A seriously corrosive chunk of ultra blown out frenzied power violence from down under. Or as the sleeve proclaims over and over around the border "raw-grind-violence". And that's just what this is, violent, raw, and grind. Recorded live on the radio, 7 tracks, 12 minutes, of buzzing blown out riffage, churning chugging guitars, screeched shrieks, bellowed howls, furious octopoidal drumming, relentless blastbeats, pounding doomy plod, all wound up into a face melting explosion of power violence fury.
Fans of any of the recent crop of power violence warriors will definitely dig: Iron Lung, Endless Blockade, and it's always good to know the spirit of Crossed Out, MITB, Drop Dead, No Comment still burns bright worldwide.
Super limited cd-r, pretty sure it's out of print already, we only have a handful of copies...
What if we'd never reviewed an Acid Mothers Temple release before? Let's pretend... the first thing we'd say would be, what's with the matching Hawaiian shirts the band sports in the photo on this cd's back cover?? Then we'd go, like, check it out, they're this weird hippy rock group from Japan, maybe more like a cult than a band, with this hairy bearded crazy guitar player named Kawabata Makoto, the band's called Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno and they obviously love krautrock and Hawkwind and other druggy '70s psych stuff. They have this new album with the weird title of Pink Lady Lemonade - You're From Outer Space, and boy howdy is the music trippy, even trippier than the crazy colorful cover art collage. Recommended if that's your scene. We can't wait to hear more, let's hope they follow this one up with another album soon, if that's possible after expending all this cosmic pink lady energy!
But of course AMT have about 1,000,000 previous releases, you know 'em and you love 'em, so we probably should add just a little more info (or maybe actually DON'T need to add any more info?). FYI, as you might guess from its title, this disc features another revamped, reinterpretation of the AMT concert fave "Pink Lady Lemonade". We count different versions of that epic track on at least nine other AMT cds/dvds that we've previously listed!! So obviously it's something special in Acidmothersland. Making it extra special here, perhaps, is the presence of a brand new drummer/vocalist recruited from Japanese all-girl groop Afrirampo, the "cosmic shaman" known as Pikachu. Must be her offering up all the haunting vocals with the mildly Yoko-ish waver, that soar through the gentle kosmiche bliss of this album's lengthy space-outs, "songs" which eventually tend to swirl into something a little more intense and chaotic and guitary. "Pink Lady" is split into two parts, 24 and 11 minutes, bookending between them this disc's two other tracks, "Message From Outer Space" and "Take Me To The Universe". And oh yeah, what IS with the matching Hawaiian shirts?? Have AMT gone yacht rock? Well you could sip a margarita to this, if it was appropriately dosed.
Yup, it's another vintage Alice Cooper album, and it's worth grabbing for the title track alone. After the recent reissues (Pretties For You and Easy Action) spurred her to revisit Billion Dollar Babies, the song has been stuck in Cup's head for weeks! So sinister and bizarre... kinda makes you feel as though you've been crawlin' the back alleys of Detroit or crashin' out in a decadent Laurel Canyon mansion. So dirty. So good. Amazing rock musicianship and composition. Gnarly grungy bass and guitar riffs. Multiple awesomely strange vocal leads. An unexpectedly delicate piano interlude ("Mary Ann"). Social programming methods for patriots ("Generation Landslide"). Plenty of creepy cold sweat moments (the epic sprawling "I Love The Dead"). Although this album may be most remembered for the anthemic pop rock of "No More Mr. Nice Guy" - itself quite a snapshot of the mysterious 'fame' underbelly - the album is truly a vivid document of the burgeoning Detroit / LA glam / shock rock scene circa '72-'73... most importantly, Alice Cooper as a strictly kick ass band, not a celebrity!
Wow. Does the dictionary definition of brutal have the words "anaal nathrakh" in it? Well it should. We've loved this brutal British band for years, from back in 2001 when their devastating debut The Codex Necro blew us away with its ultra-extreme black metal, uh, necro-ness. Well, what's amazing is that Anaal Nathrakh (their name comes from one of Merlin's incantations in the movie Excalibur, btw, if you didn't know) has evolved, from raw black metal to a more melodic hybrid of black and death metal, with some crusty punk grind etc. thrown in, maybe having to do with their inclusion of members of Napalm Death for live gigging and some studio sessions too. And yet, they've stayed about as brutal as can be, even with the clean vocals (i.e. actual singing, and not just cookie monster grunts or shrieking vokills) that pop up on some tracks, amidst the other sorts.
The blasting drums are insane, the keyboards deranged, and the guitars killer -- it's quite a piece of work they have here for those into both the necro, and the slightly more nuanced. Frenzied yet technical. Maniacal yet melodic... you get the idea. If you liked Codex's follow-up Domine Non Es Dignus, or the one after that Eschaton (which we bizarrely failed to review, though the black metal fans here all own it), then get set for another treat. And if you're a black metal dissing death metaller (if that breed still exists at this late date), well maybe this album will be the one to win you over...
We went a little crazy for Aaron Spectre's Drumcorps project, a crazed manic electronic workout featuring live metal guitars and chopped to bits metal and grindcore, all mashed up into some incredibly head spinning, neck snapping, dancefloor destroying moshpit annihilating heaviness.
So the latest bit of Drumcorps brutality, finds Spectre teaming up with Bay Area thrashmetal titans Animosity for a 3 track one sided 10", which takes up right where the Drumcorps record left off and pushes this whole metal / electronic hybrid even further out. This time, Animosity wrote three tracks, and Spectre got to fuck them up. But weirdly enough, unlike on the last Drumcorps disc, where it sounded like a record assembled from bits of metal and grind and breakbeats, this disc sounds more like an Animosity record, where they just happen to be incorporating bits of jungle and techno and drill+bass and whatever grinding buzzing weirdness Spectre could come up with. And the results are pretty stellar. And its core, this is a grindmetal record, but the guitars are super clipped and processed, often stuttering and chopped up into impossible rhythms, the beats are revved up and transformed into frantic breakbeats, some of the super fast blast beats just keep getting faster and faster until they turn into impossible digital stutters. Huge riffs grind and churn, often separated by squalls of jungle, freaky beats, it's a mash up, but neither side is in control, it veers back and forth from metal to jungle to grind to breakbeat often exploding into everything at once. This is the sort of shit that could get us non dancers out on the floor. Or maybe get you dancers into the pit. Either way, fucking awesome.
And we talk about insane packaging all the time, but once again, holy shit, these guys are pushing the limits of how over the top you can get - eye popping full color screened sleeves, incredible, garish illustrations, inside and out, but it's the vinyl, some are clear and white swirled, some are red and blue and clear swirled, but then the non playing side features and abstract thick metallic ink silkscreened image, either gold or silver, it's hard to explain, but the first time we slipped one out of the sleeve, everyone working had to gather around to see.
CRAZY LIMITED. We got a bunch, but odds are these are the last copies we'll be able to get.
This album arrived quietly enough. The band's name, the album title and stark black slipcover offered little fanfare of what sounds might lurk within. For that matter, Madrid based label Acuarela has such an eclectic array of artists on its roster that we weren't allowed any tell-tale hints from peeking at their catalog. So, we tentatively slipped the jewelcase out of its slipcover. It revealed a dreary, fog blurred outdoor photo with leafless tree branches vanishing into the mist and damp mossy banks sinking into the chilly river's edge. That image totally captures the overriding mood of Spirit, leaning towards the dark, the mysterious, the slightly sinister. Apse's stormy post rock soundscapes churn up the gloom with a goth industrial edge. Hushed high male vocals lend a ghostly quality to the already haunted atmosphere. In fact, this may draw comparisons to Sigur Ros, but its heart is far more heavy and unsettling.
Phew. For a minute there we were worried we were gonna go a list without a Nadja or Aidan Baker disc. But fear not, we're safe! At least for two more weeks.
Team up number two from UK sludgecombo Atavist and doomdrone duo Nadja, and much like the last disc, which sort of threw us for a loop as we were expecting some serious sludgey bombast, the first of the two tracks here is all blissed out and dreamy, a churning 20+ minutes of downtuned minor key guitar shimmer, deep whirring bass rumble, locked into a looped cyclical meander, the various spidery meoodies intertwined and loose, layered and abstract, stretched out over a deep blackened canvas of undulating sonic swells, darkly ominous but quite hypnotic and mesmerizing. But then comes the CRUSH. And it's massive, we only had to wait a record and a half for the metal payoff but it's a big one. Three guitars locked into a churning riff, the drums a massive pound, howled vocals buried in the mix, all the while a haunting high end drone seems to hover over the proceedings, woven into the chugging melee below. But this sudden explosion of poundage and riffery is short lived, after 6 or 7 minutes, the blissy downtuned metallic onslaught abates, leaving a swirling emptiness of distant percussion and soft fluttery feedback. The high end gradually transforms into lowend, and the track gets a bit SUNNO)))-y, deep slowed down riffs moving glacially under a blackened canopy shot through with glimmers and shimmers and muted sparkles, finally slipping back into a softly moaning drone, that drifts like smoke through a sky grey with ash.
