We sold through our stash of these in nothing flat when we first listed this a little while back. Luckily, one of our distributors got a handful in, so we grabbed all we could, so everyone who missed out on this the first time around, now's your chance (probably your last chance)...
Two different sides of longtime aQ faves Oxbow, recorded live at the Supersonic festival in 2007.
The A side features a handful of Oxbow tracks, all stripped down and acoustic - just acoustic guitar, and the wild feral mewling of frontman Eugene Robinson. And you would think that playing stripped down and acoustic would make it sound more mellow, less frenzied and intense, but it doesn't. In plenty of places, it's like the guitar isn't even there, it's definitely Eugene's show. A wild caterwaul that even somehow gets the crowd shouting along. Intense and emotional, darkly intimate, but still strangely sinister and explosive. Essential for sure for all Oxbow fanatics.
But it's the flipside that will probably make this disappear in no time. A side long jam, that begins much like the A side tracks, simple urgently strummed acoustic guitar, and those primal vocals, until the guests make their presence known, Stephen O'Malley from SUNNO))), and Justin Broadrick from Jesu / Godflesh, the bass player from God, and even a string quartet. When those folks join the fray, it sounds almost like you might imagine, the acoustic guitar and vocals, buried under moaning strings and sheets of soaring blissed out high end, streaks of glistening feedback, crumbling rumbling swells of downtuned amp melting grind, thick sheets of buzz and shimmer, all draped over the haunting acoustic Oxbow musical drama unfolding beneath. Pretty amazing. Here's hoping these guys stopped by a studio to capture more of this stuff. But until that happens, this will most likely be your only chance to hear Oxbow's twisted, frenzied, so called "Love's Holiday Orchestra".
Beautifully packaged in super thick black matte sleeves, with silver metallic printing, with an insert featuring photos of the evening's festivities, as well as Oxbow guitarist Niko Wenner's recollection of the evening's festivities... which according to Eugene, leaves out the critical part where they left him for dead, knocked out and unconscious on the stage!
Like fellow Texan mesmerists Stars Of The Lid, Adam Pacione's sounds are utterly timeless with only the barest gesture of movement to deliver a beautiful arc of sublime driftwork impressionism. Similarly, Pacione is quite the craftsman for these utterly beautiful surfaces of subtle sonic reflections and refractions, choosing to spend many years on a set of recordings instead of churning out the cd-rs. This ambient alchemist had issued a variation of With Wakened Eyes back in 2005, with the material dating back a few years earlier. We've not heard the earlier version (although some of the sources mutated into his impeccable Sisyphus CD), but this sounds damn good to us. The aforementioned Stars Of The Lid, William Basinski, and the best of Brian Eno's ambient compositions come to mind when trolling through the expansive wash of drift and drone of With Wakened Eyes. Pacione's blurred soundfield actively engages in softened vibration, aerosolized melodies, sunbleached drones, and sustained tones that glimmer with a blinding sunbeam shot through a dense thicket of leaves, making for a gorgeous, late night drone album. Limited edition of 100 copies.
These three amazing long compositions taken from live performances at the twelfth annual Vision Festival in New York in 2007 will be difficult to convey in a one minute sound clip. Their sweeping scope performed by a tight 16-piece unit of horns, woodwinds, and strings (including an oud and electric guitar), journey through a broad modal push and pull of ethnic, improvisational and modern compositional forms, veiled by an almost cosmic exotica. That aspect comes courtesy of the East Indian singer Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, whose sometimes wordless, sometimes poetic vocals interweave throughout the piece's dynamic colorful tones and earthy textures, yet they never overly predominate. This one requires attentive listening to the deep and wide unfolding of these compositions for its full rewards, but it's well worth it!
It's been a little while since we've heard from the boys in Pelican, due in no small part to a seemingly endless world tour. They show up in the shop so much, we sometimes think they must have relocated to SF. And this is not exactly a 'new' record, in fact, it's a different version of a song that has already surfaced once a while back on a now out of print 10", "Pink Mammoth", Pelican's 'hit', or about as close as a heavy metallic instrumental post rock band will ever come to a hit, but it's a killer song, and here it gets redone a little with help from Pelican pals These Arms Are Snakes.
It's hard to tell just how different it is without doing a side by side comparison, but on first listen it does sound a bit more washed out and droney, the sound a tad thicker, and more guitar-y, which is obviously because of the various extra players. But it hardly matters, if you haven't heard this song before, you must, and if you have, you probably already dig it and definitely won't mind hearing a slightly different version. Soaring, epic, heavy without actually being metal, the guitars crunchy but clean, the drums busy but restrained, and then there's the hook, that pops up a few minutes in, and seals the deal. There seem to be plenty of extra guitars, getting all tangled up into warm swirls of layered harmonies, and every time that hook resurfaces it's fucking magic!
The flip side finds These Arms Are Snakes redoing one of their songs with the various members of Pelican along for the ride. Loping and mathy, chiming guitar harmonics over a crumbling distorted main riff, the vocals going from weary indie drawl to snarling growly wail, all over a churning motorik rhythm. The vocal harmonies and stripped down rhythmic lope, lock into these dark grooves that totally remind us of late great San Diego trio Three Mile Pilot. Cool stuff for sure.
The vinyl packaging, as with all Hydra Head stuff, is over the top. A blue on blue printed 10" gatefold, incredibly thick, with a third layer of reflective clear ink over the top, and the text in white on top of that. Pressed on thick black vinyl. And probably limited too. The cd packaging ain't so shabby either, blue and pink and clear inks on a brown cardstock, screen printed fold over origami style sleeve, also most likely very limited...
The latest entry in Touch's ongoing series of limited 7"s from People Like Us and Ergo Phizmiz is by far the biggest surprise of bunch so far, in that you'll find no deep drones or abstract minimalism or delicate soundscapery, instead, as it states plainly right there on the sleeve, we get "Two new rolls of woozy dream circus lovingly cooked by two bakers of antiquity. Recorded in the ice and snow, in clay ovens, by broken down carousels."
Which is pretty much what it sounds like. Lilting sunshine-y melodies, circusy calliopes, gentle summery strum, and lushy boy girl vocal harmonies, all spun into some sweet pop confection. Sort of like Belle And Sebastian run through The Decemberists, and indeed all woozy and warbly, playful and pretty, old timey pop. But that's just the A side. The B side begins with a rhythm straight out of Perrey And Kingsley's songbook, but it's not long before the vocals come in, and again offer up a sing songy fractured doo wop duet, while the strange honk and skronk continues on beneath, along with some warm record crackle and some warped off kilter keyboards.
Definitely a weird one, and will likely rub some of the more striaghtlaced minimalist Touch music fanatics the wrong way, but it's a pretty darn giddy chunk of high art gone low brow, which is mos definitely a good thing.
The psychedelic folk fans here at Aquarius are overjoyed that this brilliant obscurity is at last back in print -- and in an expanded, vastly improved cd edition no less. Originally released in 1970, Linda Perhac's "Parallelograms" is a lost gem of lovely, delicate folk-psych songs in line with Joni Mitchell or Heart's folkier moments, gone waaay underground and mystic. For a long long time, although collectors held the record in great esteem, no-one knew anything about Ms. Perhacs at all. When the Wild Places label first reissued the album on cd some years ago they had to do it from a mint vinyl copy of the record. Since then, they've miraculously managed to track down Linda and got their hands on reel to reels dubbed from the original masters, along with a passel of bonus tracks -- half a dozen of 'em. Whoo-hoo! Along with that good stuff, some mysteries were answered. It turns out that, for instance, the popularly held belief that Perhacs was from Hawaii was incorrect. But she lived in the Pacific Northwest and California, so that's not too far off, really... They also confirmed that this was indeed her only recording. But if you're only going to make one record, having it be as good as "Parallelograms" is a neat trick. Her gossamer vocals encounter tripped-out electronic effects and gentle folk-rock backing, transporting the listener to a place not usually or easily reached in this day and age. There's a track or two that gets strangely coffee-house beatnik on us, and sound a bit dated, but most of this is truely ethereal hippie folk-psych beauty unparallelled. Really nice, and recommended.
There's a seriously thriving noise scene in San Francisco, shows all the time, tons of tapes and cd-r's, performances in warehouses, street corners, micro labels popping up all the time, the one bummer, for us at least, is we're not all that into noise. Well, Allan is into Japanese noise, the rest of us like things that are noisy, but prefer our NOISE to be pretty, or droney, or in some way not all that harsh. Soft noise some folks might call it.
But we're not noise prudes, our ears are made of stern stuff, and there's plenty of thick, buzzing caustic skree we love to cuddle up to. Like this, the debut full length from local duo Perineum, made up of two members of other aQ faves, Ben from local black metal horde Horn Of Dagoth, and Derek from local kraut / drone outfits Horseflesh and Ozmadawn.
Two tracks, appropriately enough titled "The Nail" and "Key". "The Nail" begins with a wall of crumbling caustic distorted heaviness, a swirling buzzing churning swirl of processed tapes, effected vocals, tons of fractured effects, all ground into a roiling black cloud, but something strange happens about three quarters of the way through, the noise abates, leaving a ghostly smear of backwards melodies, delicate crystalline shimmer, soft resonant swells, all layered and fused into a dreamy warm drift that gradually grows quieter and quieter.
