At long last! One of the most anticipated black metal reissue campaigns EVER, moves forward with the 4th and 5th installment in the comprehensive cd rerelease of the entire recorded output by Swiss one man horde Paysage D'Hiver. Judging from past installments, and how often we get asked when the next disc is coming out, most of you have already freaked out a bit, added this to your cart, and begun 'the preparations', lighting the torches, blacking out the windows, turning your freezer on high and leaving the door open to produce thick drifts of snow throughout your house (well, it worked in Tom And Jerry cartoons), in anticipation of finally getting to immerse yourself in the frostbitten winter world of Paysage D'Hiver.
Paysage are almost universally revered, as THEE ultimate grim and frosty black metal band, the soundscapes and sprawling epics the make up the 11 Paysage releases so far are truly transcendent, each one dramatically different than the last, but somehow a continuation, another chapter in a hopefully never ending saga. Much like how Darkspace creates a black metal that seems at once futuristic and alien, evoking distant planets, dead suns, black holes, strange ships and mysterious beings, Paysage invokes, crumbling stone walls, set amidst icy peaks, cloaked in year round snow, thick forests painted white, the branches heavy with frost and snow, flickering firelight bravely battling against the ever encroaching coldness, of darkness, and night, of moonlight and death, of earth and sky, seasons and most importantly Winter. Makes perfect sense then, as most of you already know that Wintherr, the man behind Paysage, is also a member of Darkspace.
Both bands transcend the genre, using sound, by deftly arranging sounds similar to many other bands, in a whole new way, to create something wholly original, something that is more than just music, powerful sounds that transport and transform. Like Darkspace, the music of Paysage is made up of course by buzz and blast. And there are riffs and vokills. There are drums, and keyboards and bass. But right there is where any similarity to other black metal bands ends. The world of Paysage is a world of alchemy, it's far more difficult to imagine Wintherr hunched over a four track, than it is to picture him in a cave over a fire mixing potions. When we listen to Paysage, we don't picture someone in jeans and a t-shirt playing a guitar, we imagine a lonely figure wrapped in furs, hunched over, walking up an icy path toward a black structure in the foothills of some mighty mountain range, the windows glowing amber, a distant flicker barely visible through a wall of falling snow. And somehow that's exactly what makes this music so magical, and so utterly mind blowing.
Kerker was originally released on cassette in 2000, and is essentially a single piece, split into movements, and of all the reissues so far is the murkiest, all of the requisite parts are present but the fidelity is so low, the recording so strange, that all of the constituent parts are rendered one swirling muted organic whole. Bands like Wold, Amocoma, Yoga, Paysage take it to a whole 'nother level. Beginning with a rumbling ambience, the main riff soon surfaces, barely audible over the din of the intro, and very little changes when the vocals and the drums join in, the sound becomes a bit more frenentic, headphones reveal more details, but even then, the sound is a swirling churning roiling black sea of buzz and blur and hum and rumble and whir occasionally coalescing into discernible black metal before seemingly blurring before your very eyes and slipping back into the abyss. So incredibly haunting and mysterious and beautifully fucked up. The second movement is all ambient, thick swaths of keyboard, and pounding industrial drums, a gurgling blackened drift, like trudging through some underground cavern populated with demons and monsters, huddled by firepits, trying desperately to escape the blizzard that lurks above. Here too the sound is incredible, lush, yet lo-fi, muddy and indistinct, but within that muddy swirl all manner of subtle details and slow shifting colors reveal themselves. Voices too, demonic, ominous, bubbling up from below. The third movement continues the descent, the ice melting, soon the rocks themselves liquefying into viscous black pools, the sound of this approach to hell is one of deep low end buzz, a blown out distorted rumble that seems to swirl malevolently beneath a haze of blurred whir, until finally a keyboard enters, adding a glimmer of light to the pitch black sprawl.
