount of psychedelic guitar action and organ jamming going on. Also, another ex-member of Arzachel appears in Khan, keyboardist Dave Stewart (not the Eurythmics fellow, but the guy who founded mathy proggers Egg, and later on played in Hatfield and the North).
So... in brief, Khan's a mixture of gentle, Pink Floydian atmospheres, Canterbury style organ burble, and hard rockish guitar power, with song titles like "Stranded (Effervescent Psychonovelty No.5)", "Mixed Up Man Of The Mountains", and "Stargazers". Being prog, the instrumental parts are paramount, but also look out for cool spacey lyrics like "Starstruck moonman looks so blind/You're still a slave within your mind". It's very of its era, that's for sure! Excessively prog, but in the best way. The songs are all longer than your typical pop single of course, though none break into the double digits minutes-wise. And, importantly, it's all very melodic, the singing expressing much majestic emotion, as does Hillage's searing acid rock guitar leads and the driving organ grooves of Stewart. At times we're reminded of Atomic Rooster, at others Van Der Graaf Generator, and at still others of Caravan... so a definite AQ prog recommendation, all right.
Ok, we just realized there's not nearly enough KISS reviewed on our website. All that's there really is some weird Russian picture disc 12" versions of the Peter, Paul, Gene and Ace solo albums. Also two of the three multi-dvd volumes of video KISStory. And that's it. Well, I (Allan) am going through a bit of a Kiss phase right now, so I thought I'd start stocking and reviewing some Kiss albums, one at a time. They're cheap enough. And no, I'm not reliving my childhood, it's not a nostalgia thing, actually when I was a kid I wasn't into Kiss at all. I remember looking at elementary school classmates Kiss lunch boxes and thinking, that's meant for kids, it's way too clownish, so I'm not into it... is that the sort of snobbery that led me to work in a record store? just kidding. However, I've come around on Kiss. Now I'm a bit obsessed, and lately have been trying to build up my Kiss collection on (remastered) cd.
This is the most recent one I've acquired, and it wasn't high on my list 'cause usually it's derided as one of the weakest of the Kiss albums from the original makeup era, its 1979 release finding Kiss incorporating some DISCO elements to their music, much to the chagrin of Kiss's hard rocking fanbase. Of course, that almost makes it all the more appropriate for reconsideration in today's pro-disco musical climate. And I was surprised to find out just how much I liked it!
It was the first Kiss studio album to appear after those solo discs, and song-by-song it's striking how such stylistically disparate tracks co-exist, from the four Kiss members, almost as if it was a various artist collection. That's because, while not only do all four original members get songwriting credit (along with some outside helpers), all four get vocal turns as well (which, I think, only also ever happened on its 1977 predecessor Love Gun). There's three songs sung by Paul Stanley, three by Ace Frehley, two by Gene Simmons, and one Peter Criss.
The album starts off with the hit single "I Was Made For Loving You" (written by Stanley, with an assist from producer Vinnie Poncia and song doctor Desmond Childs). It was one of Kiss's biggest hits, actually, and you can see why, but also why diehard fans might have been upset... total, total disco. Stanley really lets loose his inner diva! It's a pretty great song though, even with the smooth cheese factor. Supposedly Stanley wrote it to show how easy it was to write a disco song, though that doesn't explain why he needed those other guys to help with it. We could imagine a banging remix by somebody like Lindstrom being a big hit today!! Love the propulsive disco drumming (not catman Criss, but secret session replacement Anton Fig, as on most of the album). Stanley also came up with another disco-ish cut "Sure Know Something" and the heavier (but still cheesy) "Magic Touch", all of 'em catchy as heck. Gene's "Charisma" is another cool KISS-style (of course) bubblegum hard rock meets disco crossover, with groovy echoey production touches. Definitely a highlight. "X-Ray Eyes" is his other entry here, and it's always nice to hear the distinctive singing of the demonic one. Ace does a cool Stones cover ("2,000 Man") and two originals of his own, including the punkish "Hard Times". His other number "Save Your Love" is pretty garagey too. And then the sole Peter Criss cut, "Dirty Livin'", sorta explains why he wasn't in the band for that much longer.
In some ways, it's all the more awesome, that the same disc featuring the most disco-ish stuff also has total punk rock on it too. I mean seriously, Ace's rough, super shitty, shouty singing on "Hard Times" (as well as the streetwise lyrics about living in the "citay", cutting school to "space our heads out" in the park) is pretty darn punk, especially when you realize it's found on three million selling album that also boasts a super polished, poppy disco hit single!