"Key" begins as a whispered bit of hiss and whir, like a collage of amp buzz and muted record crackle, smeared into a fuzzy prickly bit of soft white noise, within which is buried subtle rhythmic variations, slowly shifting textures, gradually growing more and more corrosive, the sound decaying and crumbling, bits of feedback beginning to show through, the sound like a Wolf Eyes / Blue Sabbath Black Cheer mashup, eventually within all that hiss and buzz, deep moaning melodies become barely visible, jagged shards of high end surface like chunks of black ice a winter sea, and the sound grows white hot, before fading and gradually disappearing completely.
Packaged in a cool mini dvd style plastic case, with printed and collaged inserts, and the inside of each case hand painted with some mysterious and arcane symbol.
Okay black metal freeks and fanatics. We've all been going apeshit for everything and anything from the super tangled and inbred French micro-scene that spawned Alcest, Amesoeurs, Mortifera, Valfunde and of course Peste Noire, and we had been trying to track down enough of these double cassettes to finally list, and obviously we did, but odds are these will FLY out of here, and as we're not sure how limited these actually are, and how long it will take to get more, if indeed we can, please be prepared to maybe be disappointed, or very patient as we try to get more.
We reviewed Peste Noire's second full length FolkFuck Folie a while back, and the Lorraine rehearsal lp, both were amazing, stumbling chaotic, filthy fucked up blackness, and these two tapes are no different. If anything, they're more raw, and more gritty and blown out. Lo-fi and ultrablack. The first track is so fast it almost sounds like it was recorded at the wrong speed. But much like the records proper, the sound lurches from furious black blasts to stumbling midtempo buzz, to plodding almost-doom, but even on these early ultra lo-fi recordings, the mood and vibe is already in place, haunting and creepy, demented and freaked out, borderline psychedelic at times. Noisy as fuck, crumbling and super distorted, everything painted a washed out black, grime-y but at times weirdly melodic and blissy.
Collects pretty much all of Peste Noire's recordings outside of their 2 proper cds and the rehearsal lp (including their problematically titled 2001Aryan Supremecy demo, which seems out of character since according to Encyclopedia Metallum, their lyrical focus is on "Aesthetics of Evil, Medieval Demons and Decadent Poetry") including a couple unreleased bonus tracks. But probably, unless you're a crazy obsessed tape trader, you haven't heard any of this stuff anyway.
Needless to say, WAY recommended, and again, probably super limited, so act fast.
Cool packaging too, two cassettes, laid side by side in a small printed black cardboard box, with two inserts, old demo covers on one side, liner notes on the other.
A short while back we reviewed an lp from legendary bluesman Washington Phillips, called What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?, released on the amazing vinyl reissue label Mississippi. As much as we love vinyl, we know a lot of folks out there don't have record players, so thankfully, all of the tracks on that Mississippi lp, are also contained on this here cd, and then some! The lp featured 12 tracks, this cd collects all 16 recordings from Phillips, his entire recorded output, and as a bonus, you also get 4 tracks of early religious music from Mamie And A.C Forehand (Forehand had a track on another recent Mississippi comp called Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long). Here's what we had to say about Phillips when we reviewed the lp:
Very little is know about Phillips, other than he was from Texas and only ever recorded sixteen songs. That's it. Sixteen songs, all of them totally gorgeous and mysterious. Phillips vocals are intense and world weary, but it's the accompaniment that really stands out.
The cover shows an illustration of Phillips playing what looks like a toy piano, but the sound is stranger than a toy piano, much higher and more resonant, chiming and tinkling, like little bells, like Christmas carols, a sort of joyous effulgent sparkling shimmer. The liner notes suggest that it may or may not be a Dolceola, an extinct late nineteenth / early twentieth century instrument that looks like a hybrid of a toy piano and a zither. But as there is only one confirmed recording of the Dolceola, on a Leadbelly track from the forties, it's hard to prove just what Phillips' instrument could be. According to a 1961 interview with Frank Walker, who recorded Washington Phillips, the instrument Phillips used was homemade and was something "nobody on earth could use except him". Online sources speculate that it could be a fretless zither or a phonoharp. Whatever it is, it sounds somewhere between a hammered dulcimer, a spinet (baby harpsichord) and an ice cream truck (minus the sound system), all beneath a warm fuzzy patina of dusty crackle. The notes tumble and twinkle while Phillips weaves them seamlessly into a warm glowing backdrop for his testifying, creating a gorgeous and haunting angelic gospel blues, that is truly unique.
Hurrah! something new from Piano Magic! The only unhappy thing about it is that it's an all too brief four song ep. We found ourselves hitting the 'play' button again every seventeen minutes. Never know quite what to expect whenever a new release from Glen Johnson & Co. crosses our threshold...
Delicate shimmering whimsical art pieces? Brooding heady molasses-rock? Wall o' guitars? Sparkly electronic chamber pop? We can attest that whatever they've offered up thus far though has seldom disappointed. They seem to be moving in a more straightforward guitar driven rock direction these days that we certainly didn't anticipate. The title track and the final one both threw us for a loop. Very very slow with an almost goth gloominess, sinewy and Doors-esque even! It also drew some comparative musings to the darkest side of The Go-Betweens. The two songs in the middle are far more familiar. "Stations" is a velvety languid number sullenly sung by Johnson, and "Vacancies" is the dreamy pop surprise treat on the cd. Sung sweetly by Angele David-Guillou, it'll surely also please fans of the sadly defunct UK band Delgados! Lovely!
Two local Bay Area luminaries team up to may tribute to their dub / drone / minimal idols, Augustus Pablo, Terry Riley, Morton Feldman, and Sun Ra, a pretty tall order, but these two are well up to the task. Dax Pierson, you might know from playing in Subtle and 13&God, Robert Horton, for his many drone-y and drifty cd-r releases (a bunch we've reviewed here) and tons of mind blowing collaborations with all sorts of fellow sonic travellers. A chance meeting and a discovered shared love of the above mentioned musical visionaries led these two to collaborate on this disc right here. A score written by Horton, Pierson on the melodica (shades of Pablo) some cello, some vocals, all blurred and stretched out into some minimal abstract dronedub, heavier on the drone, that manages to be haunting and mysterious, spacious and spare, warm and emotional.
The dub element is subtle, here and there the cello switches from long bowed notes to rubbery pizzicato melodies, Piersons wheezing chordal clusters spiral off into sweet major key figures, but they always slip back into a swirling shimmering miasma of warm washed out whir and buzz. The first half of the record sounds more like a Sunroof! record than a dub record, all keening high end and warm metallic reverberations. The record slips into some weird dubbed out field recordings part way through, sort of like Jewelled Antler remixed by King Tubby, before once again slipping into another sun dappled dreamy ur-drone.
Not knowing the roots of this collaboration, or perhaps if the record had a different title, one might not necessarily hear as much of the various elements and influences, but they are most definitely there, deftly employed within a sound that on the surface might at first sound like a more 'traditional' abstract ambient drone cd, but even then, there seems to be something just a little different going on, something strange, and mysterious, a sound or a vibe that transforms this into a sonic experience much more distinctive and unique, a 'something' you don't need to recognize or understand or even really hear consciously to enjoy. Beautiful.
What might you expect from a band called Pig Heart Transplant? With a record called Hope You Enjoy Heaven? And song titles like "Prison / Fortress", "Crawling Through Hell", "Abject. Debased. Diseased" and "I Video Tape Your Diet"? What if the band featured members of Spazz, Silentist, Iron Lung, Despise You, Artimus Pyle, Gob, Brainoil and more? What if we told you they shared some splits with dirgedoomnoise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer? Yeah, you'd probably come up with something like THIS.
A punishing slab of slow motion power violence, crushing downtuned guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, everything dripping with filth and murk, total Man Is The Bastard worship for sure. Low end all over the place. Some tracks the guitars are burning hot, the production way in the red, others are super creeped out murkscapes of industrial pound and processed vox, while still others are sludge-doom trawls through all manner of crusty low slung dirgemetal, and a couple are long buzzing drones, with howled vocals over the top, sounding a bit like a low end deathmetal Whitehouse. Maybe our favorite track though, is "Feeding From Your Trough", reminding us a bit of Geronimo, a fucked up mechanical sprawl of pounding crunch and hissing static, dripping with distortion and noise, locked into a stumbling lurching rhythm, with some chunks of grinding heaviness that sound like they could blow out your speakers, slipping from clipped robotic trudge, to hateful blacknoise dirge and back again. Some seriously harrowing shit for sure. Which as you probably know by now, means WAY recommended. At least for those in the mood for some murky and menacing musical punishment.
Yes, that's right. Japanese noise maestro Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, teamed up here with guitarist Richard Pinhas of pioneering '70s French synth-prog act Heldon in a Tokyo studio last year. An unexpected collaboration, perhaps, but a successful one - two action-packed discs worth! Here at AQ you could call us Merzbow fans - one of us even dutifully reviewed EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN' DISC in the 50-cd Merzbox that came out a few years ago. He's not only pretty much thee originator of Japanese noise but we still find him to be one of the genre's most interesting practitioners. But since Merzbow is, almost by definition, so prolific, we can't get excited about every single release he puts out (the obi blurb here claiming "He has recorded and released nearly 100 cds" may be the understatement of the century... isn't it more like 1000??). This one, though, we are quite excited about. 'Cause Pinhas is another AQ fave. We love Heldon, and also enjoy much of his solo work since the '70s, right up to 2006's Metatron.
