What to say about Philip Jeck that we haven't already. Easily one of our favorite modern music makers. Most definitely, our favorite turntablist / old vinyl manipulator. What Jeck does is so far beyond simple DJ-ing, so much more subtle and creative than most turntablism, he is a composer, a sound sculptor, as adept live as in the studio, maybe even more so, able to create gorgeous soundscapes of crackle and hiss, to conjure up emotions, and energy, from fragments of other folks' recordings, all on the fly. The evidence is right here, a live recording from 2006, just Jeck, a roomful of turntables, a handful of effects, and a box of old records. We've yet to actually see Jeck perform live, but it must be mesmerizing, an act of not just creativity, but also agility, 5 turntables, 10, 20, more, each locked into it's own loop, all the various loops overlapping, creating rhythms, melodies, textures, SONGS.
The five lengthy tracks here, all woven together into one ever evolving whole, are masterful exercises in sound manipulation, so deftly managed, that it's nearly impossible to recognize these sounds as records on turntables. Take the opener "Press", with it's swirling sea of effected shimmer, and rain-like record crackle, the warm whirs and deep soft swells, minor key melodies surfacing from minimal background drones, all manner of reverbed percussion, like the echo of water droplets in a shower, shuffling rhythms, distant keening high end tones, snippets of voices, brief squalls of barely restrained chaos, building to a noisy finale, before slipping into a minimal hushed pulse. Totally breathtaking. "Intro Roll" takes up where "Press" left off, taking those same sounds but moving in a different direction, opting for something more ominous, darker, more textured, more rough, the crackle and hiss even more prominent, but this time rife with buried high end melodies giving the whole track a distinctly haunting vibe. "Live With Errors" adds a strange looped marimba like melody over the top, and an off kilter shuffling rhythm, which slips from murky and muted, to blown out and distorted, before slipping into "All That's Allowed", which begins with a low end pulse, that is soon surrounded by dramatic soaring strings, and streaks of shimmering crackle, very dramatic and emotive, before finishing off with "Chime Chime", which seems to be a version of "Chime Again" from Jeck's Sand album, and like the title suggests, is a sea of processed and looped chimes, glimmering, tinkling, bell like tones drifting all sun dappled over a looped abstract rhythm, bass soon drifts in, a bit of metallic percussion, some steel string fragments, before fading out, laving just a very soft, minimal drift, all the sounds muted and right beneath the surface, growing quieter and quieter until they disappear completely. So totally gorgeous, mesmerizing, and again, breathtaking.
Vinyl only, beautiful Jon Wozencroft photos and layout as always, LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES, some on clear vinyl, some on colored, it's random so please don't ask for a particular color.
As you might expect from "the world's first openly gay rock star" (or make that would-be rock star), the music of seventies singer Jobraith is pretty darn glammy and campy, a blend of '70s hard rock histrionics and even more overtly showtune tendencies (Jobraith had performed on Broadway, actually, in the musical Hair, and was also a trained classical pianist), full of over-the-top pop and not-so-ambiguous sexuality.
He's part David Bowie (very much David Bowie!), part Marc Bolan, part Elton John, part Mick Jagger, even part Bee Gees (that high voice)... You can hear all that for yourself on these two new cd reissues of Jobraith's two Elektra albums, his notoriously overhyped self-titled debut from 1973 and its '74 follow-up, Creatures Of The Street. We'd gotten familiar with Jobraith via an earlier collection, Lonely Planet Boy, which featured songs selected from these two records, but it's nice to hear 'em in their entirety, and it turns out that comp missed out on a few of the many gems to be found among Jobraith's compositions.
Unfortunately the Jobraith story is a tragic one, his career fizzling after these two albums (both expensive flops), his brushes with fame always far-fetched and fleeting, Jobraith ultimately dying in obscurity, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, in 1983... though about ten years later, according the the story recounted in the liner notes, Morrissey tried to find Jobraith to take him on tour, unaware that he'd passed away long before.
So, while in retrospect there's for sure a patina of sadness over Jobraith's music, it's better tribute perhaps to Jobraith's memory to enjoy these albums in the fun, flamboyant spirit in which they were intended.
Both albums have their merits, we don't know if we could choose between 'em. The debut boasts the oh-so-Bowie "Space Clown", along with the piano-ballad bombast of "Be Still" (somewhere, this MUST have been a hit). You can party down to the proto-disco prog of "World Without End" or the funky "Earthling", and rock out to the fuzzy "Rock Of Ages" or the braggadocious "I'm A Man". There's also a bunch more piano-y crooner tunes on the softer side: "Inside", "Blow Away", and "Movie Queen", all quite good (the latter, quite, umm, gay as well).
Creatures Of The Street perhaps veers even further into campy, cabaret territory than the debut (or maybe it's just that "Dietrich/Fondyke" is so much that way) but also offers up a fair bit of rockin' and also just plain weirdness. At times we're reminded of Sparks, and one of the best tracks here is a folky, quirky, quite catchy number entitled "Scumbag"! Other standouts include melodramatic opener "Heartbeat" and the walk on the wild side that is "Street Corner Love". As with the debut, there's plenty of piano, plenty of orchestration, and plenty of drama... The image/identity conscious Jobraith was always striking poses, both on album covers and in his lyrics.
While the world wasn't ready for Jobraith back in the '70s (even though his music is oh-so-'70s), obviously we've come a long way since then. Jobraith's excesses can be forgiven (those of his management too) and his cult status can only grow, as his actual music is still quite a kick. Heck I was in a bar the other night and the DJ was playing "I'm A Man"! Good to have these both individually reissued on cd at last, with liner notes by Ritchie Unterberger (author of, among other things, the excellent Unknown Legends Of Rock n' Roll, which didn't include Jobraith but probably should have).
As you might expect from "the world's first openly gay rock star" (or make that would-be rock star), the music of seventies singer Jobraith is pretty darn glammy and campy, a blend of '70s hard rock histrionics and even more overtly showtune tendencies (Jobraith had performed on Broadway, actually, in the musical Hair, and was also a trained classical pianist), full of over-the-top pop and not-so-ambiguous sexuality.
He's part David Bowie (very much David Bowie!), part Marc Bolan, part Elton John, part Mick Jagger, even part Bee Gees (that high voice)... You can hear all that for yourself on these two new cd reissues of Jobraith's two Elektra albums, his notoriously overhyped self-titled debut from 1973 and its '74 follow-up, Creatures Of The Street. We'd gotten familiar with Jobraith via an earlier collection, Lonely Planet Boy, which featured songs selected from these two records, but it's nice to hear 'em in their entirety, and it turns out that comp missed out on a few of the many gems to be found among Jobraith's compositions.
Unfortunately the Jobraith story is a tragic one, his career fizzling after these two albums (both expensive flops), his brushes with fame always far-fetched and fleeting, Jobraith ultimately dying in obscurity, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, in 1983... though about ten years later, according the the story recounted in the liner notes, Morrissey tried to find Jobraith to take him on tour, unaware that he'd passed away long before.
So, while in retrospect there's for sure a patina of sadness over Jobraith's music, it's better tribute perhaps to Jobraith's memory to enjoy these albums in the fun, flamboyant spirit in which they were intended.
Both albums have their merits, we don't know if we could choose between 'em. The debut boasts the oh-so-Bowie "Space Clown", along with the piano-ballad bombast of "Be Still" (somewhere, this MUST have been a hit). You can party down to the proto-disco prog of "World Without End" or the funky "Earthling", and rock out to the fuzzy "Rock Of Ages" or the braggadocious "I'm A Man". There's also a bunch more piano-y crooner tunes on the softer side: "Inside", "Blow Away", and "Movie Queen", all quite good (the latter, quite, umm, gay as well).
Creatures Of The Street perhaps veers even further into campy, cabaret territory than the debut (or maybe it's just that "Dietrich/Fondyke" is so much that way) but also offers up a fair bit of rockin' and also just plain weirdness. At times we're reminded of Sparks, and one of the best tracks here is a folky, quirky, quite catchy number entitled "Scumbag"! Other standouts include melodramatic opener "Heartbeat" and the walk on the wild side that is "Street Corner Love". As with the debut, there's plenty of piano, plenty of orchestration, and plenty of drama... The image/identity conscious Jobraith was always striking poses, both on album covers and in his lyrics.
While the world wasn't ready for Jobraith back in the '70s (even though his music is oh-so-'70s), obviously we've come a long way since then. Jobraith's excesses can be forgiven (those of his management too) and his cult status can only grow, as his actual music is still quite a kick. Heck I was in a bar the other night and the DJ was playing "I'm A Man"! Good to have these both individually reissued on cd at last, with liner notes by Ritchie Unterberger (author of, among other things, the excellent Unknown Legends Of Rock n' Roll, which didn't include Jobraith but probably should have).
This is a pairing that we didn't expect; and without a doubt, we didn't expect it to be so good. Jason Kahn is an American ex-pat living in Switzerland, having made a smooth transition from the percussive ends of improv into a drone heavy minimalism that often derives from the resonant frequencies of snares and floor toms. Earlier in 2008, Kahn delivered a transcendent live set at the San Francisco Art Institute with little more than an amplifier, a drum head, and some basic electronics. Asher Thal-Nir has impressed us with his ultra-quiet renderings of whispered field recordings and gauzy atmospherics, on par with some of the best work from Bernhard Gunter (what ever happened to that guy, anyway?). The album begins with rasping din of soft metals like aluminum or copper rattling against each other. For those familiar with Kahn's work, this tactile acoustic noise sounds just like one of his feedback systems transmitted through his drum kit; however, the sources for this album are all field recordings. Asher provided the environmental sounds from the back alleys of Boston, with ventilators, heating units, and other motors that ceaselessly rumble in the urban landscape. Kahn picked the far more pastoral sounds of Lake Zurich. It's almost as if Asher decided upon sounds better suited to Kahn's aesthetic and Kahn to Asher's sensibility. In any case, the huge rumble of subharmonics from Asher's industrial field recordings becomes this leaden cloud that weighs very heavily upon the recording. The fastidious production work between these two subtly shifts the clamorous frequencies into singing overtones, resembling a Ligetti chorale at times or a Pandit Pran Nath harmonium drone at another. But by the end of the record, the thick drone collapses into a vibrating black hole with ripples of negative energy fading into the soft patter of those lakeside field recordings. Definitely for fans of Phill Niblock, John Duncan's drone work, and Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion. Very fucking cool.
Latest in this long running series of split 12"s, each volume's number in the series denoted by the number of holes punched in the plain white cover, this volume thus being number 19! And this time number 19 is the magic number as both bands sharing the split are LONG time aQ faves, Kemialliset Ystavat from Finland, and Sunroof!, the more droned out and blissy project of Skullflower's Matthew Bower. Both groups sound amazing as usual, but display different sounds than we're used to here.