So, even on one of the most maligned (next to Music From The Elder, perhaps) of the make-up era Kiss platters, I found a lot to like. I've been playing it a lot (ask anybody). Maybe it's time you should give it another chance... or, for the younger of you, a first chance... and like I said, it's cheap! I'll review some more Kiss soon, maybe The Elder, which also actually has its moments too.
It has come to this. Just as we somehow suspected. And desired. Underground guitar maestro Mick Barr, he of such monomaniacal hypershred mosquito-like guitar and drums (or drum machine) bands as Orthrelm, Octis, and Ocrilm, has finally unleashed the bona fide black metal album that we always knew he probably wanted to do. And should do. After all, in our review of the last Ocrilm album Annwn released earlier this year on Hydra Head, we'd said that not only did Barr's guitar buzz remind us of black metal music, but that if it were a black metal album it would be one of the best (and most fucked up, too) of the year.
So, now Barr and equally tech-y cohorts guitarist/bassist Colin Marston (that's right, of mathy mindbogglers Behold...The Arctopus!) and drummer Lev Weinstein (Bloody Panda) have started the utterly blackened Krallice, releasing their self-titled debut on the respected Profound Lore label. And the rest of the USBM scene should take notice, these guys mean business. Sure, anybody with a MySpace page can have a black metal band, make a cool unreadable, thorny logo (like Krallice's) and come up with song titles like "Wretched Wisdom", "Timehusk", "Energy Chasms", and "Forgiveness In Rot" (as Krallice have done) but probably not that many can actually back up all those black metal signifiers so seriously with their MUSIC, music of such sheer power and perfection that we find here. Wintry winds are blowing here (i.e. it's not hot air), as majestic melodies ride the crests of tsunami-sized waves of distorted, buzzing guitar. The six mesmerizingly lengthy tracks found on this Krallice disc are quite technically complex, and buzzingly relentless, much as you'd expect from Barr and Co. It's a blasting blizzard, with raging vokills and hyperspeed drumming but most importantly, shreddingly gorgeous guitar leads, densely woven, that build and build always to new forbidden plateaus of melancholic, misanthropic triumph. Imagine maybe the epick grimnity of Weakling or Wolves In The Throne Room, already badass in the guitar department, with an extra dosage of divebombing fretboard squiggle, interstellar energies continually released in the form of six string shred... yes, Krallice certainly "bring it" as it were, and should appeal to both fans of Barr's previous quasi-metallic, mathy mindfucks as well as those looking for quality USBM, advanced structures or not. (Although, in regards to neo-classical shred, they haven't quite unthroned the true Yngwie's of USBM, the late lamented Windham Hell.)
Last year just about all of us who heard the song "Lip Gloss" were immediately smitten with what had to be one of the most fun and catchy bubble-gum-hip-hop songs ever recorded. It snapped and popped like a young Missy Elliott on the greatest high school cheerleading squad EVER. If you haven't heard it you must check it out! So undeniably catchy and irresistible! So we were almost afraid to check out this full length when it finally came out as we didn't want to find out that Lil Mama would turn out to be just another in a long line of one-hit wonders. Of course the record's first song is "Lip Gloss" and it's followed by the cleverly titled "One Hit Wonder" which is a total slammer in its own right and the next several songs prove that Lil Mama has actually got plenty of hits up in her sleeve. She really has lots of the potential to become a new Missy Elliott for the next generation. She can sound so self assured, confident and full of vibrant color. There are a handful of really great and catchy songs on here for sure. It does lose steam towards the end with some misses and a should-have-never-been bonus track featuring Avril Lavigne. But we were happy to find out that Lil Mama is not just a one-hit wonder and we'll definitely be keeping our ears open for what she does in the future.
Nick Lowe had a huge influence on the early years of punk and new wave, working on albums by folks like The Damned, Elvis Costello and The Pretenders. But when it comes down to it, Nick Lowe is all about pure pop chops. His debut, released originally in 1978, is finally getting the proper reissue treatment it deserves including all the tracks issued on the UK and US versions along with eight extra tracks! As smart as they are clever and catchy these songs have always made us think of what it would sound like if Elvis Costello did a record of Harry Nilsson covers. With a sly sense of humor and a knack for infectious hooks, Jesus Of Cool (also released at one point under the title Pure Pop For Now People) still stands as one of Lowe's greatest moments. Chances are you've heard and loved some of these songs before without knowing that this was the record they were from, if that's the case, you might have a new old fave here.
