This recording of the Missa Luba - a version of the Roman Catholic Latin Mass filtered through traditional Congolese songs - was made in 1958 by a group of 45 teenaged boys under the direction of a Belgian Franciscan Friar named Father Guido Haazen. It's beautiful to the point that we're stumped as to what else we can say about it, which given how verbose we usually are is probably saying something. We will, however, relate an anecdote:�a few days ago a woman came into the shop, spent a good while browsing the stacks, and eventually made her way to the counter to ask for a recommendation. She was hippie-fied in a particularly San Franciscan way, and the only direction that she gave us was that she wanted a record that was going to "open her mind to new possibilities" (we know this sounds like a Scharpling and Wurster bit, but we swear to God that this actually happened!).�We scratched our noggins for a few minutes, asked her a few questions about what she did and didn't like, and played her a few things. She walked out with this record, and by all accounts the new possibilities are now a-flowin'...!�
OK, so maybe touting Missa Luba as a catalyst for middle-aged, hippie enlightenment isn't the best way to sell it to aQ list devotees, but a quick straw poll of aQ staffers has this record popping up in the collections of at least 3 of us, all of whose tastes run to some pretty different extremes (on that note, all of us who happen to be lucky owners of the original US lp release from 1965 are excited to see a complete cd reissue that includes the performances of traditional Congolese songs that were left off the only other digital release). Again, it's hard to explain precisely what it is that makes this record so captivating, but there's something about it that is so emotionally pure, honest, humble and beautiful that it's hard to deny.�Perhaps it's the fact that we spend so much time listening to dark, hopeless, bleak music - songs about death and drugs and depression and misanthropy and whatever else - that when we hear something as unrepentantly joyous as this record, it throws us for a loop. It's a simple formula - songs of praise sung in a Congolese style by a boys' choir - and it sounds almost exactly like you would expect based on the description (those of you who were thoroughly blown away by the last song on the first side of Mississippi Records' Lipa Kodi Ya City Council LP take note!); however, if you're anything like us, you won't be expecting the effect that these songs will have on you. This is one of those records that grabs you and forces you to listen in a way that makes everything around you stop for a few minutes. Catholic or not, we're positive that's a good thing. Beautiful, essential, perfect.
We only got a handful of these, and it was limited to only 100 or so copies anyway, so we won't get into too much detail. Most folks just need to see the name Lull and they'll be sold. Lull, aka Mick Harris, collaborates here with Beta Cloud, who a while back teamed up with Aidan Baker for a killer disc of dark buzzing dronemusic. But on Circadian Rhythm Disturbance, Harris and Beta Cloud team up for one 20 minute track of extreme dark ambience, loose barely there rhythms drift in and out occasionally, but this is all about the atmospheric low end, and it is LOW, a deep subterranean rumble that seems to swallow up all light, like the sound of some massive behemoth drifting slowly through the blackened deep, or some mysterious black shape drifting across the midnight sky, huge groaning drones and massive swells of rib cage rattling bass, smeared and blurred into a tidal sort of barely-rhythm, that subtly pulses and throbs, sucking the listener under, filling you ears with gorgeous soft black sound.�
SUPER LIMITED. Most likely already out of print at the label.
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.
As is the case with Aidan Baker and Nadja, it almost wouldn't seem like a proper aQ new arrivals list without the presence of�Machinefabriek, aka Rutger Zuydervelt, so we're quite relieved to have both. Actually, all three.�
This latest Machinefabriek recording captures three live performances, all in Amsterdam, recorded between 2006 and 2008 all looooong, the shortest 16 minutes, the longest 22.�
All three performances find Machinefabriek in fine form, offering up thick billows of warm guitar shimmer, fluttery staticky ambience, and at one point some uncharacteristically heavy super distorted metallic guitar, but here, it's not so much metal as simply a mighty drone, thick and throbbing and super intense. There are long stretches of near silence and super minimal high end drone, glimmering slow building crescendos, squalls of distorted choral buzz, warm whirring metallic reverberations, shimmery almost new age and dense black dronemusik, all the stuff we love about Machinefabriek, BUT, and this is what makes this disc so good, is that live, while still being dynamic and subtle, Zuydervelt also proves to me way more intense and aggressive than on his recordings. And thus, we must recommend!
LIMITED TO 180 COPIES!
This is the first we've heard from the brilliantly named Manbeard, the fucked up freak folk cabaret offshoot of old aQ faves Urdog. Here they share a cd-r with furry Finnish folk combo Avarus, originally a tour only release, and while it might not seem like it, weirdly it's kind of a good match. Manbeard are tough to explain. Very jaunty and sing songy, almost like sea shanties, big drums, dramatic WAY over the top vocals, angular riffing, a little bit gloomy and dark, gothic even, with squiggly synths, damaged percussion, and really twisted songs. And really bizarre overdubs, strange characters making announcements, speaking to the listener, adding their 2 cents to various songs. Definitely an acquired taste, but if you're into the same weird stuff we are, then acquiring it might not be that difficult. The weird thing is, this disc is jam packed with short-ish Manbeard songs, then right in the middle, tack 5 in fact, is the ONE Avarus song, a massive half hour jam, recorded live, all ramshackle rhythms, and detuned guitars, chanted vocals, fluttering woodwinds, raga like buzzing, stumbling druggy far out freaked out damaged outsider genius for sure. It sounds like a blast, like they just set up on the street in the middle of rush hour, and their merrymaking just sucked in a massive crowd, dancing and howling and whooping and wildly frolicking through the streets of Helsinki. At least that's what it sounds like.�
Then it's time again for more Manbeard weirdness, fragmented song experiments, fucked up drones, lo-fi off kilter bedroom folk, fractured dada-ist pop and whatever else crossed their twisted musical minds.�
In cool hand screened color sleeves, with printed inserts. We got these direct from The Manbeard when he was in town, and he mentioned these might be the last copies, so if we run out that might be it.
MPEG Stream: MANBEARD "Original Performance Of The Manbeard Denizens Folk Classic, Manbearde Folk Classic, Manbeard Factory" [/audio/manbeardoriginal.m3u]
One of the great things about working here at the aQ HQ is finding out how much shared musical history you have with your co-workers. Take, for example, a few months ago when our review for the new Dodos record referenced this totally obscure mid-'90s band from Western Mass called the Wicked Farleys. That one offhand mention got us all so amped up that it sparked a bunch of long, hyperactive, rambling conversations about our other favorite overlooked bands from that era. Even now, whenever someone comes into the store and asks about Vetiver, there are a few of us who will take the opportunity to reminisce loudly about how totally rad Andy Cabic's OLD band, The Raymond Brake, was (believe us, they were really rad). There's a whole host of fractured, whammy bar-worshipping rockers form the mid-'90s that we collectively wax nostalgic about here both in our reviews and our day-to-day conversations (The Swirlies, Pitchblende, Polvo, Erectus Monotone, as well as the aforementioned Wicked Farleys and Raymond Brake to name but a few!); we're crazy about these bands and their records still get plenty of play years later. So with all that in mind, take us seriously when we say that had we heard the first two records by Brooklyn-based indie rockers Meneguar (I Was Born At Night and Strangers In Our House, both on Troubleman Unlimited and both newly available at aQ) back in '95 that they would undoubtedly be included in aQ's hallowed pantheon of atonal pop bliss!
So, with all of that said, there was some serious trepidation on our part when we first gave The In Hour a spin as the record finds the band dipping into new, self-consciously 'experimental' waters. Generally, 'experimental' albums by rock bands are fraught with the potential for self-indulgent missteps, poor song choices, and a total disregard for the kind of intensive self-editing required of a fine pop record. Thankfully, Meneguar manage to avoid these pitfalls and make a record that, although different from its predecessors, is still a thoroughly enjoyable listen! The In Hour is definitely a scrappier affair, but there are still hooks and riffs a plenty. Maybe it's the fact that they've always had a bit of a fey touch to them that keeps the the melody-to-skronk ratio tipped to the tuneful side; or maybe the extended meanderings are kept to a bare minimum by the fact that several of the band's members are able to get their freakier ya-yas shaken out as part of Brooklyn drone-folkers, Woods Family Creeps (whose excellent self-titled debut we highlighted a list or two back).
Aside from the ghetto blaster meets trash can aesthetic of the recording, the most notable change from their earlier work is the subdued feel that permeates the record. The distortion and anthemic leanings are dialed down, making space for acoustic guitars that manage to both clang and chime, a healthy dose of crackle and hiss, and a whole lot of reverberating echoes bouncing hither and dither. Meneguar have managed a rare feat in the world of indie rock: stretching out and messing with their formula without completely losing sight of what makes them special in the first place. Despite the slightly more primitive approach to execution and production, the band hasn't forsaken melody or catchiness or chosen to dive headlong into the hissy, static, shitwave wash of which we've been hearing so much lately. This one is equally likely to appeal to fans of Woods Family Creeps, Barn Owl and the like as it is to fans of No Age and Eat Skull without sounding particularly like either tribe. At its core, The In Hour is a thoroughly enjoyable indie rock record that will give fans of bands like Les Savy Fav, Superchunk, GBV, Pavement and Archers of Loaf plenty to smile about. It's chock full of memorable, melodic gems that should provide ample mix tape fodder for the coming summer days. Hopefully, giving this one a listen will inspire some of y'all to check out their back catalog as well! Recommended for sure!
