We only managed to grab a small handful of these, the latest dvd document of everyone's favorite Japanese psych rock unit doing their cosmically infernal thing. Like it says, live at the Bears club in Osaka, August 3rd, 2007, performed by an AMT lineup including new female recruit Pikachu from Afrirampo. Also, there's a guest appearance by Masonna! He's credited with synthesizer, vocal, and rock'n'roll star...
NTSC, region free dvd.
Here's two long time AQ Krautrock favorites - the first and second albums by Berlin band Agitation Free - that have been previously available as cds on the Spalax, and then on Garden Of Delights labels. But now krautrock reissuers Revisited have done even newer reissues, which is great 'cause we LOVE these records and we're glad of an excuse to list 'em again, especially since the previous edition has been unavailable for some time now. Also, Revisited has found some bonus tracks to include on each!!
The ethnic influence that so defined Agitation Free's debut is not as much a factor on 1973's Second - but both the West Coast style guitar jamming AND the way-out-there electronics experimentation really come to the fore. Again, mostly instrumental (one exception being the ominous, electronically treated reading of an Edgar Allen Poe poem that forms the last track, backed by gloomy Mellotron-led prog rock), psychedelic, trippy stuff, utterly gorgeous. Electronically created environmental sounds, wild and spacey synths, and relaxed, melodic guitar are all to be found here in abundance. Second was the second great album from this brilliant, often overlooked, Krautrock band. After Second they departed the scene with their excellent swansong live album, Last (not yet reissued by Revisited), though some other posthumous live/archival documents have subsequently been released as well.
The bonus track included here is "Laila '74", a nearly 8 minute live version of the album track(s).
They got their start as a hippie commune band, with ties to Guru Guru, Tangerine Dream, and Amon Duul. Their debut, "Malesch" (Arabic for "it doesn't matter, take it easy"), is a true cosmic Krautrock classic, blending the spacey psych of Pink Floyd and fellow krautrockers Ash Ra Tempel and Popul Vuh with a flair for Eastern "exoticism". Plus, in the intertwining guitars, you'll find some hints of the American West Coast psych sound (yes, even a little Grateful Dead -- but don't let that scare you off). The album was recorded in 1972 not long after the band was sent on a tour of the Middle East by the Goethe Institute, and incorporates field recordings (decades before the likes of Godspeed You Black Emperor!) from their trip: the bustle of Cairo streets, desert winds, calls to prayer, friendly airline pilots... These tapes are a key element of this record's appeal (along with their sheer talent for jamming and their synth and electronic experimentation). Oh, and some great Hammond organ sounds too. Basically, this is a fantastic album of mostly instrumental psych / drone / ethnic rock, that's generally mellow but powerful too. Whether to the Great Pyramids of Egypt (where the album cover was shot) or to inner space, "Malesch" portrays a true trip indeed. So recommended.
"Lunatic avant-free-rock, honed in guerrilla street performance" we're told. Hmm, we know the streets of Tokyo are crowded, but we bet Ahousen cleared the block they were rockin'. Of course, had we been there to see 'em, we'd have stayed put in the street, digging Ahousen big time. This is some serious psychedelic guitar grit, drum tumble, distorto-bass trudge, avant-sax blat, and angsty-screamy vocal burble, from a Japanese band we first heard on PSF's Tokyo Flashback vol. 6 comp. The guitarist, Katsu, played in a band called Lizard back in the '70s, the drummer is Tail from Suishou No Fune. The quartet is rounded out by Suu on sax and vocals, and Akira on bass. Dunno what other bands they may be from, but being part of Ahousen seems cool enuff! Wild and wooly but also sometimes achingly melodic and melancholic, Ahousen (aka Ship Of Fools in English) is part free jazz, part psych rock, and part Japanese folk. It's like Albert Ayler meets Blue Cheer. Or Musica Transonic with sax and a hint of Enka.
Beginning auspiciously enough with the energetic onslaught of "All Creatures", Ahousen's self-titled debut consists of four tracks in total, ranging in length from 7 minutes to an epic 28 ("Ophelia", which occupies the 2nd half of the album, certainly is a dramatic performance, compelling throughout, moving from moments of delicate frolic to heavy duty freakdom). Speaking of drama, even in the album's less fierce, more folky moments (like on the relatively lovely "A Leaf"), Suu's nervous breakdown, primal scream vocals up the emotional ante on everything else, his extreme outbursts being a major element of Ahousen's sound, and impact. Compared to other Tokyo Flashback style acts we like from the Tokyo psych scene, such as LSD-march and Up-Tight, these guys somehow sound more '70s underground, and more OUT there - in part due to the free jazz factor, in part due to those vocals... Radical. Fans of Fushitsusha and Kaoru Abe now have a dream date. And let's not limit ourselves merely to Japanese references, anyone into intense underground noisemaking from like likes of, I dunno, Raccoo-oo-oon, might want to sail into the maelstrom with this Ship Of Fools too. Pretty fantastic.
What You Don't Know Is Frontier is the second release from this heavy droning super group and it's insanely awesome. Densely layered glacial pools of buzzing heaviness, it's no surprise that Asva consists of members of Burning Witch, Goatsnake and SUNNO))) among others. An expansive pallet of guitars, percussion, organs, electronic wind instruments, and vocals, all plunge the listener into a battle between crumbling civilization and the redeeming light at the heart of the storm. Unlike many heavy drone bands who are easily weighed down by a lack of dimension within their music, Asva manages to swiftly guide the listener in and out of finely choreographed movements that unfold with precision musicianship. This is definitely not simply "another drone record" that should be overlooked or dismissed. The range of textures and attention to detail is key here. What You Don't Know is Frontier unfolds more like a soundtrack then a drone record, a refreshing attempt at broadening the genre into a more honest, accessible art form. Highly recommended for fans of anything HEAVY.
What You Don't Know Is Frontier is the second release from this heavy droning super group and it's insanely awesome. Densely layered glacial pools of buzzing heaviness, it's no surprise that Asva consists of members of Burning Witch, Goatsnake and SUNNO))) among others. An expansive pallet of guitars, percussion, organs, electronic wind instruments, and vocals, all plunge the listener into a battle between crumbling civilization and the redeeming light at the heart of the storm. Unlike many heavy drone bands who are easily weighed down by a lack of dimension within their music, Asva manages to swiftly guide the listener in and out of finely choreographed movements that unfold with precision musicianship. This is definitely not simply "another drone record" that should be overlooked or dismissed. The range of textures and attention to detail is key here. What You Don't Know is Frontier unfolds more like a soundtrack then a drone record, a refreshing attempt at broadening the genre into a more honest, accessible art form. Highly recommended for fans of anything HEAVY.
Another of several new PSF titles new in stock, and this one's a BRUTE. Holy moly. Deafening sandpaper for the ears... and we love it, just like we love the likes of Skullflower, Aufgehoben, and Cadaver In Drag, all of whom share the same sonic sandpapery, amped up overload absurdity of this band. Aural Fit, you may recall, if you read our list attentively or are especially tuned in to the Japanese underground, had a track on the Tokyo Flashback 5 comp, followed by a self-released full-length (now out of print) that we recommended some years back to fans of Boris and Earth looking for an even more extreme dose of heavy-duty, doomy dirge. On this new disc, Aural Fit still do the dirge, some of the time, remaining ultra-heavy all of the time. But, their sound has gotten even more "cacophonic and dense" so that it's ridiculous the band's called, merely, Aural Fit. More like Aural Apocalypse! They're not having a fit, they've having a catastrophic explosion. The sound of mechanical monsters on the march, lumbering through the smoking ruins of civilization, crushing and killing anything that hasn't already fled or been vaporized by their initial onslaught. It's four tracks, 38+ minutes of feedback, distortion, pounding percussion, and buried screams. Punishing noise rock, psych rock insanity. Utterly blown-out freak-outs, so in-the-red that your shuddering stereo speakers would be glowing if you looked at 'em through infrared goggles!
Betty Botox is none other than JD Twitch, one half of Scotish super-duo Optimo. Yes, they named themselves after the Liquid Liquid song of the same name, and you may remember them from the inimitable Kill the DJ series a few years back. The one that had beats and mashups of everything from Laibach to Arthur Russell to Sun City Girls to Ricardo Villalobos - in a DANCE mix! Huh?! Anyway, this disc compiles various re-edits and remixes completed by Ms. Botox himself. Whatever you do, don't get scared. Yes, this is music you can dance to, but it has mixes of fucking Hawkwind and that Italian industrial group Pankow. Remember them? This guy is digging pretty deep, and thanks to artists like this we still have some faith in dancing. Did we mention that there's even an edit of The Jellies "Jive Baby on a Saturday Night?" Well, listen in as Ms. Botox warps and rearranges this super weird, psychedelic disco trip-fest. Hell, we might even bust out our eye-liner if and when he decides to tackle Fini Tribe's bizarre cover of "I Want More" by Can. Yes, that really happened. Fans of fun, this is for you.
The first 7" by this dynamic duo, was a serious blast of synth drenched post riot grrl fury, all new wave garage stomp and ass kicking punk rock genius! Record number two dials back the synth and new wave elements and ups the swaggery garage vibe, with these two new tracks. The A side features the boy half of this duo on lead vocals, shouting out a staccato invective over a groovy swinging garage jam, sounding a bit like a more upbeat Brainbombs, which is NEVER bad, simple, stripped down Pussy Galore / Royal Trux style RAWK.