Finally, the cycle is completed with another super distorted, murky blast, this time with synthesizers adding demented shards of melody, the drums an avalanche of pound and crash, the guitars a maniacal frenzied buzz, the vocals a subterranean gurgle, and again all blurred and smeared into a gorgeously hazy washed out smear of abstract buzzing blackness, dark and dramatic, haunting and enigmatic.
Like all of the reissues, the cd is housed in a book sized A5 digipak, adorned with haunting images, this time a grim looking dungeon (Kerker means Dungeon) and a swirling black hole, with lyrics and NO liner notes. The digipak is housed in a black envelope, with the name of the band and the record printed in barely legible black ink.
At long last! One of the most anticipated black metal reissue campaigns EVER, moves forward with the 4th and 5th installment in the comprehensive cd rerelease of the entire recorded output by Swiss one man horde Paysage D'Hiver. Judging from past installments, and how often we get asked when the next disc is coming out, most of you have already freaked out a bit, added this to your cart, and begun 'the preparations', lighting the torches, blacking out the windows, turning your freezer on high and leaving the door open to produce thick drifts of snow throughout your house (well, it worked in Tom And Jerry cartoons), in anticipation of finally getting to immerse yourself in the frostbitten winter world of Paysage D'Hiver.
Paysage are almost universally revered, as THEE ultimate grim and frosty black metal band, the soundscapes and sprawling epics the make up the 11 Paysage releases so far are truly transcendent, each one dramatically different than the last, but somehow a continuation, another chapter in a hopefully never ending saga. Much like how Darkspace creates a black metal that seems at once futuristic and alien, evoking distant planets, dead suns, black holes, strange ships and mysterious beings, Paysage invokes, crumbling stone walls, set amidst icy peaks, cloaked in year round snow, thick forests painted white, the branches heavy with frost and snow, flickering firelight bravely battling against the ever encroaching coldness, of darkness, and night, of moonlight and death, of earth and sky, seasons and most importantly Winter. Makes perfect sense then, as most of you already know that Wintherr, the man behind Paysage, is also a member of Darkspace.
Both bands transcend the genre, using sound, by deftly arranging sounds similar to many other bands, in a whole new way, to create something wholly original, something that is more than just music, powerful sounds that transport and transform. Like Darkspace, the music of Paysage is made up of course by buzz and blast. And there are riffs and vokills. There are drums, and keyboards and bass. But right there is where any similarity to other black metal bands ends. The world of Paysage is a world of alchemy, it's far more difficult to imagine Wintherr hunched over a four track, than it is to picture him in a cave over a fire mixing potions. When we listen to Paysage, we don't picture someone in jeans and a t-shirt playing a guitar, we imagine a lonely figure wrapped in furs, hunched over, walking up an icy path toward a black structure in the foothills of some mighty mountain range, the windows glowing amber, a distant flicker barely visible through a wall of falling snow. And somehow that's exactly what makes this music so magical, and so utterly mind blowing.
Kristall & Isa was originally released on cassette in 2001, and is another blast of frostbitten brilliance, a furious buzzing trek across snow choked tundras, and right out of the gate, this is one of the fiercest of the Paysage discs, the guitar a furious buzz so in the red that it's blurred into a near static streak of sound, the vocals are harsh and hysterical, buried in the mix, the drums a motorik pound, and within the swirling chaos there seems to be strange melodies lurking, what sounds like flutes or keyboards surfacing and then disappearing in the blink of an eye, definitely lending a strangely psychedelic vibe to the proceedings.
The record quickly shifts gears and transforms into lo-fi bedroom ambience, sounding like it was recorded on a boom box, all manner of clatter and clunk, the music and the vocals super low, it almost sounds like someone held up a microcassette recorded to the speaker of their stereo, super intimate and creepy. The follow up is much the same, only this time the music is a whooshy soft focus blur, but still the shifting microphone can be heard, as well as lots of tape hiss, a truly creepy ambience, like listening surreptitiously from afar.