We might normally scoff at a release limited to only 37 copies, but when you see the handmade miniature collage covers and hand painted tapes, you'll understand. Each one is hand made, a surreal landscape of humans with animal heads, fragments of buildings, mysterious shapes and figures, all done, tiny, to fit in a cassette. Folks who picked up the other releases on Custodian, Color Zoo Containers, will know what we're talking about. One had a cover, that was an intricate cut out insect, the other hand painted, each on folded transparencies. But it's not just the packaging that gets a lot of attention, the music inside is appropriately skewed and mysterious. This one is by a duo called The ( ) Moppers (space and parentheses required), half of which is the man responsible for C,CZC and the incredible packaging.
This is the document of a live show recorded back in 2004, and while it's difficult to pick out exactly what instruments are used, the result is a gloriously buzzy, crackly rhythmic soundscape, lots of glitchy crunch, throbbing distorted low end, soft chordal drones, some simple drumming, all super lo-fi and blown out, parts of this almost sound like a lo-fi noise rock Aluk Todolo, the same sort of abstract rhythmic mystery, but here, it's much more intimate, lots of little sonic events going on, what sound like music boxes, simple strummed guitar melodies, even some piano, but the various elements are distorted and woven into a loping field of thump and thud, of crunch and clunk, that seems to sprawl and drift, sometimes billowing into thick buzzing swells or harsh grinding distortion, but more often, meandering minimally.
Fans of Avarus and Uton and other Finnish sonic experimentalists will dig, as folks into minimal lowercase soundwork. Cool stuff. And remember. Limited to 37 copies, each one individually hand mad and numbered, we got more than half, but those won't last long...
And they're back, once again, to test even the loyalty of their most faithful fans. Like clockwork, another list, another Nadja. It's difficult enough doing a list every two weeks. The thought of writing, recording and releasing an album every two weeks boggles the mind.
Okay, so we're exaggerating a little, but only a little. And in fact, this here Nadja, has been out for quite a while, but it went out of print before we could get enough copies to list, so we had to wait until it was finally repressed.
We may gripe about the ridiculous frequency of Nadja and Aidan Baker releases, but a lot of that has to do with having to review them. If we were a fan, and all we had to do was just kick back with some headphones and drift off, well, hell. Bring it on!
But as we've mentioned before, Nadja actually do manage to mix it up, each record exploring different facets of their sound, offering up new takes on their dirgey droney shoegaze-y doom. Desire In Uneasiness brings in a real drummer, and it's noticeable, the songs have a bit more swing, are a little less mechanical sounding, and actually do sound more organic. This record actually is strange in that even though it's split up into 5 songs, the guitar sound is super distinct, and they all seem to be in a similar key, and thus, the record plays out like a single extended song, which with some bands might be a huge complaint, but in the case of Nadja, it actually is pretty excellent.
The first track (movement?) might just be one of our favorite Nadja tracks yet. The new guitar sound is killer, super processed and almost alien sounding, but still thick and distorted. The drum sound is BIG, the main riff is a dizzying fuzzy swirling harmony, almost like some metal lead, slowed down and drenched in FX and distortion, mesmerizing and looped and hypnotic, the drum pounding away beneath that circular riff. The second track blisses �out a bit more, gets super shoegazey, a gorgeous washed out drift, that near the end slips into a strange almost funky shuffle.
Track three is super spare, the drums pounding along in an expanse of distant drones and swirling effects, sort of jazzy, a little bit dubby, stripped down and abstract, which gives way to part 4, a 15 minute long crush, channeling Godflesh and Loop, a churning spaced out groove, with the drums holding things down until things begin to drift apart, the looped guitar spiraling into the ether, while the drums gradually go from simple and tribal to sporadic and space-y. The final track is nearly 20 minutes, and finds Nadja doing their very best space rock, the blown out buzz and relentless pummel builds to a tripped out space-y, many minutes long blow out, that reminds us a bit of Terminal Cheesecake crossed with Hawkwind!
Another Nadja. Another good one. As long as you have room on your shelf, no reason to stop now...
The return of black ambient darklord Nordvargr. A quick look at the aQ website reveals a long love and appreciation for the dark art of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, from his early days in black ambient terrorists MZ412, to more recent guitar based dronemusik, to his collaborations with MZ412 Drakh, heck, Andee even released the last Nordvargr / Drakh disc on tUMULt. Needless to say, for folks into dark drones and ambient blackness, sinister soundscapes and bleak and abject sounds, it's hard to do any better than Nordvargr.�
While the last few discs have displayed a renewed interest in the guitar, with a much more song oriented approach, Helvete finds Nordvargr returning to the miserablist blackdrone world of his past, offering up some seriously intense and caustic brutality, a collection of grim, utterly hellish soundscapes, all crumbling low end, cavernous black rumbles, haunting mysterious blackness, a definite old school industrial vibe. This disc has been anxiously anticipated due to the fact that Leviathan's Wrest contributes vocals to one track, and his demonic croak is totally unmistakable. He growls and gurgles ominously over deep black drones and all manner of distorted crash and crunch, some seriously frightening stuff for sure. If you think stuff like Lustmord is way too lightweight, then this is definitely for you.
"Dronevessel Part II" is a harrowing expanse of dense metallic low end buzz, sprawling like the roots of some gnarled black tree, impossibly heavy and suffocatingly black. "Part III" begins with a series of strange grinding metal klaxons, before slithering back into the pitch black from whence it came. Drakh offers up vocals on "Exit Cult, Enter Hell", a super distorted snakelike hiss, draped over a crumbling churning black sonic sea.
The final track begins with almost a minute of near silence, before a raw metal buzz surfaces, stumbling blast beats, buzzing riffage, harsh demonic vocals, some full on lo-fi grim black metal for a brief moment, but it quickly blackens and slips back into sinister grimnity. But beyond that brief dalliance with the black blast, this is indeed a soul consuming black hole of sound.
This is easily one of the darkest, heaviest, scariest black drone discs EVER. And we don't make that proclamation lightly. WAY recommended.
Okay folks, here's a release that hardly needs an introduction or a description because the masses are gonna be grabbin' this up regardless of what we say... many already have! Conor Oberst has pretty much become a household musical name and face, and we'll surely be seeing more of him in the coming months following the release of what is perhaps his most accessible album to date. No question, he's a talented Americana songwriter, but the thing that made his music so immediately distinct, so emotionally charged and so darn endearing was his youthful quivering-verge-of-breakdown-shivering-rain-drenched-puppy-ness. That's far less apparent these days which makes his music more appealing for some, and less for others. In fact, it was more than a little bit unsettling for us when we realized that on a few numbers Mr. Oberst (yes, he's definitely a man now) sorta sounds like a second rate Tom Petty (whom many of us love!), but also a deadringer for John Cafferty And The Beaver Brown Band as well as the Fabulous Thunderbirds (uhhh, whom less of us love!). Album highlight? Definitely the quite Elliott Smith-esque "Lenders In The Temple".
If we were told that this disc was actually unearthed from the once-lost archive of a curmudgeonly pair of outsider artists who lived on some sodden island in the Puget Sound during the mid '70s, we could definitely be excused for believing it, and thus being completely wrong about the true identities of Vague Johnson & Thompson Omake. With every sound swaddled in tape hiss and occasionally thrown out of orbit by an unruly tape machine, the curious happenings on Headiferous Untacbulum could have easily come from that era of unkempt post-hippie / proto-Industrial expressionism (e.g. Taj Mahal Travellers, Nihilist Spasm Band, Nurse With Wound, etc.). These tracks are grimy psychedelic adventures of free-folk-drone-noise wanderings for homebuilt instruments which rumble and churn against a static field of modular synthesis. Elsewhere, long form drones from dissonantly bowed strings swell into huge clouds of radiant drones. Then, there are the hammered plucks across acoustic guitars with plenty of nods to Fahey and Basho that also emerge behind a pall of spring reverb, and stone-encrusted field recordings crashing through the mix with unexpected results. Top it all off is the hand-dyed envelope with a crusty smear of wax holding the package together. Wouldn't be surprised to see something from these two on Foxy Digitalis or Root Strata one of these days.
All that said, it turns out that Omake and Johnson are the work of contemporary Seattle based musicians Matt Shoemaker and Dave Knott, working through Shoemaker's arsenal of electronics and Knott's invented instruments recorded through a beat-up tape recorder. A really great piece of way-out there sound-field generation and free-folk splutter; and of course, it's super limited to about 40 copies.
Time for the noirishly groovy, '70s prog and funk infected, jazzily inflected debut full length from the UK's sinister, stylish Padded Cell. What time is that? About 2am maybe. Night must fall, indeed it must.