Another droney, doomy, blissy and briefly metallic essential from these two masters of their mysterious dark art.
Awesome! We'd been waiting and wanting more from New Zealand's bizarre Bad Statistics ever since we got their vinyl-only debut, Static, last year. In addition to thinking they had a really excellent band name, we loved the doomic, droning weirdness of their propulsive krauty NZ noiserock, made even weirder by the utter outsider vocal garble that arose over their ritualistic music, like spirits or specters seemingly summoned from the other side. Now, huzzah, there's this new full-length, an actual cd on the Pseudo-Arcana label, and it pretty much picks up where the LP left off! 47 and a half minutes more of mysterious musical ceremony, Bad Statistics style, on these seven tracks. Again, the vocals (produced from the throat of one Thebis Mutante) are really strange, unhinged alien hippy rant-chant, like Ya Ho Wah's Father Yod speaking in tongues, sometimes looped and layered. Together with the throbbing drum beats, distorted electronic textures from guitar and bass, and hollow horn bleat and twitter on a track or two, you have the basic tempel-vibrating template for Bad Statistics' repetitive, rumbling, mesmerizing murk. Best listened to from a yogic position of spiritual openness, legs crossed, mind clear, third eye unblinking. Though, at their loudest, most intense chugging psychrock peaks, some vigorous rocking back and forth will be called for, maybe even full-on writhing on the floor.
Let's take the 13-minute title track as an example... it's moaningly eased into, the percussive plod slow and sparse, but after a short while Thebis cries out quite like Can's Damo Suzuki, and the pace picks up, cymbals crashing... before another long droning lull with whistling and mumbling drifting over the slo-mo chug of the guitars and drums... then towards the very end, the singer suddenly seems possessed, his voice dropping into a guttural exhortations, the din of the instruments rising into a psychedelic swirling howl... welcome to the reverse exorcism!!
Imagine the kosmic-kraut-primitivism of early Amon Duul, Tangerine Dream, or Siloah, with Circle's Mika Ratto as voice coach, encouraging Yod x Yoko vocal vibrations. Or the linear lo-fi insanity of a secret Dead C meets Reynols monster jam, if directed towards the worship of some ancient god, recorded on cheap cassette only as an afterthought. Yeah. It's pretty much awesome.
Delia Derbyshire may embody the otherworldly beauty and mystique behind the sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but John Baker was its alchemical heart. Who else could take a simple tone from air being blown over a bottle and make it into a warm and electrifying panorama of melodious sound? This is the first of two volumes of rare and unreleased pieces from the heyday of the BBC; this one covering the years 1963-1969. In it we find TV adverts, library pieces, jazzy soundtracks, radiophonic pieces and home recordings as well as interviews on how he made the sounds contained here. Baker had a knack for melody, and often imbibed his mechanically made recordings with a warmth and playfulness that his more mathematically inclined contemporaries lacked. Yet he could also establish veils of mystery and drawn out suspense in his carefully composed themes. But Baker's real talent is brevity. With most of the 49(!) tracks contained here lasting under a minute, he evokes a complex and engaging sound world that is perfectly encapsulated within its minute long timeframe. Baker is the first of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop composers to get such a retrospective overview. Hopefully this means we'll see more individual overviews from this important laboratory of recorded sound very soon.
There have been a whole bunch of killer installments in Table Of The Elements' recent guitar based series of one sided 12"s: Oren Ambarchi, Lee Ranaldo, Jon Mueller, but this is the one everyone seems to have been waiting for.
Especially considering what went on with the last belong 12". We sold out in a flash, got more and then sold out again, we couldn't keep that in stock. Well, we're happy to report that this latest is just as good if not better. Whereas the other 12" was all covers, the single looooong track here is an original and it's a doozy. A warm, washed out, dreamy, delicate, gauzy blurred woozy drift of pixilated sound. Jeck, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, all those guys have nothing on Belong. If anything, Belong take those sorts of sound and transform them into something more organic, more amorphous. "Same Places" sounds almost like actual people playing actual guitars, instead of something assembled on a computer. Layered and dense, the melodies obscured by thick swells of fuzzy whir, the fact that this is the "slow version" does explain how gorgeously glacial it sounds, and how many of the tones do sound like someone with their finger on the vinyl slowing the record player down to a crawl, but all that does is let the lowend sprawl, the melodies become even more abstract, pulled apart, and slowed down to the point where their constituent parts almost separate and drift away, almost. Instead, it's an underwater whirl, everything shimmery and indistinct, the sound as you sink deeper and deeper into the abyss, but instead of getting darker, the sounds begin to glow from within, bathing you in their unearthly light. So totally gorgeous.
Pressed on thick clear 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!
We always sort of assumed Black Boned Angel, the alter ego of Birchville Cat Motel's Campbell Kneale, was just that, an alter ego, a one man exploration of things dark and drone-y and heavy, the sort of stuff that was maybe TOO day for his day gig in BCM. But here, on the latest BBA, Kneale has teamed up with fellow Kiwi noisemaker (and longtime aQ customer) James Kirk for something just a little bit different.
One single hour long song, that begins with all manner of barely there ambience, distant resonant rumbles, keening high end, fluttering chimes, super super minimal, tons of space. Eventually, the guitar comes in, but not crashing or exploding, instead, it comes in strumming dolefully, unfurling deep sorrowful chords, that are allowed to ring out, building a spaced out minor key melody that drifts in a melancholy haze. The sound is really quite pretty, some sort of post rock, minimal slowcore, think Dirty 3, or Low, but even slower and more abstract. And this goes on for nearly 30 minutes, lulling the listener into a soporific daze. But c'mon, this is BLACK BONED ANGEL, at about the halfway mark, the hammer falls, and the duo unleash a torrent of digitally processed distortion that buzzes and rumbles, all draped over a throbbing industrial crunch, until what sound like real drums join the fray, splattering out a spider web of disjointed beats beneath the nearly static undulating layer of undulating grinding buzz. When the buzz does shift, the chord change feels massive, the melody locking in tight, before slipping back into a metal-Niblock blur.
Eventually, the song ramps down, the guitars fade away leaving high end traces of what came before, keening streaks in the sky, shimmering lowend shadows underpinning coruscating arcs of distorted skree, eventually smoothing out into a soft, warm whirring blur that drifts off until the end.
Gorgeously packaged in a black on black digipak. Another winner from Kneale and his (for now) partner Kirk!
This panda is bloody, dead, and gone...welcome to the funeral. Bloody Panda's debut full length, Pheremone, is a treat of funerary DOOM to be sure, but we get a lot of super rad doom don't we? It seems like every list there's another sky-melting, sun exploding super heavy band to flood your earholes (thankfully!). Among the heap of doomy metal Bloody Panda certainly stand out. First of all, the most obvious unique quality is the wailing, crooning vocals of front woman Yoshiko Ohara. Her beautifully chromatic singing adds a sort of otherworldly haunted vibe to BP's punishing sound. So weird and sick and ghostly. Also the band is just ruling! The musicianship on this is outrageous. Check out the drumming on the opening "Untitled" track, the pattern at the end (you'll know). That's some bugged out shit right there. There's organ, and guitars and basses tuned to the sublevels of hell, and really interesting rhythmic structures scattered throughout the entire record. There's also a ton of subliminal noise elements beneath much of the music. Basically if you're a fan of less-traditional, fucked up weird ass doom metal, this record is for you. Enough twists and turns to make it stand out among the hordes of heavy. Recommended.
This Russian dark-ambient duo have named themselves after two mathematicians (Eugenio Calabi and Shing-Tung Yau) who specialized in differential geometry and collaborated on defining a hypertechnical thesis which was later expanded through string theory. It's unclear whether these electronic cosmonauts have a background in high-level mathematics, although they do give a rudimentary explanation (in English) as to the metaphors that they are seeking through their music towards their namesake's research: as string theory describes poly-dimensional spacetime as coiled up and unobservable amidst those dimensions which are able to be seen. A clinical distance is duly noted in the sounds grafted onto this CD, as billowing clouds of synthetic mist and slow-motion shadow streaked across the refined surface of this album. But at the same time, Compactified isn't a completely detached piece of inhuman computer music trapped by the restraints of pure mimicry. There is a sense of the sublime which hovers throughout the album, the mystery of what we do not know about our own universe even as science makes great advances as to its origins, and the cosmological beauty which parallels the subatomic and the galactic. At times, Calabi-Yau recalls some of Lustmord's investigations of sound minus the death obsession; at times, Aidan Baker's softly modelled ambience is not far from earshot.
We've been meaning to list this for a long time. One of those special records that so many past and present aQ employees hold close to their hearts. This is John Cale's orchestral pop masterpiece! Last list we made his collaboration with Terry Riley one of our records of the week and while this is a different beast all together it definitely shows what a wide range of musical genius Cale had going on during the early '70s. Paris 1919 is most certainly a pop record, but not just any kind of pop record. This is one that immediately transports you to the lavish and lush fantastical worlds these songs take place. Backed by a band featuring members of Little Feat as well as the UCLA Symphony Orchestra, Cale was able to create songs that somehow are as delicate and understated as they are glowing and baroque.
