Here's the Seattle band that we always confuse with Blood Of The Black Owl. I guess we need to learn to read. Anyway this is their second album, following up The Feast released on 20 Buck Spin two years ago. Again, it's a brootal, sludgey concoction of blackened 'metal of death' musick. 11 bombastically bulldozering tracks with some sort of anti-Christian, astrological agenda, or something. This is definite bad mood music, on the doomy side of death metal a la Incantation. Thick and crushing, with guttural DM vox, and much atmospheric gloom pervading the slower parts. The majestic, monstrous hell-belch that is BOBE's Horoskopus shows that these guys, several of whom used to be in a metalcore band called Teen Cthulhu, have matured into a full-grown Cthulhu! Wish we woulda seen 'em on their recent tour with Watain but we were busy working on the list that night...
It's finally here! An audio / video document of the amazing 77 Boa Drum performance that took place in Brooklyn on July 7th, 2007. Originally filmed for a full length theatrical and dvd release, those plans were scrapped for some reason, so this right here is the only document of that fantastic and now legendary performance.
Available only as a very pricey import, 77 Boa Drum contains 2cds, a full recording of the performance split into two halves, a dvd, featuring 20 minutes of video from the event, all housed in a massive and gorgeously designed green and gold hardcover book, packed with tons of photos, including a couple of our very own Andee, who was one of the 77, diagrams of the drum layout, various text and other imagery. It's really pretty fantastic, totally deluxe and elaborate. And beyond object as art, listening to the recordings, the sound is massive and powerful and beautiful, more than just a spectacle, it was a sprawling chunk or rhythmic organic sound, equally composed and improvised, the power of that many drummers, each contributing his or her own style, combined with the Boredoms three drummer attack, and Eye's homemade multi necked guitar and spaced out electronics. If you missed it, you might want to think about picking one of these up (cheaper than the plane ticket woulda been, right?). And even if you were there, that almost makes this even more essential, an amazing, over the top, keepsake of one of the most amazing performances we've ever seen or been a part of, and the very first Boa Drum.
Needless to say, this is crazy limited, and we only have a few of these. When we run out, we'll hopefully be able to get more, but there's certainly no guarantee. So if you really want one, act fast.
A little while back we managed to score just like, three copies of new Japan-only Boredoms 12". Obviously, not enough to list. Now, they've done a second pressing, but again, it's super limited, we were only able to get a few, this time an outrageous 8 copies. So we're listing it, but please prepare to be disappointed if (when) we tell you we've run out.
Inside the insanely colorful sleeve, the two sides of this 12" contain remixes of the two Boredoms "breakbeat" tracks heard previously only on the bonus cd that came with the import-only Live At Sunflancisco dvd last year. (At least one of them, anyway, we're a little confused on that point). "Voaltz" gets a remix from Atlz and Kabamix, while DJ Coswamp takes care of "Rereler". We're not hip enough to Japanese DJs to actually know who they are, but since this is the Boredoms does it matter? The original tracks we described as "percussive party-pleasers... if your party digs the freaky Bore-tronix, that is!". Now they are perhaps even more party-palatable. (FYI, if it matters to you, this vinyl was pressed in the USA, not Japan. Our distributor thought some peeps might care.)
Hmmm, that album title makes me think of... poop. Don't know about you, but it's not exactly what I want to have in my head while listening to music... unless it's G.G. Allin of course, but even then! Anyhoo, Boston Spaceships is yet another one of Robert Pollard's alter egos. Well, actually it's an altogether new band, a supergroup even! The band lineup includes Chris Slusarenko (also of GBV and Takeovers) and John Moen (also of Decemberists and Mr. Malkmus' Jicks). On the road, they're joined by Tommy Keene and Jason Narducy (who also plays with Bob Mould). Don't worry, it's the farthest thing from poopy. This is Pollard and co. at their loosest limbed indie rockin' fun. Reelingly garagey raucous with lots of wonkily bent electric guitar chords, lyrical silliness ("Soggy Beavers"?!), vocal yowling, primal drumming. Sounds like they had great time recording it. You might have just as much fun listening too, especially if you're a Pollard fanatic. Highlights: "Andy Playboy" and "Rat Trap"!
The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!
Finally this British Folk classic becomes both widely available and affordable! In a lot of ways Anne Briggs is the British equivalent of Karen Dalton, both were distinctive and influential interpreters of traditional folk songs, and both adamantly hated recording. While Briggs' fate is less tragic than Dalton's, her self-imposed retirement from singing at 27 and long willful reclusion has left fans with a similarly slim catalog of recordings to pore over. Yet Briggs is no obscure figure. Discovered by Ewan MacColl in the early sixties, Brigg's pure yet untutored vocal delivery had tremendous influence on many of the key figures of the British folk revival, namely, Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, June Tabor and Linda Thompson. By the time of her retirement, she was legendary. The Time Has Come is her second (and in our opinion, best) album, originally released in 1971. Here for the first time she records some of her own songs, a few of them popularized by other artists, like the title track previously covered by her former boyfriend, Bert Jansch. But perhaps influenced by the emergence of rock elements in the folk scene, she also updates the arrangements of her guitar and bouzouki accompaniments so that even the traditional tracks are handled with a warm but modernly melancholic pastoral grace. An artist at what now has to stand as her peak. Perfect for Spring!
There are few voices as pure and natural as Anne Briggs, an untrained but highly influential figure of the British Folk Tradition. This is a fine reissue of Briggs' first album from 1971 comprised mostly of traditional material that has only been previously available as expensive imports. While a few songs are backed by her guitar playing, a large number of them are sung a cappella. But with a voice like hers, the songs don't need much accompaniment. "Go Your Way" is one of our all time favorite songs period and well worth the price of admission. If fans of Shirley Collins or of all portents of magical folk music haven't already discovered and devoured Anne Briggs' scant but essential discography (she only recorded 30 songs before her self-imposed retirement at age 29!), the time has come!!
The long awaited follow-up collaboration between these two musical giants is finally here in physical form, after only being available as a digital download. Although, this time it feels more like a David Byrne solo album rather than a revisiting of musical territory from their stellar My Life In The Bush of Ghosts. Not bad though, as long as you're a fan of David Byrne!
The return of Chicago's instrumental hypno-psych-kraut rock groovers Cave. Hot on the heels of the recent single/cd-r combo on Trensmat (now out of print, so don't ask) come two more stretched out jamz that manage to push all our buttons: repetitive, psychedelic, heavy, hypnotic... remember the track "Butthash" from the 7"? That we described thusly:
"A bouncy groover, with swirly synths, caffeinated rhythms, and buried vocals, a bit angular, a little new wave, equal parts krautrock, and spaced out shimmer, but all tangled up and kaleidoscopic."
Well, that was a 'mellowed out' remix of the first Cave track right here. So now take that description, add heavier guitars, all sorts of synths, howled distorted vocals, pounding drums, and wind it all up into a relentless killer groove that would do Circle or Pharaoh Overlord proud, kicking out the jams like Wooden Shjips on 45. The second track is more of the same, krauty and psychedelic, drums locked into a super tight rhythm, the guitars locked right in too, keyboards offering up all kinds of tripped out counterpoint, and more fuzzy effects drenched vocals soaring over the top, not so much singing as sort of howling along, the whole thing getting more and more fuzzy and distorted as the song progresses.
Cave share this 10" split with California Raisins, who may just have one of the WORST band names ever, but that doesn't stop them from kicking up a serious racket themselves. Hailing from Columbia, Missouri (where Cave called home before Chicago), California Raisins rock similar territory as Cave, the core of their sound a tightly wound guitar / synth hypnogroove, the difference being that CR are way more of a noisy, punky ROCK band, with much looser and wilder drums, and a vocalist whose wail is WAY up in the mix, his vocals heavily distorted and reverbed, turning what could have been a sort of psychedelic krautrock into more of a tripped out hypno garage stomp, plenty of Stooges-y swagger, Brainbombs-y pummel, but occasionally wrapped around super hypnotic krautrock style grooves or spread out over buzzy synth drenched crunch. Lo-fi and distorted and heavy and noisy and garage-y and a pretty good match for Cave's more looped sounding kraut psych grooves.
Packaged in hand screened silver and black sleeves (screened by the dudes in Cave) with a photocopied insert, and a cd (not a cd-r) featuring all the songs from the 10"!
Isobel and Mark are together again for another smokey affair, conjuring up songs that play like a country tinged film noir soundtrack. Evoking stark and rich emotion, their voices almost like devil (Lanegan) and angel (Campbell). As always when these two get together they create songs that feel very pensive and solitary. Much of this record seems less forced and more natural than some of the moments on their previous outings, where it seemed like they were trying a bit too hard to be a modern day Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra. While we still can't help but love these two more on their own (Campbell in Belle And Sebastian and solo, Lanegan solo and in the Gutter Twins and of course Screaming Trees!), we can't deny they are capable of making some magical music together.