So, what does the Merzbow-Pinhas summit sound like? It's plentiful and varied, but the basic impression is that of Merzbow's fried electronic noise zips and zaps like someone shooting down spaceships amidst Pinhas's glimmering, glorious Frippish guitar drone. Merzbow is credited with EMS Synthi A and "all noises" though Pinhas, with his guitar and "loop system" isn't exactly quiet. As Merzbow's machines emulate the sound of a sparking, arcing live electric wire, electricity shooting sparks in sizzling patterns, Pinhas keeps the pleasurable pulse of his guitar going and going. There was obviously much mutual admiration here, between "Merzdon" and "Heldrow" as one of the track titles puts it, Merzbow thrilled to play with one of his '70s heroes, Pinhas quite aware of how he paved the way for further extremes of experimental, electronic music, but not resting on his laurels at all. They bring out the best in each other, easily making this one of our favorite recent documents from either artist. Pinhas sure can't wimp out here, and Merzbow keeps his contributions psychedelically listenable.
This is available as a double cd on Cuneiform, or a deluxe triple vinyl set on the Dirter Promotions label. Expensive, but quite fancy.
Another disc that somehow slipped under our review radar, which we're only getting to now, even though it's been in the shop since the beginning of the year. James Plotkin should really need no introduction, nowadays he produces and masters pretty much every weird, dark, doomy, heavy, drone record, but has of course played in Khanate, Phantom Smasher, Flux, Romance, O.L.D. and more...
For his entry into Utech's Arc Series, Plotkin has crafted two extended dronescapes, the first recorded live in 2007, hushed and muted and darkly beautiful, deep blackened shimmers, soft rumbling swells, a low end sprawl that over the course of 40 minutes (!) sheds its glassy darkness and reveals a hissing whirring blur underneath, but even then, the sound is smoothed out, blurred, smeared, subtly melodic, not even really ominous as much as mysterious and hauntingly tranquil.
The second track, performed and recorded in 2006, is a whole different beast, a chopped up assemblage of malfunctioning electronics, swirls of glitch and buzz, fractured melodies, damaged streaks of FX, swirling metallic shimmer, dense clouds of collaged high end skree, deep whorls of tangled crunch and moaning bass tones, all tangled and mangled, twisted into uncomfortable shapes and shot through with shards of grinding high end, wrapped in gauzy layers of warm sepia toned whir. While not as simply beautiful as the first track, within the second lurks much melody and beauty, all tangled up with the constantly twisting and twisted buzz and crunch of Plotkin's blackened soundscaping.
Gorgeous packaging, metallic gold and black fold over sleeves, with striking photography by Max Aguillera-Hellweg. Probably super limited, we've had these for a while, we have a decent amount, but once we run out, not sure we can get more....
If the exuberant outpouring of song from the likes of Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes, Hidden Cameras, and Wolf Parade get you all giddy and weak in the knees, then we might have a new fave for you! But particularly like the former two, Port O'Brien can get serious too and take a more solemn tone. On the more hushed songs (which are also some of the album's best) such as "Stuck On A Boat", "Don't Take My Advice" and "Will You Be There?" the lights are dimmed and the instrumentation stripped down to a skeletal folksy assembly of Van Pierszalowski's brittle, emotive young voice and guitar, and Cambrian Goodwin's comforting pluck of the banjo. Glowing warmly throughout the proceedings, almost as if at a distance, are some understated violin and cello backing. The album's title says it all. When everything else fails you (whether you be the player or the listener), music is where you will always find solace, stimulation, escape. And Port O'Brien does so in each of these achingly bittersweet songs.
A brand new single-track of sprawling blackness from this mysterious Idaho duo, offering up their own version of the template laid down by Earth way back around their album 2. Which as you probably already know means, metal riffs slowed down to tarpit tempo, the various notes struggling to move forward through a field of crumbling distortion and near static buzz, the riffs allowed to ring out and fade away almost completely, before the next one comes lumbering up behind it.
The strange thing is that live, Pussygutt are a full on band, much more traditionally heavy, with a drummer and everything, even on their last record the epic double lp Sea Of Sand, the band was a lurching doomic behemoth, bordering on the industrial at times, but here, their sound is stripped way way down, and it suits them. They're able to evoke all sorts of moods with their carefully constructed downtuned ambience. This is some seriously sinister shit for sure, sweeping and darkly cinematic, the soundtrack to the eventual collapse of the universe, the sound of dying stars, or of some long slumbering beat awakening after millennia, or maybe Goblin at 16rpm, some haunted house music way too scary for any haunted house you'd ever want to visit.
It's not all heaviness though. Long stretches of sound dip into hushed shimmer here and there, while elsewhere the low end slips away leaving a creepy string section do drift spectrally, like some secret Satanic classical music, but even these moments are always tense with the knowledge that right around the corner, could be lurking another churning black wave of slow motion doomdrone crush. Really fantastic, and more than most of this stuff, infused with a deep otherworldly beauty.
Definitely require listening for folks whose cd racks/record crates/iPods' are packed with Earth, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, To Blacken The Pages, Hum Of The Druid, Expo '70, Nadja, Vulture Club, Hjarnidaudi, Monument Of Urns, Fear Falls Burning, Half Makeshift, Tunnels, Seconds In Formaldehyde, KTL, Light Of Shipwreck...
No one does organ fueled fuzzy garage party rock better than New Orlean's quirky Quintron. Too Thirsty 4 Love has been sounding so damn good blasting from our stereo. Like a way more disturbed B-52's channeling The Cramps, these are the sounds you would want to be going nuts to at the best Halloween party ever. While Quintron is often just laughed off as a joke or novelty artist, the truth is, there is so much blood, sweat, guts and grit to these songs, and this outing is reminding us again of how damn great he really is!
So far our only real exposure to Rahdunes, has been their recent split with krauty drone combo Expo '70 (and a few cd-r's and tapes here and there), but on that split, they definitely demonstrated their ability to conjure up some seriously cosmic sounds.
So here we have the first proper full length cd from kosmiche astral travelers Rahdunes and it's pretty fantastic. And fantastical.
A longform soundscape of garbled guitars, and smeared melody, a forever unwinding sonic tapestry, woven from disembodied ghostly voices, spidery guitar melodies, haunting whirring woodwinds, all dipped in LSD and doused in a suitcase full of fractured effects. Delay collides with reverb, guitars crumble to pieces only to have those pieces drift lazily heavenward, when riffs do surface, they seem to simply hover, looping in on themselves, creating slow shifting sonic latticeworks, through which all manner of synths and sounds intertwine. Most of the tracks darkly meditative, the sounds pulsing and throbbing softly, creating barely perceptible rhythms, the you feel in your bones and seeping into your skin more than you hear it.
Electronics drift through ethereal clouds of distant bagpipe melodies, of buzzing low end rumbles, thick slabs of shimmery black murky splinter into fragments that collide in mid air with impossibly distorted voices, it's like some krautrock band flew to the moon and plugged their guitars into funhouse mirrors, everything woozy and gloriously unhinged, tripped out and drug drenched, what percussion there is, is mostly chimes and bells, and more often than not, those sounds are buried along with everything else beneath undulating layers of whirring spaced out effects, and blurred abstract melodies. Totally and gloriously fucked up, the perfect soundtrack for tripping out, and drifting off.
Total inner space / outer space introspection overload.
Which means we LOVE it. Beautiful oversized gold and green on creme printed packaging, equal parts cave drawings and old quilt. So cool.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Just wanted to get the attention of the growing legion of Mississippi Records obsessives, as this week we have not one, not two, but THREE new releases from this PDX based all vinyl, mostly reissue label.
All three of the new Mississippi releases are of a more punk rock, post punk bent, abandoning temporarily the blues, gospel, and African reissues that defined the label in the early days. With every release, they get harder and harder to pigeonhole, which is always the mark of a great label.
The Rats might not be an immediately recognizable name to most folks, but what about Rats frontman Fred Cole? Ring any bells? Well, in case you hadn't figured it out already, Cole would later go on to front the legendary Dead Moon, and more recently, the Pierced Arrows, alongside his wife Toody, credited in the Rats as T.Rat. A serious slice of Portland punk rock history for sure.
The Rats existed for only a few years in the early eighties and spit out some awesome organ drenched punky garage rock stomp, liberally laced with some new wave and power pop. The vocals high and wavery, Cole sharing vocal duties with his female bandmate, the choruses shouted singalongs, the drums a simple pound, the guitars swinging from almost twang to indie jangle to punk rock crunch, the songs wreathed in Fuzztone style organs, the vibe wild and wooly, not hard to imagine these guys RULING every sweaty basement and dive club in Portland.
Thick black and white sleeve, with just the most minimal liner notes...
It's been a great year for krautrock inspired kosmiche pastiche. As records by Arp, Cloudland Canyon, Growing and White Rainbow have found a new generation using old analog synths to orbit the earth with lots of great results. It was so fitting and ideal that Jonas Reinhardt got to make their live debut playing the after party for the Cluster show in Big Sur at the beginning of summer which some of us were lucky to see, and we were immediately impressed with what is slowly becoming one of the most exciting outfits to emerge from San Francisco in a long while.
Reinhardt is the alter ego of Jesse Reiner who played in Crime In Choir and Ascended Master, as well as serving as one of the guitarists in Citay, whom he recently parted ways with so he could focus all his attention on this project. He's really managed to find his inner Klaus Schulze with this record creating an album that shimmers and pulsates with strength and grace. Like the best of '70s era Tangerine Dream with the ominous moments of Goblin and healthy nods to Cluster and Harmonia this is sure to please fans of spaced out propelling cosmic adventures in sound. It seems as this was recorded before the live version of the band was formed as recent live shows finds Jonas Reinhardt catching much more of a groove as they create 'kraut style' dance parties with totally thrilling results. We can't wait to hear them capture that side of their sound on tape, but until then this is a really great beginning of what we have a feeling will be a long running and rewarding project!