"Der Kristall Ist Eis" explodes into a bleary eyed buzzy black blast similar to the album opener, and again the sounds are so blurred and blown out that the track seems to gradually shift into some spaced out buzz drenched dronemusic, hypnotic and mesmerizing. A near static blast, that pounds away while all around it clouds of static and buzz swirl, and eventually, beautiful warm melodies surface from the din, and it suddenly sounds like two records playing at once, but in a really good. really strange way.
After one more extended stretch of bedroom lo-fi field recordings, this one the most ambient and abstract of the bunch, a series of hushed whispers and some barely there shimmer, the final track explodes once again in a relentless frenzy of buzzing high end, machine like jackhammer pound, and a wall of blown out static rrrooooaaar. This track is the most varied of the bunch, slipping at one point into a lurching Burzumic lope, but only briefly before returning to the relentless wintery black onslaught. The band pause for breath, while cold winter winds blow through, the band offer up a tangled convoluted off kilter outro that sounds almost Deathspell-ish, before darkness falls once again and all that is left is the sound of the windswept wintery night.
Like all of the reissues, the cd is housed in a book sized A5 digipak, adorned with haunting images, this time a beautiful winter forest and a snowy stream, with lyrics and NO liner notes. The digipak is housed in a black envelope, with the name of the band and the record printed in barely legible black ink.
Super cool embroidered patch from one of our favorite black metal bands. Black and white and silver, the band's logo frosted with snow. Your denim vest wants one of these soooooo bad. We only have a tiny handful of these so don't be too bummed out if they're gone before you get one...
Drummer Aaron Levin and guitarist Eric Murray, both formerly of tongue-in-cheek (but over-the-top awesome) glam rockers Boyjazz, have banded together as a duo since that band's unfortunate dissolution to create another outlet for their "bow down, we're not worthy" level instrumental talents. Pegataur is the result (the name referring to a Pegasus + Centaur hybrid, a winged man-horse, of course). Their debut cd, Eternal Flight, is quite a treat for anyone who digs rippin', all-instrumental heavy metal. Technical and melodic and riffy - basically, imagine The Fucking Champs as a two-piece. If you like the Champs, you'll like this, maybe that's all we need to say!!
Any of you out there who perhaps found Boyjazz too jokey (you shoulda given them a chance anyway, what an entertaining band they were!), should have less of an issue with this, in fact, Pegataur not only shut up and play but really go off the deep end in terms of seriousness if you delve into their, um, mythology. The packaging, a large circular poster that folds up to hold the cd, inside a plastic sleeve, bears mysterious illustrations of supposed significance within the occult sciences, relating to their own research. We've gotta quote what their press release says about it: "Orbiting around the Pegataur seal are 11 sigils for the tracks and a 12th king sigil to bind and rule the album as a whole. Utilizing techniques employed by such famed Renaissance occultists as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim and Dr. John Dee, each song title and corresponding sigil were generated by custom software (written by guitarist Eric Murray) that correlates the musical structure of each track with the many esoteric traditions in which Pegataur is initiated. It is suggested that the neophyte concentrate on each sigil as the song plays while holding the song title firmly in their mind to further their studies." (Hmm, they don't say how you're supposed to do that whilst headbanging.) So, maybe their joking has just gotten even more nerdy and obscure. Or maybe there's something to all of this. Certainly this duo seriously seem to be channeling an unnatural abundance of heavy metal chops and catchiness through each one of these 11 rockin' songs, as if they've got some direct psychic link to a dimension of metallic wonderment and the devil's music just effortlessly, endlessly flows through the Pegataur boys and their instruments like magic.
Pegataur probably could have scored bagfuls of gold pieces (or weed) from The Sword or High On Fire in exchange for some of the best of these riffs and still had plenty of good ones left over. Likewise, their hella tricky metallic mathrock moments would likely garner applause from folks like Electro Quarterstaff and Girth. We've already compared 'em to the Champs, but you could also try to imagine Zebulon Pike, stripped down to one guitar and forced to condense their usual 20+ minute epics into the 3-minute pop song format.