Chan Marshall & co. give us -another- batch of cover songs from the Jukebox sessions on this special vinyl-only release. She interprets Otis, Aretha, Credence, Fairport Convention and The Pogues, some ("Fortunate Son") more convincingly than others ("It Ain't Fair"). The further she moves away from the song's original mood, it seems, the stronger the outcome. Those of you who have followed Chan's career to this point know that she has forgone the trappings of indie rock for what this reviewer would call "indie soul." None of these songs have quite the pull of, say, "Satisfaction" on the first covers record, but "Fortunate Son" comes close, due in no small part to Jim White's minimal drumming and the undeniable smoky appeal of Chan's voice.
Whoa, this is quite a strange gathering of peculiar musical entities, don't you think? Mr. Chesnutt's collaboration with the A Silver Mt. Zion folks last year made total sense in its beautiful bleakness. Psst, it was called North Star Deserter and we heartily recommend it! However, when we heard the names Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power and the mysterious Amorphous Strum in the same breath we were left scratching our heads. Nevertheless, we gave it a spin and found that this twisted roots rock album is for the most part really the Vic Chesnutt show. It's perfectly understandable though, no slight on Elf Power, but he's such a potent and distinct musical force all by his lonesome. Signs of that trademark Chesnutt vitriol-soaked distemper comes quickly. you need look no further than Dark Developments' second song "Little Fucker". Really, the only glimpse of even a bit of Elf Power's indie psych poppiness comes late in the proceedings in the seventh song, the slightly more quirkily layered pop tune "Bilocating Dog"! Definitely for devoted Chesnutt fans, but perhaps not the place to start if you're just getting your feet wet, nor if you're looking for a new Elf Power album!
Just have two of these in stock. Children are a pretty cool new thrashy metal three piece from NYC, ex-members of Early Man we think, who just have this 12" out on Kemado. We saw 'em play when they opened for The Sword and Slough Feg a few months back. Good stuff, some crazy twin guitar action and raw energy. Note we said twin guitar, and they're a trio... which means, a la The Champs, no bassist! But they're pretty heavy nonetheless, and the shred never stops. Does that (and their long-haired but hipster/skaterish appearance, and label affiliation, membership pedigree, etc.) make 'em not "true" metal? Maybe, but they put on a damn good show and this 12" is worth a spin, headbangers!! Includes download card for free mp3s of these songs, too...
What might you expect from a group featuring members of doomdrone heavyweights Trees and Tecumseh? Something slow and low and lumbering... Probably, us too, but City Of Churches is anything but. Not slow, or low, or lumbering, instead, Memelust is 63 tracks (yep 63 tracks on a 7") of super hyper spastic tech-grind insanity. Some songs are literally one second long, a single harsh guitar-drums-shriek burst, others sprawl to 5 or 6 seconds, a few even longer, those 'extended' tracks jam way too many parts into way too little space, so each blast is a bursting at the seams micro-blowout of chaotic screamo grind fury.
The sound is so short and sharp, the songs so jagged and fragmented, that at times, when there are 5 or 6 2 second long tracks in a row, it almost sounds like someone is just fucking around with the volume knob, turning it down, then up, then down, and up again, creating the briefest of shards from a larger grinding whole. But that is not the case, these are all actual tracks, songs even... some improvised, others composed using an invented system of musical notation! City Of Churhes has been described as 'brutal prog', we might alter it a bit to GRIND-prog, equal parts Harry Pussy, Naked City, Napalm Death, Anal Cunt, Brutal Truth... we could go on, but you get the drift, this is about as UN-easy as un-easy listening gets. A dizzying onslaught of total grinding metallic fuck-you-up.
Packaged in gorgeous hand screened black and white and yellow on heavy cardstock sleeves, with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
We found a stash of these, and realized once again, that we hadn't listed these yet, it came out last year, and is now WELL out of print, so these are the last 8 or 9 copies we'll ever get.
CJA for those who don't already know is Clayton Noone, who also plays in aQ faves Armpit and NZ new wavers the Futurians. On past solo joints, Noone offered up a stumbling lo-fi bedroom folk, rife with all sorts of random noise and random production fuckery, and Vintermanederne follows a similar course, but manages to be even more abstract.
The opener is a 20 minute sprawl, that seems to be mostly field recordings of rainfall, occasionally interrupted by fragments of fractured lo-fi folk, underpinned by distant shimmer, which eventually builds to a roar (maybe that's the wind whipping by the microphone), before slipping back into some sort of murky dronemusic, ending with some folky flutter and still more rainfall. The second track is much more straight ahead, simple acoustic guitar, and sweet crooned vocals, soft downer bedroom folk for sure, really quite pretty. The record finished off with some lo-fi indie jangle, muted electric guitar, a gorgeous vocal mantra, all very reminiscent of Alastair Galbraith, before some percussion enters the mix, and song spreads out growing gradually more and more abstract.
Fans of Galbraith, Milton, Noone, Horton, Carter will definitely dig, and there's enough field recording sound manipulation weirdness to keep it interesting for the free-noise cd-r set.
And again, already OUT OF PRINT, these are the last copies ever.
As we've mentioned in the past, the music of Coh, aka Ivan Pavlov, is quite difficult to describe. Which is probably why he tends to be one of our favorites of the many modern electronic minimalists. He releases records on Raster-Noton, yet his sound manages to both embrace R-N's signature minimal glitch and click, while at the same time subverting it, creating something simultaneously warm and familiar, alien and totally original. Every record is thematically and sonically unique, whether he's collaborating with other musicians, or simply creating a song suite based on some random idea, even a whim, once it works its way through Pavlov's brain into the computer onto disc and into our stereo, the resulting sound is more often then not transcendent, minimal in sound sure, but with maximum impact, his music emotional and personal where others creating similar sounds are cold and clinical.
For Strings, Pavlov has decided to take the sounds of certain stringed instruments, which played some part in his musical upbringing, and in some way to enrich and expand those sounds, to twist and transform, allowing the instruments to be recognizable, and sound like they sound, but to create a whole new setting for those instruments. The focus here is on the 4 instruments that Pavlov played throughout his life: piano, guitar, saz and oud.
The opener is all piano, and sounds the most at home on Raster-Noton, simple melancholy melodies are suspended in smeared shimmers of reverb, the notes stretching, stuttering, blurring into washed out whirs of dreamy chords and long drawn out tones. Sounds bent and stretched, layered and allowed to hover in long expanses of distant high end flutter. Hushed and gorgeous, the digital manipulation deftly applied so as not to distract from the gorgeous hushed drift. Really quite lovely. The piano continues on into the second track, where the sounds are much more manipulated, looped and layered, but this time into a swirl of Melnyk-like flurries, which are augmented by a stuttery techno like pulse, the whole thing skittery and hypnotic, peppered with streaks of buzzy squelch, until the final few minutes when the beat drops out and the various notes are allowed to swirl like sonic snowflakes.
The next few tracks are like a suite, beginning with what is either a saz or a lute (sorry we can't tell for sure), locked into s super rhythmic strum, and processed into a propulsive minimal almost-techno, which is soon wrapped in thick sheets of low end buzz and glitch, almost synthy sounding fuzz, eventually building to an almost metal riff, all blown out and wreathed in crumbling distorted buzz, finally erupting into a confusional tangle of crunchy riff, processed hum and rumble, and Middle Eastern sounding melodies. This leads directly into a lumbering doomy digitized metal workout, the main riff grinding its way through clouds of swirling effects and smears of squelch and buzz, distant soaring sort-of-strings, all very dramatic, until the guitars fade, leaving just a skeletal rhythm, and super dramatic slow burning electronic swell and skitter.
The next track is all Middle Eastern melody, laced with bits of glitch, a muted electronic throb, a bit like a slightly more techno Muslimgauze, but as the track develops, the sound becomes more digital, the original melody chopped up and wrapped around a propulsive beat before fading out into a shimmer of pixilated piano, which gives way to the record closer, beginning again, with moody, simply strummed strings, before being swallowed whole by a massive buzzing electronic drone, gorgeous and layered and so thick, while the strings below continue to unfurl. The track gets all old school techno briefly, skittery and stuttery, clipped notes, until again, near the end, that howling buzz drenched drone returns, this time all chopped up and even more corrosive and blown out.
It sounds all over the map, and it is, but all the tracks, as disparate sounding as they are, slip in and out of each other so perfectly, a definitely sonic suite, with more in common than just the stringed source material. The second disc features a single 17 minute track, that starts out sounding like Machinefabriek, all dark bell like tones and deep blackened shimmers, soft whirs, stretched out almost-melodies, some strings do pop up part way through, sounding again quite Middle Eastern, and again wreathed in a brittle techno stutter, before a long drawn out stretch of near silence, and a brief coda of soft strings over distant drone. So awesome. Maybe the best thing we've heard from Coh, which is saying a whole lot.
And the packaging. Holy moly! Super elaborate, die cut fold out multi panel printed sleeve, the cds held in place by various slots and slits, revealing the curved silver edges of the discs as part of the design!