Let's start with Kemialliset, whose usual sound is a gloriously ramshackle abstract foresty folk, and it still is, sort of, but it sounds like someone in the group got a computer (or at least finally figure out how to use one), as this is easily the most polished sounding KY record yet, and the most rife with strange electronics and effects, but by no means does that mean it's less out there, in fact it's probably the weirdest and most twisted KY record yet.
Woozy twisted lullabies, warped music box melodies, haunting vocal harmonies, it's still foresty and folky, but way more fractured, with strange edits and tons of swirling effects and electronics, way more experimental and abstract, pretty and lilting for sure, but totally twisted. The final track is fantastic, a playful groove, only mildly effected, hypnotic and beautiful, but still a bit off kilter.
The flipside finds Sunroof!, one of our favorite purveyors of glistening high end ur-drone, and technically these tracks still qualify but they're a bit more abrasive and harsh, the opener is brittle and caustic, a field of shrieking feedback, and hiss drenched high end, sputtering horns(?) and all manner of NOISE. The second track is all warped radio transmissions, still droney and minimal, buried beneath a sea of pulsating buzz. And the final track explodes with sheets of corrosive buzz, all high end, grinding and fuzz drenched, a mighty ur-drone bordering on Merzbow territory, but always with a haunting melodic undercurrent that transforms what could be near white noise into something thick and layered and organic and in some strange abrasive way, quite beautiful.
First there was Warhammer 48K, then there was Cave, now there is Lazer Crystal. That's right those crazy noisemakers from Chicago have gone and got themselves a brand new band with a brand new sound. Fans of Cave and WH48K might be a bit thrown, but most likely only for a second, as the sound of Lazer Crystal was definitely hinted at in sounds of both those bands, especially Cave.
It may look like a 12". And it is, but there's only one song on each side, with most of each side being the runout groove, but fear not, there's plenty of sound to be found! Super ghetto spray painted cover art, tiny scrawled photo copied insert, all leading us to drop the needle and get bowled over by LC's wild lo-fi electro krautrock jams. Think total eighties John Hughes soundtrack new wave, all tangled up with electronic Kraftwerk style Krautrock. Analog synths buzz over fuzzy grooves, machinelike beats pound and pulse while vocoder-ed vocals swoon and swoop all over the place.
The flipside introduces some Bryan Ferry like crooning to the proceedings, the perfect compliment to the lurching synth drenched new wave krautrock what-the-fuck beneath. Groovy, danceable, weirdness that kicks a surprising amount of ass!!!
Anyone into all those French new wave reissues we've been digging lately, or any of the more modern dance floor destroyers, will probably find the perfect place for this in their next DJ set.
Another cryptically groovy release from the mysterious Clutchy Hopkins. This time a long distance tape exchange collaboration between Hopkins and multi-instrumentalist and troubadour Shawn Lee. We're not sure what Lee's input is here, because this sounds just like the other Clutchy releases, with funky cinematic organ and drum breaks augmented by jazz guitars and flutes. Reminds us of Money Marks early releases as well as his work with the Beastie Boys, who funny enough are among the latest folks rumored to be the actual Clutchy Hopkins. Hmmmmmm......
We've mentioned it before, but it definitely bears repeating. It's always good to print the speed a record is meant to be played at. If your band is slow and sludgey, droney and dirgey, then odds are it will sound good at both 45 -and- 33, and if you're like us, you'll probably think it sounds better slower, dirgier, heavier, so we're gonna review this split at 33, cuz it sounded better that way. If it was meant to be played at 45, well, everything we're about to say, only slightly higher pitched and a bit faster.
Lesbian are from Seattle and feature a bunch of dudes who have done time in other heavy bands, most notably Asva. They released an awesome album on Holy Mountain a year or two ago. And here, they offer up one track of classic sounding doom, at least at first, soaring minor key guitars, wrapped around crushing drums, harsh demonic vox, strangely haunting and pretty, but as the song develops it gets weirder and weirder, introducing some blasting double kick, some old school eighties style chug complete with guitar harmonies, and some streaks of blurred almost-black metal. Like Khanate meets Iron Maiden, but weirder, and even cooler than that already sounds.
The flipside is a new track from Ocean, from Maine, not to be confused with THE Ocean from Germany, the sound here is brooding post rocky metal, a simple strum, all murky and Godspeedy, slow building, before exploding into a churning low slung sludge, that at 33 is thick and viscous, but maybe slightly less so at 45. Heavy and murky and pummeling, before giving way to a pretty droned out abstract outro.
Packaged in sturdy full color sleeves, pressed on thick opaque yellow vinyl, and most likely limited.
Acid tongue?! Well, from the sounds of her latest album it's not residing in Ms Rilo Kiley's mouth. Her voice is as sweet and smooth as ever, however, the album itself is certainly asking for one thorough tongue lashing. On it, she's taken a flying leap into the syrupy slick pool of adult contemporary. Aaaaiiiieee! And the guest appearances of Chris Robinson, M. Ward, Zooey Deschanel and Elvis Costello (heck, these days he's the king of the genre!), don't help one bit. Someone in Hollywood must've thought this was a good idea. A shudder inducing shame.
This is not new, but its a favorite record we've never carried before and we managed to get our hands on a few copies to list, not sure if we'll be able to get more, so you know the drill...
We can't say we were huge fans of the Lilys, the Philadelphia based outfit led by Kurt Heasley. Their constant genre switching from MBV shoegaze to Oasis-style brit pop to electronic music never held our focus for very long. Yet this one record, a minor one in Lilys overall discography, recorded for the Darla label's Blissed Out series in 1999, is the one that holds up the best for us. Which is funny, because the Blissed Out series was created for invited bands to experiment with their sound. The best in the series included AMP, Windy and Carl, and Fuxa, but the Lilys one is our favorite, because they use the forum to dive head first into full blown Krautrock worship. Over 6 long instrumental tracks, they channel Neu!, Cluster, Kraftwerk and Faust (the cover art sort of apes Faust IV, albeit badly) with great efficiency and verve. We admit that at this point in time, it's not the most original sound, but for a one-off album, Lilys do it so spot on in a way that displays their obvious influences yet still sounds fresh and enjoyable. And nearly a decade before Arp, Cloudland Canyon, and countless other bands were fishing from the same well. Yeah!
There is almost a curse in creating something that so many people praise as "genius" and as your "defining moment". Such is the case with the legacy of one of the best west coast psych bands of the '60s, Love. For most people the story of Love begins and ends with Forever Changes, their undeniably classic album from 1967, a record that's been included on all sorts of best album of all time lists and has been the subject of entire books and magazines articles. Rightfully so, as it really is one of those classic timeless records that we turn to time and time again. But sadly the attention Forever Changes now attracts has obscured the fact that Arthur Lee (essentially the driving force of Love) created a whole lot of other amazing music that's not on Forever Changes. Lately we've been spending lots of time with Love's 1969 outing Out There which was originally released as a double lp and was pretty much a commercial flop (as was Forever Changes when it first came out!)
After disbanding and changing lineups almost every year in the late '60s and into the early '70s Love was pretty much the vehicle for the enigmatic world of Arthur Lee (who for some funny reason calls himself Arthurly in the credits of this record). Out There contains some of Lee's most devastating material, songs like "I'm Down" paint such a moving and sad portrait of the internal anguish that haunted Lee throughout a lot of his life. This disc really is all over the place, containing more playful and breezy tracks like "Run To The Top" and quite possibly one of our favorite Love song of all time, the ultra dreamy "Willow Willow", as well as the smart ass and anti-military "Discharged", the twelve minute percussive freakout of "Doggone" and the Hendrix like rocker "Stand Up".
While it's not without a few misses this still is one of the best records in the Love back catalog and strong proof that there is more to the story and Arthur Lee's genius than just Forever Changes.
Not one, but two new Machinefabriek releases this time around, both on the smaller side, a 3" cd-r elsewhere, and this one song 7", both great as always, both limited as always, and depending on how full your Machinefabriek shelf is at home already, both quite possibly essential.
This new single features a single track spread out over two side, a gorgeously minimal guitar workout that reminds us of another aQ fave, Part Timer, with it's sleep guitar figures, wreathed in digital glitch, bits of crackle and streaks of hiss, every now and then a thick distorted guitar surfaces, only to drift off again, leaving lots of space for that lonely guitar to drift through. Stuttery, skipping, sudden moments of near silence, but all peppered throughout a slowly unfurling expanse of warbly woozy fractured folk, soft and pretty, spacious and minimal, the glitchiness mostly adding texture, rarely interrupting the song's dreamy drift.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Second of two releases from Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek. This 19 minute piece is a collage of live performances, woven deftly into one single organic soundscape, lots of space, and distant shimmer, simple reverbed guitars, deep Jeck-like swells of soft focus fuzz, dark low end rumbles that slip into a slow drifting loopscape of field recordings and warm melodic whirs, of smoother out record cackle and deep drones, brief moments of found sound, coughs, footsteps, eventually transforming into hushed whispery blur, peppered with thick resonant thuds, a muffled piano perhaps or an effected guitars, more mysterious voices, all very funereal and mysterious drifting off to near silence before finishing off with a woman singing a song in some other language. It's basically everything we love about Machinefabriek boiled down to a lean 19 minutes, the various performances fitting together like puzzle pieces, so much that it's impossible to tell where one ends and another begins.
Incredibly nice packaging, an accordion like full color fold out, with gorgeous photos, and liner notes, includes a link to a website where you can download a 25 minute bonus track, of course, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!
What's more evil and metal and "I don't give a fuck about humanity" that slapping on some corpse paint and lurking in the forest for a perfectly grimm band photo? What's more cult than strapping on a bunch of spikes and spitting fire, while a photographer expertly captures the 'ritual' on film? What's more anti-social and BROOTAL than dousing yourself in blood, leering evilly at the camera, and holding as still as possible until the timer clicks and the camera catches your pure evil for eternity?
Well how about just waking up, stepping in front of the mirror on your closet door, and snapping a picture of yourself in all your first thing in the morning, PINK tightie whiteies (pinkies?), socks, baseball jersey and bedhead, frowning grumpily and holding the digital camera in front of you in the mirror? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING. Fuck posing and preening and make up and all that, nothing is more grim than the antisocial miscreant captured in his home, where he makes his sick sounds, and where he hides from all the filthy scum outside his front door. The colorful bedspread, the wood paneling, the vinyl tile flooring, the framed pictures above the bed, that stuff is all more intimate and personal and ultimately EVIL than any amount of forests and spiked armbands and bullet belts. Sorry for the rant, we're just a bit obsessed with the band photo on this Malveillance collection, which does in fact feature Mr. Malveillance in a t-shirt and pink undies, scowling at the mirror in his bedroom. Fucking awesome. And somehow, that sort of symbolizes the music of Malveillance pretty perfectly as well. Simple, stripped down, raw. Think Akitsa, Ildjarn, Bone Awl, that sort of super primitive
blasting crusty brutality. But with Malveillance that sound is even more punk, more pummelingly straight ahead. ONE riff over and over and over, repeated to death, the vocals a raspy howl, the drums a D-beat pound, the production raw and lo-fi but still heavy and filthy and grimy and totally BAD ASS. In some ways, it reminds us a bit of a more punk, more blackened Brainbombs.