The flipside finds Lily back on the mic, lamenting about how she knows she's not the prettiest girl but she doesn't need to hear that from YOU, all over another bad ass garage blues jam, some serious riot grrl revamped, a KILLER main riff, an amazing hook, all murky and muddy and blown out, fierce throaty, angry girl vox, if only the White Stripes were this bad ass.
Black Moth Super Rainbow have made quite an impact in the last couple years with their crunchy and poppy take on analog electronic pop, a sound that falls so near the more playful side of Boards Of Canada, and has us imagining what it might sound like if Air covered Daft Punk, using busted up old equipment, the result would have to be oh so charming and satisfying.
Drippers is essentially a collection of outtakes and unreleased tracks, but this is no throwaway ep. In fact we've been playing this nonstop, loving how thick and distorted the sounds here are and marvelling at BMSR's ability to conjure up such catchy and washed out electronic pop delights. The fact that they got Mike Watt to play on one of our favorite tracks ("Black Yogurt") has us even more smitten. Complete with a scratch n' sniff cover, this is music that engages all the sensations and keeps us coming back for more and more.
(FYI, 10" vinyl version forthcoming...)
Latest entry in God Is Myth's ongoing series of 3"cd-r homages to horror author H.P. Lovecraft, and this one was really a no-brainer, inevitable considering the mysteriously monickered Brown Jenkins in fact took his name from a Lovecraft story (as did about a million other bands, but Brown Jenkins is one of the stranger ones) and whose music is obviously influenced by Lovecraft's writing. And according to the liner notes, Brown Jenkins is also influenced by Joy Division, Burzum, Bethlehem, Voivod, Godflesh, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Slayer, Merzbow, Gang Of Four, etc. Sounds like our kind of metal band. And BJ is in fact our kind of metal band, as we've gone on and on about in past reviews of Brown Jenkins full lengths, all of those disparate influences wound into a dark and gloomy blackened metal, that hardly adheres to the strict tenets of BM, instead, stretching them to their limits, incorporating blissed out drones, odd off kilter chords, strange melodies, as well as shades of pop, new wave and goth, but all wound into something distinctly, if not traditionally, BLACK METAL.
So here, Umesh, aka Brown Jenkins, gets to honor the man who plays such an important part in his music.
The sounds here are not particularly Lovecraftian, the lyrics are though, the music itself is twisted and angular, obtuse chords, mid tempos, the guitar not so much buzzing as thick and layered with lots of finger picking, melodies and chords shifting, more loping than blasting, the Voivod influence is especially prevalent here, tightly wound, almost new wavish at points but more sort of dark and moody, washed out, black metal for sure, but more mathy than buzzy. The closing track sounds like a black metal Codeine, a moping slowcore wrapped in jagged shards of black metal guitar, a descending melody, melancholy and minor key, before slipping into something more propulsive but no less 'downer'.
Like the full lengths, this is challenging off kilter stuff, especially for the grim black hordes, but it's most certainly buzzy and black enough to push all those black metal buttons, while remaining melodic and moody enough to fit on that mixtape right between Codeine and Seam.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. Already sold out and out of print. We got only TWENTY, we tried to get more, but that's all they would let us have, and like past installments these for sure disappear quick. Packaged in a normal slimline cd case, with black and white covers, liner notes and lyrics, and a sepia printed cardstock insert with a photo and a brief biography of Lovecraft.
We had the one sided 12" version of this here disc a while back, but now it's been reissued with those 4 songs, as well as a whopping 9 more from an earlier lp and a split with fellow noisemakers Mass Movement Of The Moth. So all you record impaired folks can finally dig in to this monstrously noisy slab of post punk rrroooaaar.
This is some seriously crushing, heavy, post hardcore stoner grunge screamo heaviness coming at you straight from Richmond Virginia. Grinding, pummeling, super distorted and angular post punk, but with some serious groove, and vocals that go from howled to screeched to crooned (well almost), killer riffs, filthy and heavy, pounding drums, mathy and chaotic, think Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid, Mudhoney, Halo Of Flies, the Melvins, lots of AmRep, some Sub Pop, and here and there, Nirvana at their noisiest and heaviest.�
Definitely old school, and can't help but remind us of the good old grunge days, but it's hyped up, and filtered through a more modern take on post screamo hardcore, some seriously heavy, hooky ass kicking stuff.�
Way recommended.
Celer is the husband and wife team of Dani Baquet-Long and Will Long, who currently reside somewhere down on the Southern California coast. They've released a handful of well-received ambient recordings on Spekk and Infraction, and they've found a good home on And/OAR for this driftscape of tapeloop interplay. As for the title, a nacreous cloud is found in the upper regions of the atmosphere at the polar regions. Well past sunset and well before sunrise, these clouds showcase a radiant brightness against an otherwise darkened sky; and it's this particular phenomenon that forms the inspiration for Celer's album of the same name. Having stretched the tones of various instruments into languid looping drones and bliss-out ambience, Celer presents 37 short tracks which actually work really well as a single composition, given the gentle flutter and restrained attack from all of their sounds. References abound to William Basinski's ambient work, Aidan Baker's soft focus facets, and of course the seminal work of Brian Eno.
Chancha Via Circuito is not only the train that Pedro Canale rides back and forth from his hometown to nearby Buenos Aires, it's also the name he's chosen for his dubbed out, free flowing, and more nuanced and minimal approach to "Cumbia digital." We've been entranced with this record since the very first time we heard it, as it's equal parts soothing and moving, slow burning and dance inducing. We're reminded a lot of the great Mad Professor vs. Massive Attack outing No Protection, as it has that same blend of cut and paste dub, along with more recent blasts from that Cumbia scene. In fact it wouldn't surprise us if Gang Gang Dance had gotten a copy of this before they recorded their latest record as it has that same kind of tripped out and late night dance vibe they latched on to. This is exactly what you would want blasting from the speakers in a club as you waited for M.I.A. to take the stage, or in your ears as you roam late night streets, moving at ease as these seductive beats intertwine perfectly with the flashing lights of the cars zooming by.
Only available here at aQ! Even if you're already well-acquainted with Charles Atlas (the band, not the bodybuilder!), you won't want to miss this 'introduction'. It's an absolutely lovely summer-melting-into-fall sort of album. Breezy but not lightweight, drifting melodic tendrils of horn, piano and organ are accented by chiming vibes. Despite the gentle chill of melancholia, the whole proceeding is warmed by lots of reverb and warbled by lots of tremolo. Sure to appeal to fans of Sea & Cake and High Llamas!
Another cool release from one of our new favorite labels, Mississippi, or VIA Mississippi records, as it's technically on a label called Change, the same label that released that Irma Thomas lp a while back. But whatever, as far as we're concerned it is Mississippi Records, which means it's a cool record, available on vinyl for the first time, or the first time in ages, pressed on nice vinyl and in thick sleeves, for a nice price.
This time around it's New Zealand's legendary pop combo The Clean. Their Compilation album originally released on Homestead way back when, which collects all of the band's early essential recordings. Who the heck are The Clean you ask? Well, here's the lowdown from another of our reviews: The history of the legendary New Zealand indie label Flying Run quite literally begins with The Clean. Impressed by a slew of The Clean's live performances in their home town of Dunedin, New Zealand back in 1980, Roger Shephard began Flying Nun, simply in order to release the band's first single "Tally Ho." That song, an upbeat but simple post-punk number that crashed together jangling guitars and persistent organ melodies, surprised everybody with a considerable amount of commercial success in New Zealand, and became one of many songs by The Clean that found enthusiastic audiences in the US during the college rock days of the '80s, offering a quirky, exotic alternative to staples like REM, the Replacements, Robyn Hitchcock, and Elvis Costello.
Formed in 1978 by the Kilgour brothers David and Hamish, The Clean never stooped to the depths of the Gallagher brother's public fisticuffs; but the band - which flushed out its membership with Robert Scott and (in the early days) Peter Gutteridge - spent more time broken up than together. Yet, their eternally catchy pop songs became the blueprint for almost all of the other Flying Nun bands (in part due to the numerous Clean related projects on Flying Nun, including The Bats, The Great Unwashed, Bailter Space, Snapper, Stephen, and others).
The Clean's Compilation runs through their early releases, including "Tally Ho," the "Boodle Boodle Boodle" ep, the "Great Sounds..." ep, and a few more. Edgy yet unswervingly optimistic, these songs were sloppy four-track recordings of monomaniacally simple rhythms, cacophonously jangly guitar melodies, and happy-go-lucky vocals.
For folks who already have the recently released Anthology two disc set on Merge, there is a lot of overlap, in fact most of this stuff is on that comp, but obviously this has been out of print for years on vinyl, and while Compilation is just that, a collection of eps and singles, it somehow manages to function as a proper album, tight, short, sharp and nearly perfect!
Some of you might remember Gargotheron, whose cd-r we reviewed a while back, a blurred baffling black metal horde from Arizona, whose sound was grim and raw, primitive and pummeling, spastic and hyper kinetic, octopoidal drumming, insectoid riffing, we described it as "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt", so what might we expect from Cloak Of Displacement, a strange ritualistic avant doom offshoot of the mighty Gargotheron? How about long expanses of processed downtuned guitar drone, gurgled distorted vocals, abstract riffage and clouds of glitch and buzz and electronic interference, brief bursts of in-the-red ultra distorted noise drenched black metal. And more fucked up weirdness. We're tempted to describe it as a black metal Faxed Head, but it's not quite so purposefully damaged, although it's plenty demented. There are stretches of almost prettiness, in the guise of sprawling low end buzz, a little Earth (circa 2), a little Khanate, a pinch of SUNNO))), but filtered though some sort of sick Abruptum like sonic ritual, in fact ritual is an apt description, as the performance was literally part of a REAL ritual, with a real live witch performing incantations and spells, at one point snipping locks of hair from the various band members while they recorded, even the packaging, sealed with wax, have been cursed, so open at your own peril!