From the pinch harmonic frenzies and chugging changes of "Lesser Bow Of The Herdsman" and "The Weeping Quiver" to the grinding distorted stoner riffage of "Lord Solomon's Eyes" and "Human Appetite" (among the 11, we could mention 'em all) this kicks ass utterly, with no vocals to get in the way, just tons of guitar shred in an indie Van Halen mode that might make Thee Speaking Canaries jealous. No joke!
Folks went nuts for the PHT full length we reviewed a few weeks back, so here we have two new slabs of murky, muddy, downtuned sludge drenched power violence. Both tracks are gloriously crusty and filthy and so so so heavy, and would have fit perfectly on the full length.
One side features a massive lurching riff over machinelike drumming and howled vokills, pounding and relentless but strangely hypnotic almost like a sludgier Geronimo. The flip side is even doomier and more spaced out, with crushing low end, squiggly streaks of feedback, all wound into a lumbering grinding slow motion behemoth, with glass gargling vocals all beneath a thick layer of buzzy grit.
The weird part about this 7" is that both tracks, each side, features essentially an entirely different lineup! There's only one guy who plays on both sides and on one he plays drums, while on the other he plays bass. We knew they were a sort of collective and this seems to prove it. Especially considering that both sides definitely and distinctly reek of that filthy blackness that could only be Pig Heart Transplant.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Packaged in hand stamped plain red sleeves with a printed red bottom obi.
NOW ON VINYL!!!
We go on and on complaining about the dearth of grime and dubstep releases in the US, but then we end up sitting on a handful of kick ass titles that have been getting serious playtime in the shop and on our headphones. Well, as we've said before, there are only so many of us, and so so so so many records to review, so some things take longer than others. Like this double disc from Pinch. Not brand new, but easily one of our favorite dubstep discs of that last little while, and easily the darkest and most stripped down.
Split into two discs, one with vocals, one without, we definitely prefer the instrumental disc, but the vocal disc is definitely growing on us. A few tracks we could maybe do without, but for the most part still pretty kick ass. But not nearly as intense and mysterious, murky and skittery as the instrumental disc, well worth the price of admission all on its own.
Each track is super cinematic, the drums skittering and shuffling, the basslines rubbery and dubbed out, synths buzzing and warbling, shards of haunting melody drift by, what vocals do remain, are just ghostly traces and are washed out and blurred into strange streaks of sound. The sound seems to swirl and drift and wash over you, so evocative and creepy and darkly beautiful. Take "Brighter Day", the bassline almost continuous, undulating, rumbling and whirring, the drums locked into a head nodding dubbed out groove, the song anchored by this disembodied melodic fragment, that is somehow a total hook, thick slabs of buzzing synths surface here and there, backward swoops, gristly digital crunch, but for the most part it's dark and smooth, groovy and slithery, a sexy dubbed out crawl, sort of like the Tricky of old dabbling in dubstep. And the rest of the instrumental disc follows suit. Sprawling dubscapes, of fragmented stuttery rhythms, deep rib cage rattling bass, drifting ethereal melodies, lots of buzz and fuzz and rumble and whir, bits of Eastern raga, some more classic dub sounds, a bit of modern dub a la Pole, all woven into blurred bleary eared landscapes of lurch and groove. Absolutely essential.
The vocal disc is not too shabby either really, our only complaint is that the tracks are already practically perfect in their ominous minimalism, so sometimes the vocals almost seem superfluous. But even so, the vocal disc is still pretty bad ass. The opener "Punisher" is a stone cold classic, a rubbery dizzying bassline, streaks and swoops over that classic dubstep groove, totally grime-y and dubby, but also alien and abstract, the vocals a looped toast practically buried under the murk and mire. "Brighter Day", the standout from the instrumental disc, gets a vocal makeover, a super catchy sing songy toasting, that definitely changes the vibe of the song, making it much less ominous and way more poppy, but even as much as we love the instrumental version, this one is definitely still pretty great. A few of the tracks verge on the diva-like, and manage to transform the originals into something a little too croony, but there are only a couple of those, and one of them slips easily into that classic Tricky / Martina sound which is actually pretty nice. The rest of the disc just sounds like more classic modern dub, the vocals going from smooth and melodic to rough and raspy, but still underneath, the music remains gloriously slithery and skittery.