It's a record that always makes us want to wander along pastoral hillsides filled with the greenest grass, a cup of delicious hot tea in our hands as we twirl and daydream through the afternoon. Cale's voice has never sounded better, and it's for sure his most emotive and sensitive statement ever put to tape. It's amazing how many newer bands we love that for sure had to be influenced so strongly by this record. Just listen to The Hidden Cameras, Kelly Stoltz, Jens Lekman, Beck or Belle & Sebastian and you can hear the legacy of Paris 1919 in their songs. Total pop perfection!
It's tempting with this new Glen Campbell record to assume it must have been produced by Rick Rubin, since at first glance, it does seem like Campbell is pulling a Johnny Cash, revitalizing his career by taking on some unlikely covers (Travis, Velvet Underground, etc.). But just like in the case of Cash, who while very likely got some new fans out of the deal, hardly needed a reinvention, as he was about as bad ass as they come. Well damn it if the same isn't true of Campbell. C'mon. "Wichita Lineman", Rhinestone Cowboy", "Galveston", he's been recording nonstop since the early sixties, and while he wasn't quite as much of a bad ass as the man in black, you just can't fuck with Campbell. And this new disc just drives that point home.
Some strange song choices, but some incredible arrangements, some amazing playing, and Campbell's voice sounds amazing nearly 50 years on. The opener, a cover of "Sing" by the band Travis, who we had never really paid too much attention to, is just gorgeous, exultant, soaring and triumphant. So much so that it almost has us reconsidering our inadvertent Travis boycott.
The other stone cold classic is Campbell's reinterpretation of The Velvet Underground's "Jesus", with its simple acoustic guitar, soaring strings, and sweet angelic female background vocals. His cover of Jackson Browne's "These Days" is also gorgeous, heartfelt and bittersweet. Paul Westerburg's "Sadly Beautiful" is so good, so pretty, and weirdly timeless. The whole production is very sixties / seventies soft pop, all warm and fuzzy and dreamy, string wrapped around subtle orchestrations, stripped down when it suits the song, lush and over the top when it doesn't, perhaps due in no small part to the fact that Campbell's band features Robin Zander of Cheap Trick as well as 2/3 of Jellyfish! The two Tom Petty covers are obscure enough to sound like they could be Campbell originals. There's a U2 cover which is pretty nice too. The weirdest covers are probably "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters, which to be fair gets a pretty appropriately Campbell-y makeover, and Green Day's "Good Riddance", which while it does sound pretty good sung by Campbell, it's probably too familiar to remind you of anything but the original.
But small complaints really. A gorgeous disc of classic soaring lush countrified orchestral pop from one of the best performers of the last 5 decades.
A high concept split lp from two aQ faves, two different bands, two different sounds, their bond being that of nature, both expressing their visions of the world around them, of their place, and our place amongst the living things that surround us, forests, plants, animals, insects, it's that natural force that infuses the music of both of these groups, and thus links them in such a way, that this shared 12" could almost be the work of a single entity.
The first side features a single extended track from naturalist doomlords Celestiial, their track of course begins with the sounds of birds, of water and wind, insects, a forest at dusk most likely, before from below, rises deep ominous swells, rumbling drones, distant moaning melodies, a deep dark ambience that soon gives way to a big blown out doom, but, a very spacious, spare, airy sort of doom, not heavy as much as abstract, spaced out, the guitars not crumbling and downtuned, more like chiming and ringing out, somehow weirdly processed to make them seem like they are being stretched out, moaning and then fading out, before exploding in another burst, the drums and percussion sounds industrial, the vocals howled and buried in the mix, everything strangely harmonized, sounding a bit alien, near the end the drums speed up into an almost blast beat, but the music gets more and more melodic, minor key swells keeping time with the beat, unfurling a mournful melody, until the music fades out and the track finishes as it began with deep drones and the sounds of the forest.
The flipside features a long three part track by Blood Of The Black Owl, who begin proceedings with a plodding, almost metallic dirge, but backed up by a haunting chiming high end jangle, as well as distant flute like melodies that sound distinctly Native American, the vocals howled and industrial sounding, a bit like Swans or Cop Shoot Cop. The second movement begins with birdsong, deep, slow rubbery dubbed out bass, soft ethereal reverbed vocals, very medieval sounding, until the track switches gears and transforms into something more post industrial sounding, a doomy plod but with haunting mysterious melodies. The side ends with a very tribal sort of ritualistic piece, all simple hand drums and shimmering lowend ambience, growled spoken word, very minimal and haunting, almost like some ancient rite, being captured on vinyl for the very first time.
Gorgeously packaged. Incredibly thick vinyl, thick sleeves, full color inserts, and most likely quite limited...
Christmas Decorations are a tough band to pin down. Which just might be why we like them so much. In fact more and more with every record. Their latest, the vinyl only Far Flung Hum, might be the most confusing, the most difficult to describe, and consequently, very likely their best yet.
On their last record, they began to introduce a sort of folky twang into their soundscapes, nothing dramatic, but enough to give the proceedings a rustic vibe, to temper their electronics, helping to create a sound both modern and timeless, alien yet warm and familiar. FFH begins with a sort of disembodied alien folk, strings creak, instruments buzz and rumble, melodies are seemingly digitized and released to drift like pixilated clouds, in some places it sounds like a field recording of a hoedown on some ranch, frozen, then played back incredibly slow, allowing the listener to wander science fiction style amidst all these peoples and happenings that seem to be moving a hundred times slower than us. Drones buzz softly, bits of abstract percussion tinkle and chime, organs (or accordions?) wheeze and warble, there's a Finnish folk vibe for sure but with more twang, and somehow filtered through a much more modern, if slightly cracked approach. Some tracks have a distinct No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand Of The Man feel, very tribal and jammy, but with the sounds of machines, and what sounds like folks laboring in the field, digging, water being bailed, it could all be manufactured, but it does sound like processed field recordings rendered musically. Deep resonant drones, insect like chitter, tons of ambient sound, almost as if all the recording had taken place on farms and in people's homes or on street corners, allowing all the various sounds of every day life to subtly blend into the music being made. And where the electronic aspect in the past sounded more, well, electronic, now the Decorations have mastered it so the bits of electronics and glitchery, sound less like some electronic band making weird sounds, and more like electronics are in fact some living thing, that just happens to occasionally flit by, its natural sounds and calls a part of the every day soundscape, which again helps make FFH sound so organic and alive.
Elsewhere the sounds dip back into tribal rumble, sounds are processed and released back into the wild to interact with natural sounds, there are long stretches of Morricone-ish cinematic ambience, deep growling swells, little flurries of electronics and fractured melodies, but all arranged into one constantly evolving soundworld, an ever shifting space the listener is forced to navigate, and is left to wander in freely, enjoying the sounds, returning to familiar areas, or better yet, getting completely and utterly lost.
Incredible packaging, and oversized gatefold matchbook style fold over sleeve, letter pressed on thick textured cardstock, with the inner sleeve sealed to the inside of the outer sleeve. Can't remember exactly HOW, but as you might well imagine, probably pretty dang limited.
It's been a good long while since we've heard from aQ faves Circle Of Ouroborus, a damaged outsider blackened folk flecked post metal combo who confound in creating gorgeously fractured ritualistic soundworlds.
This latest missive is one half of a split 12" with the equally mysterious Somnivore. When we last heard from CoO, they sounded a bit like a black metal version of Jandek or the Fall, but things have definitely changed, the sound is not so lo-fi, and the sonics are definitely much improved, but without losing any of their signature damaged weirdness.
Chant like vocals, very reminiscent of older Swans, drift over dark distorted spidery guitar lines, the drums, only occasional, dubbed out and also distorted, while in the background lurk slither little minor key melodies, before in swoops a swirl of clean detuned guitars, being strummed frantically black metal style, but instead of buzzing, the sound blurs and smears into a bleary eyed wash, crooned Jandekian vocals soaked in reverb clamber over the top, and the result is something more like some ost nineties Homestead band than a black metal band. But soon CoO kick into gear and offer up the first hints of anything remotely metallic, distorted drumming, buzzing black riffs, but again, less buzzing as much as muted and muddy, the vocals crooned and dramatic, veering into Urfaust territory. Eventually, the buzz fades to a fuzzy washed out drone, that shimmers and drifts before a clean riffy buzz re-emerges accompanied by more deep crooning vocals, emitting a sort of not very black, and not very metal black metal, that seems to be CoO's specialty. Difficult to describe for sure, but we can't seem to get enough.
Somnivore take up the flipside, the first half is all crystalline clean guitar, urgently strummed, strange whispered vocals, chimes and bells, subtle percussion. All very strident and apocalyptic, like a more ominous and creepy Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat. Effects everywhere, the track eventually devolving into a swirling morass of deep drones, shifting from hushed whirs to barely there shimmer, to throbbing rumble, eventually dissipating in a cloud of delicate glimmering hush. Nice!
Gorgeous full color cover, printed full color insert, with lyrics and liner notes, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!!!