This is actually a collection gathering up two previous releases from 2005 and 2006, as well as a handful of bonus tracks from a little earlier. The crazy thing is, there are 7 or 8 RAMONES COVERS! And what's even weirder is they sound perfect, like they could be actual Malveillance jams, all filthied up, sped up, doused in buzz and grit, they sound pretty evil and grim, even the "hey ho" parts manage to sound a bit menacing.
What more to say. We love this shit, and Malveillance does it as good, if not better than the rest, plus any metalhead with the balls to pose in pink undies and short hair on their record, deserves to have the grim corpse painted hordes bowing at their feet for sure!
We went a little crazy for the first Mamaleek record, a way too limited cd-r, packed with blown out blissed out shoegazey black metal, head spinning ultra technical metallic grind, and gorgeous blurred black ambience. That record was so intense, so gloriously fucked up, so complex and confusional, it really seemed like an impossible record to top, but this latest record, the first Mamaleek vinyl release, definitely does its best, and in some cases succeeds big time.
Like the record opener, "I Can't Stay Behind", which begins with some creepy sample, a mysterious voices, the sound of horses, then suddenly, speaker shredding blasts of start stop black grind, a haunting lull between each, before finally launching into full on hyper speed black buzz, but with weird interludes, moaning clean vocals, stuttering drum machines, a strangely almost indie rock arrangement, but shredded and shattered, cool loping arpeggiated breakdowns, the guitars impossibly distorted, the sound WAY in-the-red, the creepy intro sample resurfacing throughout.
That indie rock sensibility runs through the whole record, but is deftly twisted into much blacker shapes. The second track, is an almost looped single part song, very hypnotic, partway through keyboards surface, all sunbaked and swoonsome, and while the track remains buzzy and abrasive, those keyboards help transform the sound into something more akin to a black metal M83.
And that side of the band seems to be the most prevalent this time around, trading in much of the brutal grind and twisted blast of the first record for something a bit more melodic and sort of pretty. Gnarled fragmented and fractured angular crunch is butted up against almost loungey piano, and random Japanese vocal snippets, murky industrial rhythms underpin groovy acoustic guitars, grim buzz gets warped and twisted and draped over swinging jazz, and it almost works, but is all the better for not quite working, the result a seriously twisted mash up. And the jazz element runs through to varying degrees, so much so that there's even a Charlie Parker cover, done pretty straight, only the guitars are a bit distorted and a little off, and there are some harsh black vokills that were most likely not in the original, seriously twisted and tweaked. Elsewhere, Mamaleek unfurls drone drenched near static black metalscapes, weaves loping drum machine grooves beneath coruscating super distorted guitar melodies, incorporates what sounds like seventies FM radio rock into otherwise grim blasting blackness,
The closer is more M83 style washed out woozy drift, skittering drum machines, wheezing accordions, shimmering strings, warm and sun dappled, wreathed in crackle and hiss, until the song shatters into a full bore freakout, a squealing fractured nearly white noise free jazz blurred metal outro, that is as kick ass as it is utterly confounding.
If anything this record is WAY more varied, more experimental, less cohesive, but not in a bad way, the sounds all manage to fit together in one epic, seriously demented whole, but this time it's a much wilder ride, not for the faint of heart, or the unadventurous. But much like the first record, fucking amazing and WAY recommended.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, and housed in ultra deluxe sleeves, with striking and subtle, spot varnish inking.
It's not just more metal magazines that we have started stocking. At long last, we're also now regularly gonna be carrying the mighty MOJO magazine. Another British publication (why are so many of our favorite music mags from England? The Wire, Terrorizer, Classic Rock...). Mojo, as you may know, covers the pop/rock scene from the past to the present, usually delving into rock history (the '60s, '70s, '80s...) while also covering all the latest, hippest indie rock sensations. For the music lover/AQ customer who's not just only into floorcore cd-rs and black metal cassettes and drone vinyl, it's gonna have plenty of stuff you'll want to read about, in fascinating depth.
This October issue: Queen on the cover (they have a new album, with Paul Rodgers replacing the late Freddie Mercury, though we're a little nervous to hear it). Inside: Dave Gilmour, The Last Shadow Puppets, The Fugs, Bon Iver, and more. Reviews, news, all that good stuff. 154 big colorful pages of it. Plus, there's a cover-mounted cd (in a jewel case!) featuring exclusive cover versions of songs from the Beatles' White Album.
NOW ON VINYL!! Gatefold sleeve import. What we said about the cd:
Illinois' "psychedelic black metallers" Nachtmystium are back with their eagerly anticipated (and somehow controversial) new full-length album for big new label Century Media (after several on Southern Lord). The underground is abuzz, and we couldn't wait to hear it, being big fans of their previous album, Instinct Decay (and intrigued by their recent Worldfall ep, featuring a couple unexpected covers). Probably what's controversial isn't their psychedelic musical direction, which we already had major clues about from the catchy, buzzy, dreamy, E-bowed and bizarre Instinct, but just that Nachtmystium are moving on up from the underground, getting more "indie" scene attention... for instance, a review on Pitchfork, who even wonder if this is really a black metal album. The fact that Pitchfork is even writing about it, makes all the "true" black metallers wonder the same thing. But whatever, yes it's a black metal album, albeit one with lots of Moogy synths and backwards tape effects and even some saxophone (from Yakuza dude) on the three-part, 12 minute "Seasick" opus that ends this disc, and other left field, post/prog/psych rock twists and turns. There's a track ("Away From The Light") of pure ambience. But also quite a few tracks of pure black metal brutality. And beautiful blends of both.
Overall, Nachtmystium mostly remains a raging black metal beast, dosed with spacey FX. Think (later) Satyricon meets Neurosis, maybe, with the controls set for the heart of a dead black sun. Really, if black metallers can deal with the likes of Sigh and Arcturus and gone-prog Enslaved, they can't possibly have a problem with Nachtmystium. In fact, quite the opposite!!
And as far as we're concerned, this is possibly Nachtmystium's best yet. Certainly best produced, and most ambitious. The fullest realization to date of this band's genre-bending progression. And the punny title is pretty clever. Black Meddle, get it? You do if you're a Pink Floyd fan. And it's not the only Pink Floyd reference here. We're not sure that if Pink Floyd circa Meddle were to have made a black metal album it would sound like this, or even if this is supposed to be Nachtmystium's best guess at what that would sound like, but the inspiration at any rate has worked to create something pretty special. There's utter blasting blackened riffarama with rasping vokills, moody stretches of instrumental psychedelic '70s space-out bliss, and, well, what more do you need to know? Already sounds like a thumbs-up AQ item, right? We have always wanted post rock bands like Pelican to be just a bit more metal, and Nachtmystium shows that can work perfectly from the other direction. Recommended. What will Pt. 2 hold in store we wonder?
Black metal by its very nature is fairly isolationist, especially considering that one of the mains strains consists of one man bands holed up in their bedroom / attic / shed / shack / cave, shunning humanity, sunlight, any sort of personal interaction, filtering all of that negative hateful energy into their grim black buzz. Even proper black metal groups, with more than one member, are often quite tribal, kvlt-like you might even say, performing sonic rituals in some dimly lit rehearsal space, channeling all manner of dark energy and creating music both bleak and brutal, evil and cathartic. That sound, created by a group, is still intensely personal and to a certain degree is created more out of a need to create, than a need for adoration or success.
But what if you turned that whole dynamic completely around. Removed all aspects of kvlt-ishness, of individualism, what if you created a black metal horde open to anyone, anyone with an amp and a guitar, or even just a computer, could record tracks, and contribute to what would eventually be woven into the first open source black metal record.
And here it is, masterminded by the guys behind gloomy bliss metal duo Have A Nice Life, Nahvalr is indeed, as far as we know the very first "open source" black metal band. Parts and songs were solicited online, contributed via email, handed off in person, donated anonymously, and eventually the HANL guys took all the various tracks and deftly assembled them into this buzzing black behemoth. And there is in fact, plenty of buzz obviously, layer upon layer of crushing downtuned insectoid buzz, but also loads of creepy ambience, weird warbly doomy bits, super lo-fi blasts of near white noise, insane grinding drum machine stutter, haunting black ambience, deep ominous rumbles and softly glowing shimmers, weird chanted vocals, industrial scrape and pound, blown out blissed out blackened drifts of crumbling soft noise, it's all very schizophrenic, but it doesn't at all sound like a hodge podge, it sounds more like a truly expansive sprawling chunk of demented abstract black metal weirdness. Which is precisely what it is. It just so happens that there's way more than 4 or 5 guys "in the band."
Some songs are so steeped in buzz it sounds like records by Ildjarn, Velvet Cacoon and Wrath Of The Weak all being played simultaneously, other tracks are loosed from their black metal moorings and sound like Skullflower, thick sheets of sound, spaced out noise drenched ur-drones, others are gloomy and darkly melodic, simple guitarlines unfurling over streaks of feedback, howled anguished vocals, and shimmering black drones, while still others are furious dense blasts of raw, noisy black metal, in the red, speaker destroying missives from hell, swirling and roiling and churning maniacally, but often splintering into creepy doomic crawls or fucked up abstract Abruptum like blackened soundscapes.
The record begins with a sample of conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Art Bell, talking about digging a hole to hell in Siberia, before launching into blown out super saturated black metal blast, but the source material is so varied, that even the parts that sound like black metal on the surface, have so much going on just below, twisted warbly melodies, keening wails, disembodied voices, textures and layers, so immersive and expansive, headphones are like X-ray goggles, revealing a whole other world hidden to the casual listener. The record then swerves from warped slow motion ambient doom, to soundscapes of high end skree and garbled guitarnoise, to grinding blacknoize fury, to downright gorgeous blissy drones and all the other various sonic stops mentioned above. Not at all typical black metal, instead, more of a weird sound experiment, based around black metal tropes, and created with a core of buzzing blackness, but allowed to sprawl WELL past the usual boundaries that define the genre, creating something extraordinary yet still distinctly black in the process.