Grim and fucked up, mysterious and abstract, definitely essential listening for ambient noise metal freeks into stuff like Abruptum, Emit and the like, but also might hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed, Khanate, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Vulture Club and other purveyors of minimal blackened filth.
Packaged in a hand stamped black envelope, sealed with wax, hand numbered, LIMITED TO ONLY 45 COPIES! We took most of those, inside a hand written missive from Cloak Of Displacement, to YOU.
Latest release from one of the strangest and most unique black metal bands around. How many groups, black metal or otherwise can you think of that hail from the tiny country of Kyrgyzstan? We actually couldn't think of any, although apparently there are at least three black metal bands. How many grim buzzing BM outfits can you think of fronted by a female? Not many we'd bet. Or how many black metal bands incorporate traditional Middle Eastern instruments into their sound? Again, the answer is not a whole lot.
So thus we have Darkestrah, a female fronted black metal trio from Kyrgyzstan who we've raved about in the past, but who seem to only get better and better with each record.
The production this time around is amazing, so thick and heavy and polished, but without losing any of the ferocity. The songs are multi part epics, slipping from woozy midtempo dirge to blackened blast, frontwoman Kriegtalith's vokills a harsh demonik shriek, the songs rife with melodies and hooks, managing to be both blasting and brutal, but catchy and epic. The coolest part though is how the band mix in traditional folk instruments and vocal techniques from Kyrgyzstan into the songs. While much of that is used as intros, gorgeous stretches of plaintive mournful throat singing and deep shimmery rage like strum, those instruments and sounds also surface within tracks, fluttering woodwinds hovering over churning black buzz, strange lilting folky melodies wound into otherwise straight ahead blasts. It turns the record into something much more haunting and mysterious and so unique. So easy to get lost in the buzzing drones and Middle Eastern melodies... The Great Silk Road is quickly becoming one of our most listened to new BM records...
Released to coincide with the band's 21st anniversary (!!!), Frostland Tapes collects a bunch of super sough after rarities, lost and live recordings and most importantly (at least for Darkthrone fanatics), the unreleased instrumental version of their Goatlord album.
As much as we're tempted to say every metalhead probably should own almost anything these guys release, this one, while pretty fucking excellent, might just be more of a 'For Fans Only' sort of thing. Although if you've never heard Darkthrone before, and want to jump in way back at the beginning, and experience the band through rough lo-fi live recordings or raw primitive demos, then hell yeah, this will definitely do the job. But if that sounds a bit too intense of an introduction, then try either Transylvanian Hunger or A Blaze In The Northern Sky, we guarantee you'll be hooked, you can always come back for this one later!
For the rest of you, who have all the records proper, odds are you're gonna want this too... the 1988 Land Of Frost demo, the 1988 A New Dimension demo, the Thulcandra 1989 demo, the legendary 1989 Cromlech demo, a 1990 show recorded live in Denmark, and of course a rare instrumental version of Goatlord recorded in 1991. Lots of songs you know, some you probably don't, varying degrees of fidelity, but c'mon it's Darkthrone, the more raw the better!!!!
Housed in a super fancy hardcover book style package with tons of rare photos, liner notes and a funny (aren't they all?) interview with Fenriz...
Imagine if the Dead Boys, the Stooges or Black Lips were from Puerto Rico and you'll begin to have an idea of the raucous fun and mighty punch that Davila 666 pack into their In The Red debut. It takes a lot to really move us when it comes to modern day garage rock as we find much of it a bit stale and burnt out, but god damn we can't stop listening to this record! There is such a pure excitement to these sounds, and enough of a range in Davila 666's music to truly make them stand above the crowd. It's not just the novelty of singing in Spanish, but you can tell these are guys who have an awesome appreciation for a wide range of garage sounds from the punk to the pop, and the few slower tracks on here are like some lost 4-track tapes of sessions produced by Phil Spector in a Puerto Rican garage in the late '70s. This is the band you would dream of seeing play at a house party, it could make even the most jaded and sullen of souls jump with joy. Luckily all you have to do is throw this on and the party comes right through the speakers. So damn good!
NZ noise rockers the Dead C were just here, and they had a little stash of super limited tour 12"s, of which we managed to get a big handful, 25 or 30, but that's it. Once these are gone, they are gone gone gone.
The recordings are live, no info on when or where, but the sound is murky and lo-fi and muddy and washed out and with any other band that would be a bummer, but that's the sort of production that perfectly suits Dead C's particular sound, especially live.
The A side begins with a thick throbbing distorted guitar drone, for minutes, before the drums finally kick in, a propulsive krautrock beat that lasts all of 20 seconds before slowing down and dropping out. Hmm, false start? Sounds cool regardless, as the guitar drone continues on and the drums once again join the fray, and the band locks into a loose but groovy psychedelic New Zealand krautjam, the guitars so muddy and indistinct, they sound almost like a static drone, a constant buzz beneath the drums, before those drums drop off and the track finishes with a woozy shimmery drone.
The B side is a gorgeous haunting creep, a black sonic fury, all pulsating guitars, growling low end and muted abstract drumming, with stuttery feedback spread out over the heavy detuned sprawl. The whole side so minimal and hypnotic and ominous and beautiful.
SUPER LIMITED. Packaged in plain black 12" sleeves.
We've become a little obsessed recently with Ukrainian one man band Moloch. A quick look at Encyclopaedia Metallum reveals about 30 or 40 releases, 5 or 6 of them BOX SETS! Unfortunately most of them limited to 50, or 40, some even less than 10. So we've been on the hunt for at least one record we could get enough of to review on the list. We have our sites set on a cd full length, which we should be able to have in stock soon, but while we've been searching this little black gem showed up, and thus, will most likely serve as your introduction to the mighty Moloch.
Of his 30 or 40 releases, only a handful are black metal, the rest are split between dark ambient, and noise. So the black metal records end up being infused with both ambient drones and black noise.
But before we get to Moloch, we have Deathrow to contend with, a one man band from Italy, that one man also being a member of Frostmoon Eclipse, Ad Hominem, Kult, Nocternity and a whole bunch of others. For this split, Deathrow offer up some gorgeously lush black ambience, thick roiling clouds of buzzing synth, shimmering organs, pulsing low end rumbles, all woven into slow moving creepscapes, almost like Goblin at 16rpm.
Moloch too chooses a path of blacker ambience, and offers up some grim necro rituals recalling the strange abstract blackened mood music of Abruptum, but far from being harsh, this is a dark and haunting journey through some fog shrouded underworld, all deep sonorous tones, mysterious creaks and thumps, dense swells of distorted low end, streaks of minor key melody, everything blurred and indistinct, distant anguished howls, tinkling marimba like chimes, warm washes of crumbling chordal whir, animal grunts and growls, reverb drenched detuned piano, all super cinematic and soundtracky, conjuring images of boarded up old houses, of black swamps, strange shapes drawn by moonlight filtering through the trees, of abandoned streets, dank cellars, of caves lit by flickering firelight, of nighttime, of darkness, of loss, misery, pain, loneliness, and hell.
WAY recommended. And if all goes well we'll be able to track down that Moloch full length, and you can discover his even blacker side for yourself.
Due to a little thing called the inter-webs (we've never heard of it), the tracks for Deerhunter's long-awaited follow-up to last years much loved Cryptograms were prematurely leaked. So to give us cd buyers more bang for their buck, they recorded an EXTRA full length, called Weird Era Continued, and released the two discs together for a single disc price. Very nice of them! This time around they fused their pop sensibilities and their more experimental hazy dronescape leanings together into songs that recall the best of classic 4AD shimmer with sixties wall of sound pop. There isn't too much difference between the two records, but the song-writing is strong enough and the production nuanced enough to keep our attention through both. While we might have liked some more spacier instrumental moments like the ones found on Cryptograms, it seems Bradford Cox has begun to channel his more experimental side into his other project, Atlas Sound, where it is actually better suited. Still this is pretty damn solid!
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!! Limited edition double vinyl, to be precise, with three "newly discovered songs exclusive to this lp". Plus two live encores from the band's final CBGB's appearance. Here's our review of the earlier released cd version:
It's been a quarter century overdue. But finally, all of the good DNA material has finally been gathered in a single collection. There may have been Japanese bootlegs floating around, and there was that terrible live record that came out on Avant about a decade ago. But DNA on DNA is the definitive collection; and its release will probably squeeze more than a few of those seminal No New York compilations LPs onto the eBay market.
DNA, of course, was the No Wave band that Arto Lindsay assembled with the help of percussionist Iuke Mori and keyboardist Robin Crutchfield, both of whom were self-professed non-musicians at the time. A mere 9 months after the birth of DNA, Crutchfield left and was replaced by former Pere Ubu bassist Tim Wright. The two line-ups of DNA manifested vastly different sounds. For the first line-up, Lindsay coupled his autistic guitar cacophony with aggressive barks and snarls of thoroughly fragmented lyrics which in turn were propelled by Crutchfield's double fisted pummel on his keyboards and More's equally Frankensteinian percussive lurches. The early DNA sort of sounded like an unholy coupling of Damo Suzuki, Sonny Sharrock, and Captain Beefheart attempting to compress all of their ideas into a two minute punk context. Recent bands like the Numbers have attempted to replicate the DNA ethos, but have devolved into ironists sneering at the audience instead of capturing DNA's frightening abstract expressionism and psychic alienation.