Those of you that picked up that excellent Milky Disco comp on Lo last year oughtta remember the track "Konkorde Lafayette", which also appears here in edited form. Padded Cell's contribution was a highlight of that comp, which also featured Studio, Sorcerer, Quiet Village and fellow DC artists The Emperor Machine, among others.
Almost entirely instrumental (there's only a couple of vocal cuts), generally dark and creepy and sometimes bleepy, Night Must Fall slow-burns through slinky, cinematic Goblinesque grooves that bring in some no-wave sax blat, and plenty of vintage analog synth zapp and bass brapp. Padded Cell certainly nods to Italo disco... and also the "disco not disco" NYC '80s downtown punk-funk scene - in fact Dennis Young of Liquid Liquid is this album's propulsive guest drummer! Imagine a spooky and suspenseful John Carpenter soundtrack gone dubby disco... Very cool, so cool in fact we had to import these directly from the label in England.
PS. we also got this on vinyl but unfortunately they all came with fairly badly bent corners...we'll try to get replacements but if you can't wait and want the wax, let us know...
No time like the present to catch up with the past. We missed the boat on Mercy Oceans when it first came out last year but last list you might remember that we couldn't stop gushing about the latest Pantaleimon record, Heart Of The Sun, which was actually comprised of reworked and retouched version of songs from this disc right here. We're happy to report that the songs in their original incarnation are just as stunning, stark and beautiful as the altered versions we fell in love with on Heart Of The Sun. Andri Degens has really made a place for herself far above and beyond so many of the modern folk herd. What makes Degens so special is the way she allows her songs to breathe and the great attention paid to creating such a rich and textured ambiance, which runs throughout the record. There are some really nice and tasteful guest spots by Baby Dee and Isobel Campbell and we can never get enough of Andri's stunning and breathtaking dulcimer. Her voice and delivery continues to remind us of two of our favorite artists, Bridget St John and Sibylle Baier and the songs on Mercy Oceans resonate with such dignity and beauty.
What a stunning debut! Pillars of Silence are a San Francisco band featuring members of Conspiracy of Beards and Brilliant Colors with an ensemble of talented friends who add nice touches throughout including Sean Smith, Jeffrey Luck Lucas and engineer Jesse Parsons, who worked the boards on other great San Francisco debuts by folks like Tussle, Pale Hoarse and Vetiver. But truth be told none of that matters so much, as it's the songs and music that Pillars of Silence have crafted on this debut that stand out so dramatically. These songs melt with such a satisfying and lasting warmth. Lush reverb, textured but never too busy instrumentation and such gorgeous vocals that come together to create songs that have that rare ability to feel both familiar and so totally new and refreshing. There are lots of comparisons to throw around, we hear the smoke and haziness of Mazzy Star and Opal, the crisp and truthful delivery of Smog and the lush and melancholic delivery of Moon Pix-era Cat Power. There are so many songs from this record that we already know will become staples of mixes we make for friends, crushes and true loves. Pillars Of Silence have earned themselves a place near Citay and Vetiver as another of San Francisco's finest songsmiths. Highly recommended! You best act fast on this one as they didn't press too many of them.
Between 1998 and 2000, Stefan Betke released three albums as Pole, producing some of the most influential electronica of that era. Emerging from Berlin where he worked as an engineer under Robert Henke (aka Monolake), Betke proposed a fragmented post-techno aesthetic that broke from the Chain Reaction sound which had been so prominent in Berlin at that time. Essentially, he reassessed one of the major influences upon Chain Reaction, that being Lee Perry, furthering the ghost in the machine echo and tape hiss accumulation, but through a novel digital synthesis upon a handful of malfunctioning electronic modules. Here, dynamic skittering blips, pinpricks of digital errata, and a perpetual cloud of simulated vinyl static fluttered amongst sporadic yet dubbed out thundercracks of drum kicks and a constant thrumb of digi-dub basslines. When Pole's first album came out (simply designated 1), no one was doing anything close to this; even Vladislav Delay's abstracted electro-dub had yet to be formed. By his second album (just called 2), the night-time digidub structures of Pole sharpened in focus, and the fragments of post-acid bleep and his static-cling grains of sound snapped in place against the dub. Melodies flickered in the distant space well behind the throbbing bass and crackling small noises, often times sounding eerily prescient of what Kode 9 and Burial would transmogrify into dubstep nearly a decade later. His third album (yup, it's 3) had become self-aware of the impact that Pole was having upon the global electronic scene, with the downbeat rhythmic stabs and delay-impacted sounds having been more aerosolized but no less convoluted. These three records are clearly the best work that Betke has produced, and they are now back in print as a triple cd set. Oh yeah, 4 bonus tracks. We like that.
Another week, another Robert Pollard release! Had enough yet? If so, we (and probably he too) would understand. Many of his solo outings can be a bit haphazard, but allow is to reassure you that this album is actually remarkably solidly packed with Pollard pop gems and quite light on the overt weirdness. Maybe he should have titled it "Robert Pollard Gets Down To Business"? Diehard fans should certainly give this one a spin!
If you happen to somehow be new to this musical gent, this probably isn't the place to start. Figuring out the best introduction can be a daunting task. At last count we had about 59 Pollard and Guided By Voices entries in our database, and that's not even including his alter egos and side projects. There's so many that a few times we ran out of words with which to review them! Nonetheless we can advise you to head first and immediately to Guided By Voices' Bee Thousand.
Gorgeous and long overdue reissue of this out of print death metal classic from Australia. But don't let the words death metal throw you. We're not huge fans of straight up death metal either. But this is anything but straight up. In fact this is most definitely one of the weirdest, most damaged death metal records we have ever heard. From the same label that brought us the truly bizarre WOLD record from a few lists back, this is sort of along the same lines as the no-wave death metal of Gorguts' classic Obscura record, Portal takes traditional death metal and douses it in chaotic noise, twisting the arrangements into serpentine blurs, so fast and furious that it almost becomes a buzzy blurry drone, any faster and it would be a full on noise record, like Total or Skullflower playing death metal maybe. But then on top of that, replace all the standard downtuned DM riffs with impossibly manic squiggly Black Flag like riffing, sounding quite a bit like little metal spiders running up and down the neck of the guitars. Riffs and squeals of feedback shooting out like bolts of lightning, the drumming impossibly complex and blasting away beneath the churning ocean of writhing riffs, the vocals just another squirming barely discernible presence amidst the super distorted tangle of metallic riffing and blasting drums. Sometimes all the disparate sounds lock into weird metallic stuttering loops, buzzing and repeating hypnotically. And every once in a while the metal dissipates into gorgeous, gauzy, ambient drones, whirring and shimmering, like old machinery and black and white films, backwards loops, strange pitch shifts and gritty industrial percussion, a dizzying swirl of abstract sound, very reminiscent of Jeck or Basinski, but those respites are brief and are soon swallowed up by further waves of Portal's confounding crush.
Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold mini lp sleeve, with striking glossy filigree on the front cover, a printed inner sleeve and booklet with lyrics / liner notes.
Another in Table Of The Elements' new series of one sided etched 12"s. A series focusing on the electric guitar. Last time we had Oren Ambarchi, this time we have Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, who starts out his 12" sounding quite a bit like Sonic Youth in fact. Noisy crashing chords, chaotic and off kilter, over a super high pitched sonar like beep, weirdly hypnotic until it explodes into a full on psychedelic skreekout.
The second track begins with an amazing tripped out, warbly warped guitar groove, which gives way to a weird high end drone doused in fucked up effects, so woozy it almost makes you dizzy just listening, and reminds us a bit of a fucked up set of bagpipes.
The final track begins with an echo-y almost-industrial space-y surfy riff, that shifts suddenly in pitch, creating mysterious melodies, super haunting and hypnotic, but this track too soon gives way to a massive amp blowing, speaker melting chunk of freaked out Japanese style noise-psych. Whew.
Pressed on opaque swirled turquoise vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass etching by Savage Pencil, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!
Live, recorded for French radio in 1978, this archival album from minimalist composer Terry Riley is a gorgeous solo meditation for specially modified organ and plenty of delay, running about 54 minutes in length. It's not unlike Riley's classic Shri Camel record from around the same time - he says, "the musical materials of The Last Camel In Paris are second generational belonging to the family of Shri Camel while manifesting their own distinct shape and flavor". On Last Camel, Riley's gently piping organ tones and tinklings ceaselessly unfurl, slowly modulating, truly a lovely late night listen for anyone with an ear for Riley's special brand of New Agey, neo-classical, psychedelic minimalism. It's one long, continuous performance but has been conveniently broken into ten seamless tracks on this cd release "as a guide to compositional changes" in the piece, which does move into more and more intense, ever-repetitive realms as the disc progresses.
A most essential archival release for all Riley fans, despite the uninspiring album cover artwork (is that a solarized picture of a dream-catcher?). Inside the digipack, things look better, the foldout cd booklet having a black and white photo of the bald, bearded Riley in concert on one side, and liner notes (mostly in French, drat, though there is some text in English from Riley himself) on the other. Now, there's another Terry Riley reissue on this list, our Record Of The Week in fact, but don't fret, getting this along with Church Of Anthrax won't be too much of a good thing, just plenty of it!