We just got a few new titles in from Japan's Doubtmusic label, which specializes in the outer margins of "jazz" and other avant garde sounds. This one is perhaps of particular interest to underground Japanese music freeks as it's a duo that features none other than guitarist Yamamoto Seiichi, of Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, and Rovo fame, among many projects. His partner in crime is percussionist Yoshigaki Yasuhiro (from Ground Zero, Altered States, Rovo, ONJO, and others). These guys are old pros when it comes to making an awesome, interesting racket.
As you'd expect, it's a disc of somewhat splattery skronk - but quite listenable by skronk standards! There's a certain sort of catchy, chaotic logic to this duo's jittery, jumbled improvs, all performed live, the ten tracks here selected from several Nambajazz shows for this hour-long disc. Some subtle and moody, others utter stompers. Frantic this can be, but also foot-tappin'. Those looking for tangled, heavy-duty Takayanagi style blowouts need look no further than track 3 to get their ears peeled back. Amped-up guitar mayhem and octopoidal bashing in full effect! Elsewhere, the duo's music, led by Yamamoto's innovative and invigorating guitar playing (and "misc."), takes lots of other surprising twists and turns... ferinstance, track 9, "Ten-Kwaurou" ("An Air Corridor"), works in a bit more melody, even snatches of some classical pieces, in the midst of a satisfyingly shambolic, mathrock workout. Definitely one for any fan of Yamamoto's out-guitar stylings, as well as Zornophiles, Improvised Music From Japan subscribers, Boredoms nerds, etc... you know who you are....!
Another one of our all time favorite Italian prog records, by one of our all time favorite Italian prog bands, reissued on vinyl! The cds have ben out of print for ages, so it seems this might be the only way to get this for now...
"Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band", is how we boldly described Osanna in our review of another Italian prog rock fave, Il Balleto Di Bronzo. We've now got Osanna's L'uomo in stock on vinyl, so you can judge for yourself. Even limiting our discussion to the realm of Italian prog, it would be difficult to claim that Osanna are objectively better than the also amazing likes of Il Balleto, Le Orme, Area, New Trolls, Franco Battiato, Goblin, I Teoremi, RDM, Museo Rosenbach, etc. But, Osanna do somehow combine the key elements of what we like about those bands and prog in general into these three crazy, colorful records, and thus deserve our hype. Ripping flute and sax solos, heavy psych guitar, powerful vocal choruses, hard rockin' prog drumming, weird musical changes and juxtapositions, electronic synth experimentation... Catchy, fun, fucked up prog from five nutty Italians, who want to rock out as much as be arty and display their adept musicanship.
The wonders of Italian prog have been revealed to us in a gradual process of discovery -- finding a used cd with a cool cover, or reading somwhere about another strange band, or getting a recommendation from a friend or customer. Neither of us grew up in Italy, or had a geeky older brother to hand down his PFM and Goblin LPs. In the case of Osanna, Andee's the one who came across 'em first, while travelling in Japan, actually. Rather randomly, the guy from the Boredoms-meets-St. Vitus doom/trance band Solar Anus (released on Andee's tUMULt label) gave Andee a tape of Osanna to take home, promising him he'd like it. Well, Solar Anus dude knew whereof he spoke! Soon we were on-line, trying to track down the LPs, or cd reissues. Not long thereafter, Andee and Allan both possessed the complete works of Osanna. Ever since we've been super psyched to share our Osanna-excitement with you, our prog-lovin' customers... Actually we hope that self-proclaimed "prog" dedication is not necessary for enjoyment of Osanna, as we think that these discs are good and weird and silly enough for AQ-customers into whatever sort of musical extremity (experimental, krautrock, psych, metal, classic rock) to dig.
Osanna's 1971 debut "L'Uomo" may be the most song-oriented of the first three 'essential' albums, their Crimson and Tull influences easy to spot. They sound a bit like a proggier, Italian version of Mexican contemporaries Dug Dugs, if that's of any help -- equally into weird psychedelic effects, hard rock, and pop. A couple of the poppier songs are sung in English, and those might result in a few uncomfortable moments of "what am I listening to here?" panic. But the sheer exuberance and fuzzed out riffing of "L'Uomo" as a whole can't be argued with!
Portland? This doesn't sound like Portland! Hey, this guy isn't even French! What gives?
Well, Benoit Pioulard is but a pseudonym for a young avant-folk tunesmith named Thomas Meluch, who now lives in Portland, Oregon yet grew up in Michigan. His gauzy dream-pop has much in common with those sounds that spilled out of Michigan with Windy & Carl, Fuxa, Auburn Lull, and even Veronica Lake beginning just over a decade ago. There is a decided craftsmanship that further distances his work from the shambolic affairs that dominate his current hometown, yet this album is not without its narcotic impressionism through his gauzy smears of ambience across his wistfully strummed acoustic guitar numbers. Temper is his second album released through Kranky, and that's a damn proper place for the man. Well, yes, Windy & Carl do release records through Kranky; but his work also fits along very well next to Stars Of The Lid and Labradford. The album's opening cut "Ragged Tint" is atypically urgent in its doubletimed elliptical fingerpicking which speeds past Pioulard's vocals which are sort of like mumbling Stephen Merritt if we could make that sound like a very good thing. A heartbreakingly sad glockenspiel melody tumbles into the chorus of the song, tempered with reverb and delay to match the hue of his dreamy drone-pop. The rest of the album is set at a languid pace, more in keeping with the first Iron & Wine record, complete with lo-fi bedroom recordings and sad little ditties strummed across his acoustic guitar girded with softened Boards of Canada rhythms. Each of his songs are effortless, beautiful, melancholic, and totally worth getting stuck in your head. He brackets each of his songs with softly treated field recordings made on a well-worn walkman that has never had its heads cleaned. So the rainstorms and birdsongs are cast in a mottled gray fog of thick tape hiss, which turns bleary and sad through Pioulard's treatments. As one customer who bought this record from us said, "it's too pretty not to buy!"
Ooh! The vinyl version of Temper also comes with his first album on Kranky, Precis.
Portland? This doesn't sound like Portland! Hey, this guy isn't even French! What gives?
Well, Benoit Pioulard is but a pseudonym for a young avant-folk tunesmith named Thomas Meluch, who now lives in Portland, Oregon yet grew up in Michigan. His gauzy dream-pop has much in common with those sounds that spilled out of Michigan with Windy & Carl, Fuxa, Auburn Lull, and even Veronica Lake beginning just over a decade ago. There is a decided craftsmanship that further distances his work from the shambolic affairs that dominate his current hometown, yet this album is not without its narcotic impressionism through his gauzy smears of ambience across his wistfully strummed acoustic guitar numbers. Temper is his second album released through Kranky, and that's a damn proper place for the man. Well, yes, Windy & Carl do release records through Kranky; but his work also fits along very well next to Stars Of The Lid and Labradford. The album's opening cut "Ragged Tint" is atypically urgent in its doubletimed elliptical fingerpicking which speeds past Pioulard's vocals which are sort of like mumbling Stephen Merritt if we could make that sound like a very good thing. A heartbreakingly sad glockenspiel melody tumbles into the chorus of the song, tempered with reverb and delay to match the hue of his dreamy drone-pop. The rest of the album is set at a languid pace, more in keeping with the first Iron & Wine record, complete with lo-fi bedroom recordings and sad little ditties strummed across his acoustic guitar girded with softened Boards of Canada rhythms. Each of his songs are effortless, beautiful, melancholic, and totally worth getting stuck in your head. He brackets each of his songs with softly treated field recordings made on a well-worn walkman that has never had its heads cleaned. So the rainstorms and birdsongs are cast in a mottled gray fog of thick tape hiss, which turns bleary and sad through Pioulard's treatments. As one customer who bought this record from us said, "it's too pretty not to buy!"
Ooh! The vinyl version of Temper also comes with his first album on Kranky, Precis.
The welcome return of the mighty Plastic Crimewave and his druggy spaced out SOUND. Another vinyl only missive from the outer reaches of whatever galaxy these guys call home. Unequal parts Stooges, Monster Magnet, Hawkwind and the Butthole Surfers. Freaked out murky space garage jams, with plenty of psych guitar crunch, woozy, drone-y melodies, wild squiggly leads, plenty of groove and swagger, snarled vocals that remind us of Crazyhead or Zodiac Mindwarp (how are those for obscure references), all wound up into swirling buzzy blowouts, that go from slow burning throb to heart of the sun freakout, the guitars unfurling distorted streaks of sound, the drums solid and steady, the bass spreading out like a thick black fog. Been digging the Heads, White Hills, Titan and that stuff, and somehow missed out on Plastic Crimewave? Now's your chance to catch up.
The second side finishes off with a super long, sprawling space kraut dirge, that sounds a bit like a more psychedelic Circle, looped and reptitive and hypnotic, tons of effects, a repeated riff, the background a ever increasing swirl of buzz and whir and reverb and delay, the whole track seeming to slow down and melt into an oozing ambience, that drifts and shimmers and rumbles before fading out completely.
What more do you need to know? If you're jonesing for a druggy tripped out krautdrone space rock fix, you've come to the right place...
Wow, the perfect garage kraut blues for a generation of post-everything youth hungry for something to rock out to. One part free and trippy and one part industrial and weird, here is a band that represents the East Coast jam band effortlessly. Michael Bernstein and Maya Miller, members of the noise/drone outfit the Double Leopards, team up with Nate Nelson (Mouthus) on drums and Todd Cavallo on bass, for a stripped-down session of head-nodding jammers. The Door pays homage to the alchemic aspects of krautrock while setting forth a new chapter in the noise-rock agenda. Stripped down rhythms driving beside ripping guitar licks, lush '60s organ flutters, and mumbly apathetic vocals that don't sound too far off from the vocals of producer Thurston Moore. The door is catchy in a strikingly weird way, like listening to a '60s pop record through a fucked up underwater amp. Any fans of creepy damaged pop will not want to miss this killer record!
Here's a new lil' 3" treat from the always-interesting LA-based experimentalist Steve Roden. It offers a view of land through a ship's dirty window... three black marks on the glass evoke the 'noise' of worn film as Roden's voice falls below the waterline. This song, "A Slow Moving Boat", has come to life through several poetic transformations described in a short text on the cd sleeve. Taking field recordings he made of a ship's hull in Norway, Roden has used them as guide for his voice as he hummed along to the drone, then replaced the original field with a recording of bowed banjo. As with all of the 'concepts' that drive Roden's work, this one is absolutely gentle... a subjective way of framing and eliciting a creative gesture that, in this case, deftly makes its way back to a ship as a commissioned soundtrack for an FM Staten Island ferry broadcast. The voice on this 15 minute piece ebbs in and out of itself, Roden intoning beautifully at both a high and a low register while the banjo buzzes and flutters. Strangely, as hand-made and human as this music is, it seems to leave its maker behind as it blows out of reach of land...