The second DNA line-up with Tim Wright on bass embraced a far more painterly approach. Rather than replicating the antifunk cubic sounds of Crutchfield's Moog, Wright produced calligraphic bass lines with a sinewy pelvic grind that infused a bizarre sensuality to the tortured sounds of Lindsay's guitar 'n' vocal shrieks. No net loss/gain there.
While Mars clearly had their highlights, they quietly imploded, Lydia Lunch dropped the shock treatment of Teenage Jesus in lieu of the cartoonish noir of Queen of Siam and Eight Eyed Spy and James Chance went onto parody himself as James White, DNA were consistently the best of the No Wave bands; and it's about damn time that this document came out. Clearly there are a lot of contemporary bands who should be shamed into calling it quits with the release of DNA on DNA, and there should be many more people who should be blown away by just how good DNA were.
Now On Vinyl!
Meric Long, the man behind The Dodos, was calling his band The Dodo Bird for a spell, which just so happened to be the title of his debut cd-r release which we carried earlier this year (which was billed as a Meric Long album). Now they go by the abbreviated The Dodos. Confused? Well, all you need to remember is that Meric Long along with percussionist Logan Kroeber are The Dodos. Their engaging music makes keeping them in mind and heart as easy as pie!
As far as we can tell unlike their namesake they are neither feathered and flightless nor extinct. In fact, from the sounds of this, their first full length cd, these Dodos are flourishing, blossoming, ready to take flight. With his contemplative lyrics, terrific songwriting and rich arrangements of vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, percussion and... trombone(!), Long more than makes good on the impressive promise he showed on his debut. Throughout the proceedings he exudes a warm charm and confidence and an occasional willingness to gently nudge the boundaries of the acoustic folk singer/songwriter terrain. Jeff Mangum and John Darnielle, set a place at the table for The Dodos!
FINALLY! The most recent Earth album on vinyl, but this ain't just any old vinyl, even by Southern Lord standards, this is so deluxe it's off the charts. Metallic gold ink on faux leather hardcover, like an old fashioned, and very big Bible, inside the lps are attached like pages in a scrapbook, loads of full color artwork, but the most important thing about this limited vinyl version, and perhaps the most frustrating, is the extra bonus track, available only here. More gorgeous sunbaked gospel flecked blues, languorous guitars, minimal drums, with horns and slide guitar, so beautiful and fits perfectly with the record proper. And again, only available here. Limited to less than 5000 copies, which seems like a lot, but for Southern Lord, and Earth in particular, it's probably not nearly enough. Here's what we had to say about The Bees when it first came out:
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slowmotion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
We were given a heads up about El Guincho months ago by a customer who was in the store while we were playing Panda Bear. He asked us if we knew El Guincho, when we said no, he told how we had to hear it and it would blow us away and how he was like the Spanish version of Panda Bear. So now several months later El Guincho is finally seeing his record released in North America on XL, and we have to say once again, that sometimes our customers are often way more hip and in the know then we are, because this is proving to be a total store favorite! There is a huge Panda Bear influence at play but with a much more full on party sensation. And a distinct lo-fi Manu Chao vibe as well. This isn't headphone music, this is a record meant to come blasting out of speakers. We hear such a wide range of influences, especially the surging sonic sensations heard in Congotronics, all riled up for full pleasure.
If Panda Bear ever got to be captain of a party cruise we're pretty sure this is what it would sound like to be on that ship. Sign us up!
We didn't know a whole lot about El-G, aka French pop weirdo Laurent Gerard, other than he was supposed to be sort of like a twisted modern day Serge Gainsbourg, and hearing this now, that's really not that far off the mark, he even has a female foil to further cement the Gainsbourg comparison. Mix in some Animal Collective weirdness, some Kemialliset foresty folk, and you'd be getting close.
French ballady folk is definitely the core of Gerard's sound, but the tracks here vary wildly, compiled as they are from a handful of super limited previous releases. But a quick sampling reveals laid back French pop, breezy and dreamy, brushed snares, subtle electronics drifting over finger picked guitars, fractured blues drenched in wheezing organ and random percussion, peppered with deep bassy throbs and grunted garbled vocals, Abstract fractured folk, soft female vocals over shimmery organs, rubbery basslines and howled male background vox, the final track of the A side builds from a folky whisper to a soaring layered drone, all buzzing tones and warbly organ, strangled guitar leads and lurching low end melodies. The rest of the record hovers close-ish to French folk and pop, but tweaks them just enough to keep it interesting, at one point converting the main riff from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" into a backdrop for some ethereal crooning. Cool stuff. Definitely recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as the softer side of freak folk and the weirder side of French pop.
Odds are most folks who would be into this record, won't even make it this far in the review, they'll just grab one. For doomlords and ladies, this really needs no description other than the names of the two bands, Finland's dead and deceased Reverend Bizarre, whose post mortum release schedule rivals Tupac's, and UK masters of downtuned sub-Sabbathian stoner sludge, Electric Wizard. Each band offers up a sidelong track of crushing doom drenched heaviness, each coming from their own distinct direction.
The sound of Electric Wizard is something special, in some ways so derivative, so sonically similar to about a million other bands, but the second it comes on, it could be no one else. A testament to their doom mastery for sure, and this is primo doom, a slowly unravelling main riff, lurching and lumbering, melodic vocals settled way down in the mix, languorous stoned leads over the top, thick swirls of psychedelic organ, and endless spaced out drug drenched jams, Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet meets Sabbath, but slowed way down and dirtied up, culminating in a nearly drumless melting riff outro, the guitars slowing down, the riff crumbling, squalls of psychrock leads, thick whirring organs, the song eventually grinding to a halt after droning on and on and on. Awesome.
Reverend Bizarre counter with their own extended slab of plodding doom genius, spaced out riff, pounding drums, vocals slipping from guttural howl to ominous whisper, but this is RB, so it's bound to get bizarre, and it does, with a chanted midsong ritual, soaring clean almost operatic vocals invoking demons over a woozy melodic lope, before slipping into an almost krautrock like groove, before lo and behold, the song flips and the second half of the track is BACKWARDS!!! Hypnotic and creepy, the sounds whooping and shimmering, the vocals a demonic gurgle over the top, very tripped out and dizzying, a weirdly blackly psychedelic outro from these twisted doomic Finns. Who we would say we miss like crazy since they broke up, but they haven't really stopped releasing records quite yet...
Pressed on what appears to be black vinyl with bits of glitter in it, with a garish seventies horror exploitation cover, a saucy lady cutting up another saucy lady on some black altar, candelabras and skulls, long velvet gloves and capes, knee high leather boots and way too much makeup, but fear not sensitive ones, the exposed crotch (right beneath the grinning skull) is covered by a little pentagram, and the sliced nipple by a little black circle. Phew!!
Not so much an ensemble as it is the work of one of the Starving Weirdos, the one who also records in the equally cool RV Paintings. Although it's unclear why the new monicker was necessary, besides the fact that it's a solo record, since the sound is not all that far removed from the Weirdos', which is no bad thing, if anything, the sound on At The Foot Of Nameless Roads is like a more intimate, more hushed take on the Weirdos' abstract avant ambience. Where the SW sounds like a handful of guys bathed in shadows, around a roaring fire, banging on mysterious objects, coaxing sounds out of big old hunks of electronics and busted musical instruments, the sound of EE, is more tranquil, movements measured and precise, lit not by fire, but by moonlight, or soft sunlight filtered through grey clouds. A series of longform dronescapes, shimmering smoother out high pitched skree spread out over layers of burnished hum. Deep metallic shimmers create fields of swirling overtones and buried melodies, delicate tendrils of washed out buzz spread out like a crack in the ice, creating intricate patterns that when viewed from afar are barely visible, but up close reveal all manner of shapes and designs, dense fields of looped percussion get tangled up with reverberating tones and overlapping chunks of fragmented melody, drums are dubbed out and delayed to the point that they almost become a static blur, and finally the sound of a crackling fire underpins hushes whispered dronelike ambience.
This is after all, for all of it's various sounds and timbres, arrangements and processes, a very minimal drone record, and a quite varied and lovely one at that.
Cover art by Tarentel's Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Talk about "Black Meddle"! That recent album from Chicago black metallers Nachtmystium got a lot of attention, in part for its (quite honestly) self-proclaimed Pink Floyd influence. But if there's one black metal band in the world who REALLY remind us of the psychedelic hypnosis of late '60s, early '70s Pink Floyd, it has to be Norway's mighty Enslaved.
Here they are with their 10th full length album, and once more, we bow down to them. Man, they make it look easy, triumphing again and again, always delivering the deathly blackened Viking post rock prog metal with such power and utter perfection. Over the years, they've gotten more and more proggy and Floydian, and Vertebrae is the ultimate in that direction - so far. If you liked their previous record Ruun or before that, Isa, you should be well pleased with Vertebrae. It's a progression, no major stylistic shift, just another solid Enslaved album, complete with clean vocal harmonies, black metal rasps, lulling atmospheres, wicked riffing, mathy structures... all coexisting intelligently and emotively in these compositions. The guitars and keys are often bright and shimmering, yet despite the melodiousness, a Nordic grimnity pervades. Indeed, the 2008 edition of Enslaved seems -serious- in a way that some of their quirkier, earlier forays into Viking-prog territory maybe weren't (well, a band wearing tunics and tights, as they used to do, really shouldn't take themselves too seriously). Rockin' and rollin' is still in their blood (take it from Allan, who saw 'em live earlier this year at SXSW, not once but twice, the second time right after Harvey Milk and Torche!), for sure you'll bang your head to much of this, but Vertebrae is also "head" music in the headphones and deep thoughts sense too. Simple, sorta New Agey song titles like "Clouds", "New Dawn", "Reflections", "Center" should be some clue to this. Though "New Dawn", for instance, is actually an example of the storming black metal violence that strikes a balance with Vertebrae's more pensive, post rockish moments.