Seven inches of awesomely depressive distortion drenched new wave downer pop. Imagine a couple of old school synth pop classics, dipped in a vat of white noise, then rolled around in shards of fractured synth buzz and crumbling distortion, a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The surface is a prickly wall of in-the-red lo-fi fuzz, a curtain of soft focus blacknoise, but just below that surface lurks a secret heart of classic eighties new wave, the programmed rhythms, the swirling synths, the deep dramatic vocals, but taken together, this is everything we always wanted new wave to be, harsh and heavy and dark and deliriously catchy, buzzy and brutal and abrasive but still fuzzy and hooky and weirdly melodic. The B side takes CC's noisy new wave even further out, the sound generously doused with heaps of that blissy Tim Hecker-ish blur of which we can never get enough.
If we had to pick a favorite, out of all the post rock / math rock / post metal hordes, a sound we do admittedly dig a whole lot, and one we can't seem to get enough of, Maine's mighty Conifer would be right there at the top. Which is saying something, as up until this brand new full length, we'd only heard from them twice, their debut, and a split with Ocean. As compared to some of the other bands who have released 2, 3, 4 maybe more records in the same amount of time. The first Conifer disc was fresh when it came out, taking classic math rock and beefing it up with huge swells of Neurosis crush, but the thing with Conifer is that they never completely buried that post rock vibe, even at their most metallic, when they were slipping into full on doom territory, they hung on to those loping rhythms, those fractured melodies, and figured out a way to infuse those elements into the roiling heaviness. On the debut we were hearing Slint and Bastro and Seam as much and as often as Isis or Neurosis, probably even more so.
In that way, the sound of Conifer hasn't changed all that much, their sound is still rooted heavily in mathrock, the metal elements more adorning the postrock instead of the other way around. In fact more than ever, they sound like a nineties mathrock band supercharged and transported to the oughts. Even at their heaviest, they don't get HEAVY, as in metal heavy, they get louder, and more dynamic, more intense, the sound gets fuller and more expansive. And this time around the band we can't help but hear all over this record is Polvo. The guitar parts are all woozy and warbly and angular and sort of seasick, the opening track is the perfect example, it almost sounds like some metal band covering the opening track from Polvo's Cor Crane Secret, with its multiple parts, its liquid arrangements, the clean guitars, layered and indeed woozy, the drum part and the arrangements, loping and mathy and not a little bit groovy. We hate to go on and on about mathrock and Polvo, cuz it could all be a big ol' coincidence, but we doubt it. Every song on Crown Fire is mathy and melodic, sometimes locking into repeating figures for just a tad longer than would be comfortable for most bands, opening up and drifting through wide open spaces, all glimmering harmonics and shuffling rhythms, backwards guitars floating in a sea of muted soft drones, tripped out almost Pink Floyd action here and there, complete with space-y synths and fluttery flutes. "Into The Gauntlet" almost sounds like a heavier Codeine, a bit doomy, with a strange lurching arrangement beneath glistening sparkling chimes, and flurries of shuffling snare drum and floor tom. Hard to say what it is exactly,
as it should be with music, but regardless, this is definitely a new high for a genre that becomes more and more overpopulated every day. Whenever we find ourselves listening to one of these new post rock / metal hybrids, as much as we love metal, and we do, we find ourselves longing way more for the intricacies and arrangements and dynamics of the post rock side of the equation, it's too easy to just turn it up and let downtuned guitars chug, and Conifer prove that you can make a super heavy, super catchy, epic record, without even bothering with faux metal chug, which is something else for sure.
If that weren't enough, the record closes with the 13 minute title track, featuring Eugene from Oxbow on guest vocals (normally Conifer are instrumental). The result is pretty excellent, and finds the band, doing their best Oxbow, a sort of abstract bluesy groove, that over the course of the song gets a little bit mathier and more complex, while Eugene sing-talks, howls, mewls, wails, growls, shrieks, moans, The track is super spare until about halfway through where it dials up the metal, offering up being churning chords and pounding drummage to support Eugene's increasingly unhinged and manic vocals, the song building to a furious climax, before drifting out in a haze of whispered mutterings and fractured electronics. It's a pretty awesome track for sure, but for us, it somehow works better when taken almost as a separate record. The first 6 tracks are so perfect together, a brilliant 38 minute post-math-metallic-rock suite, which just so happens to come with an equally brilliant bonus single song, 13 minute ep, featuring Conifer backing up Oxbow's Eugene Robinson.
However you slice it, WAY recommended!
We love the harmonica, especially when it's used in super creative ways, processed perhaps, or spread out over some Morricone-ish post rock, it is definitely evocative, and has an incredibly unique and distinctive sound, which definitely comes to the fore when the harmonica is rescued from the blues rock ghetto it usually finds itself trapped in.
A couple past harmonica favorites: a tape by Usputuspud, a gorgeous dronescape of processed harmonica, and the sweeping deserty post rock of Souvenir's Young America, wherein the harmonica was used to add a layer of mournful mystery, and now we have this cd from NY soundmaker Joshua Convey, who utilizes harmonica, guitar and electronics, to create deep listening drones, and mesmerizing soundscapes of repetitive texture.
The opener is a brief shimmer of high end, the harmonica smeared into soft billowy streaks, the electronics burbling percussively beneath, like a much more tranquil and washed out Sunroof! The second track finds Convey dipping his toes into Fennesz territory, a strange murky rhythm, supports a skittery stuttery high end guitar, that is looped and layered, the notes glimmering and overlapping, creating strange landscapes of pixilated upper register metallic shimmer, harmonics drift dreamily, punctuated by smears of grinding glitchy buzz. The third is a brief clattery soundscape that sounds like a contact mic dropped into a malfunctioning music box, all truncated twang, and strange metallic plunks, fractured melodies, and strange mechanical textures. Which brings us finally to the final track, a nearly 15 minute expanse of overdriven guitars, the notes transformed into buzzing shards, the tones chime like but wreathed in pulsing electronics and grinding distortion, until the distortion dissipates, leaving a slowly unfurling tangle of steel strings and soft focus harmonics, transforming into a low end rumble and drift, until the final couple minutes when the guitars become blown out once again, creating a gorgeous squall of overlapping and almost psychedelic buzz, before slowly sinking into the murk. Quite challenging, pretty far out, but definitely haunting and strangely lovely. Fans of fucked up dronemusick, harmonicas, and gnarled guitars will definitely dig.
Gorgeous diecut packaging with super striking photos by Max Aguilera-Hellweg.
From the folks behind Gog And Servile Sect, both big time faves around here, comes another curious bit of abstract heaviness, the curiously monickered Crowned Heads Of Europe. A CRAZY limited lp, only 100 copies, and for a quick idea of what you're in for, have a look at the legend on the back of the sleeve: "dROne. aRT/dOOM. experiMENTAL. sataniC/celestial." Indeed. We're sold already. Helps too that the packaging is pretty elaborate and trippy too, a thick gold metallic fold over sleeve, printed in black ink, the back side is only a half sleeve, revealing the black vinyl lp within, but also revealing a layer of textured prismatic holographic plastic.
So what exactly are The Crowned Heads Of Europe all about. Is it art doom drone satanic celestial experimental? Yeah, pretty much. Deep drones, recorded so hot and in the red, that the sound crumbles, wrapped in hiss and distortion, wreathed in soft edged feedback, the melodies abstract, a reverb drenched chiming blur, that gives way to a thick caustic downtuned crumbling sonic churn, a black ambience equal parts MZ412 and Wolf Eyes, a subtle industrial vibe, and plenty of shimmer surrounding the heavy grinding core. As the record progresses, no matter how heavy and corrosive the sound, it also manages to be weirdly pretty, a little psychedelic too. The record offers up brief squalls of squiggly distorted high end, only to follow with a lurching slow motion bass dirge, trudging through a creepscape rife with ghostly voices and melodies, processed vocals drown beneath slabs of FX drenched crush, super minimal doomic drones a la Trollmann, blossom into shimmery stretches of soft swirl and dreamy ambience, finishing off with a longform blast of crumbling in-the-red dronedirgedoom, the sounds so blown out, the overtones seem to add a whole layer of accidental melody, and the tones beating against one another create strange stuttering rhythms, everything buried beneath layers of filthy distorted murk and buzz, before slipping into something soft and hauntingly pretty, fading out in a blur of minimal cinematic creep.
LIMITED TO 100!!! Each lp comes with a cd-r containing all the music on the record.
If our instore cd player had a counter we're pretty sure we would have maxed it out by now with endless repeated plays of the debut full length by Crystal Stilts. As much as their debut ep blew us away (check the review elsewhere on the site for much gushing), this record is taking our love for them to even greater heights, so much so that we're becoming pretty darn obsessed! And how could we not, an entire record filled with smokey and catchy dark pop gems. With crooning vocals and rich hooks imbedded into every song, they've managed to create a record that we're always in the mood to hear and don't think we'll ever get sick of. You can tell that these guys probably love '60s pop and girl groups as much as they do post-punk and psychedelic garage sounds, as the songs on Alight Of Night sound like Phil Spector laying his Wall of Sound on a band whose own sound falls somewhere between The Smiths and Joy Division, or if Spacemen 3 did a record full of Crystals covers. In fact this is reminding us a lot of the Jeremy Jay Airwalker ep that we fell in love with right around this time last year.