The first Clouds record, the project of Cave In guitarist Adam McGrath, was a freaked out hodgepodge of stoner rock, hardcore, prog rock and seventies boogie rock with definite nods to Beefheart, Zappa, Comets On Fire, the Cave In mothership, it all worked, the result a heavy slab of FX laden riff heavy RAWK with lots of twisted detours.
If anything, this newest Clouds disc takes all that same stuff a little further, with a bigger focus on the riffrock aspect, and a huge infusion of POP. Not always obviously so, but some of these hooks slay. Think the beefy lumbering almost grunge of Scissorfight, melded to the pounding retro metallic pound of Karp or Big Business, some of that Cave-In magic and voila!
The second track, "Feed The Horse" sounds like it was yanked off a late era Cave-in disc and given a serious metal makeover, while the opener "Empires In Basements" gives Torche a run for their sludge pop money.
And then the band go all strange and angular and off kilter with "The Bad Seat", sounding almost like Randy Newman if he was 20 years old and signed to Hydra Head, and we know that sounds weird, but it's actually quite cool.
The record is all over the map for sure, exploding into frenzied punk rock as often as sprawling out into huge lumbering sludgey doom, offering up soaring metallic pop gems, or stripping it down to chugging classic rock grooves, but no matter what these guys do, or what sound they're tackling and making their own, the songs rule, and the band kick out the jams big time. And like we've said before, in a perfect world, instead of Green Day and the Foo Fighters, you'd be hearing Torche and Clouds all over the radio. Ahhh, maybe some day...
In the two years since we last heard from Coelacanth, other drone based groups have unleashed hundreds of cd-rs of extended vibrations, treated field recordings, and fucked-up droning noise; and Coelacanth could have easily fallen into that camp, releasing any number of perfectly adequate live recordings. But they didn't. Instead, Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Of, Child Readers, and many things Jewelled Antler) and aQ's own Jim Haynes chose to labor on the details of their recordings so that every timbre, every drone, and every tactile grain of sound was perfectly aligned with the sounds of their elemental objects and particular environments. In the world of Coelacanth, there are rocks, rust, sand, leaves, strobe lights, weird electrical devices, shortwave, and plenty of oceanic field recordings (in honor of the fish they're named after); and from those sounds, Coelacanth creates multiple layers and deep textures, all together in a mesmerising tapestry of sub-aquatic abstractions and chiming reverberations. Perfecting their tactile dronework was just the beginning in preparing for their fourth album Wrack Light In Copper Ruin, as they also began collaborations with the film/sound artist Keith Evans in finding a visual corrolary for their sonic abstractions, utilizing breathtakingly hypnotic film and video installations to compliment Coelacanth's music and vice versa. Evans is also a member of Silt, a multimedia collective that specializes in elaborate multi-projection / kinetic-sculpture installations -- one of which was featured at the Whitney Biennial back in 2002. Given that Evans has previously worked with Chasse for a Thuja performance in Scotland a couple years back, a Coelacanth / Keith Evans pairing seemed logical.
So, Wrack Light In Copper Ruin is both a CD and DVD, with the audio portion finding Coelacanth not only collaborating with Evans on some of the recordings, but also Matmos who had asked Chasse and Haynes to join them for part of their 96 hours of performances at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Underwater bell tones, raked stringed instruments, ringing glass harmonics, and gaping drones saturated in a density of texture so complex that it almost sounds like an acoustic version of a Fennesz album! The DVD features Evans' jaw-dropping video work: abstract undulating landscapes of refracted light, all scored to a subtle Chasse / Evans remix of the sounds on the CD. The rippled linear patterns seem innocuous at first; but like the hypnotic primal power of fire, it totally sucks you in. So gorgeous!
Ivan Pavlov (aka Coh) has been making a minor career of collaborating with the kingpins of Industrial Culture. Jhonn Balance of Coil had appeared on a number of Coh tracks over the years, Peter Christopherson and Pavlov have recently begun a project together called SoiSong, and now there's this joint venture with Cosey Fanny Tutti. We would imagine that a Chris Carter / Coh duet for old synthesizers would make for a kick-ass record; but for Genesis P-Orridge, hmmm. Anyway, the Pavlov / Cosey album began with a dialogue between the two artists, out of which Cosey supplied spoken word tracks for Pavlov to use as the source material for the album. The first few tracks are tentative collages of Cosey's breathy, sexually charged voice cut up into airy constructions that recall some of the sparse digitally treated voice pieces of AGF. By the middle of the record, Cosey & Coh quite literally say "Fuck It," and the hammering electrical streams of post-Moroder arpeggiation, digital distortion, and effortlessly simple sequencing of monophunk meets electro-crash dynamics. These latter tracks are certainly worth the price of admission, but one has to wonder why the earlier tracks don't pack such a punch. Even if they were meant to be moody and dark, those could have been pushed much farther.
On first glance, you might assume this was a black metal record. The cover is all black, with intricate metallic silver inked designs, a strange pentagram like shape in the center, pentagrams on all four corners, there's even an upside down cross in the band logo. But then you realize the band is in fact called Cough. And that all around that strange pentagram like sigil in the center are the distinct shape of pot leaves.
Then the music starts with a solid 15 seconds of high end solid state feedback, before the band kicks in, and we are suddenly in druggy slow motion ultra stoner doom country, and we like it. In fact it's almost three minutes of nearly continuous Eyehategod style feedback, separated by the occasional crash of the band, before the song really kicks in, and then the band lock into a lurching druggy stoner groove, more Electric Wizard than Eyehategod, but still plenty of both. Clean vocals carry the melody, but harsh blackened shrieks pepper the landscape, the riffs huge churning downtuned black swells, about as slow as a band can get while remaining even slightly 'groovy'. And don't worry, throughout, the band pause now and again to unleash lightning bolts of high end feedback, before lurching back into action.
And so it goes. Six long songs, each blessed with a handful of kick ass riffery, oozing hate and distortion and filth and crust, the rhythms staggering from doomic plod, to druggy slither, to an almost rocking pound, the riffs slipping into Sabbath territory, but usually straying much further south. The band dabble here and there in tripped out space rock, getting a little psychedelic, the vocals wreathed in effects, the melodies crazy catchy, but no matter what, they thankfully never wander too far from their gloriously filthy fucked up drug drenched doom-ed sludge.
Not sure about you, but Cristal for us conjures up images of MTV Cribs and Jay-Z and 50 Cent partying at some exclusive club, or hot babes in bikinis sipping drinks on a yacht moored right off Miami Beach, but most definitely evoke the dark blackened sonic abyss that is this, the first release from the oddly monickered Cristal, a trio that just so happens to feature one member of long time aQ faves Labradford.
And Labradford is a good jumping off point for Cristal, there's a definitely sonic connection, but where Labradford built on the most minimal of sounds, this trio seems to break the sound down into the smallest possible parts, creating, hyper detailed microscopic droneworlds that virtually REQUIRE headphones.
Lots of blurbs have referenced SUNNO))) but the sound of Cristal is less about power and force, more about texture and timbre, whereas SUNNO))) explode outward, Cristal collapse inward, like that ride at Disneyland, where you travel into the microscope. This is minimal microscopic, but incredibly rich and detailed sound.
Ultra deep ambience, a sound both subterranean and subaquatic, metallic shimmering high end washes over everything like some sort of alien sheen, fields of glistening cricket like chitter adds texture to otherwise slow shifting smooth expanses of warm soft swirl, dreamy and ethereal, fields of high tones surface here and there like a symphony of gently rubbed wine glasses, the only real jarring moment is at the beginning of side 2, the opening track an ear splitting burst of super hot white noise hiss, almost Merzbowian in its intensity, all chaotic and crumbling and buzzy, but the disc quickly returns to it's more tranquil drift for the remainder of side 2, a wash of low end whispers, of textured blurred melodies, sounding quite a bit like some Ligeti choral piece sloooooowed way down. Really quite lovely. Just be prepared for that brief blast, otherwise, a gorgeously deep dark minimal dronescape that will for sure hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed.
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed black on black!
If you're not scared of labels like Cherry Red, Creation, or Hut, then keep reading. And if you first heard those labels on college radio, then definitely keep reading. Darker My Love is an LA-based 4-piece that channels the energy of bands like The Stone Roses and very early Oasis. Sure, throw in some Supergrass. Absolutely summertime, windows down, driving along the coast, feel good music. The group's arrangements are thoughtful while remaining accessible and breezy. In particular we can't help but notice the vocal melodies, provided by guitarist Tim Presley and bassist Rob Barbatto. Interestingly, both artists are former members of The Fall. Also, drummer Andy Granelli was in both The Nerve Agents and The Distillers. Either way, if '90s pop, early '80s power pop, or any other kind of pop has an appeal, this is your summer record! Recommended.