Not to harp on the Pink Floyd thing too much, but you'd swear that they somehow got ol' David Gilmour to do some guest guitar soloing on album's third track, "Ground". And 'cause they make us think of Pink Floyd so much, that means they also remind us of another amazing Floyd-infused, proggily original metal band, the late (?) great Voivod... But regardless of those comparisons (and also ones we could make to some fellow Scandinavian acts with '70s prog influences, like Opeth and Amorphis), Vertebrae is obviously, and awesomely, an album only Enslaved would, or could, make.
NB. By the way, did you know that Enslaved's vocalist/bassist/most-Viking-looking-dude Grutle, is or was involved in something called Tangerine Funk??
Strange that we've never written anything about this album, the second album from Vienna's guitar 'n' laptop rock star Christian Fennesz. Originally released on Mego back in 1999, this album has gone through several pressings, fortunately always preserving the same core tracklisting, although the art has shrunk down to a digipack for the 2008 edition on Touch. The two albums that came after this album - Endless Summer and Venice - may stand as his perfect albums, one obviously summery and the other decidedly wintery; if anything, this is his shoegaze record, as he deftly wrangles with hurricane-strength distortion and tempers that with a post-MBV blur of narcotic auditory bliss. Throughout, Fennesz merely alludes to melody buried beneath all of the fuzzy drones and tempestuous noise, with pixel pointed interludes indicative of the signature Mego inflorescence for digital errata that he and Pita helped define. This is clearly the album that was the major inspiration for Tim Hecker and his digiscapes of guitar drones and 8-bit noise; but this album also bridges back to earlier pioneers of electronic adventurousness such as Main (especially Motion Pool) and The Hafler Trio (like Intoutof). If you've not checked this out, there's no better time than the present.
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The first (and before now, only) Fotheringay album from 1970 is one of our favorite records of the British folk era, but they were a group that from the beginning seemed like they were never meant to last. Led by a post-Fairport Sandy Denny and her husband, former Eclection guitarist Trevor Lucas, Fotheringay was more like a temporary dalliance away from the larger entity of Fairport Convention with Denny departing for solo stardom (and tragedy) after their first album, and most of the other members joining Fairport later on. A second album was in the works but never completed, well, until now that is! The Fledg'ling label has gone to great lengths to rescue the shelved tapes and restore the tracks to their seventies British folk glory. The sound is incredible and typical of Joe Boyd and using a light touch, sounds like a lost artifact from a previous era. While these are mostly traditional tunes and covers, their are five original compositions including two from Sandy Denny that have been little heard before now. We can't say that it betters the first album, but there are plenty of great songs for fans of this era. Named after the castle where Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded, it's interesting that after 38 years when this recording was started and long after it's two principle members have passed on, that the ghosts of the past are singing once more.
What more could be said about these two Fripp & Eno records than we've already written in countless Expo '70, Growing and Aidan Baker reviews? That's because these records are pretty much ground zero for all of the dark dreamy drifty processed guitar / tape / synth drone that we can't ever seem to get enough of. Perhaps there are other earlier influential touchstones such as Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, perhaps Stockhausen and Terry Riley as well, but none seemed to have come so totally out of nowhere from two relatively mainstream players as these two records. Manuel Gottsching, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music all came a little later.
After every other Eno solo album and collaboration (from Cluster to David Byrne) has been reissued, we are lucky enough to finally see both of these classic releases newly 24-bit remastered by Fripp himself reissued on his DGM imprint. These have never sounded better! No Pussyfooting even contains an extra disc featuring both tracks in reverse and a 40 minute bonus track of "The Heavenly Music Corporation" recorded at half speed that we know all our customers into glacial doomy drone will want, nay, need to own! Even if you own this record already, you may just need to buy it again for the stellar extra material!
It's easy to take for granted nowadays the influence of Brian Eno as the "godfather of ambient music", but in 1973 before he had even released his first solo record, Here Come The Warm Jets, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno were mainly known for their previous roles in King Crimson and Roxy Music respectively. Then this mysterious record parenthetically titled (No Pussyfooting) appears with its cryptic cover, a sort of ultra-modernized take on a hermetic alchemical engraving depicting the two artists (Eno at his most androgynous) looking in opposite directions, sitting in a small mirrored room with no doors reading tarot cards on a mirrored table with what sort of looks like a line of coke (?), next to a mirrored guitar in a mirrored case in the corner, a translucent mannequin and an antique silver radiator behind them under glass shelves filled with old books. The back cover showing the same scene with both artists and tarot cards missing. With its two side-long awesomely titled tracks "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and "Swastika Girls", what kind of music would this be? Rock? Prog? Glam? No one probably would realize until they purchased it and brought it home, that it would be this organically cerebral deep listening experience of the highest order. It's kind of a downer that we have such easy access to information nowadays, because when this came out, it was a true mystery object, which added to its esoteric appeal. But it still is to an extent, as numerous listens over the years still never fail to captivate, or confound how exactly the sounds are being made. Apparently,utilizing a system later dubbed, Frippertronics, two reel to reel tape decks were used to allow audio elements to be added onto a continuing tape loop building up dense layers of sound that would slowly decay as it turned around the decks' playback head. On "The Heavenly Music Corporation" layers of deep synth drones are layered in phased washes with Fripp's unique bowed guitar sound ringing ascending solo lines on top that sometimes loop and sometimes don't. Eno wrings out what sounds like synth lines in counterpoint to Fripp's part in similar tones so that at times it gets harder to tell who is making what sound as the piece intensifies. "Swastika Girls" starts with high pitched cascades of processed piano like tones with scraping synth squelches looping in counterpoint, before low rising bass notes and Riley-ish piano repetitions appear. Then Fripp's searing guitar crash-lands into the mix almost disrupting the whole process, but somehow it all works. Much more distorted and dissonant than "The Heavenly Music Corporation", it doesn't take the process for granted that everything will sound harmonious but remains still somehow cohesive, though far from easy listening.
While the backward tracks are equally amazing, they highlight a different kind of listening experience altogether. The seams show a bit more, the entrance and exit of new sounds more abrupt, but still strangely alien. Their inclusion here came from out of the listening experience of their first (and probably only) complete UK radio broadcast in 1973 courtesy of the late John Peel. Because the tapes were stored "tail out" but played as though they were stored "front out", the broadcast played the music in reverse. When Eno called in to say the music was being played backwards, he was met with a "that's what they all say" response.
But the real bonus of this deluxe package is the 40 minute "half-speed version" of "The Heavenly Music Corporation". When there were 16 2/3 rpm options on early record players, a lot of young guitarists would use the speed to slow down 33 1/3 rpm records to learn and practice their favorite guitar lines. Here it makes the drones so deep and heavy, Fripp's guitar lines more crushing, the layers creep and slither sounding like it could be one of the weird drone cd-r's we sell tons of. If it was in a black sleeve with skulls on it, and was called Skulled Space Outrosphere or Radiant Black Blood, and sealed with wax or wrapped in twine,�and was limited to 100 copies,�we'd sell a million of em (well, okay... 100!!). Sooooooooooooo Recommended and Essential!
What more could be said about these two Fripp & Eno records than we've already written in countless Expo '70, Growing and Aidan Baker reviews? That's because these records are pretty much ground zero for all of the dark dreamy drifty processed guitar / tape / synth drone that we can't ever seem to get enough of. Perhaps there are other earlier influential touchstones such as Tony Conrad, and La Monte Young, perhaps Stockhausen and Terry Riley as well, but none seemed to have come so totally out of nowhere from two relatively mainstream players as these two records. Manuel Gottsching, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music all came a little later.
After every other Eno solo album and collaboration (from Cluster to David Byrne) has been reissued, we are lucky enough to finally see both of these classic releases newly 24-bit remastered by Fripp himself and reissued on his DGM imprint. These have never sounded better! While this reissue doesn't feature any bonus material, we still think it's a must have for any fan of kosmiche experimental drone music. If you haven't owned this before, now is the time!!!!!
Judging from the cover and title of 1975's Evening Star, it would be easy to dismiss this as a generic new-age record by Shadowfax or Mark Isham. It does look a bit Windham Hill-ish. But while its more melodic and dreamy than No Pussyfooting, this is certainly not pure relaxation music. It's way more cerebral and at times quite unnerving. Teaming up with Fripp once again after releasing three brilliant solo pop albums (Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, and Another Green World), Eno started concentrating on his ambient period culminating later that same year in what would be his first solo ambient record Discreet Music. Using the same dual tape machine system as on No Pussyfooting, the tracks here feel more composed and purposeful. Starting with "Wind on Water", layered washes of phased high toned analog synths and flittering guitar drones pulse like a breathing entity before the Cluster-like piano figures of the stunning title track, "Evening Star" emerge augmented by a ringing guitar arpeggio and one of the most gorgeous Fripp solos ever put to tape. This track is like an early predecessor to Eno's soundtrack work for the NASA film Apollo, almost a decade later. So beautiful! The next couple of tracks delve further into gentler territory, with "Wind on Wind" being an excerpted version of a piece later included on Discreet Music. But the nearly thirty minute final piece, "An Index of Metals" returns us to the dark intense drone of No Pussyfooting. Sounding more metallic and cosmic than anything on that record, "An Index of Metals" with its deep resonant pulsations and expansively spatial guitar work at times sounds like the melting magma of a dying star, or Edward Artemiev's coldly terrifying soundtrack work for Andrei Tartovsky's Solaris. Awe-inspiring yet very chilling! So Essential!