Like we said before, you could just listen to the instrumental version over and over and over (we certainly have), and we'd give this big ups just on the basis of that disc, but give the vocal disc a try to. We've been spinning that one more and more everyday. And as if we even needed to say it, WAY recommended.
Sometimes the world does indeed seem like a surprisingly small place. Years back, we were email penpals with a guy in England, who drummed for a killer mathy post rock band called Polaris. We exchanged records, and dug the shit out of the Polaris stuff we heard. Eventually we sort of lost touch, but would often wonder what happened to our friend, and wonder what had happened to the band, who as far as we were concerned should have been way more popular than they were.�
Well, years later, we get a random email from a label looking to get their records into the shop, and lo and behold, right there on the list is a record from a band called Polaris. It couldn't be. Could it? But indeed it was, recorded in 2004, this most recent release (their last?) from UK math rockers Polaris is like a modern take on nineties math rock. A little dreamier and more melodic and a little less raw then we remember, but still so good. Channeling the sound of Polvo, Pitchblende, Archers Of Loaf, Rodan and the like. Spidery minor key melodies, angular riffage, complex mathy drumming, lots of start stop arrangements, super dynamic, with long brooding stretches of loping melancholy groove, giving way to brief squalls of soft crunch, moody Tortoise like meandering, occasional bits of metallic buzz, gorgeous swells of dramatic Slint-isms, weary drawled vocals, all woven into long flowing post rock soundscapes. We sometimes forget how great stuff like this sounds. Hardly any bands make music like this anymore, and even the modern math rock and post rock bands who do have a totally different vibe than back in the day. The cool thing is, while Polaris definitely sound like they were transported here from 1995, they manage to update the sound, making it their own, somehow prettier and dronier, the vibe woozy and dreamy as well as propulsive and tightly (un)wound. So good. Several songs in, we were smitten, totally transported, captivated. It seems impossible but it doesn't sound dated at all, even though it's so reminiscent of the nineties, a testament to the bands skills and chops. Absolutely recommended, especially to folks who miss the math and the post in their rock.
We were pretty into the R.Y.N 7" we reviewed a while back on the mighty Drone Records label. But this is the first full length we've gotten our hands on (apparently there's another companion full length released earlier this year) and it's pretty amazing. Huge tectonic slabs of glacial doomic drone, equal parts Sunroof!, Sunn 0))), Wolf Eyes, deep grinding low end, shimmering black expanses of churning, washed out murk, blurred and smeared into apocalyptic dirgescapes. Deep dense and ominous, but strangely pretty as well. What we didn't know until quite recently, was that R.Y.N. features the man behind long time aQ faves Marzuraan, which makes sense when you think about it, as most of the R.Y.N record sounds like it could be the early stages of a Marzuraan album, or more accurately, a Marzuraan record with all the metal and pummel removed, no vocals, no buzzing downtuned guitars, just the blackened shadows beneath, and the guitars that DO surface, are blurred into long sheets of undulating washed out muted buzz, wreathed in sheets of feedback, often building to high end symphonies that threaten the very fabric of your inner ear, before slowly subsiding into something much more tranquil and dronelike. And these aren't simple tones either, these are rough edged crumbling sonic expanses, rife with metallic buzz, haunting overtones, layered and dense, a sound active and ALIVE, a burning buzz that often sounds like it's barely being restrained. Often slipping into something soft and smooth, drifting in the distance, lulling the listener before exploding into a sound much more fierce, white hot and glimmering violently like a collision between two sonic suns, with the tracks that follow, like the aftermath, long glowing streaks of sound, unfurling in an endless expanse of blackness, peppered with soft focus glimmers, and barely audible rumbles.