While formerly Esoteric was about the most bongloaded experimental sludge metal you could find, perhaps more stoned and bizarre than countrymen Electric Wizard, this new album sounds a bit different, like maybe on different drugs, Esoteric finding some crystal shit to inject in their collective boiling bloodstream that renders them a genius doom-death metal machine, technically and aesthetically uber-achievers. On this, the band's first album since 2004's Subconscious Dissolution Into The Continuum, they again move further from the drug-addled "retardation" (which we loved of course) of their early weirdness, and add another brick to the wall of ultimate doommastery that they already built on Subconscious. And yet, they're still pretty darn weird, as befits their name. Even if way more My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost than before, with that romantic, gothic, doom-death kind of vibe, one that (on the romantic side) even reminds us of fucked up black metallers Eikenskaden or Mystic Forest... With its long passages of ambient spooky spaceiness, and sheer heaviness, The Maniacal Vale also makes us think of a more metallic version of Aussie arty riff merchants Dumb & The Ugly, more metallic due to the awesomely wretched, bestial vokills ensconced within gorgeously noodly neo-classical electric guitar shred. The Esoteric equation includes minor key melody, classical chamber music chops, echoey psychedelic darkness, sizzling drone FX, and much in the way of massive, crushing, METAL.
And this just get more crazed as it gets more deathmetally. Like on disc one's final track, the speedy "Caucus of Mind", wherein you're being chased by utter grunting cookie monster vocals (perhaps even the cookie monster itself) down a hall of mirrors / wind tunnel hybrid, architecture that exists in some extra-dimensional space. Where death metal brutality and doomic drone both tug heartstrings and excite the grey matter simultaneously, thereby proving some obscure theory of quantum physics. Is heaviness a wave or a particle? Maybe a very LARGE particle. Experimental, emotional, extreme. ESOTERIC.
And oh yeah, you noticed where we said "disc one"? That's right, this IS Esoteric, and after the mere single-cd anomalies of Metamorphogenesis and Subconscious..., they're at last back to the sprawling double disc format of their first two op-art-adorned opi, The Pernicious Enigma and Epistomological Despondency.
True desert blues! Originating from the never-ending dunes of the Sahara Desert, Etran Finatawa have been casting quite the entrancing spell on our ears with their second full length. While they do share many similarities with folks from their region like Tinariwen and Toumast they also have their own identity and places of departure. It's mostly their guitar sound and sense of melody that will have many comparing them to Tinariwen (which is an awesome thing in our book!). But we love how there are also moments on the record where their use of stripped down percussion, chanting call and response vocals and odilirou flute are used to perfection to help carve out a sound that is more of their own. And we have to mention how mesmerizing the soulful vocals that fill the record are, something that you almost take for granted as you listen, as it it so perfectly melds with the music. Another gem from the Sahara that will be in our ears and hearts for a long time to come!
We've been wanting to correct a glaring omission from our site for some time now. Well, its not so much an omission as it's an overdue update on a very old review; one that was made when our reviews served only as shelf-talkers in the store instead of entryways into the vast online catalog of our website. And now with an affordable reissue with a bonus disc of rare BBC radio sessions and alternate versions, the time is right to reappraise this mighty, weird, and awesome jewel of classic krautrock greatness that is Faust IV.
Essential as any krautrock album we can name, including Can's Tago Mago or Future Days, Amon Duul II's Yeti, or Neu! 1, Cluster, Kraftwerk etc. It's also the record that coined the term "krautrock" which is the title of the nearly 12 minute opening track, a thick pulsating rumble of motorik groove that out-Neu's Neu!. But things definitely get stranger after that with bizarre forays into reggae, pretty ballads, prog, pop and free jazz. Yet for all the weirdness, this is the record to get if you've never heard Faust before as it's their most accessible and structured. Not nearly as kaleidoscopic and avant as, So Far or Faust Tapes, and even with the genre-hopping, the songs all seem to belong together. "The Sad Skinhead" has got to be the most left-field excursion into reggae we've heard, complete with marimba passages and echoing vocals, while "Jennifer" has to be about the prettiest song ever made. Each song linked together by odd passages of detuned piano, far away screams and noisy stews of synth warbles and feedback stabs. "Giggly Smile" obviously influenced Battles recent debut Mirrors, as strange effected vocals accompany groovy prog excursions that abruptly shift tempos into one of our favorite rocking moments ever put to tape before suddenly ending, launching into the sublime folk groove of "Lauft... Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald... Lauft". And it just keeps getting better and better.
The bonus disc features many alternate versions of the songs including a much longer version of "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)", plus rare BBC radio sessions of two songs "The Lurcher" and "Do So" and one previously unreleased piece, called appropriately "Piano Piece".
This is definitely one of those records, where we wish we could just invoke some physical force to reach out and grab you through the computer by the shoulders and just scream "Buy this already!!!!!!"
For those of you that somehow have missed seeing a Fiery Furnaces show or for those of you wishing to relive the magic... The band has defied The Foghat Principle (as immortalized in Yo La Tengo's "Sugarcube" video which starred the fellas from Mr. Show... but we digress!) which proclaims that "your fourth album shall be DOUBLE LIVE!" Instead they held out a few albums longer, and made it their seventh. It's a good thing though, we think, because that means this hefty 51 track compilation features a bunch of songs from their most recent (and arguably their best) album Widow City. Psst, you might even recognize their touring bassist - Sebadoh's awesome Jason Loewenstein! Woo hoo! The band is as deliciously delirious, dark and strange in concert as they are on records, but with the added unpredictability of the live setting their songs of twisted folklore and fairytales seem to unravel at the seams and reweave into themselves and the adjoining tunes into something that's at once oddly familiar yet altogether different. The track names on the back of the digipak add to the disorientation - they're not the actual original song names, but a set of six equally perplexing chapter titles. A vast, wild 'n' wooly, suitably enigmatic listening experience.
Leave it to the Numero Group to dig up a soundtrack so lost that the film it accompanies was never even made. Cut back to 1975, when the blaxploitation film era was at its peak before its downhill slide from socially uplifting noirs to clowning ninja-pimp buffoonery, and you have the seeds of a film in the making. A former gangster turned preacher who robs the robbers and gives to the poor. Brotherman! But first, before casting, before even finishing the script, what's needed is a Grade A soundtrack. Cue guitarist, songwriter and arranger Carl Wolfolk and his fledgling Chicago-based vocal group, The Final Solution. Dipping into the SuperFly well, but with enough uniquely inventive guitar work that allows it to stand apart firmly on its own, Wolfolk created an amazing score of songs and instrumentals that still sounds remarkably fresh and non-cliched. Using flamenco style funk guitar flourishes that stab around the four part harmonies, Wolfolk interjected socially smart song-writing with sweet Northern soul nuances. Unfortunately, the plug was pulled on the film before even a still was shot, leaving Wolfolk to carry around his masterwork for more than 30 years, hoping someday the music would be released. Well, Brotherman, your time has come!
Onwards and upwards, Bay Area pop darlings Finest Dearest have returned with their second cd release, and it's filled with some terrific driving tunes! Indeed, since 2005's Pacemaker cdep and even last year's Off Sides 7", it sounds like they've gotten a whole lot darker and edgier, and the shadowier tones are evident right way with the cd packaging's deep hues and stylin' fontography. it's a definite marked contrast with the delicate homespun art of their previous releases, and yes, the music contained within follows suit. Led by Carly Schneider's sweetly biting vocals, the band definitely still recalls the early '90s indie pop dreams of Velocity Girl and Tsunami, but with more of the modern day sheen and wise-beyond-their years complexity of groups such as Tegan & Sara or Rilo Kiley.
No frills bootleg 1970 UK folk-psych reissue, featuring a young David Toop (currently a musician and writer, of "Oceans of Sound" fame, among other things), who not only plays on this disc but did the cover as well. Supposed to be really nightmarish and weird, but we didn't quite "get it". Definitely nothing like the Comus or Cromagnon we were hoping for! However, it does have a spirit of mellow melancholy that some might enjoy.
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.
Mort Garson is probably best know for playing on records by folks like the Sandpipers, Glen Campbell, Mel Torme, Doris Day and others, which is to say, probably not very well known at all. He even composed and played the music accompanying a short film of past space missions to fill in the spaces when not much was going on during the 1969 moon landing.
He was however, one of the earliest proponents of the Moog synthesizer, and for the crate diggers out there is probably most famous for two records, a disc of Moog music based on the signs of the zodiac, and a record credited to Lucifer, called Black Mass, another freaked out Moog holy grail. But until those get reissued we'll have to make do with this tripped out drug addled re-envisioning of The Wizard Of Oz. And tripped out and drug addled it is!
Narrated with some freaky beat poetry (a voice uncannily like Jello Biafra at times), the story peppered with all manner of sound effects, blown out fuzz, warbly melodies, fuzzy static percussion, blurpy basslines, swirling space-y FX, and then there are the songs. Almost Gary Numan-ish sounding synths, laced with operatic female vocals, growling menacing monster like male vocals, some more abstract beat poetry, all woven into a head spinning retro exotica mishmash.
Some of the tracks are definitely reminiscent of Perry and Kingsley, some of the tracks slip into almost groovy porno style seventies psych jams, some are manic, with the Moog spitting out super percussive sputter and hiss, others are dreamy and trippy and almost Beatles-esque (if the Beatles only played Moogs), and some tracks, like our favorite on the disc, "Killing Of The Witch" are downright freaky and sound like primitive lo-fi Goblin jams.