The first thing you notice about Funereal Moon, a long running black metal horde from Mexico City, is main man Impure Ehiyeh's amazing corpsepaint, each eye in the center of a black upside down cross, a pentagram in the center of his forehead, his nostrils painted huge and animal like, the mouth outlined like a dripping bat, the whole face lined with cracks, making him appear as some 100 year old demonic black metal ghoul. Which suits the music, as their sound is totally unhinged, a raw, lo-fi, fucked up grim black metal that has more in common with a band like Necrofrost than any of the classic Scandinavian elite, which is most definitely a good thing. Murky, mysterious, stumbling, damaged, the guitars washed out and muted, the vocals a raspy croak, the drums solid and simple, the whole sound twisted and off kilter, the sounds panned dramatically from left to right, so sometimes the band swerves back and forth making the music totally dizzy and unhinged.
This collection gathers up 4 newish tracks from 2007, and 5 more tracks from a 1996 demo. The first four tracks are, as described above, woozy, and gloriously fucked up, long stretches of Abruptum-like ambience get all tangled up in blasting black weirdness, giving way to droning plodding black doom, finally turning into some strange sort of spaced out abstract psychedelia, growled vox over noodly reverbed guitars and swirling spaced out effects. Weird, and so cool.
It's the older stuff where it gets REALLY weird. The guitars impossibly processed and lo fidelity, pulsing like some strange electronic transmission, the vocals even more croak-like, doused in echo, it's an intro of sorts, but maybe our favorite track here. The next track is more straight ahead, but again the production is insane, the vocals louder than anything else, the drums and guitars tumbling and roiling way down in the mix only occasionally exploding to the surface. It's all very droney and hypnotic and textural. And somehow it only gets weirder, culminating in a seriously amazing and fucked up two song finish, first, the tripped out "The Lust", with its stumbling tribal drumming, its droning electronic buzz in place of guitars, and haunting female spoken words, while a voice growls and grunts demonically in the background, and another female moans in ecstasy! And finally the 11 minute "I Came From Darkness To Conquer", a woozy synth drone, with some troll like vocals over the top, what sounds like programmed drums and flute (?), the vocals get weirder and weirder, high pitched and alien one second, growled and cookie monster like the next, finally the drums drop out, and the record closes out with synthesized strings and an orchestra of growls and grunts and howls, easily one of the most seriously fucked up ambient black metal rituals ever.
If you read this far we shouldn't even have to say it, but yet another essential record to add to your collection of freaked out, far out, damaged and demented, confusional and inspired genius black metal what-the-fuck. Which means ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!
Over the course of several years Gang Gang Dance have made the evolution from totally whacked out and hard to describe collage of sound weirdness to slowly injecting more structure and carving out actual songs while still keeping an aura of mystique and playful experimentation in their sound.
Saint Dymphna pushes their evolution with even more structure and a kind of hypercolor sheen providing a psychedelic soundtrack that sounds a bit like Kate Bush performing at an all night psychedelic rave. Its evident that for the first time in fully realized form the band is really embracing the last word of its moniker, making music for the kind of late night dance parties we'd love to frequent. Maybe it's some of the band members' strong involvement in late night culture as DJ's and partiers over the last few years that has helped shape this exciting shift in their sound. You can tell they've been listening to lots of the most interesting dance music around as there are healthy hints of Bangra that pop in and out of the songs on Saint Dymphna as well as a more nuanced take on what lots of the Italians Do It Better camp (Chromatics, Glass Candy) have been up to lately. But what made us originally fall in love with Gang Gang Dance is still present, their true sense of adventure and a fearless ability to merge influences that usually seem so disparate, into a seamless whole. Not many other bands could have a record with a song that sounds so much like the mostly swirly moments of My Bloody Valentine ("Vacuum") followed by a song with Tinchy Stryder on the mic for a track that would be at home on M.I.A's latest. That is the true beauty of Gang Gang Dance, they really understand how to blend and merge color and sound to create something that can takes on its own life. We've just begun to immerse ourselves in this record and so far we are loving the ride, and we have a feeling that this one will be on nonstop play in the weeks and months to come!
Another split record featuring two aQ faves, each offering up a sidelong slab of dreamy dronemusic, with each giving it their own subtle twist.
Taiga Remains, aka Alex Cobb, head honcho of the Students Of Decay label, unleashes a deep reverberant drone, all shimmery metallics and soft low end swells. As the track progresses though, the sounds gets more and more dense, thickening, sprawling, becoming more ominous, the bass deepening, within this viscous flow, lurk buried melodies, steel string buzz, super deep melodic rumbles that surface like some massive sea creature before slipping back under. Near the end the sound becomes almost orchestral before finally flickering out.
Gareth Hardwick takes the other side, and his sound is much more tranquil and gentle than the Taiga side, but still similar, almost like the same piece, just stripped to its essence, warm languid layers drifting to and fro, unfurling a soft slow motion melody, melancholy and wistful. About halfway through, electric guitars join in, pulsing and buzzing over the soft shimmery drift, adding an ominous edge, layer upon layer, constantly shifting, overtones appearing and disappearing, the whole thing warm and thick and mesmerizing. Almost metallic but managing to remain somehow soporific and soothing.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in a plain green sleeve, and VERY VERY LIMITED!
Latest ep of cinematic doom dirge black ambience from this freaky one man band, and like past missives, this stuff is gorgeous, sick, confusing, heavy, fucked up, noisy, mysterious, cinematic, epic, disturbing and totally brilliant.
It's supposedly an ep, but it's almost an hour long, and for most folks an hour of this punishment is all you could take.
Check out some of our other Gnaw reviews, to read our gushing descriptions of the super evocative sound world GTT is able to conjure up, we wrote endlessly about bleak barren wastelands, charred bodies, horrific site and sounds, it's almost easier to describe the images and ideas that this music evokes that it is to describe the sounds themselves. But we'll have a go.
Imagine Abruptum scoring films and you might have a rough idea: strings soar, horns moan and bleat, industrial percussion is laced throughout, vocals are disembodied guttural howls, melodies creep through blackened soundscapes of buzz and pound, opening up into expanses of creak and clatter, laced with samples and found sounds, all floating above a sea of tense dronemusic, everything wrapped in swirling clouds of black sludge, and doomic rumbles. The clouds occasionally part, revealing some intimate moment, whether musical and dramatic, agonized wailing, or some strange dialogue, usually tangled up with some gloomy melody, some stumbling rhythm, before exploding again into a cacophonous blast of epic cinematic blacknoize.
This record doesn't deviate too much from past releases, which is just fine with us, it sounds like we're just digging deeper into the scarred psyche behind Gnaw Their Tongues, the most notable difference might be the presence of more sampled strings, and the record's closer which is a gorgeous buzzing midtempo black metal dirge, that manages to sound grim and raw, but also weirdly melodic and emotional.
GTT is one of the few bands who manages to create an absolutely unique sound, an impossible doom / black metal / ambient hybrid that fuses all of those various sounds perfectly into something that is both all and none of those. And as always, garish artwork, this time a topless woman preparing to emasculate a supine nude man, and of course song titles like "The Uncomfortable Silence In Between Beatings" and "My Womb Is Barren And I Want Revenge".
Fucked up and genius and thus absolutely recommended.
Holy shit. GORE! Easily one of our favorite heavy bands EVER. We raved about the separate 2lp reissues last list, but we figured we'd wait for the cds to show up before bestowing Record Of The Week status upon them. Now combined as one massive double disc document collecting the first two albums and then some from this Dutch instru-metal group, who forged an incredible minimal metallic legacy that would go on to influence loads of our favorite bands. In fact, aQ would quite possibly be a whole different kind of store if it wasn't for Gore...
This is the sort of review that is so intimidating. Records we have loved for years and years, listened to hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, and then to finally have to put into words what it is that makes these so good, so special, whatever it is that makes these two of our favorite records EVER!!!! How much do we love these records? Well, whenever we would find one used, we would buy it just to give it to someone who needed to hear it, so much so that Andee at one point was even talking to the band about a comprehensive career spanning box set. But why you ask? Difficult to explain, hearing them is enough, even decades after they were originally released, folks who have never heard Gore, are usually sold after ONE song. Sometimes it doesn't even take that long. Just listen to "Mean Man's Dream" below, we'll wait....
See what we mean? So heavy, repetitive, mesmerizing, hypnotic, angular and abrasive, but impossibly catchy, groovy even. Listen to the other tracks, you won't be able to stop, you'll need to hear them all.
Gore fanatics will need these no matter what, and most heavy music fans have probably at least heard OF Gore, if not heard them once or twice, so they too might also want to pick these up. But we might as well start with who the heck this Gore band is anyway, and why should we care...
Gore were a Dutch instrumental power trio trafficking in ultra minimal heaviness, like an even more minimal Melvins, but sans vocals, their songs made up of one, maybe two riffs, pounded out over and over, a bit like a more metal, proto-Circle.
Hart Gore and Mean Man's Dream are the first two Gore records, but play like part one and part two of a single song cycle. Crushing, pummeling, heavy as hell, repetitive, motorik, but weirdly melodic and impossibly catchy, we can't stress enough how massive and seminal these records were and are. Gore created and mastered a sound that would go on to influence countless heavy bands, and yet, somehow, these two records decades after their initial release, still sound YEARS ahead of their time, masterpieces of heavy rock, of minimal metal, of proto-math metal, of hypno rock, this, as they say is THE SHIT.