The sound of R.Y.N. manages to shift from krautrocky new age to post industrial black ambience and back again, often finding a sonic space right in between that we probably didn't think even existed.
By now, it should be obvious if this is your thing, but here's a few other names, that if found in your collection, probably speaks to the likelihood that you need this: Atavist, Hlidolf, Encomiast, Troum, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Fear Falls Burning, Expo '70, Half Makeshift, Sorc'Henn, Xela.
Latest disc of dronemusic from aQ customer and master dronelord Andrew Moon, his first for Utech, and definitely one of his heaviest.
From the opening few seconds, this is some seriously distorter metallic static heaviness, a massive crumbling wall of slow moving fuzz guitar, gorgeously layered so it's not just some guitar-against-the-amp bullshit, no, this is some serious minimal dronemusic, just instead of tones, or sinewaves, Moon has opted for BIG amps and slow glacial chords. The sound pulses and throbs like it was alive, and it sort of is really, with all manner of metallic buzz and grinding shards of feedback drifting beneath and within the humid cloud of warm whirring thickness. Moon is a master of maximizing minimalism, and this track is the perfect example, both understated and pretty, but thick and corrosive and heavy enough that some dronedirgedoom obsessive could get really into it. And it's the sort of sound we can never get enough of, and one that could have stretched the length of the cd and we would have been perfectly pleased.
But there's more to Moon and Tomorrow's Void than just heavy buzz, the second track is much murkier affair, moaning deep tones gradually spread out and grow more and more melodic, even as feedback adds another layer to the proceedings. But 10 minutes later and the guitars come growling back, unfurling an avalanche of crumbling fuzz and blown out minimal anti-metal.
There are 3 or 4 tracks over the remainder of the record that dip into much more muted minimal dronescaping, some offering streaks of high end with their rumbling whirring drift, but the majority of the record is spent with distortion pedals on, filling rooms and speakers and headphones with billowing clouds of warm buzz and ever expanding slow motion guitadrones, each one in its own way powerful and dark, but to our ears trancelike and dreamy, the exact sort of heaviness that has us entranced and drifting off to the other side.
Now available on vinyl!
Berkeley based guitarist, Sean Smith, doesn't shake off the Fahey discipleship of his debut too easily on this sophomore effort, no matter how hard he tries. Yet still he brings a darker and more spontaneous impulse to his playing, allowing roughly exposed and muted fret tones to surface, showing he is not all about polish and that 's a welcome departure. More improvised than composed, Smith's cerebral guitar weaving is less bucolic sunshine this time around, taking us on a night time sojourn through a folkish nether world of threaded string picking and somber harmonic tonalities.
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!
Massive dose of divine Skullflower noisiness this time around, a brand new vinyl only release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this right here, a long in the works, super limited, hand assembled TRIPLE cd (not cd-r) boxset featuring all new material, over three hours or buzzing noise, abstract riffing, and all manner of brilliant sonic fuckery.
Not sure which disc comes first, but we'll start with Circle Of Serpents, and right off the bat, we're greeted with a glorious looped riff, reminiscent of Exquisite Fucking Boredom or Orange Canyon Mind, locked and looped and played over and over and over, while in the background all manner of melodies and melodic fragments, swoop and swoon and howl and keen, a swirling abyss over which a fuzzy minimal metal loop is locked on repeat. But don't expect the whole disc to be riff based, the second track explodes in a wall of grinding crumbling blown out noise drenched chaos, and as if we weren't already mixing it up enough, track three offers up some full on ultra grim blasting murky black metal, Skullfower style! We knew Bower dug the black metal, and always hoped something would come of it, so here you go, raw and buzzy, a stuttering drum machine blast beat, riffs blurred and smeared into abstract streaks, vokills buried in the mix, all barreling though clouds of effects and crumbling noise. The rest of the disc slips from epic, sun dappled Sunroof! like effulgence, tortured Abruptum style black ambience, thick distorted classic Skullflower wall of rrrrooooaaaar, strange fractured bagpipe industrial rhythm noise jams, thick warm blissy shoegazey guitar drones, and more. Easily the most varied, the weirdest, the most listenable, and quite possibly the best Skullfower record we've heard in years, and that's just the first disc.