The narration is really weird and funny and goofy but can be incredibly distracting, and it's probably the one thing that might limit the re-playability of this disc, strip away the random dialogue, and this would have been a pretty awesome fucked up synth freakout, but since the narration is here to stay, it ends up being exactly what it was meant to be, a truly over the top exotica oddity, that might not get played all the time, but it's exactly the sort of record that will probably end up on plenty of mixtapes, and will get pulled out at parties, and will most definitely feature heavily in wild whatthefuck DJ sets.
Maybe even more anticipated that the recent Nah Und Fern box set from Gas, compiling all of the previously released Gas records, is this, a book of art from the man behind gas Wolfgang Voigt, which beside being beautiful and packed with variations on the foresty images that graced all the Gas records, also comes with a 5 track disc featuring rare, old, unreleased Gas tracks, which have the Gas faithful in a frenzy. More on the music in a second.
The book itself is quite striking. A slightly blurred shot of a forest, tinted deep red, it could be the cover of a lost Gas album (which in some ways it is), the band name embossed in a deep red metallic ink, Voigt's name on the back. Inside is a selection of photos, which seem to be from the same shots that produced the record covers, all shot of trees and branches and leaves, close up, from afar, they would look amazing all blown up on a gallery wall, but manage to be pretty dang striking here too.
Even sans cd, this would make a pretty excellent coffee table art book. But there is a cd, and as we mentioned before, it does in fact include nearly an hour of unreleased Gas, so�
Five tracks, all ten minutes or longer, each a deep dark gritty drift, almost completely eschewing the beats that would find their way into later Gas albums, these tracks explore deep billowy black ambience. A few have some glitch and crackle, but never does it evolve into that murky thump Gas does so well, instead, it sounds like water dripping, or ice melting, while the leaves and branches sway in the background, one track is super lo-fi and raw, with an industrial machinelike loop beneath the glistening musical mumble, underpinned by deep string swells, and haunting melodies, but that track is quickly followed by something much darker and elegiac, a brooding longform shimmer, like a string quartet slowed waaaaaay down, and blurred into soft shifting shapes. The closer is the most pastoral of the bunch, almost like it could be the music for some sort of nature show, slow panning shots of glaciers glistening in the sun, leaves falling in slow motion, time lapse films of wildflowers blooming then withering, clouds drifting across a deep blue sky, the only thing keeping it from going to far in that direction, is the soft patina of fuzz, the buried buzz, the looped mesmer, the barely audible glitch, all the things that make it distinctly GAS.
There really is something about music from New Zealand. We used to think it was sort of shorthand cheapshot music journalism, comparing everything to the Dead C, and lumping all these disparate sounding bands together based entirely on locale, but dammit if the more we listen to this stuff, the more it does seem to be true. Take this Glory Fckn Sun lp, the latest chunk of sweet dreamy noise from New Zealanders Antony Milton, Ben Spiers and Simon O'Rorke. As we were listening to this, all sorts of other bands came to mind, but when we thought about it more than a second, and listened really closely, we realized that this music could not have come from anywhere else. A blind listening, and we're fairly sure, even if we couldn't name the band, we would have immediately known New Zealand.
None of that is to say this record isn't unique or its own entity, or that it sounds like everything else from NZ, it most certainly doesn't, but it does share much sonically, and texturally, and there's just something ineffable that makes the music of GFS distinctly New Zealand.
Regardless, it's a big glorious fucking soft noise explosion, beginning with soft cymbal swirls and rumbling low wend, lots of effects, and deep buried melodies. Long streaks of buzzing metallic skree skitters over bits of clatter and clang, all held in place by a field of creaking metal on metal shimmer, murky vocals swimming in swirling pools of crumbling distortion. If you need references, think of some lost record on Corpus Hermeticum in the nineties, Surface Of The Earth maybe, a softened Dead C, muted and swathed in electric crackle, the whole thing a glorious whirling abyss of sound peppered with the clank and clunk of mini pipe fights, and twisted atonal chords, chiming harmonies, all layered and spread out into gritty streaks of droning abstract, slightly noisy beauty.
Pressed on clear red vinyl, housed in a striking chipboard sleeve hand screened, two color, and of course LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Woah. What a surprise! See, the German psych/prog/kraut specialists at World In Sound have been responsible for a lot of cool '60s/'70s reissues and comps (Cold Sun, Modulo 1000, Psychedelic Minds Vol.1...) but they also have released some unfortunately not-so-hot cds by a bunch of modern prog and stoner rock bands doing the retro thing, and well, we haven't reviewed any of those based on the old "if you don't have anything nice to say..." principle. Just not worth bothering. BUT, that was until this disc came along. Like we said, a surprise. This Julian Cope approved (Record Of The Month for August '08 on his Head Heritage website) band has come up with a doozy of debut (?) here, a real humdinger from these Gallic guitarslingers. Featuring Matthieu Canaguier on "thunderbass", Antoine Hadhoannou on "prophetic drums", and most importantly, badass-in-chief Gregory Raimo on "guitar & guitar lighter, yaya preach, feedback", this trio's No More Invention sounds something like the French answer to The Heads, or White Hills, or even Mainliner. Utter aggro over the top distortodelic geetar excess. Frickin' savage. SAVAGE.
Nope, not at all what we'd have expected from World In Sound. Not only have they found a current signing that's good, in fact great, said signing are also a lot more punk than we'd have thought. Heck we bet these guys grew up on Metal Urbain, maybe even Soggy! The rabid vocals are somewhere betwixt Johnny Rotten and Mark E. Smith, babbling indecipherably. They also remind us a bit of the guy from The Trashmen (if "Surfin' Bird" was a raving, epick 12:50 long biker/garage meltdown blowout kraut jam called "Lighter Slinger Festival", ferinstance). Some other song titles, just to whet yer sick appetites: "Into The Garage", "The Beheaded Motorbiker's Head", "Black Dwarf Man", "Gigolo Albinos", and (uh-oh) "Auschwitz Boogie". Nothing holy here. Simply full tilt, fucked up, freaking out-out-out. Don't come looking to Gunslingers for songs and melodies and suchlike. Come looking for the blinding white lighting of FX overloaded, speed freak amp-sploitation, and the rhythm section rough-and-tumble of mainlined rock action energy, and you'll find it. Timeless stuff, heck if this WAS a '70s acid-punk reissue we would be less surprised. Gunslingers could do battle with the likes of Gaseneta, based on what we're hearing here. Recommended!
London's heaviest, most hypnotic head-cavers, Hey Colossus, have found a home for their third album on the Riot Season label, who have previously brought us noize from the likes of Mainliner, Shit and Shine, and Aufgehoben. Heck, the label's logo features a trio of tanks, so of course Hey Colossus is a good match for their aesthetic. Being so brutally heavy and all, tank-like basically.
Happy Birthday (ironic title we guess, this is about as far from "Happy Birthday" the song as you can get) sees Hey Colossus doing what they do best: throbbing, distorted, kill 'em all action. Uber heavy, totally bad trip psychedelic. From the feedback intro of opening track "War Crows" and the rasping, ranting throat abuse that follows amidst pulsating, amped up electric murk, this Hey Colossus album destroys like a more rockin' version of Khanate... the Khanate comparison even more apropos on the next track, the more slowly thudding "Tight Collar". Part metal, part punk, part psych... what to call it? Ugly rawk doom drone maybe? With wailing Hawkwindy ampfriedification n' FX, heading into tortured dead zones of sheer nihilistic sludge, Hey Colossus fits in with such faves as Indian, Brainbombs, Unsane, Cadaver In Drag, godheadSilo, Pissed Jeans, Vincent Black Shadow, Cavity, Rusted Shut... and those other Riot Season acts mentioned at the beginning of this review. In other words, glorious stuff for those so inclined (like us!), pulling the listener who dares inexorably into its extreme vortex.
There's eight tracks here, 46+ minutes of the Hey Colossus experience, which threatens to run itself (and you) off the rails into total insanity as it rocks and rumbles on. Can't pick fave tracks really, they're all pretty badass, but the driving uptempo umph of the waveringly blown-out "Fire Up The Tambourine" is certainly quite wicked. Even more out there, "Permanent Vacation" parts 1 and 2 is full of bottom-of-the-abyss, buried alive vocals in a shitstorm of droning distortion... And how can we not like a track, especially a pounding, noisy, rhythmic near-13 minute epic, that's called "Overlord Rapture In Vines Part 2"?? It's the psycho-delic explosion that ends this album appropriately apocalyptically. Happy fuckin' birthday indeed.
NOW ON VINYL!
The Hold Steady follow up their widely embraced third album Boys And Girls Of America with a mountain of more burly college radio ready rock that harkens back to the glory days of Husker Du, The Clash and The Replacements. Y'know what we're talkin' about - crunchin' electric guitars strummed by mannish fists, vocals sung through husky workin' man beards, and gang-style backing vocals probably contributed by everyone who was in the building at the time. However, The Hold Steady show their softer side getting a little more fancy pants with the addition of horns and harpsichord among other pleasantries. In fact, we'd might even liken them to the bleak weathered Scottish romantics The Arab Strap. All of these are of course good things in our books!