We always talk about how something is super limited and sold out and out of print so we won't go into too much detail, but then we invariably do, but not this time. We have less than 10 copies, originally limited to 500, sold out and out of print. Once these are gone it's off to eBay with you.
Two covers, one recorded in 2001, one recorded last year, Saint Vitus' "Dark World" and Judas Priest's "Deceiver", both given a Reverend Bizarre makeover. With vocalist Albert doing his best "Vocal Impersonation" according to the liner notes. His Rob Halford is wildly over the top and pretty amazing. And he already sounded a lot like St. Vitus's Scott Reagers to begin with, as that band such a huge influence on Rev. B.! As always, heavy and doomy, the songs obviously classics, too bad we got so few of these.
Max Richter first caught our attention with his gorgeous arrangements on Vashti Bunyan's long awaited return to the world of music, 2005's Lookaftering. He's put out several of his own post-classical works, and his latest is just simply stunning. 24 short tracks made for gray days spent looking out the window as rain falls gently and memories drift to the surface. Most of these tracks are under two minutes and were actually intended to be used as ringtones. Somehow Richter is able to pack such strong emotions into these short tracks but also allows the listener to fill in the blanks and wander away. Anyone who uses these as ringtones will for sure be sporting the most elegant and classy cell phone around. Simply beautiful!
Now available on vinyl. Super deluxe, and of course, super limited!!
A new Jack Rose record is always cause for celebration around here. Along with James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, Richard Bishop and a few others, Rose is one of the new modern masters of the steel string guitar, helping to reinvent and redefine neo-Appalachia or modern folk or whatever you want to call it.
No huge changes, we're happy to announce, just more of Rose's gorgeous steel string beauty, gossamer sheets of buzzing shimmer, droning ragas, traditional bluegrass, slippery slide, melancholy melodies, jaunty pick and strum, the mood occasionally dark and ominous, sometimes playful and festive, and other times dreamy and serene, it's as much about the sound as the songs. To see Rose play live is pretty mindblowing, his mastery of the guitar is truly humbling, his playing incredibly physical, but so fluid and seemingly effortless. And the sounds that emerge from that chunk of wood and steel are consistently breathtaking. Which is true even on record, those sounds well removed from the actual recording, but retaining much of the physical act of the performance, the energy and the emotion, the sound vibrant and LIVE. This new record is no different. Sonically, well in line with the rest of Rose's recorded works, but like every new Rose record that comes along, it manages to subtly expand and progress, sonically and compositionally, while continuing to sound classic and timeless.
Fans will obviously need Dr. Ragtime, but for folks who have yet to discover the magic of Jack Rose this is a perfect place to start, and odds are those same folks will very likely find themselves wanting and perhaps even needing more!
Gorgeous packaging, clear shiny ink on gold matte sleeves, with printed pink and white Japanese style obi.
AQ pal, experimental musician, yoga instructor and Root Strata label head, Jefre Cantu, was so in love with this record that he nearly insisted that he review it for our list. Being the overly busy beavers that we are, we were more than happy to oblige. Take it away, Jef.....
I have to admit it, I'm a late bloomer when it comes to the work of Arthur Russell. My ears didn't exactly perk up when I first heard his re-released early disco recordings a few years back (which says more about my taste for the genre at that time than his take on it). But when a good friend of mine passed along the collection of airy rock/jazz/classical mutant instrumentals that are collected on First Thought, Best Thought I was floored. And hooked. It proved to be the perfect entry point for me into Russell's storied body of work, and lead me on a path to other equally addictive outings such as his hallucinatory World Of Echo, and the weird electronic funk of Calling Out of Context. And now, thanks in no small part to Russell's long time lover Tom Lee, we have Love Is Overtaking Me' a lovely set of folksy pop songs culled from (literally) hundreds of cassette and reel to reel tapes that span his carrier from the early '70s to the year before his untimely death in 1992. I'm happy to say it's a real pleasure to listen to, as this collection highlights a side of Russell's work that's hardly been hinted at before. Tunes like the opening "Close My Eyes" or "Maybe She" are arresting to hear if for no other reason than how bare Russell sounds, his mellow croon laid blank against an acoustic strum. The opening passage on "Goodby Old Paint", a cover of a cowboy standard, may just be one of the most gorgeous things he's done, only disappointing in its brevity. It's the kind of thing I could listen to over and over for an entire Sunday morning. Joined with a full band for most of the disc, tracks like "I Couldn't Say It To Your Face", "Hey! How Does Everybody Know" and "The Letter" are sunny summer day pop songs, cast in lyrics about love, dogs, dads and full moons. Each one's a perfect bit of headphone candy, layered with hooks that may go unnoticed on the first, or even second listens, but ultimately stick to the sides of the brain for days on end. It's really staggering to think that the 21 tracks here have never been heard by the public before, and just as staggering to consider what could have become of Arthur Russell had he lived till now. Finally, the disc winds down with the heartbreaking romantic downer�"Love is Back", where he softly sings over a spare constellation of keyboards & electronic beats "Being sad is not a crime...."
Out of the same politically fervent Chilean psych scene that brought us Congregacion, Los Jaivas, and Embrujo, we get another amazing spiritual-minded psych-folk artifact, this lone album from Sacros. Creating songs inspired by the great gods of South America, such as Quetzalcoatl, The Plumed Serpent, god of the ancient Mayas, and Viracocha, Lord of Tiahuanaku in the Andes Mountains, Sacros were a short-lived group supported by the Divina Providence Church, who in exchange for practice space, commissioned the band to write and perform an electric mass. Unfortunately, their debut album was released one week after Augusto Pinochet and his right wing regime took over the country and called for the destruction of the state run music label along with all released recordings, thus very few copies of the original album survived. Recently featured on the Chilean installment of the Love, Peace, and Poetry compilations, Sacros' unique sound - gentle Byrds-ish country-rock mixed with the psychedelic tinges of Popul Vuh - is quite beautiful and highly recommended.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Just wanted to get the attention of the growing legion of Mississippi Records obsessives, as this week we have not one, not two, but THREE new releases from this PDX based all vinyl, mostly reissue label.
In addition to unearthing rad rarities and reissuing them on vinyl, or putting together perfect mixes of blues, gospel and African music and releasing those amazing mixes as proper lps, Mississippi also does their bit to support their local scene, with a series called appropriately enough the North Portland Series, this being volume 2! (And no we never got, nor can we get volume 1, so don't ask)
We know almost nothing about Sad Horse, other that what's to be found right here. And what that is, is 6 short sharp blasts of angular lo-fi punk rock stumble and garage-y pound and crunch. The drums simple and straight ahead, the guitar raw and fuzzy, wild shouted boy/girl vox, super energetic and fun.
Beyond the musical component, Mississippi Records fanatics might also want this for the sleeve, a strange hand made, origami style jacked, with an extra little booklet affixed to the front, which just so happens to be a no frills, super lo-fi, partial Mississippi Records catalog! C'mon, know you want one...
We always assumed that Denmark's Sarah's Charity must include Matthew Bower of Skullflower, or Marcia Bassett of Hototogisu, or at least someone from Heavy Winged or Double Leopards or one of those sorts of bands. They have the same sort of slow burning heaviness going on, the washed out walls of psychedelic swirl, grinding guitars, keening streaks of high end. Another one of 'those sounds' we can't ever seem to get enough of.
Ends up SC are indeed from Denmark, and do not count any American or British noise rock ringers among their members, which is just as well, as these guys can totally hold their own, and then some, whipping up a seriously dense and deliriously blown out soundscape of buzz and blur and shimmer and rrrroooaaaaar. The other cd-r we had from SC was equally guitar heavy, but here, the sound seems significantly murkier and more muted, softer even (softer being relative of course), giving it a more dreamy drone-y sound which is no bad thing at all. But fear not, this is still fierce and prickly and caustic and HEAVY, just sort of pretty too.
We only have a handful of these, it was LIMITED TO 150 COPIES (each with a hand numbered insert), and they've been waiting for a while to get reviewed and listed, so pretty sure these are long gone and out of print at the source, but while they last, we got em here...
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Lalo Schrifin's second most famous soundtrack after Mission Impossible (he also scored Dirty Harry, Cincinnati Kid and Cool Hand Luke among others) is this monster score for Enter The Dragon. The hit film is a perennial cult favorite that not only launched the Kung Fu Martial Arts Film craze in America but made its star Bruce Lee a legend due to his untimely death six months before the movie was released. But for avid readers of Wax Poetics, this score resonates amongst hip hop aficionados and sample heads alike for its thrilling combinations of jazz tension, funk breaks, wah guitars and far eastern musical motifs, not to mention Bruce Lee's battle cries peppered throughout. Hip hop and martial arts have often kept close quarters from Dolemite to the Wu Tang Klan, and this score just may be ground zero for the marriage of both those worlds.
HaiyaHHHHHHHH!!!!!
We rarely carry toys, not cuz we don't all love toys, but we already have our hands full with just music. But every once in a while, a toy comes along that speaks directly to music nerds like us. And you presumably. And the folks at PressPop in Japan definitely seem to have our number!
Way back in 2005, they released a Bob Moog action figure, wearing a sportcoat, red bowtie and glasses, finger extended to depress a key on his trusty analog Mini-Moog synthesizer. As we proclaimed back then, the perfect gift for "AQ vintage-synthesizer-lovin', action-figure-collectin' shoppers", and we were right, those Moog dolls flew out of here like you wouldn't believe. So here we are 3 years later, and just in time for Christmas, it's time for the second in PressPop's series of electronic music innovators, this time none other than Raymond Scott!