For fans of the heavy, it has been a pretty good year! Cough, Thou, Trees, The Wounded Kings, Asva, et. al. And it just seems to keep getting better and better. Here's one of our latest slow, low, doooooomed-out faves, brought to us by the ever-reliable, ultra-heavy 20 Buck Spin label. Samothrace offer up 4 long tracks of mournful, slo-mo sludge on their debut full length Life's Trade. This not-so-merry band of black stone wielders hail from Lawrence, Kansas but recorded this in Chicago with producer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Buried At Sea, Indian, Minsk, Rwake, Nachtmystium... he knows his heaviness!). They're not the first band to employ emotive loud-soft dynamics, post-rock style, but they do it quite well, and it sounds fantastic, this whole album exuding utter dismal despair. And, hopefully, provoking some form of catharsis. Everything - the guttural vokills, the effects-blanketed guitars - are weary, weeping, wailing lamentations echoing across the Midwestern prairie, finding common cause with our favorite funereal doom from Finland, British doomdeath of the '90s like My Dying Bride, and fellow sludge lords like Atavist and Ocean. Not bad company to keep, if not clinically depressed.
Sometimes it seems that bands move too far away from metal and get into some kinda mediocre, boring post-rock middleground. Like -- fuck, dude, where's the metal? However, Samothrace manages to stay heavy even while incorporating other elements. The thing is, it's not metal with something else thrown in, they take other things and make them metal. At times it's quite pretty and melodic. It's like His Hero is Gone (Fifteen Counts of Arson era) mating with the gorgeous new works by Earth. There's many long, exquisite stretches of mellowed out beauty, calm and quiet, to lull the listener before being bulldozered by fat fuzzed riffage in a more metallic, stoner mode, which sometimes flows into some sweet, Iommi-envious soloing. Samothrace's loping lethargy and mopey melody is such that even at its most crushing, the band's music still seems suffused with the sunset's psychedelic twilight rays, or perhaps radiates its own comforting warmth, somehow. If that speaks to you, grab a copy, spark one, and turn it up. You'll want this one loud. Recommended.
Ready for some galloping rifftasy?? We could be reviewing the new Early Man ep (and we will) but for your metallic delectation this week, we'd rather present you with a reissue of an old fave, a relatively obscure NWOBHM classic. If you don't know what NWOBHM means (and we mention it often enough, like in our Rogue Male reviews recently), this will clue you in with an ace to the face - even though Savage never quite made it up there with more famous New Wave Of British Heavy Metal brethren like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard*, ferinstance. And if you do know what the NWOBHM is, and love it, then this is for you. No need to hesitate. Savage's 1983 debut (they had some other, later releases, but basically blew their wad here, and how) is utterly a classic, even just on the strength of the lead-off track alone, "Let It Loose" (misidentified on the back cover tracklist here as "Letting Loose", d'oh). And the rest of the album is full of quality, crunching metallurgy too, oh yeah. Noted metal scribe Martin Popoff rates it a 10 out of 10, comparing it to the best of Saxon, Witchfinder General, Grim Reaper, & Diamond Head (we'd say it comes closest to the latter). He's quite right, this IS one of those 10/10 NWOBHM stormers that can do no wrong, unquestionably when it comes to "Let It Loose", crackling with electric energy, which sets the tone for a whole disc of white hot, speaker trashing, youthful shred, Savage sounding quite savage indeed, while maintaining the NWOBMH's reputation for pint-draining, party-hardy catchiness.
Need more recommendation? How 'bout that Metallica in their early days used to cover two of this album's songs live?! Lars knew his NWOBHM neckwreckers after all!
Aside from the aforementioned typo, this is an ok reissue, though there's no liner notes included in the cd booklet. Lyrics yes, but no liner notes, what's their excuse? We expect thorough liner notes in our reissues, people! The previous reissue of this on Neat had liners from the guy that did the awesome Mad Maxish cover art! At least this does include the same 3 bonus tracks, taken from Savage's 1979 and '80 demos.
*no, Def Leppard don't suck. Their first few albums are pretty great.
It's hard to believe that The Sea And Cake have been around for almost fifteen years now. That's making us feel pretty old, but it's also reminding us what unsung heroes of the indie scene these guys really are. They're a bit like that good friend you don't necessarily see all the time but when you do you are immediately reminded how special they are and how comfortable around them you feel.
Over the course of all those years The Sea And Cake have never let us down, always releasing records both breezy and confident, often imitated but never duplicated, a singular sound and vision that Sam Prekop, Archer Prewitt, Eric Claridge and John McEntire have made so much their own.
Car Alarm finds them in top form, much like Pinback and Stereolab, the Sea And Cake are a band who don't stray too far from the template they've seemingly perfected, but instead concentrate on continually creating rich and well constructed songs and albums within that framework, music that will stand the test of time and remain unaffected by passing fads. The Sea And Cake were never the most hip or cool or crazy band so we weren't surprised to see Vice magazine dissing them so hard in a recent issue, because in so many ways the band represent everything that is not flashy, shocking or schlocky. Instead it's about the music, about substance and integrity, always delivering a breath of fresh air in a musical world polluted with so many wannabes trying way too hard. The Sea And Cake never sound like they're trying to be anything that they are not, their music always just flows with such perfect ease. And Car Alarm proves once again that the band have not lost any of their charm or musical sophistication, and in fact they are sounding better than ever!
Ambient post rock bands are a dime a dozen these days, and bands who sound more like Godspeed that Godspeed ever did at this point probably outweigh the legions of Neur-Isis clones. But every once in a while, bands manage to remind us just why we fell in love with that sound in the first place. Danish quartet Seven Mile Journey definitely take that sound to whole 'nother level, brooding, epic, cinematic, like post rock without the rock, a sort of abstract filmic chamber music constructed from rock instrumentation.
Slow building, slow burning, so tense and intense, moody and mysterious. The drums are kept to a minimum much of the time, more for propulsion and flourish than actual beat making, but when the drums do come in, they come in hard and then drive the song, while the other instruments weave lush tapestries of sound, minor key swells, lilting overcast melodies, buzzing strings, simple piano parts draped over keening moaning minimal soundscapes, jangly guitars drifting amidst warm whirring lowercase drones, in some cases the songs build to incredible climaxes, like staring into the sun, everything blinding and chaotic and exploding like some sonic supernova, others just smolder, glowing from within, never quite easing up on the built up tension.
Fans of the usual post rock culprits - Godspeed, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky - will have very likely just found their new favorite bands, although for us, the band are at their best when they mix it up, removing the drums, spreading out the sound into impossibly emotional and moving imaginary soundtracks, ratcheting up the tension, building and building and building. Epic, transcendent and beautifully cathartic.
Killer vinyl reissue of a long out of print cassette from the Shining Path, aka Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff, brother of our very own Irwin.
Originally released on T.B.T.D and now long gone. Sort of taking off from where Shining Path's first Holy Mountain release left off, these guys take synths, vocals, organs, hurdy gurdy, drum machine and guitar and whip them into a blown out krautrock, wild noise space rock frenzy, some baffling mix of Can, Hawkwind, High Rise and Suicide, that sounds perfect together, a confusionally brilliant wild eyed blowout. Total WTF? free psych heaven! From the opening burst of blown out heart-of-the-sun psychrock meltdown, to a stretch of spacious drifting, mesmerizing motorik fuzzstomp, to the final chunk of weird drum machine driven, electronic krautdrone, these guys are absolutely melt minds and destroy speakers, and we can't get enough. The flipside is another burst of furious dubbed out druggy psych, this batch of tuneage recorded live in Brooklyn in 2006 with guests Little Howlin' Wolf and Peter Barry. Recommended of course.
There are weird bands, and then there is Silentist. Originally described to us as a classical pianist playing along with a metal drummer kicking out insane blast beats, it ended up being not nearly that simple, and in fact it was even better that that description would have led us to believe, sounding much more like a weird grind metal band who just happened the have a lead pianist.
So after three eps, we have the very first Silentist lp, and it's as weird as we remember, maybe even weirder, and somehow even better. As of this writing, it's been playing for about 5 minutes, and EVERY customer in the store has come up to see what the heck we're playing, a few who were digging it, and a few who were seriously confused. And rightfully so. Imagine doom metal crossed with cabaret, classical music and grind metal, that description alone would lead you to believe that hearing it might do your head in, and actually hearing it, well, it just might, this is some totally insane, totally unique, and absolutely fantastic stuff.
Beginning with solo piano, the record starts of dark and dolorous, melodic and mysterious, but soon the pianist begins playing a bit more wildly, the drums kick in, and the shrieking vocalist soon follows, and suddenly it's some insane black metal / free jazz / whatthefuck hybrid. Imagine Dave Lombardo jamming with Lubomyr Melnyk and Gaahl from Gorgoroth on vocals. Or a grindcore reimagining of "Flight Of The Bumblebee", but all of those descriptions are really too reductive, this is some serious next level shit. Epic and majestic, sometimes sounding like a piano-led Swans... other times sounding like classical black metal, really quite difficult to describe, which in most cases means they're doing something right.
Anyone into weird heaviness or heavy weirdness, this is most definitely for you.
It's so difficult for a doom band to carve out a totally unique sound. Slow, check. Downtuned, check. Plodding tempos, check. Growled vox, check. Nothing to do but get slower and lower, but you can only get so slow or so low, before the music stops being actual sound and instead turns into some sort of physical thing, like a big molten lump of mysterious blackness. Plus, odds are, in a name-that-tune style test, most of us would be hard pressed to tell one ultra doom band from another funereal doom band, or one doomdirgedrone outfit from another slow motion sludge combo. But then there's Skepticism, who even after 17 years, and some dramatic sonic shifts, still sound like no one else. Their warm washed out blend of chugging ultra low guitar and warm church organ-like keyboards, their haunting atmosphere and otherworldy production, sound like NOBODY else.
Way back in the beginning, the way we described Skepticism was like this: imagine a doom metal band jamming out in a church basement, while upstairs the organist practices, playing some haunting liturgical hymns, now imagine a recording made right outside the church's stone walls, so the metal is muted and murky, the pipe organ warm and thick and muffled, so weirdly heavy, but dreary and dreamy. We also at one point described Skepticism as black metal meets Labradford. Both are pretty accurate we think.
It's interesting that such a heavy, low end band would NOT have a bass player, but like all the other records, Skepticism employ just guitar, drums, and keyboards, but once you hear it, a bass would just muddy it up, the sound is already perfect, a dark shimmering heaviness as ethereal as it is crushing. The band's recordings gradually grew less lo-fi, thickening and becoming heavier and heavier, but without losing their distinctive sound. It's been 5 years since the last Skepticism record, Farmakon, and in that time, the band have once again subtly altered their sound, incorporating a bit more classic doom, a bit more propulsion as well, a little more 'chug', varying the sound more than ever, but around these new elements is still wrapped that thick, warm black Skepticism sonic monk cloak.