We don't sell a lot of comic books here, although maybe we should as a bunch of us are way into comics. Goon, Hellboy, B.P.R.D., The Walking Dead, Preacher, Y, Exterminators, we're almost as nerdy about comics as we are about music. And once in a while a comic comes along, that just hits the spot. Not about a superhero, not a super extended narrative, not violent or bloody, just goofy, funny, fun and bizarre. And since we figured that some of the music nerds who read our list also dig comics, so well, what the heck...
The comic in question is the cutely titled Wuvable Oaf. The story of a huge hairy bear man, who spends a good amount of his time naked, or at least shirtless. And is constantly surrounded by his pals, and lots and lots of kitties. There's plenty of goofy dancing, man love, saucy almost sex, penis shaped birthday cakes, high fashion, reality TV, feline birthing, and an art�punk band called Ejaculoid. You don't need to be into big hairy dudes to dig the comic, but you should at least be into kitties, and into some super awesomely detailed artwork. The hair factor alone is amazing, it must have taken months to illustrate Oaf, let alone his equally hirsute pals. The comic is not heavy on story, the vignettes are brief and fleeting and funny, but it's all about the art. Intricate and complex, incredible detail, the panel that shows a Victorian with the Twin Peaks antenna tower in the background is perfect right down to the defaced poster on the building next door. And did we mention the HAIR! So much hair, torsos, arms, faces, shaved and on the floor, it's everywhere!�
Anyway, check it out, locals will probably recognize some of the characters as they are modeled after real folks, one in particular is a long time aQ pal and sometime list contributor. They have amazing shirts too, which you might see AQ staffers sporting once in a while. You can read and see more here:�http://www.wuvableoaf.com/
Oaf, his pals and his kitties get a big wuvable thumbs up fom aQ!
Lustmord began in the early '80s, when Brian Williams was a member of the seminal Industrial ensemble SPK. The first Lustmord records followed suit from SPK's brutish dark noise with rhythmic underpinnings; however, the Lustmord aesthetic was fully realized in 1990 with Heresy. This has long been one of the best examples of dark ambient composition with plenty of occultish references and absolutely terrifying soundscaping. The two albums that came afterward - The Monstrous Soul and The Place Where The Black Stars Hang - formed something of an ersatz trilogy of essential Lustmord recordings. The initial ideas behind these albums were a bridge between psychoacoustic research and the metaphors of horror, definitely in keeping with the Industrial roots which spawned Coil and Psychic TV. But in recent years, Lustmord has been a huge influence upon the ambient sides of metal - black, doom, or otherwise. So, Hydra Head has now commissioned their second album from Lustmord in [Other]. This is a much better record than the previous album on Hydra Head, although the things that work for [Other] have been the staple in Lustmord's productions past -- murmuring rumbles of blackened energy, downpitched Tibetan horns blasted through catacomb reverb, and slashed noises cast in shadow. Like on Juggernaut, Lustmord augments his nightmarish sound design with guests and their guitars. Lustmord revisits one of the problematic tracks from Juggernaut which found King Buzzo from the Melvins chugging out a downtuned riff, and which sat somewhat flatly against an ocean of dark drones. Where this track fails, the collaborations with Aaron Turner are pretty damn awesome, with some slow-motion desolate notes reflecting a similar vibe found on the recent Earth albums (i.e. Hex and The Bees Made Honey). A little uneven, but when this is good, [Other] is really good.
Disco heads take notice! When we first got this white-sleeve 12" in the store and gave it a whirl on the turntable everyone here was sure they were hearing the sounds of some lost obscure disco platter circa '77. In actuality this 12" is a brand new release put out on the Solardisco label, which just so happens to be run by the artist Maelstrom, whose deft touch in cutting, pasting and recording vintage disco sounds is displayed on this edits EP. No doubt he hit his target right on. The sweeping horns, the cosmic vibrations, the Paradise Garage, Patrick Cowley and Giorgio Moroder influences are wielded with pride. With folks like Prins Thomas, Lindstrom and James Murphy already geeking out over him and playing his edits out when they DJ, it's just a matter of time before the Glasgow based Maelstrom becomes a household name, in houses where disco is in high rotation at any rate!