It's so cool to see AQ customers of all stripes getting swept up in the 'Stilts' sound, unable to resist as we're blasting it in the store, and it's inevitable that they eventually make their way to the 'now playing' holder to find out who is responsible for these sound getting under their skin in such pleasurable ways. Got a good feeling this will be on many of our year end favorite lists...so damn good!
There are plenty of ways to make noise with a guitar. Lord knows the aQ list is proof of that. Whether it's running a guitar through a computer the spews out soft pixelated hum, or leaning a guitar against an amp and letting huge waves of black buzz pour out, or strapping one to a table and attacking it with all manner of toys and implements resulting in plenty of scrape and scrabble, or just running a guitar through a million effects pedals until what comes out the other side is nothing but streaks and blurs and rumbles and roars and barely retains any guitarness at all.
Then there's whatever the hell Alex Nagle does to his guitar that transforms it into Csection. Nagle's name might be familiar to you as the man behind the genius Flittermice Of Eld, a 'group' who took a handful of notes from a Darkthrone song and turned them into a heaving mass of dark drones and fractured buzz. Csection finds Nagle again doing unspeakable and confusional things to his guitar, and again the results are pretty fantastic.
A single 25 minute track, beginning with some weirdly digitized distortion drenched guitar shredding, that sounds a bit like it's been run through a Commodore 64, sheets of high spread out over all manner of strange crumbling low end, detuned riffage, that high end spiraling into squiggly clusters of rapid fire notes one second, sprawling out into a shimmering stretch of soft noise the next. Over the course of the track, the guitar becomes less and less recognizable, at one point shifting into a gloriously burnished field of high end streaks, all assembled into some strange alien melody, while within, various overtones clash and collide, blend and beat feverishly against one another. Imagine Phil Niblock composing for high end shred guitar, or a droned out more static version of one of Mick Barr's maniacal projects (Orthrelm, Octis, Orcrilim).
There are moments here and there, when the high end drops out, and the sound briefly becoming more of a gnarled angular drift, with Marc Ribot like guitars floating in spaced out fields of reverb, atonal, and haltingly melodic, but those interludes are usually quite fleeting, quickly subsumed by still more squalls of Nagle's frazzled and fucked up digital buzz.
This is a super limited cd-r, we've had them a while, so there's a good chance that when we sell out we won't be able to get more. Packaged in cool hand screened red and silver digipacks...
"In a foreign town, in a foreign land, reaping time has come." Thus spake David Tibet on the 2nd album from his heretically-minded project Current 93. Those words became commonplace within the Current 93 pantheon of poetic allusions toward Tibet's horrifying visions of the end of the world. While his tireless research and spiritual development has found Tibet nowadays with a self-constructed theology that includes elements of Christian doctrine, Coptic Gnosticism, Crowley's magick, Buddhist transcendentalism, and far more esoteric subjects, the apocalyptic visions for Tibet in 1985 were centered firmly between dual, conflicting personalities: Christ and Crowley. These two play out in the Current 93 drama built not upon the taut acoustic folk as found on Tibet's more well known constructions, but through a darkly hallucinatory collage of monastic chanting looped against thudding percussive blows that are less structural and more of a protracted stomp of corporeal punishment. Tibet has always relied upon musical accompaniments for his visionary work, and Dogs Blood Rising is no different as Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound deftly shapes the slashing feedback and growling utterances into a hellish orchestration for Tibet's bellowing not only for the Antichrist but also for the weeping Christ who suffers till the end of time in his own theological reasoning. As commonplace as Tibet's voice is on all of the Current 93 albums, he has recruited a number of guest vocalists, including Steve Ignorant of Crass and Diana Rogerson, serving to de-center the album further. The five disquieting collages of Dogs Blood Rising are totally the stuff of nightmares, long standing as one of the pinnacles of industrial culture. Now back in print on vinyl with reproductions of the original fliers from the first edition of the album, but probably not for long!
Nature Unveiled was Current 93's debut, with the subtitle "Antichrist Revealed." As much as C93 has evolved since 1984 when David Tibet began this project, Current 93 emerged fully formed with much of the conceptual groundwork laid out for an entire lifetime of Tibet's research into occult mysticism and heretical Christianity. This album was conceived from beginning to end as a nightmare, with all of the exaggerated sounds collaged in harsh relief against a doomscape of the blackest of sounds. Tibet employed a handful of musicians with ties to Industrial Culture -- Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound (who has gone on to aid and abed Tibet on most of the C93 records), John Murphy (once of SPK and Lustmord's ensemble), and even Annie Anxiety of Crass. But even the most abstracted sounds of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV often related or at least exposed some sort of relationship to technology, whilst Current 93 was all about creating a bleak soundtrack collaged from monastic chants, monstrous growls, and bellowing clusters of low end rumble, all coated with brimstone, sulfur, and ash. Throughout the album, David Tibet moans and spits repetitive chants that "Maldoror is dead," with no chance for hope and no escape. Perhaps even more so today with so many blackened ambient projects and feral noise technicians about, Nature Unveiled is an ever impressive document and a chilling visionary masterpiece.
United Jnana has reissued Nature Unveiled in one of its earliest forms, complete with the original liner notes, a small poster, and the bonus split 7" between Current 93 and Nurse With Wound. This probably won't be around for very long, so don't dally on this one!
Dame Satan's pace is a slow lysergic creep. You might've caught a glimpse of it on their split 7" record (with Two Sheds) we carried late last year. This Bay Area band is back with their second full length. Unlike many other artists of the seemingly similar southern psych-tinged folk ilk, Dame Satan's sound, though definitely dark and dirgey, is remarkably clean and free of swampy sludge. Beaches & Bridges starts out with the album's most heady gloom number "Downstream" and gets progressively more clear-eyed and straightforward. It's almost like the band was sobering up with each subsequent song... or gently wresting itself from the clutches of a fever dream.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live, Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shone on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live, Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shone on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the newly launched Plustapes cassette label comes THREE tapes from this Indonesian sixties all girl garage group. Do you really need to know any thing more? Indonesian. Sixties. All girl. Garage? We didn't think so, but just for the heck of it...
We were gonna write separate reviews for each of these, but they're so cheap, and so good, and odds are if you want one, you're going to want them all. So far pretty much everyone who has heard these has gone totally nuts for these kick ass garage rock girls.
Dara Puspita (Flower Girls in English) were Indonesia's most successful girl group in the sixties, and one of the few -actual- bands, who played their own instruments as opposed to just singing with all male backing bands. Even though rock and roll was banned at the time, with some bands being jailed for performing rock music live, Dara Puspita took their influence from that banned rock music, borrowing liberally from the Rolling Stones, The Beatles (whose songs they were warned by the authority to not perform) and the like, but giving it their own twist.
Performing a mix of covers and originals, these ladies were legendary for their wild live shows, but they really shone on record, with a totally distinctive and keen pop sensibility, gorgeous lilting vocals, an awesome rhythm section and some really excellent guitar playing. Dara Puspita weren't avant garde or super far out, not really heavy or psychedelic, instead they were just a kick ass pop group, an awesome garagey rock and roll band, catchy and fun, super energetic and with a distinctly unique vibe that makes this sound so special. Not to mention all the fuzzy record crackle, which only adds to the appeal! For us at least...
Each tape is strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, the tapes are the same color as the covers, each of which sports original artwork from Plastic Crimewave!!
ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
None more self-referential. (Not even Manowar.) This album actually has the words "Dark" and "Throne" in the title. Dark Thrones & Black Flags, could they make it any more plain? Implying the grimnity of Darkthrone's traditional necro Nordic black metal with a severe dose of '80s punk (and metal) infesting the proceedings, which is basically the Darkthrone formula of recent years. If you liked, say, last year's Darkthrone album, F.O.A.D., you'll like this (and if you didn't, you won't!). While we can't expect 'em to replicate old classics like A Blaze In The Northern Sky or Transylvanian Hunger, we do know they can make F.O.A.D. Part II! Heck, it even looks almost identical. Similar cover art, same rounded-corner jewel case. And as with F.O.A.D., the text in the cd booklet delves into fannish detail, including another page of interestin' record-buying recommendations from drummer Fenriz, and individual liner notes for each song on this disc, explaining their inspirations. Which often have to do with obscure '80s bands only collectors know about. Or, have to do with camping trips! These guys love the great outdoors, and thus the cd booklet is illustrated with many photos of Norwegian forests and lakes taken by these "Hiking Metal Punks" (yes, that's a song title here!). You gotta love it. So many black metal bands claim to be "of the forest", but these guys prove they are. They also prove, again, to have a sense of humor... yet remains totally cvlt 'cause heck they're Darkthrone!
Musically, this album rocks, it's a punked-up slab of riffy, raw black metal. Utterly old school - even though it's Darkthrone's new school sound (for the actual ye olde Darkthrone stuff, we still have a few copies of their deluxe demos collection The Frostland Tapes reviewed 2 lists back). There's anthems like "Hiking Metal Punks" and icy epicks like "Norway In September", but whatever the style, headbangingness is job number one. The production is typical Darkthrone filth, the vocals (from both Fenriz and stringed-instrument wielder Nocturno Culto) range from the usual rasping croaks to higher pitched yelps and even some weird, clean vocals (like the chorus of the opening track, "They Winds They Called The Dungeon Shaker" - that's an awesome title by the way, whatever it means). Fenriz does a Tom G. Warrior (Celtic Frost) sometimes, and even gets kinda witchy, sounding just a bit like ol' King Diamond on "Hanging Out In Haiger". On the drums, he bashes away enthusiastically as always. Guitarwise, Nocturno keeps it grim (of course) but throws in the occasional surprisingly widdily solo.