The strangest song is probably "March October", with its clean guitar, it's lurching chug, and it's almost drinking song like vocals, howled by a singer who we can't help but imagine is covered in sabre tooth tiger pelts, sporting a black beard to his waist, a massive mountain of a man, leading us on a brave march into certain death. The whole record is epic and majestic, funereal and crushing, morose, atmospheric and dismally, depressively beautiful. Anyone at all into bands like Esoteric, Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Corrupted, Evoken, Boris, Khanate, Eyehategod, Cavity, Electric Wizard, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Thou, Trees, Otesanek, Fleshpress, Monarch, Nihill, Monument Of Urns, Atavist, Noothgrush, Catacombs, Winter, should either already love Skepticism, or should buy this, and then buy every single thing they've ever recorded, because as much as we love all of those bands, we just might love Skepticism the most...
Holy drone!! This is not at all what we expected from these guys, but then, most Skull Defekts records tend to confuse or confound. Which is pretty much why we love them so. And who are we to turn up our noses art a sonic surprise, especially when that surprise is DRONES. Big thick buzzy snarling crumbling blown out low end buzzing writhing brain melting, ear drum crushing, rib cage rattling, speaker destroying drones. Skull Defekts are no stranger to the drone, and the fact that they called this record Drone Drug, should have been a clue, but the band, who in the past have been heavily rhythmic, have discarded pretty much everything except for the drone. No beats, no riffs, no recognizable instruments, nothing but deep dark drones.�
This is a seriously heavy record. Dense and brutal, four extended tracks, each an exercise in tension, long form extended tones, but within these, stretched out sounds, much like dronelord Phill Niblock, the various layers are surprisingly active, throbbing and pulsing, and twisting and slithering and buzzing and whirring and shimmering, the sounds rough and raw, bits crumbling and emitting grit, slipping into fuzzy drift and then slipping back into a solid endless throb. The power of the drone is divine, and when harnessed, like this, with volume, and texture, and timbre, the music is a physical presence. Headphones come to life and encase your head in an organic black cocoon of sound, speakers unfurl thick flows of sonic tar, laying supine, eyes closed, you're soon buried alive, beneath layers and layers of resonant rumbling sound. And it is divine.
This is powerful, earth shifting, massive minimal music. Not sure if these sounds come from synths or guitars, electronics or sine wave generators, malfunctioning effects pedals or a microphone lowered into the center of the Earth (we're leaning toward the latter), the result is something so primal and organic, so primeval and timeless, the act of listening seems to alter the listener's molecular structure, transporting the listener to an alternate universe, made entirely of sound, where our bodies are transformed into sound waves, our souls escape their mortal shackles and reveal themselves to be pure, deep drones. So awesome.�
Massive dose of divine Skullflower noisiness this time around, a brand new vinyl only release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this right here, a long in the works, super limited, hand assembled TRIPLE cd (not cd-r) boxset featuring all new material, over three hours or buzzing noise, abstract riffing, and all manner of brilliant sonic fuckery.
Not sure which disc comes first, but we'll start with Circle Of Serpents, and right off the bat, we're greeted with a glorious looped riff, reminiscent of Exquisite Fucking Boredom or Orange Canyon Mind, locked and looped and played over and over and over, while in the background all manner of melodies and melodic fragments, swoop and swoon and howl and keen, a swirling abyss over which a fuzzy minimal metal loop is locked on repeat. But don't expect the whole disc to be riff based, the second track explodes in a wall of grinding crumbling blown out noise drenched chaos, and as if we weren't already mixing it up enough, track three offers up some full on ultra grim blasting murky black metal, Skullfower style! We knew Bower dug the black metal, and always hoped something would come of it, so here you go, raw and buzzy, a stuttering drum machine blast beat, riffs blurred and smeared into abstract streaks, vokills buried in the mix, all barreling though clouds of effects and crumbling noise. The rest of the disc slips from epic, sun dappled Sunroof! like effulgence, tortured Abruptum style black ambience, thick distorted classic Skullflower wall of rrrrooooaaaar, strange fractured bagpipe industrial rhythm noise jams, thick warm blissy shoegazey guitar drones, and more. Easily the most varied, the weirdest, the most listenable, and quite possibly the best Skullfower record we've heard in years, and that's just the first disc.
And thankfully, the other two discs hold up just as well, super varied, and noisy and heavy, rife with drones and riffs and ragas and blasts of black metal, strange rhythms, mysterious percussion, doomy dirges, layers of guitars everywhere, dense and thick and corrosive and abrasive and warm and pretty and fucked up and furious and dreamy, all over the map, somehow all held together by some nearly impossible to decipher masterplan, but why try to understand, it's not necessary to enjoy this, in fact it's better to just luxuriate in the massive soul swallowing sound, and simple give in as you drift further and further, deeper and deeper.
Matthew Bower who is Skullfower describes it like this:
"Leitmotivs and keys get twisted and mangled and return with the dread anticipation of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence in a cycle of upheavals and lacerations, beginning and ending interwoven in an occult pantheistic tapestry that posits a gateway from the rational universe of gods creation into universe b, for spirits that can tune to the bleak, gorgeous vision SF has been channeling since tribulation.
Comes in a cardboard box with silver foil blocked slipcases featuring sigils/glyphs/runes that are both symbols and aspects of the working, and 15 visual fragments that can be arranged in conjunction with the sounds to make spells, koans, traps, resonances to help bring about the sacred alignments that the music aims toward.... indeed a valuable tool for dark meditation, and lefthand tantra".
That's right, 3 cds in silver embossed sleeves, in a hand painted cardboard box, each hand painted by Bower himself, also included a bunch of color inserts, as well as liner notes, the whole thing LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
First vinyl in ages from the mighty Skullflower, and much like the triple cd box reviewed elsewhere on this list, the new SF sound finds Skullflower mastermind mixing the two distinct sides of his sound, the looped hypnotic riffy side, and the free abstract noise side, and the results are pretty fantastic, forging a new sort of noise drenched, proto metal abstract free drone psychedelia, and of course incorporating all kinds of other sounds, like black metal buzz, and minimal industrial percussion. The lp is the perfect addendum to that massive triple album box, serving almost like a 4th disc in the set, covering similar ground, but with its own particular twist.
Side one opens with that distinctive abstract-krautrock, metallic-psychedelic riff that only Skullfower seems to be able to pull off, looped and repetitive, but slowly shifting, almost imperceptibly, over a swirling morass of distorted buzz and feedback drenched howl, noisy and heavy but strangely meditative. The follow up shifts gears and offers up a buzzing wall of sound with soaring high end melodic streaks over the top, and what sounds like vocals buried WAY down in the mix. Hot on the heels of that one comes an awesomely droning psych rock dirge, this time with drums, and an incredibly catchy and surprisingly melodic main riff, woozy and druggy, but sounding like some classic eighties metal riff, just Skullflower-ed. And so it goes, the tracks shifting from chiming ritualistic dronemusic to buzzing abstract ambience to noisy almost-industrial plod and back again. And we're digging it big time. These two most recent releases might just be our favorite Skullflower records since Exquisite Fucking Boredom on tUMULt!
It's really crazy how many little scenes there are all over the world, scenes that could very well remain hidden forever, so many bands, some insanely amazing bands, who are perfectly happy to just play shows locally, release cd-r's now and again, never to be heard outside their little circle. Some scenes are particularly rich, bursting at the scenes with kick ass groups that deserve to be heard by folks all over. One such scene that we've been particularly smitten with, is over in the UK, Leeds we think. Their most famous export, at least around aQ, is Like A Kind Of Matdor, who released their first, and only record posthumously on Andee's tUMULt label. A crushing slab of flute flecked accordion laced doom prog. Which leads us to the Slomatics, another incredibly heavy, crushing and pummeling doom behemoth, hailing from the very same scene, and due to have a split 12" with LAKOM come out someday. Their sound is slooooow and doooomy and heavy, but unlike the prog tendencies of their LAKOM scenemates, the Slomatics traffic in a sound more Melvins-y, more sludgey, think Grief, Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Harvey Milk, Electric Wizard at 16rpm, that sort of thing, but a bit more abstract, a little more spaced out, repetitive, the sound layered and dense, a bit psychedelic, but still at its core, heavy, brutal, slow and sludgy. There are some brief moments of off kilter mellowness, clean guitars, loping drums, but those moments don't last long, quickly obliterated by another wall of lurching, lumbering crush. Some of the heavy parts are laced with almost buried wailing leads, and the vocals are howled and heavily reverbed, but not of that really matters as much as the riffs, and the riffs here are amazing, downtuned, blown out crumbling and MASSIVE.
Our favorite thing about the Slomatics besides their crushing heaviosity? The line in the liner notes that reads: "Middle-aged professionals by day, aggro-sludge losers by night"!
Heavy, heavy, heavy, and so very recommended.
The Stargazer's Assistant is the work of David J. Smith, who many of you might recognize as one of the masterminds behind modern day prog outfit Guapo, or his slightly more esoteric project Miasma & The Carousel Of Dead Horses.
The Other Side Of The Island is not just the name of this record, but a series of sculptures created by Smith from wax and coal and copper and lead (one example is the creepy image on the record's cover). A series of shapes with a deep backstory, the Earth, and the world beneath the surface, the rock and soil, the time that all of those layers of rock represent. These sculptures were part of an installation, for which The Other Side Of The Island is the soundtrack. And unlike the over the top progginess of Smith's other projects, the music here is a dark and mysterious soundworld, an audial representation of the above concepts, a journey into the depths below, and it sounds like it.
Utilizing harmonium, prepared guitars, percussion, tapes, samples, electronics and piano, Smith, along with his Miasma bandmate Daniel O'Sullivan, have crafted a truly scary chunk of buzzing doomy drone. We're not talking SUNNO))) or anything like that, no this is much more cinematic and expansive, more abstract and ambient, no riffs to be found, but guitars crunch and grind, wail and ring out.
The record opens with random bits of guitar scape and piano plonk, hovering over a deep dark swirling abyss, the track builds in intensity, the various elements growing more and more aggressive, darker and more ominous, the low end especially grows blacker and thicker, and eventually coalesces into a doomy drifting psychedelic ambience.
After a brief two minute interlude of industrial scrape and clatter, and some dreamily tripped out backwards vocals and guitars, the band slips right back into the second half of the opening track, a sort of slow burning spaced out style krautrock drift, all extended drones, and wordless vocals, buzzing coruscating electric guitars adding still more layers of psychdrone shimmer, a gorgeously smoldering ur-drone beneath a slithering slippery distorted riff, that flits and flutters like some restless spirit.