AVAILABLE ON LP!!! Well, it was an lp once before, long long ago, but Jandek's been cd only for years now...
Here's our review of the cd version when we listed it way back when...
The album that started it all was actually not released as Jandek but quite curiously as The Units back in 1978, although there is no denying that Ready For This House is the work of our beloved Texan mystery man Jandek. With Corwood Industry's CD reissue campaign which began several years back, Jandek claimed his rightful authorship over this record. From this album and onward past 34+ records, Jandek has crafted one of the most unique, incredibly personal bodies of music of all time. Within this huge catalog, Jandek (whose real name might be Sterling Smith, then again it might not) is painfully alone, even on those few records with enigmatic duets with female singers or possible collaborations with "John" the drummer. Where the archetypes of blues can accurately describe the sobering truths about hard drinkin' and hard livin', Jandek delves way deeper into the emotional pit of raw abjection and existential torment. His deformed post-blues of incredulously shrill notes, meandering monochords, and lithium saturated vocalizations are unbearable to the average listener. Yet, when given half a chance by the adventurous among you, the enigma that is Jandek will inevitably become revelatory.
The mere fact that this was the first record does not in any way indicate that Jandek (or The Units, if you must) was fishing around for a sound. In retrospect, the Jandek signature was fully developed from day one, and Ready For This House still stands as one of the greatest in the catalogue.
For the majority of Ready For The House, Jandek meanders through a single, slightly offkey, acoustic guitar chord with a half-strum / half-plucked style that emphasizes loud / quiet dynamics and a rhythmic laziness as the perfect accompaniment for his obtuse lyrics and delivery (i.e. 'Inside myself there is no question / Just the jangle of our brain / Three times four is twenty-seven / Only fragments still remain' from "First You Think Your Fortune's Lovely"). This musical signature dominated his first seven or eight records up through the mid-'80s. It should also be noted that Jandek also debuted one of the few actual tunes that he repeated on a number of later records in "European Jewel." This track broke from that single monochord with a comparatively musical descending set of notes heralding Jandek's warped vision of the blues.
If you are new to Jandek or are looking to get a hold of one of the better albums, Ready For This House is marvelous place to start. Very highly recommended.
Hard to believe it's been 6 years since we last heard from Ireland's The Jimmy Cake. Back in 2002, we were heavily digging their second record, Dublin Gone. Everybody Dead., which found the band getting more and more aggressive. Their sound went from a drifty post rock to a dense blend of Godspeed, Magyar Posse, Explosions In The Sky, Salvatore, Hwyl Nofio, long sweeping epics, sweeping vistas of cinematic sound peppered with intense crescendos and stretches of free jazz freakout.
Six years later, the band has really mellowed out, harkening back to their debut, Brains, but with even more of an emphasis on the cinematic side of things. Utilizing an unlikely arsenal of instruments (at least for an ostensibly 'rock' band), clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, piano synths and accordion along with the usual guitar bass and drums, the band use the piano as the focal point, crafting swirling slow building epics, that really do sound like music pulled from some strange indie soundtrack. It's all instrumental too, so it's easy to hear bits of the Tindersticks, the Dirty 3, Arab Strap, in the Jimmy Cake's melancholy moodiness. The horns are used more for texture and drone out in dark harmonies, the guitars are spidery and minimal, the drums often a subtle shuffle, the gorgeous blend of strings and horns and accordions afford each track a distinct grandness that glows regally. Another definite reference point is the Rachel's, the sound is distinctly chamber music-esque, but set in a more post rock context. Think the Drift, old Tarentel, very evocative and strangely Eastern European in places, with some more experimental tracks of long shimmery dronemusic and drifting harmonics here and there, separating the more (almost) rocking tracks, as a whole creating the perfect imaginary soundtrack for a movie filled with dark moonlit nights, lonely strolls, cobblestone streets, rolling hills, grey skies, rain against windows, and brief bits of sunlight. Lovely.
Sirens is a new limited edition cd from this fine Bay Area foursome! Our first encounter with Junior Panthers was back in 2002... no, not really all that long ago! Their band name was fitting, collegiate and energetic. Their self-titled debut album was a bright sunbeam of buoyant pop. The next we heard from them was their Derelicts cdep in 2006, and it seemed they were still destined for jangly indie pop darling status. Now just two years later, they're a whole 'nother band... still very good, but very different. Think: a lot less bounce, and more beefed up rock. Ultra drenched in reverby guitar effects, Sirens is far more shoegazerly and spacily psychedelic than past recordings seemingly inspired by equal parts My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Jesus & Mary Chain, Swervedriver and Polvo. Cool.
Those of you who have been reading our New Arrivals list carefully for the past month know that I (Allan) have embarked upon a quixotic little project, reviewing one old KISS album per list. Why? Dunno. I guess 'cause Kiss rooooooooool. So, so far I've done write ups on two of the more kwestionable Kiss platters of the make up era, the disco inflected (infested?) Dynasty (1979) and the Styx-ish concept album Music From The Elder (1980). Go back and read about 'em if you didn't, we'd be happy to sell a few more of those...any of those. This time 'round, however, I thought it best to feature a maybe more acclaimed, essential Kiss album. I've chosen... Destroyer! From the Bicentennial year of 1976, their fourth studio album, coming after in-concert classic Alive!, Destroyer is one of the biggest Kiss successes ever. In part 'cause of drummer Peter Criss' surprise hit ballad, "Beth". But you're not gonna buy this for "Beth" (probably). You're gonna get it for the heavier fare here, such classics as "Detroit Rock City", remarkably Sabbathy in the riff dep't, and "God Of Thunder", a song Paul wrote for Gene for obvious reasons, of course this album's most heavy metal moment. Catchy, campy party starters like "King Of The Nighttime World", "Shout It Out Loud", "Do You Love Me?" (cowritten with Kim Fowley) are all over the place here too. Along with much studio embellishment both within and between songs, album opener "Detroit Rock City" getting a sound collage intro new to you if you've only heard it on the radio before.
Basically, if someone were to ask us what Kiss sounds like, we'd wouldn't hesitate to reach for Destroyer. The glammy, cartoony '70s kitsch Kiss phenomenon was about as full in effect here as anyplace else. Just check out the larger than life, band portrait on the cover. Wouldn't you want that on your lunchbox? And elementary schoolkids' older siblings could appreciate that Kiss was ready to rock hard for respect, capable of competing with the likes of Grand Funk sure enough but also doing battle in the arenas with some of the more metal acts of the era. So, Destroyer: hit ballad, hit rockers, good times all around, what more do you want? And well, heck, if we have to tell you too much about THIS album, maybe Kiss just isn't for you. C'mon nostalgia, do your thing...
Maybe you remember the good old days. Obituary's Slowly We Rot, Morbid Angel's Blessed Are The Sick, and - of course - Sepultura's Beneath The Remains. THOSE good old days. The days when metalheads could look each other in the face and say things like, "Dude, Scott Burns fucking rules," and it would mean something. Maybe even one tattooed tear would drop. Earthdogs worldwide would only consider purchasing longsleeve versions of their favorite band's shirts. When the only guy in the band allowed to have short hair was the drummer. Guitar solos were mandatory. Well, Brazil's Krisiun have managed to continually exist within that realm. It seems that for them the only difference between then and now is heightened production value. Their music remains heavy, tight, and fast. You're getting zero corpsepaint, no buzzing guitars, and absolutely no art-school-esque Banks Violette collaborations. Metal dudes weren't wearing makeup and crying about how they hate people, because they were too busy trying to kick ass. Death metal, no bullshit necessary. We're not even sure if they know that black metal has taken the spotlight in "extreme metal" for like, oh, almost 15 years now. Make sure to bang your head in a circular motion, even while listening to their cover of fellow Brazilians Sepultura's "Refuse/Resist."
Another backroom discovery, this time, a super limited (only 100 copies, and now almost for sure out of print) cd-r from New Zealand space raga outfit Lamp Of The Universe. Each one of these packaged in a gorgeous swirled hand painted sleeve, with a printed insert. Two long songs, and this is LOTU at their most drone out, way more raga than space rock, longform drones, extended tones, shimmering buzz stretched out into minutes long melodies, bits of percussive shimmer surface here and there, but for the most part this is all about the mighty DRONE. The opening track introduces some high end snake charmer style horns, and some buried hand drums, but those really only add to the undulating layered drone.
The second, slightly shorter track (22 minutes) is a slowly shifting thick tangle of layered tones, wound into one huge slithering reverberating drone, deep and resonant, thick and dark and shimmery, plenty of buzz and fuzz and whir, intoxicatingly mesmeric, a drone so dense and intense it nearly sucks the air out of the room when it finally ends.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each hand numbered, we have the last copies ever, so please don't be disappointed if these disappear quick...