First Robedoor release we've listed in a while, but by no means have these guys been slacking. Nope, we just looked away for a few months and 3 or 4 lps slipped �under the radar, so we're gonna try to get all caught up, beginning with this, the newest (we think), from this drone-y duo.
We've always dug these guys, whether they were doing something muted and whispery, or kicking out the thick drone-y jams, this one is a little of both, probably leaning toward the former.
The first side begins with an almost tranquil landscape of processed rhythmic buzz, that soon becomes a cacophonous roar, warm, thick synthy drones lay atop pulsing subterranean rumbles, deep subtle percussion peppers loooooong drawn out tones, a burst of textured noise erupts, spewing thick buzzing crumbling guitars, barely audible chant like vocals are buried underneath, super noisy, but weirdly hypnotic and dreamlike.
The flip side is split into two extended tracks, the first is a super abstract doomy groove, wailing plaintive guitars and moaning wordless vocals, suspended in a massive expanse of black ambience and mysterious shimmer, which gives way to a loooong slow drone, with a strange Velvets-y melody buried way down under the surface, more creepy almost choral vocals, a super amorphous abstract drift, haunting and otherworldly.
Mars Volta fans! We're sure you're well acquainted with the name Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, aren't you? Well, your fave band's guitarist goes solo once again (this is his fifth solo release)... and gets all electronic and acid jazz-y in the process. Emphasis as usual is on the (fusion and free) jazz side of things, mind you! We've heard some call these tracks experimental soundscapes, but once you get past the first minute and twenty seconds we think better terms to use are improvs or jams. They are far more active and melodic than the former term implies. Furthermore, there is a definite open-weave feel to the proceedings, and all of Rodriguez-Lopez's musical influences (other artists such as Santana and Mahavishnu Orchestra as well as geographic regions Latin America) are palpable at every turn. If you dig those stretches when he totally goes off during a live MV set, then you'll probably get deep into these recordings. Lots of mad flourishes of percussion, guitar and synth noodling, some cool segments that you wish would develop into full-blown songs but instead abruptly stop and jump to something else, it's sort of like an audio sketchbook of his time spent in Amsterdam although you'll also feel like he jetsetted to other exotic locales during the recordings. It wasn't a solo mission by any means. You'll hear plenty of contributions from his MV comrades as well as six-string buddy John Frusciante and Money Mark too.
Those of you who exhibited the good taste to purchase the cd reissue of Rogue Male's debut album, the 1985 NWOBHM classic First Visit, highlighted here recently, are all probably wondering when the reissue of the band's second and last album, 1986's Animal Man, would arrive, right? And you might also be wondering, just how well does Animal Man stack up against First Visit anyway? Well good news all around. It's finally here, and damn right Animal Man is just as good as First Visit, maybe even better. Which means: tough, hard rockin' '80s British metal, catchy, somewhat speedy, and still semi-futuristic (as far as their Mad Maxish costuming goes anyway... also note the computer voices at the start of side one).
Motorhead is still an obvious influence, some Thin Lizzy too. We're hearing both in the vocal dep't., which are sorta gruff and yobbish... kinda punk really. "The Real Me" reminds us of some Di'Anno era Maiden, specifically "Running Free" from Killers. Love the harmonica blowin' coda on that one too! There's definitely a punk, streetwise element to this band's metallic stylings, lots of take-no-shit attitude certainly. In fact, anyone in the market for an uplifting personal anthem might try out track three, "Take No Shit"!
At their most pogoish punk, the poppy unemployment protest rocker "Job Center" could be a Rezillos track. And at times, particularly when they work in the quasi-industrial "sci-fi" effects, this sounds a bit Killing Joke, actually. But their influences go further back - "You're On Fire" includes a nod to the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.
As with the First Visit reissue, this too is limited (2000 copies) and comes in a digipack. One bonus track this time, the non-album cut "Rough Tough (Pretty Too)" from the "Belfast" 12" ep that preceded Animal Man's release. The cd booklet includes lyrics, and biographical liner notes that yet again misspell Rogue Male as Rouge Male. Whoops.
Remember, if Andee and Allan here at AQ had gotten their as-yet-unnamed and still utterly hypothetical '80s metal reissue label off the ground already, THEY might have reissued the two Rogue Male albums themselves, if they could have. Rogue Male was top of their list - get this (and First Visit) to really understand why, maybe.
As featured on the cd that came with the latest music issue of The Believer, local SF group Sholi tackle a song by the seventies "Queen of Persian Pop", Googoosh, a beloved Iranian singer who brought much glamorous style and beauty to Middle Eastern pop music, before being forced underground by the Iranian revolution. According to Payram Bavafa, the bands singer/guitarist, "'Hejrat' is often regarded as one of Iran's most beautiful and romantic pop songs". Sholi extends the cover tributes to the B-side where they bravely take on Joanna Newsom's "The Sprout and The Bean" with surprisingly good results. Recorded by Greg Ashley it comes with a coupon to download mp3 versions of the two tracks. Nice!
Now that Iran seem to be dead. And the Church Steps are gone. And the Coach Whips are no more. Well, it's up to Sic Alps to keep the SF noise pop freak flag flying!
It always seemed that sonically, these guys belonged on Siltbreeze, and lo and behold, it has come to pass. For those who are new to Sic Alps, imagine a fractured noise drenched lo-fi garage pop, rife with blown out drums, simple detuned guitars, lazy drawled vocals, tons of reverb and distortion, all tangled up into some seriously catchy pop. Guided By Voices, Strapping Fieldhands, Pavement, but with plenty of hazy sixties psych, a killer lo-fi Phil Spector-ish wall of sound production, and a bit of corrosive noise and fractured amp buzz a la the Dead C.�
U.S. EZ leans way more toward the pop than the noise, many of the songs, eschewing any sort of noise or distortion completely, offering up instead, a sort of shimmery sixties soft pop, all jangly guitars, and reverbed background vocals, but elsewhere the band rocks pretty hard, channeling classic nineties slacker indie rock, through modern noise rock, via some fuzzy retro garage, the result as we mentioned before, often ends up sounding like a Beach Boys or Hollies record on Siltbreeze. Which should be recommendation enough. Dwyer from the Oh Sees says it's worth it just for the track "Gelly Roll Gum Drop"!!
This one was definitely made for aQ. Self described black noise / doom metal from Maniac, formerly of Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem, joined by Kvarforth of Swedish black metallers Shining, and Attila from SUNNO))) (and also Mayhem oddly enough) and featuring music by Current 93. A pretty odd mix for sure, especially the two former Mayhem vocalists, and what's even more odd, is that this release features only two studio tracks, the other 6 recorded live, one of which is an intro recorded by David Tibet and Andrew Liles as Current 93. But a strange band deserves a strange release, so here we go.
The opening title track is some super abstract noise drenched doom, falling somewhere between Khanate, Gnaw Their Tongues and something much more spacious and abstract. A simple little guitar melody drifts through a landscape of howled and shrieked vocals, thick bursts of caustic crumbling distortion, little flurries of metallic chug, haunting minor key melodies, a truly twisted doomscape for sure, but it's Maniac's vocals (as well as Attila's here) that make it so fucked up and freaked out. So impossibly harsh and intense, a monstrous growl/shriek totally in the red, swallowing up all the sounds around it, managing to sound as creepy and crawly as it does intense and insane. There's tons of shit going on in the background too, strange voices speaking, other instruments drifting in and out, random samples and field recordings, some buried percussion, all only adding to the weirdness.
The second studio track is a whole different story, a hugely heavy slab of plodding doom metal, guitars thick and loud and distorted, layer upon layer of grind and crumble and buzz, the vocals super intense, slipping from hellish shriek to demonic growl and back again. Lots of effects, the arrangement full of starts and stops, plenty of grinding guitar lurking beneath the main riff, a loping freaky fucked up ultradoom jam for fans of Moss, Monarch, Nihill, Bunkur, Whitehorse, etc.
The rest of the disc is a live show recorded at the Camden Underworld in the UK in 2007, and begins with a creepy Current 93 intro, with David Tibet, howling his strange invective, over a wash of hiss and white noise and guitar rumble, until the band launch into a live version of the second studio track mentioned above which launches the band into an expansive trudge through some serious tweaked and twisted doom. Live it sounds a lot less freaked out and a lot more TRUE, huge riffing, caveman drums, amazing throat shredding vocals, the sound is definitely raw and live sounding, but it perfectly suits Skitliv's hellish black doom. The record closes with a live version of "Amfetamin", the track that opened the disc, and it's appropriately intense, the addition of drums doing nothing to take away from its minimal menace, the focus less on vocals (minus a flurry of howls and shrieks midway through) and more on the droning guitars and grinding crumbling creepy black ambience.