By now, Raymond Scott should need no introduction, if you need to know more, do a search on the aQ site and read all about this electronic music pioneer,, his life, his music, and his legacy. Needless to say, like Moog, with out Scott, a whole lot of your favorite bands would sound a whole lot different. Not to mention the fact that he's responsible for some of our favorite cartoon music ever.
Anyway, if you're like us, your music room or computer or wherever it is that you spend all your music listening time, deserves to be blessed by Saint Scott, his visage overlooking you sanctuary, as he reaches out to add his own synthesizer buzz to whatever it is you're listening to. The body is the same as Mr. Moog's, so he's got the same magic finger outstretched, but Mr. Scott is dressed in a natty grey suit (with a Raymond Scott 100 year anniversary silkscreened on the back) with a black tie, accompanied by his keyboard of choice, the Clavivox, which he invented and patented in 1956 (and which featured a sub assembly constructed by a young Bob Moog who would design the first Moog synthesizer a decade later!). The doll and the keyboard are housed in an eye popping full color box designed by Mr. Archer Prewitt (of the Sea & Cake), and the back of the box features a killer illustration of another Scott invention, the Electronium, a keyboardless automatic composition and performance machine!
And as if that weren't enough, also included is a cd, with more killer Archer Prewitt artwork, which includes: "Powerhouse", probably Scott's most famous bit of cartoon music, a track from Scott's Soothing Sounds For Baby, his collection of electronic music for infants, really beautiful and strange, alien and hypnotic, and coolest of all, three archival tracks of Scott talking about and then demonstrating his various inventions, the Clavivox, the Electronium and the Rhythm Modulator. Holy Cow!!!
As with the Moog doll (now long gone), these are indeed super limited, and a little pricey with overseas shipping, but have a read, a look, a listen, so worth it, the perfect gift for the synthesizer nerd or music obsessive in your life, or heck, buy it for your own geek self, we did!
(Counts as 3 items for shipping purposes, not one or two, as per our usual 'box set rule'.)
After releasing over a dozen tapes and 7"s, Violent Narcissus is the latest release from Jeffery Witscher, the man behind Secret Abuse, and it's a sizzling heap of buzzing electronics and blown out radiance. Heavy, damaged Iowa city drone scapes. We didn't think it was even possible, but Secret Abuse manages to conjure the perfect dose of harsh bliss. Densely layered walls of fuzz and sizzle that boil over hushed melodies, the lp is equal parts gorgeous and abrasive. Unlike past releases we've heard that don't veer too far from the harsh noise territory, Violent Narcissus adds a bit more to the formula. With some decipherable guitar passages and lush drones buried in blown-out goodness, the album is pleasantly abrasive. Talk about aural cleansing! Highly abusive. Highly recommended.
Holy shit this record totally floors us! We're not the most easily moved and impressed when it comes to most garage rock that we hear these days so a record really has to be packed with explosive energy and endless hooks to win us over, but oh my lord Ty Segall makes us want to be locked in a small and sweaty garage while he belts out his one man band jams and makes us jump and sweat and lose ourselves like only true rock n' roll has the power to do. We knew that Ty was something special ever since we heard his homemade and way out of print cassette Horn The Unicorn and saw him play in countless charming and kick ass bands (Traditional Fools, Epsilons, Party Fowl, etc.) all before even being 21 years old.
There is a difference between being retro and making music that is timeless and Ty Segall's full length debut falls perfectly in the latter category. This could have been recorded in '81, '91 or today and it would still hold up and blow us away. All the songs are around two minutes, no wasted space allowed, total urgency filled with punk spirit and pop songwriting chops that set him head and shoulders above so much of the current garage flock. We bet labels like Swami or In The Red wish they had put out this record and it makes such perfect sense that it's being released on Jon Dwyer's label as there is a similar spirit to the energetic and frantic sounds he created in The Coachwhips and the crafty songwriting and right on lo-fi production he employs with The Ohsees. Drenched in reverb and full of such a vibrant punch we hear hints of everything from Hasil Adkins to The Rip Offs and Thee Headcoatees but most of all we hear the emergence of one of the most exciting new voices in modern day, sweat soaked, soul filled rock n roll!
Senor Coconut is back with a new set of party favorites. His endearing covers over the years have included everyone from Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Sade. This time out he's on a trip around the globe with each song being a cover of an artist from somewhere different in the world. But his eye is clearly on catchy and mostly familiar pop music (Eurythmics, Daft Punk, Telex, etc). Still totally fun and playful but not quite at the level of pure joy and innovative reinterpreting that his prior releases demonstrated. It kind of feels a little phoned in, but still filled with enough winners to keep us smiling.
The veil of mediated sound hangs heavy upon the work of Colin Andrew Sheffield, a Texan born sound artist currently living in Seattle. His work is almost entirely based upon recontextualizing sounds from already released works, although unlike such plunderphonic artists like Christian Marclay, John Oswald, and Wobbly who allow for the samples to utter their origins, Sheffield obliterates almost all of the references into a field of static vibrations, densely compacted layerings, and hyper-stretched drones. Through his digital crucible, Sheffield extracts something almost completely different out of the sources that he puts into it.
In running the ever impressive Elevator Bath label, Sheffield has found an outlet for a handful of his recordings, mostly as small run editions with the one exception being his outstanding First Thus cd. Signatures was commissioned by the San Francisco based label Invisible Birds, as the debut in what hopes to be a great catalogue of sound art composition that's somehow related to bird sounds and their environment. Keeping true to his working methods, Sheffield's contribution to Invisible Birds reclaims sounds from other records amidst what Sheffield claims to be field recordings of water and birds. The results have been so heavily obfuscated through the process that it's hard to hear any twitter of birdsong. The thunderous low-end repetition on the last track is purported to be the flapping of a bird's wing, but it's hard to discern. All of this said, Sheffield's results are gorgeous. At first, the album has almost an ominous feel, as a shimmering, arctic hush is shot forth from the speakers with layer upon layer of sympathetic vibrations interweaving into a hypnotic, if cybernetic sound. It sounds sort of like the classic Chain Reaction artists like Porter Ricks or Hallucinator with all of the techno extracted, and only a cold, cold drone of digitality left behind. By the end of the album, Sheffield brightens things into a stunning crescendo of church organ-like chords suspended in time and space with glints of vinyl crackle hanging like sunflecked dust floating in air. Here, Sheffield gives the impression of William Basinski reclaiming a Ligetti choral piece. Very highly recommended.
INSANELY LIMITED. Already out of print. This is the super deluxe version which comes housed in a quite nice box, the disc wrapped in fabric, and includes a booklet and a bonus 3" cd-r!!
We only got in a handful of this album by this English electronic artist, who has released The Measuring Of Moments (which may be his debut?) through Ian Holloway's cd-r imprint Quiet World. Holloway's own deep drone smear had so impressed us on his collaborative album with Darren Tate and Bailey Banks, and even more so on his A Lonely Place solo production, that we have been investigating his affiliated recordings; hence, we've got this album to review and list. Shenton is less inclined toward the all consuming drone evocation, and more about steering Eno's ambient strategies into territories with a bit more drama incorporating plenty of light and shadow into this particularly autumnal album. At his darkest and perhaps most compelling, Shenton works unsettled punctuations of ominous strings into his sustained tones, half formed melodies caught in reverb cascades, and clusters of electronic shimmer. He also revisits some Tubular Bell motifs around soft arppegiations of synthesized chiming, not only bringing Mike Oldfield into the mix but also some of John Carpenter's incidental scores and sound design. Limited to 50 copies!
This snazzy British psych/garage/folk/R&B/beat mag delivers another colorful issue. This time with Roky Erickson on the cover, back in the day with his 13 Floor Elevators, as part of a 15 page section devoted to the Texas psychedelic sixties scene (with articles on Bubble Puppy, Cold Sun, The Moving Sidewalks, and others)... plus, this issue also boasts features on the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, The Strawbs, exploito hippie era paperbacks, Jackie DeShannon, producer Mickie Most, and more. Including tons of reviews. 82 A4 sized pages.
Even if David Shire had only ever done the scores for The Taking Of Pelham 123 and The Conversation, those two alone would seal the deal, ensuring Shire a top spot as one of our favorite film composers EVER. Those two soundtracks are so amazing, so intense and emotional, incredibly dramatic and really really strange. The recurring melodic motif of the Conversation is one of those rare musical moments, a tiny chunk of music that once it enters your head, it sticks there forever. It helps that it's repeated over and over and over in the movie and on the cd...
But Shire did so much more, amazing films, ridiculous movies, tons of TV, silly and fantastic, dark and depressing, some were fairly surprising, cuz who would have ever assumed that the guy who did Pelham 123 and The Conversation was the same man responsible for some of the music for Saturday Night Fever and Norma Rae...
From the same folks who brought us the long overdue cd release of the Conversation comes the soundtrack to The Hindenburg from 1975. One of the final entries in the spate of disaster movies, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Hindenburg is the story of the legendary 1937 crash of The Hindenburg, a German Zeppelin, which remains still one of the worst disasters of the 20th century and one of the first to become a media event due to live radio broadcasts and newsreel footage. The movie transformed the disaster into a mystery, a secret plot to destroy the Hindenburg. A pretty killer cast, George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, Burgess Meredith...
The music, while not as idiosyncratic as either Pelham or The Conversation, is still moving and dramatic, much more classic sounding old school soundtrack music, with haunting strings, playful little melodies, sweeping expanses of orchestral swoon, occasional bursts of atonal Bernard Hermann style high end tension, fluttering woodwinds, deep ominous low end, some more classical sounding string sections, it's all pretty great, even removed from the visuals, our favorite moments of course are the darker, dronier more tense and ominous bits, which thankfully make up much of the score.