Everybody except a tiny handful of folks missed out on that Josh Lay cd-r on the last list, sold out in a flash, but for those of you who missed out, here's a brand new 7" from Mr. Lay, drummer for aQ faves Cadaver In Drag. But of course the sound here is a bit different than the cd-r. The first side begins with a noisy drone, but soft noise, an undulating layer of deep gurgly rumble and highend whir that gradually grows thicker and more ominous, until it explodes into a blast of chaotic blackness, a weird abstract black ambience with howled demonic vokills, a bit like a black metal track with the guitars and drums removed, haunting and evil and black, but more a sort of blackdrone. The flipside is all drone however, never exploding into any sort of evil blackness, instead opting to lurk in shades of grey, slithering and shimmering and whirring.
Super fancy trifold gold ink on thick black cardstock sleeve, and LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!
It would be difficult to say that Lindstrom has finally come into his own, but it's really not his fault. Given the retro-modern angle of his entire project, it's not really even a good or bad thing. The sounds, the composition, the melodic structures, they're all questionably '80s. Not '80s like Giorgio Moroder or Daniele Baldelli - as most commonly referenced, but more like a blend of Jan Hammer, Rick Astley, and, like, Paul Lekakis? Sure, a little John Carpenter even. If you can overlook all the kitsch, the bizarre nostalgia for music that may or may not have really been necessary, then Lindstrom is your guy. This particular release shows him both more minimal and more maximal, restrained and indulgent. Each of the three tracks unfold slowly, releasing one arpeggiation after another, deftly resting upon various analog drum sounds and sampled percussive devices. The production is great as usual, and no doubt the guy must have an impressive collection of vintage synths, etc. So far as songwriting, it's suspiciously absent. As with the majority of his releases, the focus is on process, development, and a definite amount of abandon as a listener. Just sitting back and seeing where he wants to take you, which is more often than not just some '80s soundtrack. Sure, "I Feel Space" was a great track, and undoubtedly helped to spark the fairly recent explosion of space disco and gave people a strange justification to somehow openly talk about Todd Rundgren as a musical hero, or something. However, the promise of that single has largely fallen flat. Truth be told, this release is a better than his usual fare, but not really essential for anyone other than completists or huge fans.
A 1974 folk rock concept album outta County Cork... a real rare record, reissued for the ye olde hippie folk interested among you. 'Tis all about the old Irish myth of King Lir and his cursed swan-children, in a dramatic presentation of lilting Celtic folk melodies with proggish majesty, full of sweet male/female vocal harmonies and electric psych guitar leads. At many moments mellow and dainty, at others darker and fairly rockin', this is nice enough, though they're no Comus (who is?). Often pretty but also a bit precious, perhaps. Includes full liner notes, photos, and 6 bonus tracks including a 10+ minute television broadcast soundtrack complete with narration, which should help out those of us not up on our Irish mythology. Also there's disparate demos and singles tracks (one of 'em, "False Prophets" is quite the stormer, sounding almost proto-metal with Neil Youngish vocals).
We're really not sure what else to say at this point about Machinefabriek. This will be the 25th release in 2 years, and those are just the ones we carried and reviewed. That may seem like a lot, but they are all different, and all pretty great. He is definitely one of the modern masters of soundscaping, able to weave gorgeous landscapes of sound using whatever sound or tones or equipment are at hand, seemingly effortlessly. Live albums prove he can pull it off there as well. And this is in fact sort of a live record, recorded for the radio, released as part of VPRO's esteemed Mort Aux Vaches series, limited to 500 copies, and housed in a beautiful thick clothbound cardstock, hand screened sleeve, each hand numbered.
And the music inside, as we would expect, is just as carefully and uniquely crafted. This three part, 35 minute piece seems to be based on guitar mostly, simple muted strums and subtle melodies, wreathed in effects and allowed to blur and smear into long stretches of soft shimmer, sometimes interrupted by bits of digital glitch or crackle, a bit of buzz, some abstract guitar twang, but those just seem to ground the proceedings in the moment, adding grit and texture so the music sounds more organic, like it's being played not produced. The second movement is another looped guitarscape, the main melody growing more and more faint and disappearing into a haze of crackle and soft static.
The closing movement, is the most minimal, offering up a deep drone, rich with subtle layers, what sound like voices, shimmering tones, harmonics and overtones, muted scrape and buried buzz, haunting and ghostly, drifting glacially until disappearing in a brief flare of static. As always, very very nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. We only have a handful...
Since around 2004, the Italian industrial composer Maurizio Bianchi has unleashed an impossible stream of recordings, often in collaboration with electronics musicians all over the world but unfortunately with spotty results. There are plenty of reasons why any label and / or artist would jump at the chance to release and / or record something, anything by Mr. Bianchi; and this 10cd boxset of his seminal recordings from the early '80s defines them all. This actually marks the second reissue campaign for these recordings, some of which originally appeared on Sterile Records and Broken Flag; but many of which had been self-published on Bianchi's own imprint. Bianchi - who simply recorded at the time as MB - had infamously been released through William Bennett's Come Organisation, who had recontextualized Bianchi's recordings of grim mechanoid drones with Nazi speeches spliced on top and changed his nom de plume to Leibstandarte SS MB... all without Bianchi's consent. Numerous cassettes, plenty of compilation appearances, and 10 lps marked this very prolific period in the early '80s for Bianchi, whereby he issued forth brutal, hallucinatory blasts of electronic noise and grinding rhythms of hand-cut tape noise and overblown synthetic distortion. These were the blackened, nihilist version of Conrad Schnitzler, Cluster, and Klaus Schulze as filtered through the industrial ethos of Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse.
But by 1984, Bianchi just stopped. There were innumerable rumors about his departure from the music community. Some said, he had become a monk. Some said, he was crippled in an accident. But the truth of the matter was that he dedicated himself to his faith as a Jehovah's Witness. His distance only heightened the mythology about this artist and increased the cultural cache of those early recordings. Hence, the necessity for this boxset.
Here, you will find those ten LPs - Symphony For A Genocide, Menses, Neuro Habitat / Moerter Under Uns, Regel, Mectpyo Bakterium, Das Testament, Endometrio, Carcinosi, The Plain Truth, and Armagheddon - each released with plenty of bonus tracks from any number of those various compilation tracks. And for those of you who had picked up the two 5lp anthologies of MB's work on Vinyl On Demand, we don't think there's any overlap between this box set and those collections.
The first records are violent display of neurotic vibrations and deadly electronics, the second is relatively dreamy, albeit retaining the sonic qualities of erratic vertigo and shadowy hallucinations. His suffocating experiments with primitive synths, delay pedals, turntables, and tape machines collapsed in on themselves with an electrocuted obliteration of sound. Out of the ashes of such early albums as Symphony for a Genocide and Neuro Habitat, Bianchi allowed for a structuralism with tentative rhythms and melodies to rise out of the blackened grit on the work found on Endometrio and The Plain Truth. Each of the albums found on this box set are available individually; however, the box set features additional artwork, plenty of bonus tracks not on the original lps (but still the same from the first reissue campaign), and a handful of Bianchi's cryptic music critiques. Of all of the dronescapes, noise attacks, and electronic warbles that Aquarius has lavished with critical hyperbole, MB remains at the top of the list in terms of innovation and actualization of metaphor and intent.
Writing as many reviews as we do each week, trying to sell records to the people who will like 'em, we really appreciate it when a band makes it easy, as in this case, like, by being from Japan. And from the early '70s. Playing acid folk. And then they've got a cool name like Melting Glass Box. All that really remains is for us to tell you if is as amazing as it seems it might be - and it is.
Of course, though they're pretty obscure, you may have heard of them already, as this 1970 album has quite a deserved rep among connoisseurs of Japanese psych stuff - though it's mysteriously given short shrift in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler book, though he does praise albums by another band, Five Red Balloons (Itsutsu No Arai Fusen) from whom comes the main Melting Glass Box guy, singer-songwriter Takasi Nishioka, who is the pretty sharp looking denim clad hipster gent in the Melting Glass Box cover photo. MGB was a one-off studio project (though Takasi made many albums with Itsutu No Arai Fusen, and a bunch of later solo records as well) that also featured folks from such crucial underground Japanese psych acts of the era as The Jacks, Apryl Fool, and AQ faves Blues Creation. There's three members of proto-metal heavies Blues Creation on board here, actually, including Iommi-esque guitarist Takeda Kazuo. Not that this is at all heavy, it's actually a mellow, melodic record, quite gentle and pretty and placid, the lazy la la la's of their folky flowerpowered pop punctuated with such surreal details as the sound of shattering glass that startles the listener halfway through the lead off track "Anmari Fukasugite". Likewise, electronic FX, tape speed manipulations, ethnic instruments, and some stinging acid guitar licks are sparingly stirred into the mix throughout, this album one of many interesting, dreamy details and odd arrangements, but that still succeeds especially due to Takasi's balladic songs, that are so very melancholic and emotional - even though we can't understand the lyrics. We bet Masaki Batoh and Ghost grew up listening to this record!
Definitely a thrilling reissue that all of us here at AQ are digging, it's been getting a LOT of in-store play. Nicely done, too, by the Erebus label, with liner notes, original sleeve shots, and discographical information in the cd booklet.