Bluesy psychedelia packed far beneath a thick, heavy cloud of marijuana smoke. If you're willing to indulge and unlock the latent Creedence and Skynrd potential lying dormant within bands like Dead Meadow, eat an eighth, take this to the beach in headphones, and figure out just how far you can walk. Comprised of five members, Sleepy Sun musically grew together in Santa Cruz, eventually reaching the shores of the San Francisco Bay peninsula. And they do embody the popularly conceived vision of their hometown. Comfortable, a high drenched in fog, floating inland on ocean wind. Compositionally, things feel natural and free. Each instrument as integral as the rest. Breathing, moving. Always cohesive, without relying too heavily on the standard verse, chorus, verse format. Maneuvering in and around the beats, the lead vocalist's feelings, arrangements, and his both thoughtful and clever melodies bleed clear in the mix. In particular, "White Dove" is perfectly suited for a 7" release. It's essentially two separate movements, each expanding and contracting, showing one piece of the larger picture. These guys take the track and "smear it" across both sides. We've heard the full-length, and this excellent release is a glimpse of what lies waiting. (The album itself was recorded by Colin Stewart -- producer of Black Mountain and Destroyer) They're helping keep places like Santa Cruz weird. Literally a full-on trip soaked in feedback. Completely recommended.
Some of you probably already know Sloth, a mysterious band of Midwestern sludgelords who in the past shared splits with folks like Corrupted, Grief, Upsidedown Cross, Floor, Noothgrush and Grief, and sonically, these guys were a pretty perfect fit amidst such illustrious company, but even back in the day, the sound of Sloth was a bit cracked, a bit demented, hints of some serious psychosis lurking beneath their lurching, downtuned exterior.
Surprisingly, this is their first full length EVER, but maybe not so surprisingly, given a whole cd to stretch out on, the weirdness factor is through the roof. This is most definitely not a proper sludge record, although there are some seriously sludge-y moments. There's also lots of weirdo rock, a bit of classic sounding grunge, some Amrep style postpunk noise, some cracked pop, and some seriously what-the-fuck sonic action all over the place. It sounds a bit like a musical clusterfuck, and it sort of is, but in a good way, and all those disparate sounds sort of fitting together, like some musical Frankenstein's monster. Not to mention, as the title suggests, the record is split into 13 songs and 13 samples, with each sample, some as short as 4 seconds getting their own track.
So yeah, even with such an amazing sludge pedigree, we're not sure we would necessarily recommend this to those looking for something like Corrupted, Moss, Bunkur and the like. A Whole Other World Of Fun is more for folks who like their music, heavy, difficult, troublesome, confusional and very very very fucked up. Just have a listen to the sound samples and maybe it will start to make sense. Probably not though...
The record opens with some grungy redneck punk rock, somewhere between Scissorfight and Fucked Up, but with some killer riffing, some weird death metal grunts, and some awesome post rock-y breakdowns. The rest of the tracks are really all over the place, from creeping Slintish mathrock (complete with spoken word vocals) and a twisted howled banshee like chorus, to a super blown out space rock groove, with an ultra distorted riff, some bizarre vocals, and some haunting keyboards making it weirdly propulsive and a bit krauty, to a sea shanty forest folk sing along, to killer lo-fi buzzing indie rock, plodding primitive black metal and every stop in between. The only truly sludge-y track is "Pike Flower Shop", a lurching, stumbling ultradirge, but even then, it's peppered with weird electric organs, raspy vocals, and fucked up production. There's also a bit of a Ween vibe throughout the whole disc, that is if Ween were some sort of weirdo power violence band.
The record ends with a murky bass and drums plod, run through with buried in the mix group vocals, occasionally interrupted by a feral death metal howl, twice as loud as the rest of the music. Fucked up for sure, bizarre, but pretty damn cool. Which basically describes the whole record.
Way recommended, but only for folks with a twisted sense of humor and a taste for heavy, all-over-the-map weirdness.
Some folks try really hard to create pretty sounds, but there are those special folks who just naturally have some preternatural ability to create majestic beauty without it ever sounding forced or contrived. The Swedish trio Tape are shining examples of just such a group, able to make lush and textured sounds that are as engaging as they are pleasing. After a couple recent reissues of older Tape recordings, we were really excited to find what their new record would sound like. And with the opener "Beams" we were greeted with what might be a contender for our favorite song of the year! A song that invites you in with warm swirling analog synths and takes you on such a dreamy ride that it feels like being on a tranquil slide up in the clouds as it takes delicious soft turns and dips through the sky. Luckily the rest of the record follows and flows with equal beauty and such a delicate touch. Tape really put to shame just about everyone else who try their hand at dreamy instrumental post-rock. Their songs aren't as simple as just being moody or melancholic instead they truly create their own world, one that glows with a cascading and illuminating vision. Highly recommended!
NOW ON THICK TRIPLE VINYL!!!
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 world needs another SUNNO))) or Earth like it needs� well, it doesn't. Nor does it need another Slint, or a Mogwai, or a Justice, or an Animal Collective. Every time a band blows up, suddenly a million bands are there to get sucked along in their wake. But never was this phenomenon more egregious than with the new wave of doom/drone/dirge outfits. At the risk of repeating ourselves again, it seems like every band, heavy or otherwise, that features at least one member with a "drone side project" or a "minimal doom side project", barely keeping ahead of the various people dabbling in back metal, but we digress.
Like most things, it probably seems easy, but isn't. The whole leaning your guitar against the amp and letting it go, sure we joke about that in reviews, but it's way harder than that. Compare the millions of ho-hum guitardrone cd-r's to something like the last amazing record by Vulture Club (we still have some, if you haven't bought one, you should, really). It's like night and day. So we're always pretty cautious when we hear about a new guitar drone group or some doomdirge record we oughtta dig.
But once in a while, a group comes along, who only just barely fit into that whole genre, skirting it, creating something totally their own, with just the merest hints of sounds more familiar, like all great bands, borrowing and stealing freely, but not just regurgitating those sounds right back at us, instead, spreading them out in some underground lab, pulling them apart, exploring how they tick, dissecting them, then attempting to put them back together again, with some of their own parts, some sounds and songs that have been fermenting in a dusty corner of said lab, the results then something new, a patchwork of sounds, that in the right hands, can be deftly woven into something beautiful, something dark and mysterious, something like this.
A Semblance Of Something Appertaining to Destruction is the latest from the mysteriously monickered To Blacken The Pages, part four of an ongoing series in sound, a sprawling dirgescape that owes much to meandering post rock, downtuned slow motion sludge, drifty abstract doom, and the sort of heavy doomic countrified sludge that Earth has been exploring over the last few records.
Three tracks, the shortest 11 minutes, the longest nearly 18, each a dusty, moonlit drift, simple minor key twang, slowed down space rock riffage, streaks of feedback and buzzing distant drones, swirling FX, layers of guitar fuzzy and druggy. The opener, more than Earth or SUNNO))) or any of those, sounds much more in line with Loop or Spacemen 3, a drugged out soporific riff, that lumbers a little too slow to rock, even a little too slow to constitute any sort of groove. Instead, it's a dreamy droney drift, heavy and mutedly chuggy, churning onward through a sky of whirls and swirls and rumbles, underpinned by plenty of buzz and fuzz and blur. It's like a super slowed down way more abstract Loop, which we probably don't need to explain to you is in fact a very good thing.
The second track introduces drums, which do little to up the propulsion, this is still weary, dreary and delightfully spaced out. A super spare, abstract doomy lope, the sky above criss crossed with high end guitar skree, the drums supporting another blown out slow motion space rock riff, the whole track trudging across an endless expanse of shimmery buzz and swirling space-y effects. Everything muted and mumbly and lazily mesmerizing.
The final, longest track, ditches the drums, returning to the lazy smoky sprawl of the opener, but this time even more abstract, the central guitar part, drifting well below the constantly shifting layers of sound, coruscating high end, over billowing deep rumbles, a glacial, stately, almost funereal anti-groove, perfect late night, drift off, trip out slow motion space rock krautdrone. Fans of Earth and Expo '70 will dig especially, as in some ways, this does sound like a strange hybrid of the two, although all of you into the slow dreamy droney heavy minimalism would do well to check this out.
Been meaning to get to this one for a while, it's something we absolutely *had* to highlight eventually, the long-overdue reissue of the crucial first album by this now veteran, always visionary noise rock/metal outfit. Mainman Steve Austin (vocals/guitars) has led a vast variety of TITD lineups over the years, having made eight studio albums to date, and Supernova is where it all started. When this first came out back in 1993 on the now-defunct Amphetamine Reptile label, we were immediately entranced and in fact almost frightened by this band's (at the time) fairly unique blend of atmospheric/ambient weirdness (via surreal sampling), melody, and heavy/hard rock action. Surely the most Satanic thing AmRep ever released, next to the God Bullies. Also, at the time, we'd have compared it to the likes of Steel Pole Bathtub, Oxbow, Engine Kid, Neurosis, Pain Teens... more recently, Old Man Gloom maybe.