Definitely for fans of freaked out free folk, dark abstract ambience and the heart of the sun bliss out sound of krautspacedronemusick like Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Expo 70, and the like...
One of our favorite albums, and another one we realized to our dismay that we didn't have in the store or on the website, so we thought we'd share our love of this record with any of you who aren't already familiar with this classic.
At their prime, Steel Pulse were without a doubt the best reggae band to come out of the UK, with great songwriting skills, social consciousness and songs bursting with energy and packed with infectious hooks. They were such a huge influence on so many bands in the punk and new wave world, that they were often asked by bands like The Clash, The Police, The Stranglers and Generation X to go on tour with them. In fact, much of the Police's early sound is SO obviously influenced by the music of Steel Pulse. True Democracy is really one of those records that crosses genre lines, while very much a reggae record it's amazing how many people who thought they weren't into reggae at all, heard this record playing and couldn't resist getting caught tight in its irresistible grasp. It's a record that never loses its charm or its ability to sweep us of our feet as we always walk a little faster, feel a little more free, and move with more purpose whenever we have it blasting in our ears. Originally released in 1982 and it still sounds as fresh and vital as ever!
This is bizarre in every sense of the word. Naturestrip is a label that has dedicated itself to propagating all sorts of composition through field recording, with sound artists like Tarab and Loren Chasse crafting impeccable scores directly from the earth, and rural psychedelic practitioners like Leighton Craig and Eugene Carchesio crafting skeletal song against an environmental backdrop. Australian filmmaker and sound artist Joel Stern has taken his field recording tactics into an unusual place of thickly collaged signifiers with hints of song, rummagings for texture, and straight recordings from out the in the field. It sort of comes across as a ramshackle radio play, as if some genius lunatic outfit like the Starving Weirdos were given permission to fuck around in the INA-GRM studios. Stern offers up some improv clamor in the woods with sticks, twigs, and bird chorus playing equal part in the noise with squeaking horns, concertina strum and squabbling noises. He's also found scraping upon styrofoam, and steel springs for an unnerving background of skincrawling textures that counterpoint tension-loaded pops of long wire manipulation and the occasional heavenly ring of chimed bells. Feral dogs bark and howl in the rain while Stern overlays a simple melody line from a thumb piano coaxed into harmony with a distant chanting of unknown origin. He's at his best when an unsettled musicality seeps through the field recordings; and perhaps he saves his best for last, with the plaintive strum across the guitar and harmonica set against a distant wailing of children becoming a tragic end to this Fellini-esque album. Remarkable to say the least.
There's been a batch of cool releases recently from this underground Tokyo flashbackin' "bleak-folk" duo, including live albums on both the aRCHIVE and Important labels. How best to follow those up? How 'bout with a two-disc, two-hour studio set on Holy Mountain, all the more room for the Suishou two (Pirako and Kageo, both on guitar and vocals) to sprawl out and let their heavy lidded (if not quite heavy) psychedelia bleed so bleakly and beautifully, including a few tracks previewed in live versions, like "Cherry" and "Til We Meet Again". Even if you haven't heard those, if you've heard any Suishou No Fune chances are you know what you're in for... the usual Suishou blend of fragile vocals wailing ever so gently over meanderingly melodic string strum and amp hum, a downer droney trance-out that's super languid and echoey, relaxed and Rallizesized.
The extended, lethargic and lovely lo-fi shimmer that Suishou No Fune conjures is embellished by some percussive rattling ritual at the opening of "Prayer", and enhanced elsewhere by occasional amped-up moments of distortodelic heaviness ("Resurrection Night" being a solid sixteen-minute example), though it's generally far to the softer side of countryfolk Boris and Acid Mothers Temple (for instance). We can guess you'll be filing this with your Shizuka, LSD-march, and Nagisa Ni Te cds... that is, filing it only after playing it over and over quite a bit, lost in a hypnotic reverie each time.
Prayer For Chibi was recorded with the help of Steven Wray Lobdell (David Redford Triad, Faust) and the cd booklet features Japanese-to-English translations of all the lyrics by the always helpful in that regard Alan Cummings, lyrics full of flowers, dreams, rain, stars, fireflies, and la la las...
October's installment of essential extreme metal reading material is here. While we read (and now regularly stock) some other monthly metal magazines (including the excellent upstart Decibel and old standby Metal Maniacs), THIS is the one that we've been addicted to longest and love the most.
This issue has Viking superstars Amon Amarth on the cover, and inside has interviews as well with the likes of Benediction, Cannibal Corpse, Iced Earth, Kampfar, and our doomy Finnish pal Albert Witchfinder of Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P), The Puritan, and Armanenschaft. There's also stuff about Blood Ceremony, Anata, Testament (doing the "Hard Of Hearing" feature), and others. Plus a loving look back at Nocturnus's crucial sci-fi-death-metal opus The Key, a scene report on Greek black metal, tons of reviews, a label profile on Profound Lore, and plenty more besides. Oh, and a huge "folk special" section. Well, folk-metal that is. They delve specifically into "Irish Pagan Metal" (talking to Proscriptor from Absu and Mike Scalzi from Slough Feg, as well as some actual Irish bands), "Finnish Folk Metal" (including mention of one band from Portugal...), and Neofolk. Whew! There's a lot in this ish worth checking out. And let's not forget the free, cover-mounted cd sampler, with 21 tracks from several bands in this issue and others too.
We know people who work at other record stores give each other gifts of music for birthdays and Christmas. Makes sense, that's what they love, right? But from another perspective, there's something just a little too easy about that... "here, I bought you this from the store where we all work". So, 'cause of that, here at AQ we don't have much of a tradition of giving cds and lps as presents.
But, Allan was thankful that Andee broke with tradition last year and mailordered him a copy of this hard to find cd for Xmas. (Andee got himself one too, of course). And now we've finally managed to contact the label directly, over in England, and order a few to sell here at AQ as well.
Definitely any lover of early '70s proto-metal heaviness needs to put this on their wish list. Downer Rock Genocide is a collection of super rare tracks by some really obscure heavy psych/prog acts who kicked around the same scene as early Black Sabbath. And it's pretty darn killer. There's 16 tracks by 14 bands, here they are: Flying Hat Band, Clear Blue Sky, Necromandus, Egor, Monument, Iron Maiden, Gnidrolog, Iron Claw, Red Dirt, Slowbone, Bram Stoker, Hackensack, Bum, and Writing On The Wall. We'd heard of some but others were new to us, unearthed from way down deep in the murky underground of decades past.
Too many gems here to talk about 'em all, but we'll mention a few... Flying Hat Band (2 tracks from them, from a never released 1973 album) was where Glenn Tipton slung his axe before joining up with Judas Priest. No wonder they hired him! We'd never heard FHB's stuff before, and already this comp is worth it just for the badass rockin' doom of their first cut, "Seventh Plain". It's like Comus meets Judas Priest! Clear Blue Sky, who also contribute two demo tracks, is one of the bands we -had- heard before (their album is a Sabbathy treat). And Sabbath lovers will really want this for "Nightjar" by the Tony Iommi produced Necromandus, easily that band's heaviest and best track. So good.
What else? The Iron Maiden on here is NOT the Iron Maiden you're familiar with, it's another, earlier band with the same name but a much doomier disposition. Actually who they really sound like is Wishbone Ash, Argus-era, all folky and epic. Gnidrolog is another one we knew, a great, super dramatic prog act in the vein of Van Der Graaf Generator, who offer up their doomiest "Long Live Man Dead". Red Dirt are a gruff slice of raw, primitive bluesy heaviness, that just got Cup to remark "that music has hairy balls!". Iron Claw kick out the jams big time on "Lightning" from a 1971 cassette only release, Egor tear it up on the blown-out live track "Street" also from '71, Hackensack deliver some wild fuzzed out soloing and wailing vocals on their kick ass cut "River Boat" circa '72, and Bum bring us the pagan "God Of Darkness" from way back in '68. Did Sabbath hear these guys? All of it good stuff for fans of bands like Sabbath, Budgie, Leaf Hound, High Tide... and Witchcraft today. Give yourself the gift of downer rock.
Some of these tracks are from albums, many are demos or archival live recordings. So sound quality varies, but not the occult-inspired, heavy-riffing, proto-metal awesomeness.
By the late 1960's East St Louis, Illinois had seen better days. Hit hard by poverty, crime, drug addiction and gang activity, it was really important for teens to have a safe place to hang out, and a positive outlet for creativity. No one understood this better then Allen Murray, a seasoned musician from the area who was semi-famous for his past work with the likes of Ray Charles and Ike Turner. He started a really inventive program at The Southside Community Center, where youth could come and sing and play music in his program called The Young Disciples.
With an amazing stable of musicians and fresh new voices on the mic, most for the first time, he really created an amazing musical world while also offering salvation to so many teens in East St Louis. What's even more remarkable is how damn good the music they made was. This was not some sort of amateur hour soul, in fact before we even knew the whole back story to this record we just thought it was another amazing lost soul label getting the primetime Eccentric Soul series attention it deserved. These songs are just dripping with warmth, soul and unfiltered funk. Another total winner from the Numero Group and such a cool program that Murray developed, we only wish it was being used as a template in cities across the country today!
The world may be full of doom and gloom, and your shelves may be bursting at the seams will all manner of slow motion sludge and funereal dirges, but there was a time, when true doom wasn't so easy to come by, the world wasn't prepared for slow motion misery and abject musical miserablism, but we were, and we hunted and searched, and thus we discovered Finland's Skepticism. The heaviest, most beautiful, most perplexingly atmospheric music we had yet encountered. It was so washed out and dreamy it was barely metal. So slow and pretty it almost sounded choral. We described the music of Skepticism as sounding like sitting in a church, while a doom metal band practiced in the basement, the huge thudding crush, barely audible through the floor, the sounds intertwining with the warm whir of the church organ, some strangely spiritual sonic confluence, that was as magical as it was mysterious.
And it wasn't just us. The sound of Skepticism spoke to all sorts of people, metalheads, doomlords, drone freeks, weirdo music obsessives, and it made perfect sense, as it was all those things, metal, doom, drone, weird. Add to that, lovely, haunting, creepy, ominous and absolutely fucking brilliant.
So here we have a double disc tribute to the masters of slow motion doomed beauty, from a handful of bands, as with most comps, many we'd never heard of, a few we were already big fans of. And also with tributes, how do you pay tribute to a music that is already so perfect? Do you try to sound as much like it as possible, or change it into something else entirely? Somehow, all of the bands here have managed a little bit of both, enough that this is a gorgeous and epic funereal doom record all the way through. Pretty enough to appeal to folks who just like their music dark and dreamy, but heavy enough to mesmerize the blackest hearted of metalheads.