For now, all we can say, is if you are at all into heavy music, these records are about as essential as it gets, your life will be changed, the way you look at music, what you consider heavy, how you hear other heavy bands, all of that will change, for the better. Trust us.
For Gore fanatics, like us, these are ESSENTIAL, the new designs are gorgeous, incorporating the timeless original album covers with new drawings and a beautiful super stylized layout. The cd includes a big booklet, packed with liner notes, the story of Gore, tons of rare photos, and most importantly, both discs come with a whole mess of live tracks from the same era! Unreleased and unheard until now!
BUY THIS NOW! YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY. THIS COULD BE YOUR NEW FAVORITE BAND! AND C'MON SOUTHERN LORD! KEEP THE GORE REISSUES COMING. WREDE! LIFELONG DEADLINE! MEST! SLOW DEATH! WE WANT, NAY -NEED- THEM ALL!!!!!!
As Grails continue to grow and develop, they move further and further away from the various other groups and scenes they tend to be most associated with, deftly carving their own distinctive sonic niche, one that incorporates post rock, doom metal, world music, psych rock, jazz, drone, in less capable hands it would be a mess for sure, and Doomsdayer's Holiday while definitely all over the map is hardly a mess, all the various sounds and songs somehow woven into a surprisingly cohesive whole.
The opener definitely sets the stage, with some strange animal call, the beating hooves of horses, super blown out drums, swirling drones and buzz, and then some angular Marc Ribot style guitaring, the track sounding like a post apocalyptic heavy metal Tom Waits jam that builds into a cinematic crescendo, albeit one wrapped around a very Maiden-esque guitar part. Confusing for sure, but pretty damn exhilarating. The track ends with the drums getting all dubbed out and everything melting back into just the sounds of thundering hooves.
But then out of nowhere, the second track begins with some sort of horn, playing a distinctly Middle Eastern melody, the drums kick in, the guitars come crashing down, and again, it's like some metallicized Sun City Girls or something. Like Neurosis covering Torch Of The Mystics, perhaps! Eventually the track morphs into a jazzy psychedelic breakdown, and then a super spacious guitar flecked dronescape. Awesome stuff, but as we mentioned, definitely difficult to describe. The is a record by a band at the top of their game, with the time and money to experiment, and some of the stuff here sounds like the band exploring, but thankfully most of it works pretty really well. There are long drawn out folkdrone jams, with fluttering flute and meandering steel string guitars, there's slow burning psychedelic space rock, strange interludes of jazzy free drumming and glitched out electronics, field recordings and space-y ambience, some metallic chamber jazz (not sure how else to describe it), some killer Eastern tinged mathy post rock, still more sweeping epic Godpseed like vistas, deep dark guitar drones that morph into haunting apocalyptic doomfolk, finally finishing off with the longest track on the record, the 8 minute "Acid Rain", a wide open wander through a glimmering sun drenched world of soft psychedelic rock, the guitars all shimmery and warm, the melodies ebullient and effervescent, before slipping back into a warm swirl of soft drones and glistening harmonics, a surprising finish to a surprising record.
First, there was The Bastard. The ultimate over the top power metal/black metal rock opera, as far as we're concerned. Ok, so Andee here at AQ put it out on his tUMULt label... but that simply proves that he/we really like it (not that that's WHY we like it). Still Hammers' best, wethink. But their follow up The August Engine was pretty killer too. And the same with their third album Locust Years, which we hailed as the first ever fantasy metal album that was also a contemporary political allegory (about Bush and the Iraq War). With that record, Hammers settled with regal grace into a new phase, with the significant addition of '70s styled Hammond organ, taking their prog leanings to ever proggier heights, the raspy black metal aspects of their sound discarded long ago. And this new release from the acclaimed San Francisco metallers is definitely a continuation of that, despite some major lineup changes in the Hammers camp since Locust Years came out in 2006.
Of course, mainman guitarist John Cobbett (Ludicra, ex-Slough Feg) is still the with the band. Also drummer Chewy Marzolo, and keyboardist Sigrid Sheie. But now there's a new set of singers. Hammers, as you may know, have always flaunted operatic/theatrical, male and female vocals, intertwining in their compositions. There's been a few different female singers (who also played bass) over the years, but the clean male vocals until now had been handled solely by Mike Scalzi of Slough Feg, who has a distinctive voice to say the least. Taking over the female role is Jesse Quattro, a trained singer who definitely holds her own in the tradition of Hammers' female vocalists. You won't notice much difference there, though she may well be the best they've had. She doesn't play bass, however, so they've got Ron Nichols in to handle that task. More difficult, perhaps, for Hammers, was replacing Scalzi, who left to concentrate entirely on Slough Feg. Patrick Goodwin (of Dirty Power and Pansy Division) stepped up into Scalzi's shoes and while his voice is definitely different, not having the weird presence or booming depth Scalzi's, he's a capable melodic singer, yearning and emotive, and maybe his less idiosyncratic style fits better with Hammers' current direction. Long time fans will definitely notice a difference, though, and some will roll with it, some won't. Certainly the Hammers of The Bastard aren't the Hammers here.
So, now Hammers Of Misfortune obviously have a lot to prove on this new album - or, actually, albums. That's right, as if to really rise to the occasion and make a statement, they've released a double album, or what they'd have us believe is two separate albums, Fields and Church Of Broken Glass, packaged together. Each one gets its own cover art, you flip the gatefold digipack over to see each one, in the style of an old Ace Double paperback (the cover shown here is that of Fields). Though we were a bit bemused to discover that since the seven cuts on Fields clock in at just over 37 minutes, and the five songs on CoBG total about 35, it actually would have been possible to fit 'em both on a single disc! At least Profound Lore isn't making you pay any extra for this two-cd concept. And, since HoM's music can be so exhaustively epic, full of complex arrangements and keyboard busy-ness and cryptic lyrics, it's actually easier on the listener to have two shorter cds to digest than one exceedingly lengthy one, really!
As well, each disc has its own theme, a rural/urban dichotomy between Fields and Church Of Broken Glass. The best example of the latter being the moody 10 minute epic "Butchertown", painting this very city's streets in sinister fairytale shades. (Urban decay, blight and fright being territory previously explored by Cobbett's black metal outfit Ludicra, as well.) If we know Cobbett, there's probably a clever narrative or allegory at play here, encompassing both discs, leading from song to song and one disc to the next, but Hammers lyrics are poetically vague enough that we haven't puzzled it all out yet exactly. You could look at their recent interview on the Pitchfork website for more insight if you wish. We again get a political vibe from some of this, and do have the idea that Fields starts off about the plight of peasant farmers in Afghanistan, beginning with the three-part, 16-minute suite of "Agriculture", "Fields", and "Motorcade". See what you make of these lines, from the latter: "Escorting friendlies, a walk in the park/Unlock the cages as soon as it's dark/Motorcade motorcade easy to mark/Send in the snipers to swim with the sharks/Breadline is burning, the headcount's a joke/Soon they'll be feasting on mirrors and smoke/Motorcade motorcade horses to show/Fish in a barrel and ducks in a row". Hmm. And Hammers manages to turn that into singalong catchiness!
Fortunately, even with the ambitious scale of this latest project, and all the new members in the band, fans will find that Hammers hasn't changed too much, still full of blazing guitar solos and stop on a dime dynamics, memorable riffs and melodies and exquisite harmonies, musical theater moments and multilayered vocals - all the over the top-ness we love about 'em. Perhaps though the progginess has gotten even proggier, more flowery... We're reminded of Kansas, actually! Well, Kansas mixed with Megadeth, maybe. With a healthy helping of that rollicking, Deep Purplish Hammond organ first introduced on previous opus the Locust Years, as we said. And if you're into 'em for the female vocals, you won't be disappointed at all.
So, what should be Hammers' sales slogan for this album - New and Improved? Well, no, we can't quite go there, what with our feelings about the The Bastard. Well, how about Two For The Price Of One! Sure. And how about Thinking Man's (and Woman's) Metal? Definitely. But we get the idea that slogans and soundbites and all those mass media manipulative aspects of modern commercial culture are exactly what Hammers Of Misfortune stands against, so we'll just leave it with, well worth checking out.
Oh, and Hammers fans of the vinyl-buying persuasion, please note that this is also going to be coming out on lp (several of them of course), via the 20 Buck Spin label...
Unlike the majority of other soundmakers, Canadian Tim Hecker takes his sweet time with releases, a 10" here, a full length there, rarely more than a single release a year, which makes the appearance of a new Hecker record a huge deal, even if it's just a live ep, like this one.
Recorded in Sweden, this ep covers more ground in 20 minutes than most other artists cover over several records, in fact, much of these parts, in lesser hands would be milked and stretched out to fill up a whole album. But Hecker lets the sounds dictate the direction. Almost as if the sounds were alive, growing, blossoming, dying, changing shape transforming, endlessly shifting with Hecker there simply to nurture and guide.
The sound is one that has become familiar to us, gauzy, blurry, buzzy expanses of muted digital glitch, disembodied melodies, sepia toned ambience, organic and electronic woven into swirling shimmering soundscapes.