Supernova's dozen tracks are full of both sheer beauty and terror; cruel, cryptic, compelling. It's a genius avant-metal mutation, ultimately more metallic than we knew back then (perhaps pioneering the "noisecore" genre), the band's violent hardcore/postrock riffage and distorted, angry vokills being moodily morphed with all manner of psychedelic sound FX fuckery and chaotic layers of vocal mumble and chatter, buried in the mix like crossed wires or intercepted transmissions... there's also stretches of proggily Frippish guitar, synth bleep, unidentifiable field recordings, including even some barnyard animal noises heard on one track. Today Is The Day keeps all this under control though, these are truly *songs*, mysterious and mayhemic but never too messy. The line between dreaminess, and nightmarishness, is often erased... they were definitely on to something here, as later output proved, Today Is The Day getting more overtly metal in later incarnations, maybe even more experimentally extreme, but never any more uniquely "Today Is The Day" than on Supernova.
This digitally remastered reissue now comes in a digipack, and the artwork is slightly altered from the original, and there's two bonus tracks too (from the '93 AmRep 7" single, "I Bent Scared"), but otherwise it's the same Supernova we know and love. In a word: Recommended!
Ok, now that that's finally out of the way (hey, it's always hardest to review the albums that you like the most, anxiously wanting to do 'em justice) we'll hopefully get to the *new* TITD album, Axis of Eden, soon. And also the same label's reissue of another TDID AmRep classic, Willpower, the ultra-intense follow-up to Supernova...
There's probably a perfectly good reason for this band being named "U.S. Christmas". We hope there is anyway. Regardless, that this disc (apparently the third so far, from this North Carolina based outfit) was released on Neurosis' label Neurot is of course a good sign, and indeed, Eat The Low Dogs is proving to be one of our favorite Neurot releases of the last little while, fitting in nicely with the likes of Guapo and Grey Daturas in the recent Neurot roster. Yep, this is good stuff! What sort of good stuff you ask? Heavy, dark, synth-swirling, psychedelic good stuff!
Turns out, U.S. Christmas play moody, echoey space rock. That's right, kinda like '70s Hawkwind. But with both more of an aggro metallic edge (though still slowed down and sleepy), and also more of a countryish one too (slide guitar evoking wide open spaces). You can imagine 'em out in the desert someplace, campfire burning, generator running, giant amps tilted upwards at a 45 degree angle to point at the starry sky, playing this stuff all night long 'til dawn comes or the drugs run out... the last track here is called "Pray To The Sky", actually.
The spaced-out sounds of synthesizers and Theremin abound, the whirring electronic FX here reminding us a bit of the whup whup whup of the jug on those old 13th Floor Elevators albums... a constant presence, but just another texture amidst real songwriting. Loping, heavy head nodding riffage and ragged, punk-angsty vocals are also part of the U.S. Christmas equation. Speaking of equations, how 'bout this one: Neurosis + Hawkwind + some twang + more space rock = U.S. Christmas. Or, if the Red Sparowes teamed up with Tarantula Hawk, or if Deadboy And The Elephantmen were channelling The Heads, or if the Galloping Coroners came from Texas instead of Hungary, those things too might sound something like this band. Quite recommended.
And who knows, maybe the -next- awesome heavy synthy space rock combo to come along will be inexplicably called Canadian Thanksgiving.
Volume twa! Or at least that's how the pronunciation sounds, yeah our French sucks here but that never kept us from leaving work sore from chronic head bobbing and rabid fist thrusting. Okay maybe not that extreme, but it's like our own mini rave here at aQ whenever this is bumped. Yep, it's the third installment of much hyped French imprint, Ed Banger Records. More pumping electro from the masterminds behind the more commonly used term, "the French touch" and a very consistent example of the description.
Within this compilation the Ed Rec roster explore new ground and take some unexpected yet intriguing attempts at chopping the hell out of samples, synths, and vocals, and turning them into full on grueling disco-house anthems. But not ALL of it's that jump up, dancey, semi-rave hype shit, they tend to unveil more of their hip hop roots this time around with the likes of label frontman, Busy P's number, "To Protect and Entertain" a collab with Murs from LA's underground hip hop troop The Living Legends, including a simple yet arduous analog synth melody rolling over boosty drum patterns to accompany Murs' simple yet catchy raps. Along with Spankrock's rap appearance on the indie-rave thriller "Back it Up" by Feadz, as well as new predominately hip hop label signees DSL, who deliver a new twist to French rap with "Find Me a World". But of course the majority of the artists shine most with their dancefloor thrashers and grinding synth driven tunes that we've grown to love. Veteran Mr. Oizo cooks up more of his signature punchy and spastic sample chopping techniques, horns and all, with everything in its right place to produce a bouncy yet fun rhythm. Then of course there's Sebastian who delivers a mind fuck of a track, "Dog", sampling, yes, a black metal tune and cutting it to shreds, guitars, screams and all, delivering a punishing yet addictive, sweatdriven "banger" that we like to call "metal house" if we may...(yeah we said). While Dj Mehdi delivers his blissful disco composition "Pocket Piano", not necessarily for the dancefloor but amazing "groove" music nonetheless! Simply put, Ed Rec 3 is a well rounded hype machine that's bound to work wonders at any given party. Truly one to check out!
Edition Sonoro is the parallel label to Twenty Hertz, both of which are run by the British drone artist Paul Bradley. Resonant Embers is collection of artists who have crossed paths with Mr. Bradley over the years and may be delivering work for Edition Sonoro in the future. There's irr. app. (ext.), jgrzinich, Ueboet, Colin Potter, Bradley himself, Maile Colbert with Tellemake, and Andrew Liles. AQ's beloved bewilderer of sound Matthew Waldron returns to his irr. app. (ext.) moniker with a disorienting chorus for vibrating objects, chiming strings, and distant moans phasing in a tripped out sonic equivalent to a funhouse mirror. Another favorite comes by the way of jgrzinich, who layers together windswept clatter from multiple recordings from high tension wires and the post-Soviet crumbled landscape of his current home in Estonia. A cold, sodden atmosphere oozes from these turnbuckle creaks and (literally) post-industrial ambience. Ubeboet is a newcomer to us, offering a majestic track of dark ambience haunted with distant strings and underwater operatic vocals. Colin Potter propagates a liquid drone from a series of harmonic belltones, which have all of the sublime power and angelic beauty of a Ligetti chorale. Paul Bradley constructs a series of interwoven guitar loops of midrange timbers that reflect similar ideas found in Aidan Baker's solo work. Maile Colbert flickers her voice through a series of looping devices and VLF recordings, recalling the early albums of Grouper but with Jarboe's vocal style instead. And finally, the comp is completed with a track from Andrew Liles, whose deeply minor chord piano keys and lilting gypsy violin have a noirish, horror film quality, perhaps in homage to Coil's lost soundtrack to Hellraiser?
We're beginning to think, in addition to our biweekly Record(s) of the Week, we might just have to institute a Box Set of the Week. There's so many amazing reissues, so many collections of lost gems, we'd probably just make them Records of the Week proper if they weren't so expensive... this item is would be a good example. But you know what, screw it, for what you get, $45 bucks is not that much, a massive gorgeous book and two cds. So much amazing music, and fascinating graphics. Let's just do it. Record of the Week!!!
Alright. Feel better already. And it makes sense. If you're anything like us, and you sort of must be since you're reading the AQ list, this kind of HAD to be record of the week, everything we love, strange sounds from all over the world, dusty record crackle, tape hiss and vinyl warble, a beautiful music related object� A total slam dunk. And there's the fact that EVERYONE who works here has one or wants one. Dust-To-Digital are like the new Smithsonian Folkways, constantly unearthing sonic treasures and then assembling them into beautifully curated collections. And we just can't get enough.
There was the Goodbye, Babylon box, collecting classic gospel music, housed in a huge wooden box with raw cotton and a huge book, the Fonotone Records box, 5 cds and a huge book in a cigar box with a bottle opener, The Art Of Field Recording set, that WAS just like a continuation of the Smithsonian Folkways series, and assorted other single disc reissues, all meticulously researched, fantastically laid out, and packed with some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear.
But this new one, Victrola Favorites: Artifacts From Bygone Days, just might be our favorite yet. Not only is it an amazing and head spinningly varied collection of musics, from African folk to country yodeling to Cantonese Opera, big band jazz to Hawaiian guitar to rhythm and blues, music from all over, Burma, Japan, Greece, Thailand, Portugal, China, Egypt, but the design is fantastic, a cloth bound hard cover book, with almost NO text, what text here is thoughtfully sequestered at the very end of the book. Where most boxes are packed with notes and recording info, the bulk of this handsome book is made up of gorgeous archival images, 78 labels, old record tins, posters, pamphlets, old greyed photographs, mailing labels, instruction booklets, all sort of Victrola ephemera. It would be well worth it just as an art book. Makes you dread the oncoming MP3 takeover, what will future generations discover of our music, old busted hard drives? None of these cool old sleeves, decaying from years of moisture and insects, gorgeous little visual artifacts offering clues as to the music contained inside.