So, basically, the cold, old ones are back with another album of all about their favorite stuff: metal, camping, Darkthrone. It mixes their punk side (which they took to the furthest extreme a couple albums back on The Cult Is Alive) with hoary heavy metal homage, again a la F.O.A.D. And there's definitely a bunch of tracks on here that give that album's biggest hit, the catchy "Canadian Metal", a run for its money! We like.
Hopefully you already know Darsombra, seeing as we made their last Public Guilt release, Eternal Jewel, a Record Of The Week not too many moons ago. Atmospheric dark doom-drone experimentation not unlike a more sinister Expo '70 or a proggier Nadja. If you don't know 'em, get this and you'll get to know at least one of their songs really really well, in a way.
Track one here, "Nymphaea", is a head-nodding exercise in bass heavy, slow-building psychedelic instrumental throb. It starts out with plenty of distortion, and only gets heavier and more blown-out as it plods forth, adding a snakily melodic guitar line to further entrance the listener. It originally appeared as Darsombra's contribution to the "untitled" 3cd comp PG help put out last year, and now it has spawned this collection of remixes, a dozen of them, tracks 2-13!
It's pretty fascinating to hear this single song morph from track to track, 'cause they're all very different, the each remixer definitely making it their own, from blissed out vocal pop (Max Bondi & Bleeding Heart Narrative's "Hyena Amp mix") to big-beat crash-boom electro (Pulsoc's "True Love Never Dies remix") to creepy drone-noise ambience (Guilty Connector's "Dotonburi Neonnights") and that's just the first three mixes on here! Elsewhere, Ala Muerte adds eerie female voice doing Latin chant, Destructo Swarmbots strip the track down to a minimal low-end hum, The Heirs Of Rockefeller crank up the fuzz, focussing on the song's incessant hypnotic plod... all these and the rest of the remixers generally fucking with this track in many compelling and often unexpected ways. Darsombra have every reason to proudly approve what's been done with, or done to, their "Nymphaea" here. Remixers not already mentioned above also include Perfekt Teeth, Magicicada, Strotter Inst., Decimation Blvd. & Darla Hood, Blood Fountains, and le knell.
LIMITED EDITION! 250 COPIES ONLY! We only got 20! On a black cd-r in a slim, screen printed sleeve with vellum obi.
Not sure how many folks remember the late great Stretchheads, a Scottish quartet who kicked up a serious din back in the early nineties, fast heavy and so fucked up, culminating in the genus Pish In Your Sleazebag album, a record of total percussive grinding chopped up, dubbed out heavy heavy weirdness. Not sure what those guys have been doing for the last couple decades, but at least a few of them have resurfaced in De Salvo, whose first disc Mood Poisoner has just come out on Mogwai's Rock Action label. But don't let the Mogwai connection mislead you, this is not any sort of brooding post rock shoe gazey shit, this is super abrasive, ultra technical, harsh and brutal, grinding, chugging metallic post punk hardcore heaviness. Imagine Black Flag, Converge, Coalesce, Butthole Surfers and of course the aforementioned Stretchheads, all pulled apart and tangled up into a whole new whirling dervish of hardcore metallic fury.
But it's not just heavy for heavy's sake, there are melodies all over the place, the arrangements are tight, and super complex. Some tracks slip into slithery almost stoner rock, others into lurching doom, but for the most part the sound here is jagged and relentless, stuttery start stop riffage, freaked out drumming, the vocals a harsh high yelp slipping from Jesus Lizard howl to Cradle Of Filth shriek, more often some impossible mix of the two, and yeah, cool guitar harmonics lacing the churning chug, the drums and bass locked tight into super staccato bursts, flurries of double kick, brief stretches of woozy prettiness, but always quickly swallowed up by a wall of crumbling corrosive blown out rrroooaaar. There are hooks, everywhere, the more you listen the deeper they sink, and the more those wounds bleed and fester. The opener is like a super charged tech metal Halo Of Flies, or like Converge's Jane Doe and Brutal Truth's Need To Control melted down and covered by the Refused. Just listen to the sound samples. Heavy record of the year, easy. And another fearsome export from Scotland (see Black Sun on the last list!), that has us dying to hear more.
So, this is the quote-unquote rockin' Dead C album? So we were told, that was the supposed spin on this one, the twenty-somethingth album from these veteran NZ "free-rock" heroes. But maybe we got that wrong, 'cause aren't they all equally (free-) rockin'? Probably what was meant was that this was more "song-y", in comparison to their previous album, last year's Future Artists, 'cause there's more singing... but otherwise, not such a huge departure. And their album before that, 2003's The Damned, was WAY rock on tracks like "Truth". It's always kinda funny getting into discussions about just how rock or noise or whatever the Dead C are, anyway, since the thing about them is that they're playing Dead C music exclusively, forging into otherwise uncharted, unnamed sonic territory with each release even after 20 years in the "biz", leaving all other underground noise/drone/rock/experimental/floorcore acts to play catch-up. As we said in our review of Future Artists, the Dead C have an amazing ability to take "unmusical sounds, caustic, abrasive, minimal and harsh, and weave them into something beautiful." That they surely do here. If you've never heard 'em before, this could be a fairly accessible starting point.
Certainly, you can't argue that lead off track "Mansions" (the 1st of 4 songs on this 45 minute disc) does not, underneath its avant-garde, noisily shambolic exterior, have a rock n' roll heart that's a-beatin'. As well, there's melody amidst the murk, with mumbly, half-whispered vocals rising to the fore. But really it's more moanin' than it's rockin', the whole album moaning and droning, full of shrill feedback textures and an eventually hypnotic sheen of percussive clangor (on the lengthy track 2 "Stations", and track 3 "Plains" especially). They stir up quite a dense din on the latter, leaving more space on album closer "Waves" for Michael Morely's plaintive vocals to wend thro' the distortion, showing the kinder, gentler side of the Dead C... Such a fine blend of immediate emotional impact and unsettling, unfamiliar audio explorations. As "song-y" as we say this is, who else writes songs that at each and every moment seem maybe like they are finishing, and/or beginning anew? Standard song structures and instrumental roles are abandoned or deprioritized in favor of an alien Dead C agenda of experimental, improvised (yet to their own logic disciplined) expressiveness that really does justify the "free" in the free-rock tag. As essential as ever. (And if you can, don't miss 'em on their first US tour in ages - they played SF last night and it was great.)
It's a bit hard to believe that it's been just over 20 years since New Zealand's Dead C first unleashed their unique brand of 'noise rock' on our unsuspecting ears, but 'tis true, and while the band have gone through many sonic permutations over their two decades, their sound somehow has always remained distinctly their own. There have been long stretches of inactivity too, with the various members pursuing their own projects, Gate, A Handful Of Dust, etc. but they always seemed to find their way back. A new record, and a recent US tour, has upped the band's profile of late, but what better time to look back, at their first two proper full lengths, available on vinyl in the US for the first time, with all sorts of extras.
While the Dead C are generally considered to be a 'noise rock band', to many THEE 'noise rock' band, it's easy to forget that at their heart, they are a pop band. With songs, and verses and choruses and crooned vocals, and strummed acoustic guitars, and all of that stuff. Never was that more apparent than on their first two records, Eusa Kills and Dr 503, which found the band sort of straddling two worlds of sound, the prevailing 'New Zealand' sound, a sort of lo-fi bedroom pop, and their own peculiar trajectory, a loose ramshackle assemblage of guitarnoise, fractured FX, noisy ambience, and a general clang and clatter. A pretty heady mix for sure, which probably had more conservative listeners reeling, but had the rest of us clamoring for more.
Dr 503, was their first proper full length (3rd actual, depending on who's keeping track), and opens up with what many consider the penultimate Dead C track "Max Harris", and if a single song could indeed be a microcosm for the Dead C sound, it's probably "Max Harris". Woozy rhythms, stumbling off kilter rhythms, the middle part sounds like a lo-fi This Heat crossed with Geronimo, all abstract distorted crunch, and muted squalls of tribal drumming, streaks of clipped effects, murky processed vocals, slivers of feedback, even a mere seconds-long acoustic guitar outro. The record veers and careens all over the place, spoken word over splattery percussion and clipped minimal strum, thick doomy dirges of heavily reverbed guitar, gloomy Joy Division basslines, and hushed muttered vocals, skipping phonographs draped over stripped down slowcore, Sebadoh style lo-fi bedroom folk, primitive tape experiments, pounding almost garage-y jams that transform into spare Jandekian sprawls, but all held together by some nearly impossible to define Dead C aesthetic.