Also included is a strange vocal track, called "There's A Lot To Be Said For The Fuehrer", a croony tin pan alley style ballad, and the whole record is bookended by newsreel broadcasts, the opening is a brief history of ballooning and the development of the zeppelin, all jaunty and playful, the closing is really intense, a rough scratchy live recording set to music of an eyewitness to the disaster, describing the crash as it unfolds, visibly shaken, his voice cracking as he struggles to keep from weeping. Heavy.
Certainly not the weirdest score, but soundtrack fans will definitely dig, and Shire fans should check this out for sure (as well as the recent Zodiac score that we also have in stock). And as with all the Intrada reissues, tons of photos and super extensive liner notes.
The return of The Shitty Listener! Maybe one of our all time favorite band names EVER. And it's about time. We all completely dug the Girls All Say EP we listed a while back, but it just wasn't enough. It was only 9 minutes long after all. Well, Fruitless Accomplishment clocks in at a whopping 26 minutes, and thus manages to take all the elements we liked on the EP, and spreads them out, expands and explores, which just means there's so much more to like.
Actually released as a book, that just so happens to also contain a cd, for our purposes, we'll just go ahead and consider Fruitless Accomplishment a cd, that just so happens to come with a book! For those new to the Shitty Listener, it's not really a band, instead it is one man, Jason Honea, from from the Jewelled Antler outfits The Child Readers and the Franciscan Hobbies, as well as the Chord Fort, the Knit Separates and Teenage Panzercorps. The Shitty Listener is his Honea's mostly solo, lo-fi, bedroom folk project. And is deeply connected to his poetry/lyrics and artwork. As is evidence by this deluxe book/cd combo.
The sound is incredibly intimate and low fidelity. Mostly recorded on micro cassettes or handheld tape recorders, Honea incorporates tape hiss and whatever ambient sound happens to occur in the background, whether it's a plane flying by, a dog barking, the sound of crickets, it all just becomes part of the sound. And just like old Sebadoh tapes, the ch-chunk sound of the record or stop buttons being pushed, as well as weird warbles in the tape, become as much a part of the song as the song itself. Lilting melancholy piano, gentle acoustic guitar strum, and not much else support Honea's warbly falsetto, plaintive and emotive, always way down in the mix, a sort of drifty fuzzy dreamy melody within each song. But that's more than enough. Each song ends up sounding surprisingly lush. Our favorites though have to be the ones that sound like they were recorded from a distance, or through the wall or window. Those tracks almost sound like Honea was singing and strumming indoors, while the mic was outside, capturing most of the music, but more than anything all of the ambient action happening around it. Other highlights include the a capella "Bad Wonder", "I Call You Up" which sounds a bit like Morrisey fronting Sentridoh, the minute long "Across My Dreams", a sort of processed dreamy guitarscape, and the 7 minute medley "Sweet To My Mind w/ Someone Flame-Like & Up Too Much", the first half of which sounds a bit like a Basinski composition, but made manually, by playing a figure on the piano, pushing stop on the tape player, pressing record and playing the figure again, over and over and over. So weird and wonderful.
Fruitless Accomplishment is a strangely compelling collision between abstract experimentation and lo-fi pop loveliness, and the results are truly divine!
The packaging is pretty dang divine as well. And just to frustrate and confuse, there are TWO different versions. Both are exactly the same on the inside, just different on the outside. Packaged in either a newsprint covered hard cardboard box, or in a sewn green felt sleeve, inside is the cd-r, an insert with the liner notes, four full color and two black and white inserts featuring various drawings and collages by Honea, and Real Flowers, a small book of poetry, gorgeously printed on nice paper and with a full color paste on cover!
Live in '95. Hmm, I think maybe that was right about when some of us here at AQ saw this Japanese psych band, they came to SF and played an amazing show at the Kilowatt, back when they had shows there. Tokyo's Shizuka, with their haunting female vocals drifting ahead of an inevitable onslaught of noisy, billowing, distorto-delic electric guitar murk, were one of the '90s precursors to such current bands as LSD-march, Suishou No Fune, and Up-Tight. At the time, we compared 'em to Angel 'In Heavy Syrup and Slapp Happy Humphrey, the latter especially 'cause of Shizuka's extreme mix of delicacy and destructiveness, of melancholic melody and sheer, feedback-laden guitar/amp/earhole abuse. Not abuse, though, not really... it's loud, sculpted sound that's actually quite beautiful. As with so many Japanese bands from the PSF/Tokyo Flashback scene, it's like a cotton candy dream of the most out there Neil Young & Crazy Horse amplifier meltdowns (a la Arc). This raw (but not to Rallizes-like levels of low fidelity) 52 minute live set is Shizuka in their element, and even if you've never heard 'em before wouldn't be a bad place to start, at all. The first song alone should make you a believer if you're at all open to this sort of thing (i.e. maybe already a fan of some of the other bands mentioned above). And it is 26 and a half minutes long! That's the biggest blow-out on the disc, the other three tracks trafficking more in the tranquil side of Shizuka, with long slow-moving stretches of sweet vocals backed by echo and hum and hiss as the shoegazing guitar bides its time before finally erupting into full flight.
And of course, those already into Shizuka know they're one of the best, unique within the pantheon, and should be pleased have another rare document of their sad dark mystery.
Only a few of us had even heard of this Scottish '80s indie sensation when this amazing reissue first hit our shelves but as soon as we listened we all instantly became huge fans and couldn't believe how they had managed to slip so far under our radar.
Coming out of the same scene that spawned The Pastels, this is really the precursor to the amazing twee and indie rock that would so dominate the underground music scene in the decade to come. Kind of like an impossibly amazing mix of Heavenly, The Vaselines and the driving spirit of early R.E.M. The songs of the Shop Assistants practically sound like the blueprints for K records. We have to believe folks like Beat Happening and The Softies had copies of this record when the whole International Pop Underground movement started up. We hear so much of our favorite indie pop sounds in this record: Magnetic Fields, Yo La Tengo, Belle & Sebastian, Electrelane, Vivian Girls, The Aislers Set, we could go on and on. It also makes perfect sense that Stephen Street engineered the record as it also fits so nicely sonically next to the records he worked on with The Smiths. The Shop Assistants can sound so dreamy and also so peppy and rocking, fully charming and irresistible without every being cutsey. This is a must have for anyone with a love for any of the bands mentioned above, indie rock, twee, dream pop, etc. Totally endearing and so damn good! If we have anything to do with it, Shop Assistants will no longer be the best kept secret in indie pop history. This is amazing!
Pretty much every black metal band in the world owes their very existence to Venom, hell, the very name of the genre comes from the title of a Venom album, and while the sound has changed over the last couple decades, the template is not all that different, buzzing guitars, galloping drums, satanic lyrics. And sure, the sound has indeed spiraled out in every possible direction, from dirgey depressive buzz, to lightning speed blast, few have taken the sound further OUT than Japan's enigmatic Sigh, who throughout their nearly two decade existence, have incorporated Morricone style motifs, psychedelic rock, lounge-y jazz, over the top cabaret and lots of saxophone into their already twisted blackness.
So what to expect when Sigh decide to take on a set of songs by their black metal forefathers? Well, perhaps we might have expected something a LOT more demented than this, but hell, it's a bit refreshing to hear Sigh just sort of thrash and rock out without going totally haywire. With special guests Dan Lilker from Brutal Truth and Shane Embury of Napalm Death, Sigh have let their sexy saxophonist Dr. Mikannibal (who is really a doctor apparently) sit this one out (although she does sing a bit) so the band can spit out 7 kick ass blasts of old school pounding metal. Which is exactly what you get. These versions are not really all that far removed from the originals, heavy and intense and furious, but also wild and sloppy and a bit chaotic and loose, which when you think about it pretty much perfectly captures the peculiar essence of Venom. They picked a couple strange songs to cover too, the bluesy "Teacher's Pet" and the epic dramatic piano workout of "Mayhem With Mercy", but for the most part this is nothing but thrashing and buzzing old school black metal, heavy on the metal.
Weird only in that it's not that weird at all for Sigh, so folks expecting something fucked up and demented might be a bit disappointed, but most metalheads will be in heavy metal heaven, er, hell.
Released as an lp, packaged with a cd (not a cd-r) containing all the same songs!
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Up until now Sigur Ros has not really been a band we'd associate with wordiness, with spontaneity or with bare flesh. They surprise us with a mouthful of an album title and an eyeful of an album cover. The music as well has floored us -- startlingly different from the trademark blissed out Icelandic grandeur of their previous four full lengths. Nothing tooo drastic, mind you, but Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust refreshes both the band and the listener with songs that are somehow at once both rawer'n'heavier and warmer'n'lighter. Instead of end-to-end waves of dreamy blanketing embraces, there are also moments of bracing starkness and (dare we say?) exuberant immediacy. The combination builds to a (yes, epic!) centerpiece number "Ara Batur" which apparently was recorded in one take and features ninety performers including the London Oratory Boys Choir and the London Sinfonietta orchestra. Whoa, stunning! it's easy to see why they chose to doff their clothing for this one!
We've been in intrigued (and a bit obsessed) with these Norwegian black metal weirdos for a while now. Frontman Aatselgribb, always sporting a white magistrate's powdered wig, usually a hat, and some sort of old fashioned garment, big wide cuffs, flowing coats, very striking, but pretty what the fuck as well. The covers and band photos are routinely super dramatic staged shots with the band members preceding over some sort of tribunal, or standing with arms outstretched batlike in the orchestra pit at an opera. On top of all that, Aatselgribb's sidekicks in Slagmaur are called General Gribbsphilser and Lt. Warder.