But of course it's NOT just a book, included are two cds, a collection of various recordings drawn from the ongoing Victrola Favorites project, masterminded by AQ faves the Climax Golden Twins. Where old 78s are played on a vintage Victrola, and recorded with a microphone placed in front of the Victrola, none of that digitizing and cleaning up the sound, removing pops and clicks, this is all about the experience of listening to old 78's, sitting in a darkened parlor, in a big overstuffed chair, the air alive with dust motes, gorgeously crackly and timeworn sounds washing over you. And listening to these tracks, it does in fact feel just like that, or alternately, it's like hopping on a sonic time machine and traveling all over the world, different places, different times, a modern day Folkways, hopping in and out of times to capture brief snippets of sound and then moving on. So fantastic. If you love the Sublime Frequencies releases, and the Secret Museum Of Mankind series, this is essential listening. And the amazing thing is that even with all of these disparate sounds and styles, as a whole the collection flows if not seamlessly, in a way that is oh so pleasing to the ears.
Korean bamboo flute solos, amazing and amazingly insane yodeling, a bit of Arabian country dance music, super dramatic Greek folk music, super festive jug band music, Japanese kabuki, dark droning Indian ragas, recordings of Big Ben and traffic sounds in the UK and so much more. It's almost overwhelming. But not enough to keep us from wishing that there were ten more discs of this stuff!
So absolutely recommended.
And the packaging. WOW. Like we mentioned before, a clothbound hardcover book. In either red or white, with a Japanese style obi, packed with the above mentioned images, the liner notes and essay left for the final few pages, the cds, are uniquely held inside the front and back cover, in circular cut outs, beneath which lurk drawings of silverfish, the bane of all 78 collectors, as they eat up the sleeves!!
One of the most kick ass comps we've heard in a while! And there's been some good ones lately, of Nigerian '70s disco funk and French '80s electro punk, among others. But how can you beat funked up, progged out psych rock from Communist Hungary?? This comp resoundingly answers that question: you can't.
While this disc's title might be in poor taste this comp's curators exhibit EXCELLENT taste in groovy Hungarian psych/prog rarities from the sixties and seventies!!! Which is as you might expect, since these are the djs/diggers also responsible for such top notch sets as Welsh Rare Beat, Vertigo Mixed, and Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word. If you like those, you'll like this. (And, like us, will be eagerly anticipating volume 2, to be titled Hung Over, of course).
A couple of the bands here we know, only really 'cause of another B-Music related release, the disc by swingin' Hungarian sex symbol Sarolta Zalatnay, which featured her work with bands such as Locomotiv GT and Skorpios, both of which appear here along with a track by Zalatnay. In fact, the Hungarian scene was highly intertwined, as diagrammed by the handy "Well Hung Family Tree" that compiler Andy Votel has provided in the cd booklet... a cd booklet that by the way is super thick, packed with all the detailed liner notes from the knowledgeable Votel you could desire, color photos of the artists, album and singles covers, and a forward by none other than "Cini" herself, Sarolta Zalatnay! All the tracks are licensed from the source, Hungaroton Records, the whole thing sounds and looks great, it's an obvious labor of love. And what's not to love, 'cause all 20 tracks here are awesome. Tons of FUZZ guitar, swirling organ jamming, flutes going off, crazy instrumental breaks, wailing vocals, dancefloor filling beats galore. High energy stuff, man. Makes it seem like living under the heel of the Soviet boot of oppression wasn't all bad, at least these folks found the freedom of getting funky and freaky...
So, here's who's on here: Anna Adamis & Gabor Presser (the latter of whom has a big presence in many of these groups), Omega Redstar, Omega (2 cuts), Metro, Hungaria, Kati Kovacs (who sounds like Janis Joplin fronting Hard Stuff!), Katie Kovacs and Gemini, Corvina, Neoton, Tamas Somlo & Omega, Meteor & Demjen Ferenc, Illes (2 cuts from them too), Sarolta Zalatnay, Locomotiv GT, Nemenyi Bela and Atlantis, Piramis, Skorpio, and Bergendy.
From the fuzzy Bo Diddley shake of Omega Redstar, to the badass organ excess of Locomotiv GT, to the frantic funky synth sizzle of Illes (a band whom we recall from Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word as well)... well it's hard to pick highlights, they're all mega. Maybe Omega (sans Redstar) gets the nod for their epic 8 minute groover "Kergeskeziu Favagok", a full 3 minutes of which at least is occupied by a killer drum solo laced with field recordings of bird twitter! They also contribute a fuzzed out stomper a little later in the disc.
Ah, but it's all so good, Well Hung bringing together an amazing Eastern European melange of hard edged acid rock funk freakbeat that's part Chains And Black Exhaust, part wah wah '70s cop show kitsch, part Iron Curtain exotica... fun times in other words! Recommended.
The first proper full length from this Midwestern black metal trio. We missed seeing them live unfortunately when they were here recently, but they did drop off their new record, and it's pretty great.�
Just like the demo we listed a while back, these guys traffic in a classic black metal sound, old Emperor, old Ulver, Darkthrone, they're obviously channeling the Norwegian elite, but their take on it is definitely their own. Where before there seemed to be a lot of eighties style riffing mixed in, here the vibe seems to be much doomier, and there's still a definite Opeth vibe with all the more tranquil clean guitar stretches. But they also do some weird, distinctly not very black metal shit. One prime example is the end of the second track (all the songs are 12+ minutes), after a majestic / epic coda, the song devolves into a gloriously abstract drum heavy jam, the guitar ringing out, a single chord, static and droney and hypnotic, while the drums get all chaotic. We sort of wished that it would on like that for another 5 or 6 minutes. Maybe live. And the band definitely get into a sort of trancey thing, which is not that uncommon for black metal, but they manage to make it sound all murky and mysterious instead of just buzzy.
But beyond the various weird bits here and there, those almost-folky interludes, and various textural experiments, the band offer up a pretty solid take on classic raw old school black metal, lacing it heavily with doom, and, perhaps inadvertently, some serious math/post rock, the arrangements, and the riffs betray some Slint or something similar in their past, or it could just be that Slint's guitarists were closet metalheads. Either way, it keeps their sound unique, and has definitely helped keep this record on constant repeat around here.
Ok, this one should be easy. Ricardo Villalobos is the minimal techno whizz from Chile (based now in Berlin) who made one of our very favorite techno albums ever, last year's very-extended-play "ep" Fizheuer Zieheuer, which has to be of the most hypnotically repetitive electronica artifacts we know of. His more recent Fabric 36 set was also a crowd pleaser here at AQ.
Meanwhile, the French band Magma is of course pretty much our number one '70s progressive rock obsession. It's practically a spiritual thing we've got about them. And like Villalobos, they're no strangers to hypnotic rhythmic pulsations, in their own proggy purview.
So, as soon as we found out that Villalobos had released a white label 12" based around sampled music by Magma, we wanted to hear it. We NEEDED to hear it. And when we did, we were quite pleased. Villalobos merges with Magma almost seamlessly, taking and looping a snippet of the Magma album Baba Yaga La Sorciere (the one featuring a version of Magma's classic Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh sung by a children's choir, we should note, which makes this even more awesome... and that's why it's called Enfants), then adding a techno beat to it. The minimalist melodic piano and the kids' Kobaian chant and the high-hat ticking go together elegantly, enchantingly, endlessly... it's about 17 minutes long! Simple, but effective. And very much a tribute to Magma, Villalobos giving credit where credit is due, just having some fanboy fun as a producer here, making his (and our) kind of techno/Magma hybrid. There's another 10 minutes on the flip, Villalobos focussing on percussion elements rather than the "chant", which we imagine that DJs could do some interesting things with.
We've been wanting to list this 12" for a while, and finally got enough copies in stock to do so thanks to Villalobos doing a second pressing (it's on his own label). Recommended!
For many of us the debut by Rufus Wainwright still stands as the shining light in his entire catalog. With arrangements and production by Van Dyke Parks this was the record that totally captured the lavish and grandiose drama and decadence of Rufus at his greatest. It's easy to forget that when this came out in 1999, it really had no scene or peer group to be placed with. This was a few years before full blown orchestrated pop made a renaissance in the indie music landscape. This was a trailblazing record in so many ways. It was still not the norm for a good looking heartthrob major label artist to be totally out of the closet. It also wasn't the norm for a pop record to come out that was filled with intense and colorful piano, stunning orchestration and such confident, romantic and tragic male vocals. Songs of yearning, unrequited love, and monumental memories delivered with such sweeping and riveting flair. So nice to have this one on vinyl now!