The record finishes off with a devastating one-two punch, the 9 minute Dead C classic sort-of-ballad "Polio", which begins all folky and strummy, gradually the guitars warp and warble, the drums stumble in, and the song just sort of drifts and skitters, the guitars weirdly effected, the vocals heartfelt and buried way down in the mix, the drums almost Can-like in their motorik simplicity, there are some moments of chaos, but for the most part "Polio" is dark and dreamy and murky and softly buzzy, a little jangly, and sort of pretty. And then it's on to the 13+ minute "Max Harris 2" which does seem to contain some sonic elements of the original, but the sound here is repetitive and clangorous, the guitars buzz and whir, the riffs angular and jagged, the sound washed out and lo-fi, the vocals another buried mumble, until the song shifts gear part way through, and it's just a single guitar, plucking out that same main riff, accompanied by super spare percussion, and wreathed in tape hiss, after a sudden burst of crash and crunch, the track jams on and on and on, becoming slowly unhinged, the sounds slowly detuning, everything getting more and more warped and warbly before stuttering to a halt.
This reissue tacks on the Sun Stabbed ep (originally released as a 7"), from right around the same time, which is pretty impossible to find at all, on vinyl or otherwise. Offering up more of the same, a handful of gorgeous and confusional tracks offering up still more of the Dead C's unique clash of classic New Zealand songsmithery and noise drenched, abstract, sonic deconstruction.
Absolutely and utterly essential listening. Gorgeously repackaged in a super heavy gatefold sleeve, reproducing much of the original art, and pressed on super thick vinyl. And as you might have guessed, VERY VERY LIMITED!
It's a bit hard to believe that it's been just over 20 years since New Zealand's Dead C first unleashed their unique brand of 'noise rock' on our unsuspecting ears, but 'tis true, and while the band have gone through many sonic permutations over their two decades, their sound somehow has always remained distinctly their own. There have been long stretches of inactivity too, with the various members pursuing their own projects, Gate, A Handful Of Dust, etc. but they always seemed to find their way back. A new record, and a recent US tour, has upped the band's profile of late, but what better time to look back, at their first two proper full lengths, available on vinyl in the US for the first time, with all sorts of extras.
While the Dead C are generally considered to be a 'noise rock band', to many THEE 'noise rock' band, it's easy to forget that at their heart, they are a pop band. With songs, and verses and choruses and crooned vocals, and strummed acoustic guitars, and all of that stuff. Never was that more apparent than on their first two records, Eusa Kills and Dr 503, which found the band sort of straddling two worlds of sound, the prevailing 'New Zealand' sound, a sort of lo-fi bedroom pop, and their own peculiar trajectory, a loose ramshackle assemblage of guitarnoise, fractured FX, noisy ambience, and a general clang and clatter. A pretty heady mix for sure, which probably had more conservative listeners reeling, but had the rest of us clamoring for more.
Eusa Kills originally came out in 1989, and makes it the Dead C's fourth proper full length (maybe 6th, hard to tell with the band's convoluted discography) and finds the band in full on song mode, with a somewhat improved production, which definitely suits them. Years later, the band would release a single called The Dead C. Vs. Sebadoh, the title a joke obviously, but even 5 years early, when Eusa Kills came out, the band did in fact sound quite a bit like Sebadoh at moments, dark and brooding, sort of rocking, melodic but a bit off kilter, especially on record opener "Scarey Nest", which is a dead ringer for some lost Sebadoh B-side, with a killer main hook, simple solid drumming, wistful sort of sad boy vocals, the guitars alternatingly jangly and corrosive. After a 43 second Butthole Surfers style abstract drum / guitar crunch jam with distorted vocals and a lumbering tempo, the band slip right back into more dark jangle, a minor key guitar unfurling, a shuffling military snare, more weary crooned vocals, it is easy to see why lots of folks refer to Eusa Kills as the Dead C's 'songs' record. Most of the tracks are 2 or 3 minutes, poppy and jangly, the whole record clocking in at a lean 36 minutes, the exceptions being the 6 minute "Phantom Power" which begins as an extended abstract jam, all simple solid drumming and jagged guitar, but then the vocals drift in all ghostlike and the sound is transformed into something much poppier, and the 7 minute "Maggot", which is probably the heaviest of the bunch, with its grinding guitars, it's lurching drum part, and the super distorted Buttholes style processed vox, but even then, there's a definite pop sensibility at work, although a bit obscured. The rest of the shorter tracks tend toward the pop-ish, whether it be pounding noise drenched indie rock, moaning slow motion Jandek style sprawl or the gorgeously languid hushed folky jangle that finishes off the disc.
Also included is the Helen Said This 12" originally released around the same time. Not quite as songy as Eusa Kills, but enough that the two fit together perfectly, an extension of Eusa's twisted jangle, muddled pop smithery, warm wooziness, and occasional cracked heaviness.
Totally recommended, and essential for all fans of fucked up music. And heck, even fans of not-so-fucked up music. This just might be the Dead C record you can handle. Gorgeously repackaged in a super heavy gatefold sleeve, reproducing much of the original art, and pressed on super thick vinyl. And as you might have guessed, VERY VERY LIMITED!
If you have a penchant for arty pop that's filled with theatrical flourishes and hand-wringing croon-swoon emoting a la Antony & The Johnsons, Scott Walker, Xiu Xiu and Frog Eyes, then you should definitely chance a visit from Dead Science's latest affair Villainaire. Mind you, it is considerably more aggressive than any of those artists' music. It's a stormy shroud of a listen not for the faint of heart. Unquestionably it's the band's most composed and fully realized album to date. Menacingly jagged post-punk and forebodingly atmospheric post-rock thunderheads run headlong into a delirious whirlwind of orchestral string arrangements and free-jazz-ish skronk. Yes, you might think it to be a seemingly incongruous meeting of styles, but Dead Science's pervading shadowy dramatics brings them all together. With special guests Craig Wredren of Shudder To Think and Katrina Ford of Celebration.
Due to a little thing called the inter-webs (we've never heard of it), the tracks for Deerhunter's long-awaited follow-up to last years much loved Cryptograms were prematurely leaked. So to give us cd buyers more bang for their buck, they recorded an EXTRA full length, called Weird Era Continued, and released the two discs together for a single disc price. Very nice of them! This time around they fused their pop sensibilities and their more experimental hazy dronescape leanings together into songs that recall the best of classic 4AD shimmer with sixties wall of sound pop. There isn't too much difference between the two records, but the song-writing is strong enough and the production nuanced enough to keep our attention through both. While we might have liked some more spacier instrumental moments like the ones found on Cryptograms, it seems Bradford Cox has begun to channel his more experimental side into his other project, Atlas Sound, where it is actually better suited. Still this is pretty damn solid!
"No, Def Leppard don't suck. Their first few albums are pretty great." So we said in a postscript to our review of Savage's Loose 'N Lethal last time. Well let's put our money where our mouth is, and do what we do here, which is write about music we like, dammit. So, here's Def Leppard's 1980 debut, On Through The Night. Despite the most ridiculous "space truckin'" cover art, and Def Leppard's eventual commercial hair metal success-to-excess trajectory, this is a kick ass album. A bona fide NWOBHM classic. Not over produced and over cheesed like some of their later million sellers. Though definitely pro and polished, heavier than you'd expect, and full on rockin', right out of the gate with the anthemic call to arms "Rock Brigade". Next up is the prescient "Hello America", Def Leppard dreaming big, some keyboard synths creeping in... but they're just an embellishment on that one song alone, as there's plenty of guitar riffage to go around on this disc! Lotsa snakey licks, some slide on the big beat of "It Don't Matter". Yeah, on and on through the night you'll hear Def Lep's six stringers Steve Clark (R.I.P.) and Pete Willis duking it out over Rick Savage's bass lines and the solid (two-armed, at the time) drumming of Rick Allen. While wailing over it all are the distinctive, nasally pipes of Joe Elliott (hmm, he's credited here with "throat" just like HR in the Bad Brains).
As the NWOBHM did, Def Leppard take the '70s sounds of British arena rockers like Led Zep and UFO and inject some new vitality and purpose. Youthful energy and all that. And they had learned their lessons well. (It took a few albums into the '80s before they fully fumbled the torch they'd been passed.) There's some mellower, melancholic moments (parts of "Sorrow Is A Woman", of course, ferinstance) but nothing like a ballad, this is mostly a headbanging good time with flashes of royal majesty.
A few further comments on this record: the Leps continue to prophesize their own impending fame with the cheering crowd mixed in on the urgent "Rocks Off". And "Answer To The Master" is just a classic heavy metal song title ain't it? As is (another prophecy?) "Wasted"...
Grizzly Bear fans will immediately recognize the vocal stylings and elegant moodiness of Daniel Rossen who is one half of Department Of Eagles and who has been a major presence in Grizzly Bear for the last several years, joining the band in 2004 and helping make Yellow House their best record yet. Along with his Department Of Eagles bandmate Fred Nicolaus, the duo have released several records that somehow slipped between the cracks but luckily with the widespread popularity of Grizzly Bear and their recent signing to 4AD this will be their most widely heard releases yet. And it's a good thing too, because this is such a moving record. With arrangements that sound like a more somber adaptation of Van Dyke Parks signature style or what it might sound like if Sufjan Stevens covered the more bittersweet side of Vetiver or Wings. And with most of his Grizzly Bear bandmates on board, there's no denying that In Ear Park sounds a lot like a great Grizzly Bear record, if not a bit more focused and even more emotionally impacting. Most of these songs were written after Rossen's father passed away, and there is such an honest reflection and mournful tone to these songs. So nice.