There are two other proper full lengths, neither of which we've been able to track down to list, both packed with buzzing blackness, haunting industrial stomp, soaring symphonic pomp, and all manner of gothic ambience. Domfeldt is the band's demo from 2007, reissued on cd for the first time, and as most people's entree into the sick soundworld of Slagmaur, it's a pretty great one.
After a dense swirling drone intro, like a symphony of swarming insects over a tuning up orchestra, the band launch into a sound that hovers somewhere between a depressive lurching black metal dirge, a Godflesh like industrial stomp, and woozy tripped out blackened doom. The guitars buzz and soar, not way up in the mix, sort of muted and off in the distance, the drums, machinelike and motorik, everything wreathed in a haunting murky oppressive ambience, the melodies ascending and descending maniacally, the whole sound very seasick and warped sounding, in the distance, strings sing, the vocals a harsh raspy croak, atonal piano pounds somewhere down in the mix, the rhythms sounding almost martial at times, elsewhere horns moan ominously, random bits of percussive clunk and clatter drift on heaving seas of twisted muted riffage, guitars unfurl prickly detuned sort-of-leads, the sound shifts from hellish circus, to stripped down new wave-y doom, to gothic crush, to 16rpm black metal, to fucked up SST inflected doom. It's pretty tough to describe. It's too slow and fucked up to really be pure black metal, but it's too black and twisted to be doom or anything else. At times it sounds a bit like The Cure if they were raised on Abruptum and Burzum, and fed loads and loads of bad acid and PCP. Some moments sound like a more specifically metal Gnaw Their Tongues, but for the most part Slagmaur do their own thing, a fucked up, sick and twisted, and gloriously damaged and demented thing. Yet another new name to add to the ever expanding aQ canon of super fucked outsider blackness. Needless to say (but we will anyway), absolutely essential.
Sorc'Henn's last disc, Harmonium Pieces & Dead Reveries, which was released on Faunsabbatha, the more 'metal' sub label of Ruralfaune, wasn't actually a metal record, more a dark dronescape, whirring expanses of Lustmordian Wolf Eyes style post industrial buzzing black shimmer.
This latest Sorc'henn disc, released on Crucial Bliss (another sub-label, this time of Crucial Blast) is even more removed from anything metal. And in many ways anything dark. At least the 21 minute opener, which plays out like an Argento soundtrack composed by Oval, all shimmering layers, and skipping cds, looped ambience, that glimmer and glistens, a bit of Philip Jeck, a little Tim Hecker, all fuzzy and crackly melodies locked into haunting loops, while over the top, a child's voice whispers, and in the background bits of bird song. Truly creepy, but simultaneously quite lovely, totally mesmerizing, would have been happy if this track was stretched out to fill the whole disc. Odds are you'll find yourself listening to it over and over, luxuriating in its haunting mystery, eyes closed, picturing some old crumbling estate, surrounded by dark forests, a child peeking from the heavy curtains in an upstairs window.
After that, the sound gets even more fuzzed out and crackly, a warm washed out hiss, speckled with bits of crackle and pop, a slowly unfurling minimal melody way off in the distance, the sound of thundering low end drifting by like black clouds, warm whirring organs, bits of electronic glitch, deep throbbing reverberating buzz, all leading up to the 27 minute long final track, a totally demented black musickal ritual, deep rumbles, growled Darth Vader like invokations, bits of industrial clatter, squalls of hiss, whirling streaks of effects, detuned guitars, woozy melodies, thick waves of crumbling buzz, slivers of feedback, creaking and groaning machinelike ambience, distorted chimes, disembodied vocals howling and moaning, a truly harrowing black and bleak soundscape, finishing off with a brief snippet of an old timey French piano ballad, adding even more mystery to the song's already eerie and mystical vibe.
Like all the Crucial Bliss releases, packaged in a cool 3 panel full color fold over sleeve.
About every 7 and a half months or so, we get an email from Sound Projector publisher/editor Ed Pinsent over in England, informing us of the release of a new issue and politely inquiring as to whether we would like to perhaps order some copies. As if we would say no! Of course, his email elicits a "hell yeah!!" response from us, and some days or weeks later, depending on the vagaries of the international postal system, an exhausted mailman arrives bearing a heavy package stuffed with Sound Projectors, in this case, issue #17. And then we have hours of reading and mental note-taking ahead of us. Mental note-taking? That's 'cause aside from the odd interview or three (this issue: Sharon Kraus, Gen Ken Montgomery, Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words) SP consists almost ENTIRELY of record reviews. And we LOVE record reviews. Sure, some are of things we already reviewed ourselves. But we find a lot of new (and old) stuff here, things we'd never heard of, or have in stock but hadn't yet gotten around to listing yet. So it's a great way to supplement your steady diet of Aquarius Records New Arrivals list reviews, that's for sure.
As per usual, this issue is broken into many "chapters" devoted to musics grouped either geographically ("The Nordic Realms") or by format ("Vinyl Viands 12-inch") or, mostly, by genre or should we say micro-genre ("Atoms Of Pure Noise", "The Droning Ones", "Utter Freakdom", "Shh - Quiet Music"). Literally hundreds and hundreds of albums discussed, in an opinionated and expert fashion. We definitely respect their reviewers, even if we don't always agree (though we often do, and in fact get name-checked in their thumbs up for the band Quest For Blood). And the wide range of music covered is right up our eclectic alley, from experimental field recordings to hippie folk to Norwegian black metal. We really can't imagine any regular AQ customer not wanting, nay, needing this magazine.
As big as ever (172 pages thick!), this issue is actually a bit less expensive than other recent Sound Projectors, as Ed found a cheaper (and faster, miracle of miracles) way to post 'em to us from across the pond. Yay!
Also, this comes with a special bonus, a free download of an album by Rhode Island synth-wizard Mudboy, exclusive to this issue of the Sound Projector.
We went a little nuts for the debut release from Anduin a while back, the project of Souvenir's Young America keyboardist Jonathan Lee, taking SYA's Western tinged post rock doom, and stretching it out into something much more subtle and ambient. But SYA is back to remind us just why we were so into Lee and his crew in the first place, with two brand new tracks of sweeping epic, spacious and cinematic post rock, rivaling and perhaps surpassing any of their more well known contemporaries.
The guitars chime and ring out, the drums propulsive and subtly mathy, lots of deserty ambience, moody melodic swoon, crunchy almost metal guitars here and there, haunting blissed out stretches of soft strummy drift, slippery slide guitar and pulsing electronics. There are some haunting processed vocals, distant and heavily effected, tribal rhythms, lots of space, little bits of glitch here and there, slightly doomy, with a distinct twang, gorgeous and dark, but always mysterious and hauntingly dreamy. Can't wait for the next full length.
The flipside features a new (to us at least) group called City Of Ships, who prove to be a pretty good match for SYA, starting their side with some washed out ambience, glimmering guitar harmonies, shimmery cymbal washes, all before the band kick in and get all mathy with tangled squiggly guitar leads and hard hitting complicated drumming. And unlike SYA, City Of Ships are NOT instrumental, the vocals a raspy croon that get more and more wild eventually veering into almost emo territory, the sound a mix of June Of 44 and a mellower Neurosis. Long stretches of mellowy meandering peppered with jagged bursts of crunch and pound, the tracks building to seriously epic climaxes with grinding metallic guitars, angular and sharp, with howled vocals and wild chaotic drums. Good stuff.
Packaged in a super swank fold over 2 color hand screened gold colored sleeve, each one hand numbered, with a photocopied insert, and LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
This match-up had to happen really, even if it was just so they could call the record SpaceShipp. Legendary Jazz pianist Matthew Shipp teams up with Spacemen 3's Jason Spaceman for two extended pieces of modern minimal dronemusic.
Apparently the two performed live together at Patty Smith's Meltdown Festival, and this recording is an extension / corollary of that performance. And it's a doozy. Shipp abandons the piano in favor of the Harmonium, while Spaceman wields his trusty Vox Starstreamer, the two conjure up some seriously deep drones. The opener is the 41 minute "Inner", and is a slow moving near static stretch of massive minimalism, the guitar and organ unfurling long tones, creating all sorts of layers and textures, complex overtones, and subtle barely there rhythms, the obvious references are Reich, Niblock and Palestine. The piece occasionally shifts and the tones become fuzzier, a bit more blown out and buzzy, but they quickly revert to their more murky washed out state. Total divine Ur-drone action, mesmerizing, hypnotic, and dreamlike.
The second track, "Outer", is only 11 minutes long, and features Shipp on the Celeste, creating delicate crystalline music box like melodies, while Spaceman creates all sorts of scrapes and buzz in the background, which slowly coalesces into a Spacemen 3 sort of looped buzz, the two elements at odds, but strangely complimentary, the combined sound woozy, warped and warbly, but still haunting and strangely lovely.
Gorgeously packaged like all Treader releases, this one features a blue matte paper fold over sleeve, with a metallic gold jellyfish embossed on the front.
Sparks are experiencing a much deserved surge in respect and attention lately after thirty seven years of crafting some of the most innovative, arousing and irreverent pop music ever. Much of their back catalog is being reissued so expect to see lots of their titles reviewed here in the months to come. We've already expressed our profound love for their first couple outings and their amazing Giorgio Moroder produced No.1 In Heaven remains an all time AQ favorite, and their last few outings have thrilled us with their over the top indulgence and pure pop genius.