We last heard from Wereju was on a sprawling�two track,�double cd released early last year. The ambient drone side project of Irish ultra doom heavies Wreck Of The Hesperus, Wereju deviated from the mothership bigtime, their take on the slow and low a whole 'nother beast entirely, and then even not all that beastly. It wasn't massive or heavy or sludgey, instead it was dreamy and mysterious, the low end more soothing than corrosive. There were definitely some intense moments, but for the most part, the sound of Wereju was a gorgeous blackened late night shimmer.�
So here we have the follow up, released on Basses Frequences, one of our favorite new labels, who recently brought us that cool Tamagawa triple 3"cd-r with the origami lantern, and several other releases elsewhere on this list. Wereju, sonically, are a perfect fit on BF, this disc another two tracker, the first, a gauzy glimmering slow motion soundscape, the sound of a camera slowly panning across a barren landscape, cloaked in fog, wreathed in smoke, the trees barely visible, just dark shapes wrapped in whites and greys, rendered in gorgeous loooong tones, not all low end either, in fact, this is firmly in the upper register, distant keening high end streaks, smoothed into strange slithery melodies, bell like tones ring out, the decay stretching out forever, softly pulsing as the sound waves drift heavenward, beneath it all, a soft rumble whirs lazily, like an ancient engine powering this slow moving celestial body of sound. Shimmering, glittering, ethereal, the sound of sunlight on water, of sunbeams filtering through the clouds, infusing the otherwise barren soundscape with a soft burnished glow.
The second track, is a bit more ominous, a bit more minimal. Distorted guitars moan way off in the distance, a deep undulating low end, spreads out like a black cloud in front of the sun. Bits of feedback and reverbed melodies drift by, but where as the first track was day, this is most definitely night. Dark, ominous, shadowed, cloudy, lots of rumbling low end, but not quite disguising the soaring shimmering remnants of the opener, that seem to be lurking just below the surface, a softly churning, constant battle for sonic supremacy, light versus dark, high versus low, but a soft war, the two sounds not so much clashing, as bleeding into each other, black and whites become greys, the sound gorgeously languid and soft focus, a long, luxurious slow burning fade to black. Gorgeous.�
Incredible packaging too. The cd is seated in a black tray within a hinged metal tin, with a paste on front cover, full color sticker, and a sticker inside too with the liner notes.�
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!
Dreamy! Initially this struck us as being oh so very very adorable, but for those around here with a low tolerance for sugar its cumulative effect soon became too much. Their teeth started to hurt, and they fruitlessly tried to shield themselves in the metal section. Alright, that's an exaggeration! Simone White's voice is a little bit Regina Spektor and a little bit Sybille Baier and a little bit Rose Melberg. The production is seriously lux, with some of the nicest inclusion of brass instruments in a pop song we've heard in a long time. Everything is ultra soft and smooth. Hmmm, it's sort of Finchy too. Our only sticky point is that Ms White opts for a few lyrical trends that have become somewhat tired and overused, like uhh... anything about feathers! However, if you embrace your inner cute and twee darling self no matter what your age, this is so for you! Absolutely crushworthy!
Wolf Parade fans will probably have already devoured this one, and don't need us tellin' them what's what! But whoa, it caught us by surprise! Those Wolf Parade folks seem to have taken a downer prior to recording their latest album! With the exception a few fleeting glistening warm pop moments, their exuberance is nothing short of deflated on At Mount Zoomer. Bummer 'cause when they're barrelling along at full throttle pop buoyancy, it's pretty darn irresistible. Sadly it never happens on this album. What's left are songs that sound more akin to the dour melodrama of New York's Interpol than the spritely orchestral drama-pop of their Canadian brethren Arcade Fire. Yes, still very dramatic and well executed, but the shift in mood may take some getting used to. Now, we all know that musical originality is a rare thing these days, and most current bands including Wolf Parade don't have a wealth of it. At Mount Zoomer finds them inevitably ending up once again as being most remarkable as a RIYL ("recommended if you like") band. So, that said, a solid album that sits right at the crossroads between Arcade Fire and Interpol!
We only really started getting into Wormwood in the last few years, a shame really as they've been at it since 1997, and have now, after 11 years, decided to hang it up. Commemorated by this 7", which is all the more sad, cuz it's fucking awesome.
The A side begins all tribal drumming, and crunchy detuned guitars, creepy buzzing synths and howled almost yelped vocals, crushing and dirgey and hypnotic and like a lot of Wormwood stuff heavily indebted to Neurosis and the other band of that time and scene. But the B side is THE jam. A furiously fierce slab of lurching stop start slow motion power violence. The drums and guitar locked into a stuttery abstract non-groove, the vocals howling along, getting into some serious Harvey Milk territory almost, feedback ringing out in the pauses a la Eyehategod, one of those parts that must make lesser bands weep openly, but it is Wormwood, so of course, they manage to confound, by switching gears partway through, and unfurling something more melodic, with some surprising female vocals, which give the track a strange sort of Viking black metal vibe. And then it's done. We'll miss 'em, but these two tracks are definitely a perfect so long and fuck off. And if you somehow missed their Starvation record, pick it up, you do not know what you've been missing.
Incredible packaging! Metallic silver ink on thick black cardstock, lyrics printed on the inside in some cool mysterious font, a full color photo affixed to the front with those antique photo corners, each one hand numbered, inside a thick cardstock insert, also printed in silver, with another full color photo affixed to it, the whole thing is super striking.
LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES.
Wow, what a surprising piece of downer metal artistry from a band we'd never heard of before! Though, we were curious about 'em 'cause this, their debut, is one of the first two releases from the new Eichenwald Industries imprint, which is closely related to the limited edition Paradigms label, who have put out a lot of cool stuff you probably have. On this, the Dartmoor, UK duo known as The Wounded Kings play classic, epic, dark doom metal (a la Sabbath) with an especially druggy, spaced out, very psychedelic vibe. The very first, and title track, sets the tone, being a three-part suite beginning with some proggy organ drone... soon joined by funeral paced, fuzzed-out guitar... and cleanly sung, eerie echo-effected vocals with a melancholic, Ozzyish croak to 'em. The album continues with much more in the way of morose heaviness, epic-ness, and ambience, full of the sort of sludgy riffs we like, having quite a haunted, occult vibe.
This should appeal to fans of both Electric Wizard and Witchcraft. Clearly their record collections include a lot of '70s psych and possibly also Italian prog too... there's hints of Goblin going on here with the organ and all. We might also cite Trouble, very early Cathedral, Fall Of The Idols, Wizar'd, Solstice, Reverend Bizarre, and early Candlemass (Epicus Doomicus era)... the obscure Detroit '80s act Coven too if you've ever heard them... all could be referenced to describe The Wounded Kings' somber sound. Definitely some recommended, traditional (but not too traditional) DOOM here, folks!
In the age of YouTube and MySpace, the idea of the music video has changed dramatically since the days of MTV (or at least the days when MTV actually played videos). In the past, only bands on major labels could make a video, often hiring a real director and dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, plenty of bands have videos before they even have a record out. Super 8, digital video, Final Cut Pro, anyone can put together their own video and have it look as good if not better than the classic videos of old.
Old news maybe, but the thing is, most bands seems to use the video as simply a promotional tactic, or an excuse to fuck around and film it. Instead of, dare we say, ART. In the underground though, it's not at all uncommon for like minded musicians and filmmakers to join forces. In fact, with the advent of live performances featuring laptops and other sedimentary sound making devices (when is someone gonna make a laptop guitar, so left out laptoppers can windmill and leap about with the rest of the band?), often it's the accompanying films that are way more compelling. Often, a show is touted as some band performing "with films by so and so", but in fact, more often than not, it plays out more like seeing a film, that just so happens to feature live accompaniment by some band.
Few labels have really taken advantage of this new technology as much as Root Strata, who have quietly and steadily been releasing a series of super limited dvd-r's, each featuring new compositions by a small handful of artists, coupled with original films. The results have been pretty sublime, the films tending toward the abstract and impressionistic, the music following suit. When watching / listening to these, it's hard not to imagine laying on the floor, propped up on cushions, lights low, the film being projected on a huge blank wall, the band hunkered over their instruments in the corner, which makes sense as that's most likely how these films/sounds were conceived.�
So we have two new super limited dvd-r releases, one from Zelienople and one from Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Paul Clipson, both limited to 100 copies, both already out of print, so these are the only copies we'll ever get.�
We've only ever had one other release by Zelienople in the past, the gorgeous Stone Academy. A smoldering noise drenched folk, simple strum surrounded thick sonic swells, tons of effects, often evolving into a blown out druggy haze. The music here is similar, but a bit more post rocky, a little Velvets, a little Bohren. A simple main riff, repeating over and over, wreathed in reverb, the vocals a hushed plaintive murmur, while all around, those elements, softly swirl, streaks of blurred effects, spidery reverbed guitar melodies, all heavy with reverb and delay, the sound super laid back and weary, dreamlike and drowsy. Which perfectly suits the visuals, a film by Donald Prokop (and the band), an endless shot of the world passing by outside a car window. In the first half, the various sights are rendered an impressionistic blur, long streaks, fields of color vibrating, whirring past, sometimes the screen is mostly sky, peppered with glimmering streetlights, but often it's a a jittery assemblage of shapes and colors and lights, here and there, more of the landscape is revealed, eliciting a strange sense of melancholy, of loneliness, enhanced by Zelienople's moody musical drift. Near the end, the camera seems to be traveling through a series of tunnels, the film offering up long stretches of blackness between smeared glass views of passing towns. So lovely.�
Packaged in printed, folded papers sleeves, and again, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, and already out of print. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