Profound Lore brings us this cd ep (five songs, nigh on 28 minutes) from The Devil's Blood, a female-fronted Dutch psychedelic hard rock act from Holland, who possess (or are possessed by?) a Satanic/occultic lyrical bent. Claiming inspiration from vintage sixties and seventies proto-metal and psych, The Devil's Blood have quite a lot in common with another "Blood" band with a witchy female vocalist reviewed here just last list, Blood Ceremony. We bet the two would get on famously. They sound different enough though, TDB not being so overtly retro-doom-metal, and more of a rockin' deal, no flutes or nothin'. Some '70s progginess comes in from the keyboards, infusing these tracks with cinematic bombast, but while this doesn't quite sound modern, it's not like they're trying to recreate the music of an earlier era, exactly, either. Although, like Witchcraft, they're big Roky Erickson fans, and cover the Rok's "White Faces" here.
Vocally, Jex Thoth haters might again have issues, but perhaps not. We're reminded a bit of Heart (who kicked ass upon occasion, don't you forget it, or let Sarah Palin ruin "Barracuda" for you). How else to describe this? Maybe imagine if Shocking Blue sang about Satan, and of course were quite a bit heavier too...
Sorta a surprise from Profound Lore, and a pleasant one. I guess not so strange since it kinda fits in with their recent Hammers Of Misfortune opus, the female vocals and keyboards and melodic content and all. Oh, and if you care, which we think you should, they get the thumbs up from Fenriz of Darkthrone, who included 'em on his list of record recommendations in the liner notes to Dark Thrones and Black Flags, reviewed here last list.
Another limited Awesome Vistas release this week along with The Jackie-O Motherfucker lp (reviewed elsewhere on this list) is this debut full length from the strangely monikered Dragging an Ox Through Water. Dragging An Ox Through Water is the solo project of Portland multi-instrumentalist Brian Mumford who conjures up a warped Americana of old-timey sounding ballads filtered through damaged electronics, field recordings and off-kilter use of horns, guitars, banjos and kazoos. Imagine the early pop-country side of Arthur Russell covering Neutral Milk Hotel's In an Aeroplane Over the Sea with just a broken guitar, a dented tuba, a child's steel drum and a busted radio shack electronics kit, and you come close to the feel of this oddly beautiful record. Oh yeah, it's limited!!!! Cool hand screened covers too!
Didn't last too long on Matador, but never fear, these headbanging heshers and their retroish riffage are soldiering on now for much more metal label The End. The four songs on this new ep are all fairly fast and furious, Early Man incorporating even more of a thrash aspect into their sound, which is no surprise since a) they already sounded a lot like early Metallica and b) thrash is back...
Their singer still has his Ozzyish moments (especially on the final cut "Suck Me Dry") but it's Metallica that's most in evidence in their music. We're also reminded of Defleshed (if they had guitar leads) and, especially with regard to the high pitched screams Early Man's singer pulls off on the title track, another band of "indie-metallers", Deadchild.
So, grab this and hear Early Man kill 'em all on the best ep we've heard lately to so convincingly warn of the danger of shark attack!!
Neo-thrash attack! Two of our faves among new breed of, uh, hipster-approved metal acts, Early Man (with a cut called "Tormentor Of The Unseen") and Toronto's even heavier Rammer (doing two tracks, "Street Trash" and "A New Imperium"). Vicious stuff, seven thrashing inches to spin again and again as you pound cans of PBR and hook the devil horn hand gesture skywards. Seriously.
On see-thru orange vinyl. Limited to 1000 copies.
Ever been to an Earthless show? If yes, then you probably are already in line to purchase this. You know that San Diego's Earthless are a live band first and foremost, their heavy, psychedelic stoner rock instrumentals best experienced at appropriate (loud) volume as they unfurl and unfold, lead guitarist Isaiah Mitchell's epic beyond-blues soloing seemingly never-ending, lifting the proceedings far, far out into space. He's not a guitar hero, but a guitar demi-god!
This double disc document captures the trio blowing minds at last year's Roadburn Festival over in Holland (good place for 'em). Disc one features a massive piece (or two?) entitled "Blue/From The Ages", which is as far as we can tell a massive improv jam exclusive to this recording, while disc two consists of versions of "Godspeed" and "Sonic Prayer" from their last album Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky... again, though, the disc is one long track, the two songs flowing together...
The sound is excellent, the band is on fire, it's prime Earthless action all right, wailin' away awesomely and endlessly. The energy level somehow builds and builds, this band intense and heavy and locked in tight, all night it would seem. Must have been a great show, well we KNOW it was a great show, these discs are the proof. Any Earthless fan should get this, likewise if you're into, say, Acid Mothers Temple, get this and you just may have new favorite band.
(And how come they weren't one of the bands on those 7" Hawkwind tributes we're also listing this week? That would have been good!)
Here's El Cuy, the other cool Peruvian "stoner rock" band we promised to review a few weeks back when we listed the Cosmos Kaos Destruccion disc by their countymen and labelmates La Ira De Dios. Like them, power trio El Cuy kick out some seriously FUZZED rock action! They've a bit less Hawkwindy though, more garage rawk, straight up punkish without all the extra psychedelic FX but lots of gritty guitar. Imagine a less poppy, much heavier version of the Hives. Or the Lyres. It's high energy garagey rock, too frenzied really to be your usual stoner rock. Heavy, freaky, catchy - heck downright melodic when they want, as on the surfy "El Vertigo". But usually it's all about badass riff wrangling as these ten songs speed by in a little over 35 minutes total. Muy excellente!
The booklet with this cd includes the lyrics in Spanish plus English translations.
We were given a heads up about El Guincho months ago by a customer who was in the store while we were playing Panda Bear. He asked us if we knew El Guincho, when we said no, he told how we had to hear it and it would blow us away and how he was like the Spanish version of Panda Bear. So now several months later El Guincho is finally seeing his record released in North America on XL, and we have to say once again, that sometimes our customers are often way more hip and in the know then we are, because this is proving to be a total store favorite! There is a huge Panda Bear influence at play but with a much more full on party sensation. And a distinct lo-fi Manu Chao vibe as well. This isn't headphone music, this is a record meant to come blasting out of speakers. We hear such a wide range of influences, especially the surging sonic sensations heard in Congotronics, all riled up for full pleasure.
If Panda Bear ever got to be captain of a party cruise we're pretty sure this is what it would sound like to be on that ship. Sign us up!
The return of Portland one man black metal horde Eldrig. We have been totally obsessed with the two previous records, Kali and Everlasting War Divinity, both sounding like an impossible mix of Godspeed and Darkspace, furious and relentless and blackened, sweeping, epic and emotional, looong tracks, rife with droning buzz guitars, furious drumming, surprising melodies, all wrapped around some super abstract and far out mythologies, but here, those same strange obsessions are tangled up with a totally new, and seriously demented and unlikely sound.
As we mentioned in previous Eldrig reviews, like much black metal, there seems to be in Eldrig, some somewhat unpleasant political leanings, flirtations with Aryanism, Nietzschism, that sort of thing, which is only represented in the lyrics and the artwork as the music is all (or almost all) instrumental. But the more we hear, and the more we dig into the strange liner notes, the less this seems like some sort of NSBM, and the more it appears to be an all consuming and twisted obsession with all manner of problematic and crackpot theologies, far out mythologies, arcane symbolism, Eldrig revel in exploring the hidden meanings of symbols, both classic and traditional, forbidden and shocking, the music, in some strange way expressing the power and energy behind and within these symbols, the words wrapped around those symbols, and the people who lived and died over ideas and beliefs and yes, symbols. The booklet is gorgeous this time, thick marbled matte black pages, with text and symbols in super reflective ink, each song represented by a symbol, and some notes on the symbol and the music from Eldrig himself, there's a pentagram (of course), the cosmic egg, the AUM, the black sun, and of course the sunwheel (aka the swastika). The text accompanying the sunwheel speaks merely of the 'golden sun' and its abstract symbolic significance. But fair warning, folks sensitive to this stuff should steer clear, it's subtle but it's definitely there (for instance, Eldrig are still obsessed with Savitri Devi, a crackpot who was all about combining Nazism and Hinduism), although the interest does seem more abstract and intellectual than political or social.