Whomp That Sucker has always been one of their overlooked albums, their first record after parting ways with Giorgio Moroder, who gave the band a more dance/disco vibe on the two records that came before this one. This record found Sparks in full on new-wave overdrive reflecting the year it was recorded, 1981, yet like so much of their back catalog it really stands the test of time. Five different kinds of keyboards and synthesizers were used in making this record and the songs are filled with crazy catchy hooks and some of their most amusing lyrics with songs that sound like Devo channeling The Knack and 10cc.
With the recent flood of newer bands looking to the '80s for inspiration in their hip shaking sassy pop (Hot Chip, Of Montreal, Cut Copy, Tough Alliance, etc.) it's pretty awesome to go back to 1981 and hear how it's really done. So fun and additive!
In the AQ pantheon of fucked up freaked out damaged weirdo black metal, we're constantly having to re-assess which band or which record is truly the MOST fucked up, the most damaged. And it can change in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, deeper listening reveals some until now hidden reserve of completely what-the-fuck-ness in a record we already considered a classic, other times, a band who maybe was never all that weird, will unleash a new record that is utterly confounding, and the bands that tend to be our favorites, seem to keep pushing the limits of the genre, continually subverting the classic sound of black metal until it's all but recognizable. In many cases, we're surprised that some of those bands continue to be loved by metalheads. Necrofrost, Furze, Striborg, Blut Aus Nord, Dead Reptile Shrine, and of course Spektr, who with each new release, jumps right to the front of the pack. Mescalyne is no different.
Were this not a 4 song ep, we'd probably already be trumpeting this as black metal record of the year, and heck, we might as well proclaim it black metal EP of the year. Even considering that black metal is only one small part of their overall, twisted and blackened sound.
As always, very little information anywhere, just some cryptic photos, and the band introduced like this: "Thus, Speller are:". One member Hth, is credited with Infra B. Distrubance, lead and rhythm anomalies, programming, sampling and vox, while kl.K is credited with percussive manifest, sampling, programming, words of spell and vox. So with all that programming and sampling, you can safely assume, that the weirdness here has much to do with electronics and processing, but it's not as simple as all that. Spektr's vision is a gnarled chaotic tangle of impossible rhythms, backwards guitars, black ambience, and FURIOUS black buzz. It sounds a bit like someone computer was hooked up to the guys in Deathspell Omega, and was sucking various black bits from their bodies and electronically weaving them into some sort of blackened beast, hellbent on destroying the world.
A mad scientist, working with black metal, in some hidden fortress, creating some Frankensteinian buzzing behemoth, a lurching, skittering blown out riffed monstrosity.
The opener, "Hollow Contact", begins with dark ambient swirls, some industrial moan and creak, a bit of metallic drumming, giving way to an incredible fierce and in the red blast of black metal fury, the drums machine gun fast, the riffs so blurred and buzzy, they're almost a continuous drone, some weird dynamics, with the guitars flipped backwards, and then chunks of tangled arpeggiated woozy blackness sent drifting into the void.
The second track is just as strange, beginning with an almost typical black metal drum beat, but beneath a layer of what sounds like record crackle, static, and hiss, and all sorts of whirring buzzing ambience off in the distance, separated by thick blasts of nearly impenetrable black buzz, until the song splinters into a stuttering hiccupping stop start breakdown, all tangled warped guitar parts, backwards drums, tons of space, and that weird blast of gnarled twisted riffage punctuating the slow crawl. The third track is all ambient, a dark confusional sprawl of black whirs, and disembodied sounds, mysterious voices, which leads perfectly into the final track, the mellowest of the bunch, still with that same sort of unhinged Deathspell sound, but more spread out, more sort of Ved Buens Ende-y, a sort of post rock groove overlaid with those woozy guitars, and some haunting industrial ambience, finally erupting into some hyperspeed buzzing blackthrash, even then, constantly pulled apart into the opening guitar vs. drums dizziness, finishing off with a haunting minute of high end drone, and hushed, panicked whispering.
Words barely do this stuff justice. Listen to the sound samples. The sound of Mescalyne manages to be futuristic, and spaced out but still grim and black. Buzzy and brutal, but atmospheric and cinematic. This is the kind of fucked up forward thinking music, filmmakers should be using to score their films. Eyes closed, Mescalyne is a terrifying nightmare ride, through some hellish futuristic underworld, and needless to say another addition to the aQ fucked up black metal pantheon. And most probably, black metal ep of the year!
There's a certain strain of black metal, that concerns itself more with black than metal, more with texture than heaviness, more with mood than any sort of musical rules. Those are precisely the sorts of black metal bands that send us spinning. Bands that transcend their genre, or are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they might belong to any genre at all. Such is the case with mysterious black metal outift Spektr. We discovered their debut a couple years back and proudly proclaimed it THE WEIRDEST BLACK METAL RECORD EVER. Since then it's been practically raining bizarre black metal, Furze, Rehtaf Ruo, Dead Reptile Shrine, Hidden, Urfaust, Circle Of Ouroborus, all most definitely black, but each with their own take on what black metal means. And sounds like.
This new Spektr record, however, takes up right where the last one left off, and effortlessly outweirds them all. But their mission is not to be weird. This is not calculated, purposeful, ironic, or in any way untrue to their vision. And it's not that sort of damaged inept weirdness. The music is too dense, and complex and varied and lush and just too impossibly and truly weird to be anything but the musical expression of someone's twisted vision. It's like how truly insane people are the ones who don't realize they're insane. And Spektr are most definitely insane.
The cool thing about Spektr, is that they seem to be some sort of experimental ambient project, with occasional bursts of black metal, as opposed to the other way around. More than half the record seems to be made up of drones, and static and white noise and intercepted transmissions, short wave radio, found sounds, soft subtle rumbles and strange rhythmic interference. When the metal does kick in, it tends towards a seasick lurching midtempo buzz, a lumbering blackened beast, that sort of stumbles and careens wildly out of control, occasionally slipping into a galloping blast, but quickly settling back into a slow sort of lope. Their metal is just off kilter enough to balance their experimental tendencies, and Spektr don't shy away from busting out with a black blast for only a few second before getting back to the drone at hand. And oh the drones! The gloriously twisted ambience. So dense and multilayered. Creaking and crackling, swelling and slithering, often punctuated by industrial pounding, strange rhythms, glitchy hiccups and stutters, but just as often a smoldering warble, a low end dirge of glacial hum and creepy crawly gurgle and whir, voices drift up from the murk, as do strange song fragments and bits of malfunctioning electronics, it's like walking through some black skied wasteland, the ground strewn with all manner of debris, the air thick with smoke and ash, The view fuzzy and indistinct, distant tolling bells, cymbal sizzle that sounds like sprinklers in a moonlit field, all these bits of sound, these ambient fragments, woven together into a truly ominous world of dark sound, the background to a truly bleak and buzzy black metal framework. The more we listen to this, the less -weird- it seems, scary maybe, haunting, harrowing, dark, dreary, creepy, ominous, ghostly, unnerving, and mysterious most certainly, oh okay, and quite a little bit weird too.
A definite contender for our favorite new black metal record!
The disc also includes a video, playable on your computer, for a track not on the cd. And it's a strange one as you might expect. The music is all dark drones, with weirdly jazzy drums way up in the mix, shuffling over a fuzzed out Burzumic riff that sort of ebbs and flows, a fuzzy distorted wave. It never fully kicks in, but it never completely blisses out. It sort of teeters back and forth between dark jazz and glacial black fuzz. It's a little like a black metal post-bop Bohren, sort of. The track shifts partway through and becomes a strange sonic kaleidoscope of creepy orchestra music, garbled ambience and a haunting martial rhythm played on tympani's. The accompanying video is gorgeously grainy, all darkness and shadows, like some rare damaged print of a lost silent horror film, the film stock so degraded that various chunks of light and dark take on ominous shapes, the end result, the visual equivalent of an old crackly record. Totally mesmerizing.
Sprung Aus Den Wolken came out of the Berlin underground in the early 80s, right alongside Einsturzernde Neubauten and Malaria, producing their own claustrophobic rhythm and noise out of junked electronics and instruments. Just as Neubauten built their own studio to serve their metal bashing purposes, Sprung Aus Den Wolken had their Cassettencombinat studio in which to tinker around with mutant grooves, sparkplug guitar scratchiness, and yelping vocals. Given the lo-fi material produced through Cassettencombinat, the studio was probably little more than a tangle of 1/4" cables, a 4-track, and whatever gear the various participants could cobble together. Yet out of these constraints, Sprung Aus Den Wolken had managed some truly inspired post-punk tunes, which sort of come across as a weird hybrid of Neubauten, The Ex, and Gang of Four. The Neubauten connection may be obvious as a very young kid named Alexander Hacke had found his way into the Sprung Aus Den Wolken camp at about the same time he began scraping infernal noises alongside Blixa Bargeld and crew. Where Neubauten was all about a bleak destruction of sound with darkly serious connotations, Sprung Aus Den Wolken were considerably more playful in their slop and sonic debris, often working in catchy grooves, basslines, and guitar bursts that tease with the notion of a pop hook into their danse macabre. Faux Pas was their first LP, recorded back in 1982, with some of this material appearing on the Vinyl On Demand boxset of Cassettencombinat material. But none of this has been on cd, until now. Klanggalerie has also included a couple of tracks from a few years later when Sprung Aus Den Wolken actually went into a proper studio (or maybe Cassettencombinat got a really fancy upgrade) for the "Pas Attendre," which earned the band a wider audience through its inclusion on the Wings Of Desire soundtrack.