Here what begins as an Oval like sweep of glimmering chimes and washed out whir, quickly develops into something much more weighty, the chimes swallowed up by a warm whirring blur, a softly churning, slowly crumbling wall of blissed out guitar buzz, the buzz very gradually dissipating, leaving just the hiss and the whir, to drift like gossamer clouds in a deep blue sky. The sounds become softer and softer, muted and murky, underwater sounding, allowed to pulse and ebb and flow and sway softly back and forth, under a delicate patina of electronic crackle, an ultra distorted guitar way down in the mix unfurling ribbons of gnarled prismatic crunch, spread out over the hushed shimmer below, like the icy crust on a dying sun. Finally the hiss takes on a life of it's own, pushing all of the other sounds under the surface, the hiss made up of all manner of skipping static and layered white noise, impossible musical in its own right, the perfect climax to a surprisingly bracing expanse of buzzing blissful ambient sound.
This is a reissue of a 1957 broadcast of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's classic tale of future shock that launched countless sci-fi movie references from THX-1138 to Wall-E. Adapted for radio, narrated by the author with a score by Bernard Herrmann, this broadcast harkens back to the classic Orson Welles War of The Worlds radio era, while creating a chilling picture of the future that still rings true. What makes it most chilling is Herrmann's wonderful score which is featured by itself on the first 9 tracks. Consisting of harpsichords and glockenspiels, the score is light but impressionistically foreboding, reminding us a bit of the soundtrack to TV's The Prisoner, and other beautifully creepy scores of British horror movies. Brrrrrr!
Ms Jolie Holland has never been a shy wallflower, but we've never heard her sound as gutsy and world-weary womanly as on this, her fourth full length! Whereas her first two albums (Catalpa and Escondida) were hushed timeless jewels set in wistful earthy rural landscapes and perhaps intended to be listened to in small intimate gatherings, her last album Springtime Can Kill You brought more of the city folk and country rock into the fold, and The Living & The Dead continues forth. Stellar guests include M. Ward and Marc Ribot! Her sparkling performance here might be likened to a coming together of Cat Power, Lucinda Williams and Lisa Germano. Fans of those fine artists, definitely check this out! As well, on songs like "The Future" she almost sounds like a female Conor Oberst... not a bad thing in our books! Highlights: "Palmyra" and "Fox In The Hole" and the giddy album closer "Enjoy Yourself".
Here be the first full length album from Mountains-man Koen Holtkamp. You may recall we got in (and sold out) his contribution to the A Room Forever series of LPs commissioning artists to match a field recording on one side with a sympathetic composition on the other. Where his offering there was a dark-hued, ominous crescendo of crackled drone sourced from acoustic guitar, Field Rituals has its head in the clouds. Holtkamp begins the album with a lovely round of brightly rendered acoustic guitar finger picking with some tricked out ring modulation effects giving each of the tones a sun-flecked glow and funhouse mirror curvature. Sustained drones from loops of melodica and harmonica mutate into an ersatz harmonium with the soaring overtones and sweeping fluctuations of tonalities gently crashing into each other. The loops every once in a while coalesce into a rhythmic underbelly, but mostly they settle as a effervescent bubbling of overlapping delay patterns and softly shimmered ambience. On top of all of this, Holtkamp dapples everything with his shimmered guitar and occasional crackles of tactile objects (he mentions water, seeds, ice, and paper) as well as field recordings of giggly children romping in a playground. The effect is somewhere between the immaculate pieces from Keith Fullerton Whitman's recordings and the bright-eyed naturalist wonder of the Jewelled Antler camp. Really gorgeous stuff from the ever impressive Type label.
This collaboration could have gone one of two ways, both equally appealing, blissed out and drone-y like the Burning Star Core albums that we've made records of the week in the past, or noisy and chaotic like most of the Hototogisu records we've reviewed. And while here and there this definitely falls somewhere right in between, for the most part, this falls squarely on the noisy side of things. Which is to be expected, guitars, electronics, voices, drums, percussion violin, Moog, objects (!), acoustic appraiser (!!), it would be no small feat to tie all that stuff up into something droney and composed. But then these folks excel at letting loose, unleashing sounds, unfurling huge clouds of blurred buzz, sending streaks of high end sparking into the atmosphere, conjuring up all manner of sonic demons with these slow shifting ur-drone rituals.
The drums are mostly scattered and abstract, but when they do lock into a groove, the sound briefly transforms into a sort of krautnoise jam, before coming loose again and drifting heavenward, sprawling out and raining sonic debris upon the swirling sea of abstract clatter and pulsing buzz drenched hum below.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!!
2008 marks the 25th year for Illusion Of Safety. Once an ensemble of misanthropic electron engineers, Illusion Of Safety has effectively reduced itself down to a single member in Dan Burke who has arrived at the silver anniversary with some of his best work produced throughout the sprawling Illusion Of Safety catalogue. There was the Quell & Sedition 10", the In Session cd, and now this small edition cd-r, all of which are exemplary versions of the Illusion Of Safety signature sound for psychologically challenging compositions. The Need To Now is more of a blackened cosmic headspace music, with all of the psychedelic flourishes that burst out of Klaus Schulze or Expo '70 turned towards something much much darker and much more brooding. There is oblivion in front of you when you are floating alone in outer space, and Burke presents that sublime fiction replete with wonder and horror. For all of the bleak subtext of the album, Burke keeps things very subtle preferring to focus on the minimalist dronesmear ruptured with occasional detours. The shadow and vacuum of Illusion Of Safety's aerosolized drone always has something ominous just outside of earshot, something lurking the corners of those corroded metal tones and already eerie passages of sci-fi incidental music slowed way the hell down. Illusion Of Safety breaks up the long-form drones with tense glitch workouts that could be an extract from a CoH production, with all sorts of misfired squiggles, poorly grounded bursts of electricity, and erratic charged samples; but unsettled ambience overcomes each of these crescendo like a creeping suffocating fog of toxic gas. It's an austere and powerful record, in spite of the many subtle twists and turns. Fucking incredible is what The Need To Now is. Limited to a mere 150 copies.
Latest from this one woman dreambliss outfit, and it's a soft focus washed out doozy. It seems like Grouper and Inca Ore are constantly competing to see who can craft the dreamiest slab of disembodied pop, of ghostlike ambient shimmer, and with every release from each of them, we find ourselves proclaiming a winner, until the next disc shows up, and there's a new winner, and on and on and on.
But really, we're the big winners in this made up competition, as we can't get enough from either. Both utilize vocals as their main sound source, but both have spread their wings, incorporating more and more instrumentation, creating sprawling expanses of gorgeous blurred ambience. And part of the magic is that the sounds are often smeared to the point that it's difficult to tell what is voice and what is instrument.
This latest Inca Ore record is maybe her most song based yet, and it totally suits her. She has always been adept and creating atmospheres and textures, but her knack for hiding catchy melodies and soft pop gems amidst all the drift and murk is really coming through. The opener here is absolutely heartbreaking perfection. Minor key and washed out, with a vocal line, that distorts perfectly, adding unexpected texture, a hidden hook that lodges in your head, the vocals drifting on the glistening minimal soundscape in the background, when the vocals fade out, leaving just the music, it's so utterly sad and funeral, but still fuzzy and dreamy.
She covers Merle Haggard and makes the song totally her own. We could go song by song and describe the record in detail, but where's the mystery in that. The first song, and the description above should be enough to suck you in. But once you're in, let yourself go and drift off into Inca Ore's haunting hallowed soundworld.
Beautiful full color covers, printed 12"x12" inserts, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! (Well, actually, some of the copies we have, which we got directly from Ms. Inca Ore herself, are from an earlier, self-released pressing. Same record, slightly different cover art. The copy you get will be randomly chosen.)
Primland was originally released as a super limited (100 copies) double cd, housed in a hand painted, custom built wood box, sealed with wax, and thus had a price tag to match. The box is now out of print, but Primland is now available as two much more affordable single discs, the first of which we reviewed a few lists back, a serious slab of crushingly twisted blackness, this is the second disc, the abstract ambient accompaniment to the first disc's more furious fucked up heaviness. But in its own, way just as intense and black.
Whereas Jabladav typically sounds a bit like some gnarled tangled up hybrid of Black Flag and SF black metal legends Weakling (Jabladav began as an homage to Weakling in fact), this second Primland disc is something else all together, a collection of sprawling dronescapes, thick with crumbling drones, black ambience, abstract piano, long drawn out epics, expansive worlds of bleak and blackened mystery. Think MZ412 or the more recent Nordvargr / Drakh collaborations, this is brooding, haunting, malevolent minimalism, but shot through with plenty of texture and mood, layered sounds woven into organic slow moving black drifts, bits of percussion surface here and there, jarring amidst the bleak slow shifting backdrop, streaks of sound that resemble strings, the piano pounding out doomy almost-melodies, drones swelling and throbbing and pulsing beneath, some of the layers processed into dizzying loops, super hypnotic and truly strange.
One track does flirt with heaviness, offering up a sport of crumbling dirgedrone, but wrapped in static, and grinding electronics, oozing over deep dreamy swells, disembodied squalls of processed noise, so distorted they threaten to blow your speakers, before being reeled in, and swallowed whole by an impossibly thick wall of dense black hole low end, shot through with glimmering upper register tones and streaks of fragmented melody.
The final track is like a slow motion raga, all hypnotic buzz and slow burning minimalism, the speed shifting subtly throughout, the track oozing and swerving and slithering, playing tricks on the listeners ears, invoking a glorious disorienting sort of audio sea sickness, woozy and druggy, and strangely irresistible.
No metal to be found here, but that's not the point, taken with disc one, this completes Jabladav's high concept Primland epic, a massive chunk of confusional outsider black art, combining dense blackened minimalism with cracked and damaged black metal weirdness, the two halves somehow reflected in each other, both able to stand on their own, but together, making up a singular organic sonic entity.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