But all of that hardly prepares you for the sonic shift Eldrig have undergone since the last album. Where was once, massive stretches of near static buzz and blast, sweeping epic blackened heaviness, there is now, what can only be described as, well, power metal. Black power metal (not BLACK POWER metal, if only!), Symphonic and super melodic and seriously over the top. It's barely even black metal anymore, lots of guitar leads, and squiggly melodies, and lush keyboards, there are vocals this time around, and they are blackened throat shredding vokills, the drumming is insane, the guitar is buzzy and insectoid, but the arrangements are ridiculous, totally epic and major key, the melodies sound sped up, keyboards everywhere. It's like Hammerfall with a black metal makeover. Some of the tracks do dip into doomy black grimness, the guitars thick and grinding, the vocals raspy and hateful, ploddingly along, but without fail, in will swoop some totally nuts guitar freakout, or an avalanche of majestic keyboards, sometimes the tracks slip into full on melodic hard rock, bordering on power ballad, there are even stretches of pretty clean guitar laid over burbling brooks and chirping birds, but those tracks always seem to return to some sort of furious power metal buzz. It sounds ridiculous, and it is, sort of, but it's also completely unhinged and fucked up and GENIUS. Not sure what he was thinking, but with Mysterion, Eldrig has crafted some totally outsider black metal, and be sure, this will definitely not appeal to the the troo and the grim, instead this is for fans of the fucked, the damaged, the so bizarre it blows your mind. And Mysterion most definitely blows our mind. Fucked up blackened power metal record of the year? As if there could possibly be any other contenders...
Finally available on vinyl!!
We've long been fans of Japanese rockers Envy, since they were furious hardcore thrashers, but over the last few records, they have been going through a pretty serious transformation, trading in much of their fury and aggression for deep introspection, their punk rock for post rock, and it definitely suits them. This latest ep, a split with the mighty Jesu, finds the band taking their sound even farther out, almost as if the songs were written specifically for Jesu. The first track is the perfect example, we actually weren't paying attention, and almost assumed it was in fact a Jesu track, the spoken Japanese vocals being the only giveaway. Beginning as a slow drift, the drums programmed, a nervous electronic skitter, before the band explode into some sort of droneblissdirge, distorted guitars, a thick wall of sound, laced with dreamy melancholy strings, Jesu fans who have been hankering for something else similar to get into might have just found their match!
The second song starts out all moody and meandering and post rocky, spidery guitar melodies, simple jangle, a bit maudlin and melancholy, the vocals breathless and buried, all very Slinty, a little Mogwai, well, actually a lot of Mogwai, some Explosions In The Sky, until with about a minute left the band explode in a frenzy of heaviness, a nearly hardcore blow out, but strangely, still cozied up to the drifty dreaminess of the first half of the song, like someone snuck in and added strings to some Converge jam, the results are truly unique and pretty kick ass.
The third song is almost the biggest surprise of the bunch, a big crunchy guitar super catchy indie rock jam. The only thing keeping it from being all over the credits of every teen movie is the growling monstrous barking vocals, but beyond that, the song is glistening and soaring, hooky with a total old school pop punk chorus, albeit dowsed in crunch distorted guitars. A bit schizophrenic perhaps, but has us dying to hear the next Envy full length. Lookout Explosions, these guys are definitely about to steal your post rock thunder, and in the process get it all tangled up with some indie rock and dronemetal to boot!
Jesu fans are a pretty loyal bunch, so most of you don't even need to know what this sounds like, and probably could care less about the band sharing this split, but what the heck, for those of you who are interested or are new to the slowly expanding Jesu universe, these two tracks, are a bit of a departure, but enough like 'classic' Jesu to hit the spot. The first track begins with a skittery lo-fi breakbeat, super old school, takes a few minutes but eventually crumbling distorted guitars tumble into the picture, and soaring fuzzy dirgepop melodies, the vocals breathy and eighties, a lot New Order, and barring the super obtuse song structure, this first track wouldn't sound at all out of place on the most recent M83 record. Very new wave-y, dreamy and melancholy, but with some definitely strange sonic shit going on, soaring high end streaks, the rhythms getting all chopped up and stuttery, some pulsing buzzing synths. It's not until halfway through that the guitars kick in, and they don't soar majestically, instead they're sort of simple and repetitive, and they're soon pushed to the background by the various other sounds, layer after layer of warm fuzzy swirls, until the end, when the drums drop out and the guitar unfurls lazily in a sea of static and crumbling sonic grit, a warm sun baked lo-fi fade out. Cool stuff. Definitely not the same old Jesu which is precisely what keeps it interesting, and makes every record a bit of a surprise.
The second track, and the record closer, begins with deep synthy bass, and glistening sonic twinkles, another slowed down stripped down breakbeat, skittering along beneath drone-y synthesizers, and softly effected vocals, once again channeling classic eighties dream pop. Until once again the track explodes into a murky blow out, the drums now a furious blast, the guitars woozy and super distorted, almost like Jesu speed metal, but never losing it's prismatic dreamlike bliss.
Great stuff from both bands. And while we're dying for more Envy, the more Jesu's sound slips ever closer to the eighties, the more we want the next split to be with sonic brethren M83. Or heck, at the very least Jesu should cover some New Order or Smiths...
Very much indebted to irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound, Esperik Glare offer two meticulously crafted collages of overlapping vibration, clattering objects, and unsettling tones, all of which allude to the swarming insects of the title. There's certainly a blackened, post-Industrial sensibility in these sounds which could contend with any of the Russian dark-ambient projects that occasionally pop up as a Drone Records single. Making the package complete is the b-side which features Monte Cazazza, who reads from an Edgar Allan Poe poem behind seasick bells and darkened synthetic tones.
Woah. This is a weird one.�A home-recorded psychedelic one-man-band "rock opera" from 1972, originally a rare privately pressed LP, now reissued on cd. Super freaky and moody and fuzzed out, with a messed-up "my woman done me wrong" vibe to it all. One JW Farquhar of Philadelphia sang and played all the instruments, though there are some other, presumably non-existent musicians credited on the sleeve... get a load of his supposed band, some of the best fake names ever: "Riffery Lowknut" on fender bass, "Slash Mullethead" on percussion, and "Callust Likfinker" on lead guitar! Steel Mammoth wishes they'd thought of those.
In the liner notes JW says that many of these songs "were written as an outcry against the materialistic nature of the woman during that time period". Maybe a little bit misogynistic? Well, apparently JW had just recently gone through a difficult divorce after having been married for 10 years, and was pretty down on women in general. Regardless of the merits of his bitter outlook, the bummed-out emotions expressed are certainly real. And feed into some genuinely twisted, trippy music.
The first two tracks, "The Formal Female" and "The Want Machine", are both multi-part suites, 11-12 minutes each. Groovy, laid back, lonely stuff, rife with FX and heavy doses of fuzz guitar (at one point, JW does to the traditional wedding march what Hendrix did to the "Star Spangled Banner"). "The Want Machine", with its funky guitar and guttural dialogue, almost sounds like the freakin' Jimmy Castor Bunch circa It's Just Begun, jivin' and acid-dosed (here, downer-dosed).
On "My Bundle Of Joy", JW's sad, melodic vocals are accompanied by what sounds like a primitive drum machine ticking away. It's really weird and lovely. Not sure what it reminds us of, maybe Vincent Gallo? Also, there's a good deal of woozy harmonica, or what could be Augustus Pablo style reggae melodica, all throughout the album. "Where Have You Been" and "Mansions" are equally odd and entrancing. Spacey, echoey, outsider rad dudeness! JW Farquhar is part George Brigman, part Dreamies, part Bobb Trimble, part Perry Leopold... like we said, a weird one. Not every Shadoks reissue is amazing, but sometimes when they find an obscure gem, like this, they really hit it out of the park, we're telling you. And as break-up records go, this one's unique.
We all love the Cure, their music informs so many of the sounds we love these days, from gloom pop to doom metal, the music of the Cure is so evocative, so dark and textured and epic, while remaining incredibly catchy and poppy. Elsewhere on this list you'll find a 2cd tribute to the Cure, which is worth buying ONLY for the Jesu track, but if you're looking for some serious Cure love and obsession, not to mention some killer covers, then the latest issue of Fear Drop will definitely hit the spot.
A whole magazine dedicated to the Cure's Pornography, a short study of the music, the band, the songs, the sound. Extensive and well researched, in both English and French, but even if you're not crazy obsessed with the Cure, you still might be pretty excited by the accompanying cd, all the songs from Pornography, covered by groups like Nadja, Troum, Dirge, Savage Republic, Year Of No Light, Contagious Orgasm, Kill The Thrill and Wild Shores. The Nadja version of "One Hundred Years" is awesome, a loping fuzz drenched dirge, weary vocals, thick crumbling guitars, sweeping and epic. Troum tackle "Cold" and create a thick sprawling smear of warm ambient dronemusic, thick and layered, the vocals an ominous whisper, cinematic, creepy, and hauntingly beautiful. Probably worth it for the mag and those two track, but thankfully, the rest of the tracks are pretty excellent as well, ranging from Neurosis-y metallic doom dirge (Dirge doing "A Short Term Effect"), to blissed out shoe gazey new wavey blur (Kill The Thrill doing "A Strange Day"), to buzzing brooding industrial folk, rife with militaristic drums, dramatic strings, squiggly radio interference, and moaning melodies (Contagious Orgasm doing "Pornography"), to sweeping washed out post rock swirl (Year Of No Light doing "The Figurehead") and on and on. Essential for obsessive Cure fans, but the disc is rife with dark, gloomy, buzz drenched heaviness, that would no doubt make the Cure proud.