What could be better (and noisier) than Masonna's Ultimate Collection Volume 1? Volume 2 of course. In honor of the man's 20 years of noisemaking madness, Alchemy has reissued several crucial, long out of print Masonna documents as two-on-one cds in this Ultimate Collection series. You can check out our review, elsewhere on our site, of Vol. 1 to read more about Masonna and his legendary place in the pantheon of Japanese noise, alongside the likes of Merzbow and Hijokaidan... suffice to say if you've never heard this stuff before, be warned! It's noisy all right. Not everyone will have the same reaction (no siree) but for us, when we hear the harsh sonic genius of Masonna, it's like, we freeze, fascinated, compelled - numbed and hypnotized even. It's really enjoyable... really.
So, Volume 2 comprises the early 1990 album Shinsen Na Clitoris (of which only 499 copies were pressed), and the 1998 cd-r Tripsy Sunshine (which was even rarer, in an edition of 49 copies!). Rather than the many short, sharp, shocking tracks found on Vol.1, there's just four long tracks here, each of the original albums split into two approximately 15 minute pieces. Though, on Shinsen Na Clitoris, it still sounds like a lot of cut-up edits.
That album is all about totally destroyed, distorted to hell vocals, Masonna's insane shrieking demonic baby babble in a swirling vortex of feedback and warped FX, the sounds of guitar (?), electronics, and his voice all one massive noisy jibber-jabber. Whew! He's really freaking out, hyperventilating probably. Later, on the Tripsy Sunshine tracks, Masonna moves more into the fuzzed out psych-synth territory of his Christine 23 Onna and Space Machine projects, with washes of fuzzy synth overload and throbbing pounding rhythms. So it becomes a bit more 'musical' but just barely. There's certainly gobs of sheer chaotic please turn that down NOISE to happily torment your earholes with as well, from start to finish.
You know how you can't fit more than, like, 80 minutes of music on a compact disc? Well this disc is one hour long, but it's probably got more (noisy) SOUND crammed into it than any cd you can find, whatever the length. Basically, Masonna takes to heart the principle that if you're gonna make noise, make it the noisiest. And he sure does.
In the wake of Wolfgang Voigt's recent Gas reissue, it would be easy to overlook something as simple - yet essential - as Monolake's Hong Kong. It was originally released on Basic Channel's Chain Reaction label, and has long since been unavailable. The album was composed and recorded back when Monolake was a duo, after the two took a trip to, yes, Hong Kong. Incorporated within, between, and around the opiate propulsion you'd expect from a Chain Reaction release, various field recordings illustrate the specific "atmosphere and mood of this experience." While potentially sounding like a college homework assignment, this collection surprisingly manages to create a sense of purpose and cohesion greater than what one might expect. Fans of minimal techno, field recordings, or even drone, listen up! Recommended.
We should probably let the band themselves begin this review, describing what to expect from the first side of this new 7" from the (maybe not so) mysterious Finnish outfit Motorspandex:
"Listening to Motorspandex's debut 7" can be a traumatizing experience: the very moment the needle touches the vinyl, black smoke begins to fill the room. You suddenly find it very hard to breathe, and realize, that the air pouring into your lungs is made out of crusty, rusty metal. A mechanized nightmare appears, veiled in nothing but motorized tight pants. It steps out of the smoke, grabs you by the throat, and enters your life forever."
We probably couldn't do much better ourselves, but we'll give it a go. Starting with the amazing cover, which features a photo of a pale, long haired, shirtless fella who looks suspiciously like Jussi from Circle, doing his best Dio, 'invisible oranges' pose, standing on an expanse of snow in front of a mighty mountain, the music inside fits almost perfectly with that majestic and very metal image. Sort of. Imagine classic eighties metal, some Motorhead, but played on clean guitars, with almost no distortion, then add in some super distorted monstrous growling vocals, and have the songs be super damaged and weird, shifting suddenly without warning, super dynamic, stop and starts, dizzyingly complex, but somehow striped down and simple at the same time. Not heavy so much as rocking and relentless. And it should come as no big surprise that Motorspandex seems to have a similar lineup as Krypt Axeripper, and Steel Mammoth, and thus, probably includes at least one (if not more) member of Finnish hypnorockers Circle. And you can actually hear it in Motorspandex, maybe more so than in those other "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" Circle satellites. Plenty of tripped out ambience, some clean, almost Comus-y folky vocals, wailing leads, but at its core, it does sound a bit like a sped up, metalled up Circle. Even the vocals almost sound like a more metal Mika. Plus some of the best song titles ever: "Frantic Slave", "Torment Star", "Tutankhamon Uranus", "Creepy Rabbit", "Steellicker"!
As if you didn't already figure it out, Motorspandex rule! Heavy and hooky, repetitive and metallic, mesmerizing and weird weird weird.