Right out of the gate, Nest (who we'd never heard of) offer up a 14 minute version of a track off the first Skepticism, and do their own sort of blissed out reverential dronedoom version which might be our favorite track on the comp. Stretches of lilting acoustic guitars over rumbling drones, separated by shimmering keyboards and slow plodding muted riffs, so soft it's barely metal at all, more a sort of droning slowcore. Much like the original, but even more soft and shimmery.
The rest of disc one, offer up more traditional doom versions of Skepticism classics, but each twisted and tweaked enough to be a good fresh listen. The final track on disc one, "The Organium" by Oktor, might be the weirdest, a sort of industrialized, mechanical stumbling doom lurch, with sung / spoken deep crooned vocals. Weird but super cool.
The highlight of disc two is of course Rigor Sardonicous, who we of course LOVE, and who do a killer version of "Chorale", beginning with backwards guitars, which eventually morph into a massive downtuned dirge, with that mournful melody buried in the mix, and the strangely loud cymbals we love so much (see some of our other RS reviews about that). The other groups on the second disc definitely take their liberties, Calmsite, turn their track into almost death metal, Aarni give Skepticism a folky makeover, and It Will Come, start out slow and sludgy, but then slip into some sort of drifting post rock slowcore. It's all pretty awesome. How bad could it be starting with Skepticism songs after all?! But either way, this is an awesome collection of intense and beautiful, slow sad heavy dooooooooom, that most definitely does Skepticism proud.
The folks at Mississippi Records most definitely have good taste in reissues, picking lost, rare, and just plain cool stuff to get reissued on vinyl, but as good as they are at simply picking stuff to be reissued, they're even better at creating compilations, mix tape masters, whose skill at curating collections is way beyond reproach. Just have a look at some past Mississippi comps: I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Life Is A Problem, Last Kind Words, Love Is Love, Lipa Kodi Ya City Council. Everyone darn near perfect, packaging, song selection, sound, feel, vibe, pretty much everything, every aspect. Some major label with tons of money should swoop in and hire all these folks and get them to do what they're already doing, just with way more resources.
For now though, we're perfectly happy to dig into a new Mississippi comp every few months, and thus, we're super excited about the latest release, another collection of old time gospel and blues called Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long. And it's of course fantastic, an amazing compilation of artists, some well know, others not so, but it's the song selection, the sequence, it's like a mix tape, and as we said above, Mississippi are the masters.
The opener is amazing, and already has us looking for more from Bukka White, his voice rough raw and ragged, but still rich and soulful, backed by some amazing female vocalists, the sound lush and rich, wreathed in old record crackle. Then there's the amazing Bessie Johnson, who has a truly unique voice, a distinctive croon, haunting and throaty, draped over a minimal background, but it hardly matters, her voice is powerful enough to carry any song. Blind Mamie Forehand offers up a gospely number, simple steel string guitar and her deep soulful voice. The Edward Clayborn track sounds super old, the static and hiss almost as loud as the music, but it only makes it sound that much warmer and gorgeously timeworn and weary. Folks heavily into the blues, probably know all of these artists, maybe the songs too, but for some of us, who only have a cursory knowledge, these comps, this comp, offer up an amazing glimpse into another time, a world of sound and songs both personal and passionate, powerful and mesmerizing.
And as we all know, there's nothing quite like getting an amazing mixtape, crammed with songs and sounds that not only mesmerize, but often have you desperately searching for more from the various artists. Mission accomplished. Another winner from Mississippi.
We know you love that Cambodian rock. And you know what? We love it too. Of late there seems to be an obsession with it; between the 4 Cambodian Rocks collections, the Cambodian Cassette Archives and Dengue Fever, we've had a pretty good run of it thus far. But now Sublime Frequencies is upping the ante with a collection unlike all those that preceded it. While the Khmer Rouge did a pretty good job of wiping out all the original performers, along with thousands of other innocent people and displacing the population of Cambodia, it couldn't completely wipe out the music. The original cassettes, still floating around are still being played on the radio to this day. Except that they aren't always played in strictly original form. Most stations, with the exception of the state run AM one, have taken to playing re-mixed versions of the songs with overdubbed instrumentation ranging from guitars and drums to synth keyboards in an attempt to keep the music fresh with the younger generations of listeners. This collection includes both the un-mixed originals taped off of the state run AM station and the re-mixed versions from the FM stations. Those of you already well suited with the previously released Cambodian rock collections will certainly get a kick out of several cuts here (some of which are most certainly completely different recordings from the ground up). Much more even than the Khmer Rocks releases, this collection has a great deal more variety of tunes (not just the garagey numbers), including some that feature traditional instruments, or at least traditional sounding. One tune in particular features just vocals and solo electric guitar which could easily be the Cambodian Lightnin' Hopkins. Additionally, Radio Phnom Penh differs greatly from the other discs in the Radio series on Sublime Frequencies in that not only are the songs allowed to play all the way through, in their entirety for the most part, but there's only very brief station ID's and disk jockey talking included.
Of all the Sublime Frequencies collections, the various 'Radio' compilations are definitely our favorites. But at the same time they are also maybe the most problematic, It seems somehow disingenuous to travel to another country, turn on the radio, record several hours worth of music and sound, come home, put those recordings on a cd and then sell them. Not just disingenuous but quite possibly dishonest. It also seems a little weird to be thrilled by all the 'crazy' sounds we hear on the radio in these various countries. A guilty pleasure, very much that aspect of cultural tourism. "The music there is SO WILD!! And SO WEIRD!!" And it seems inconceivable that someone from some other country would come to the US, and do the same thing, returning to their countries to release discs packed with shock jocks, and crappy pop music, and morning zoo's and dry NPR discussions and modern rock and Loveline. But you never know. Although part of the reason that something like that would probably NOT happen, is that American culture, from the music to the clothes to the television shows, is already so invasive, there's probably not a corner of the world where people aren't discussing Lost or Paris Hilton or Brad and Angelina's baby or rocking out to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the music and culture of these other countries does not have the same sort of universal reach. So it is actually quite a thrill to hear all of this amazing music, all of these voices, ads and commercials and songs. It's absolutely fantastic. It's just worth thinking about all that other stuff once in a while and realizing that in a sense, even just listening to these discs, we are guests, and we are digging the work and art, the livelihood and passion of hundreds of musicians and vocalists and deejays and artists. And we are digging it. A whole lot.
The first few 'Radio' compilations were a little too schizophrenic, only allowing us to hear a few seconds of a song before the dial was spun and we were bombarded by some new burst of musical randomness. It was pretty amazing in a totally overwhelming ADD short attention span sort of way, but they rectified that, realizing it was just as dizzying but way more satisfying if we got to hear whole songs. So here we are.
Radio Thailand, two whole discs culled from 15 years of recordings, captured between 1989 and 2004. A wonderfully confusional blur of Thai radio craziness, and crazy it is. A glorious hodge podge of everything under the sun, including cheesy eighties Indian disco, bizarre Thai arena rock, with wailing guitar leads, and murky Casio style rhythms, English language radio announcements, funky hip hop rock with guttural Muppets like vocals and a braying donkey chorus, complete with Knight Rider synths, Thai style Miami bass, with bumping beats and rapid fire rapping, goofy funky ska, groovy late night lounge funk, old soundtrack music, fuzzy, old school soul with big boomy drums and sweet horns, weird American style rapid fire commercials, distorted shortwave transmissions, haunting otherworldly piano, what sounds like Thailand's answer to Humpty Hump, but with wild swaths of LOUD synthesizer, full on sitar jams, Japanese style pop, sixties girl group harmonies, groovy exotica, radio dramas, solo blues vocals, and all sorts of traditional Thai musics mixed in with this dizzying barrage of music and voice and sound.
So totally amazing!
This is one of those records that reminds us of how totally powerful and intense music can be, affecting people in such deep and meaningful ways. Faced with how the HIV/AIDS crisis has devastated so much of Africa, a movement in Uganda has arisen to use music, dance and performance as a means to address, educate, empower and raise awareness in the community about all aspects of the epidemic. While there are many records made for good causes, and plenty of projects with the best of intentions, this is one with music as raw, true and intense as the cause and the people it serves. The sound is mostly vocal driven a capella numbers accompanied only at times by hand claps, raw percussion, and sounds of nature. So cool. This is not some feel good watered down benefit record, the songs are powerful and have titles that translate to "Death Killed All The People", "The Graveyard Is Our Home", "AIDS Finished Us" and "Is Someone There?". The intensity and raw honesty is felt so directly in the tone and resonance of every one of these songs. Comes with a 36 page booklet filled with information and translation of all the songs, this whole collection is proof that music does have the ability to enlighten, educate and empower.
Whether from Poland, American, Hungary, the UK, or France, there was a moment in time in the '60s and '70s when everyone making pop music was hoping to have a big hit in Germany. So even if they had NO idea what they were singing, they went into the studio hoping to tap into the lucrative German market and make it big auf Deutsch. Luckily so many of these tracks were also some of the most sophisticated, sassy and snappy pop songs being recorded in any language, or at least that's what this disc makes us think.
This comp brings together some of the totally shining moments in German-language pop from across the globe like France Gall, Barbara, Sandie Shaw, Paul Anka, Antoine, Kati Kovacs, AQ Hungarian favorites Illes, and a bunch more, amazing examples of some of the most fun and infectious pop for which fans of ye-ye delights and those In-Kraut sound collections will fall hard, for sure.
There's a similar compilation we received recently, called Parlez Vous Pop?, that's essentially the French equivalent of this collection. Unfortunately, other than a couple tracks, that comp was much more suited for coffee house background music, but THIS ONE we can enthusiastically recommend!!
When we said in a recent review that Honest Jon's was giving Dust-to Digital a run for its reissue money, we weren't kidding. Here's yet another example...
Utilizing the vast archive of 78's from the EMI vaults, Honest Jon's presents a collection of pre-global musical magic. Taking a much broader approach than Dust-to-Digital's Victrola Favorites and Black Mirror compilations which focussed on the randomness of one person's or one group's private collection, Sprigs of Time offers more nuanced cultural examples of regional sounds. Beginning with a recording of the English Sound Table, and ending with the sound of the "Gas All Clear" bell, this collection spans the years 1903 to 1957 and features thirty tracks ranging from Tamil laughing songs, early British Folk, American Tin Pan Alley, Lebanese Rumba, Georgian Piano Rolls, Gamelan music, Japanese Court Music, Chinese Opera and songs of Bengali beggars. An amazing mix of sounds and songs and easily the best collection in the Honest Jon's catalog so far. Awesome!