And thankfully, the other two discs hold up just as well, super varied, and noisy and heavy, rife with drones and riffs and ragas and blasts of black metal, strange rhythms, mysterious percussion, doomy dirges, layers of guitars everywhere, dense and thick and corrosive and abrasive and warm and pretty and fucked up and furious and dreamy, all over the map, somehow all held together by some nearly impossible to decipher masterplan, but why try to understand, it's not necessary to enjoy this, in fact it's better to just luxuriate in the massive soul swallowing sound, and simple give in as you drift further and further, deeper and deeper.
Matthew Bower who is Skullfower describes it like this:
"Leitmotivs and keys get twisted and mangled and return with the dread anticipation of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence in a cycle of upheavals and lacerations, beginning and ending interwoven in an occult pantheistic tapestry that posits a gateway from the rational universe of gods creation into universe b, for spirits that can tune to the bleak, gorgeous vision SF has been channeling since tribulation.
Comes in a cardboard box with silver foil blocked slipcases featuring sigils/glyphs/runes that are both symbols and aspects of the working, and 15 visual fragments that can be arranged in conjunction with the sounds to make spells, koans, traps, resonances to help bring about the sacred alignments that the music aims toward.... indeed a valuable tool for dark meditation, and lefthand tantra".
That's right, 3 cds in silver embossed sleeves, in a hand painted cardboard box, each hand painted by Bower himself, also included a bunch of color inserts, as well as liner notes, the whole thing LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Over the last 20 Years, Matthew Bower and his ever mutating noise rock combo have gone through more sonic shifts than it would seem possible, each alteration like an artist's 'period', but instead of a BLUE period or RED period, SF shifted from a crushing proto industrial pummel period, to a blown out black noise period, to a metallic drone period, to the more recent psychedelic hypno-riff period, and a momentary dip back into the black noise, but now he/they seem to have launched into a whole new period that effectively combines that more recent riff-based sound with that pure noise the group has dabbled in and revisited over the years. And incorporated into that sound, eagle-eared listeners may be able to hear the fruits of Bower's ever growing interest in black metal as well. With the recent 3 cd boxset and Not Not Fun lp, Skullflower have again reinvented themselves and produced a series of recordings that are at once incendiary and noise drenched, and at the same time, textural and psychedelic. More than ever, headphones are required, as background music, La Noche will simply spread out into a uniform sheet of grey noise, but slap on the phones and it's like lathering your head in LSD flavored honey and sticking your head in a den of slumbering sonic bears.
Various blown out and distorted guitar lines squiggle and squirm, producing an ever expanding tangle of fractured psych rock sprawl, beautiful prismatic squalls, rife with fragmented melodies, inadvertent harmonies, woozy and tripped out and gorgeously noisy. Parts of La Noche almost sound like some alien guitarists shred tape, broadcast through millions of miles of space, picking up all manner of detritus before being captured on some deep-in-the-jungle SETI satellite, and it's now up to us to decrypt the message, salutations from a friendly word, warnings of our impending doom, or just some hundreds of years old kid going apeshit and capturing it on some deep space 4track. And Bower's guitars are drenched and doused in strange effects as well resulting in a sound that falls somewhere between malfunctioning bagpipes and the strange sonic wonder of another aQ favorite, Amps For Christ. In fact, this could be like a metallic noise version of AfC, if Amps For Christ weren't ALREADY a metallic noise version of AfC.
Some of the tracks here do lock into some serious, albeit buried under layers of processed effects and crumbling distortion, grooves, in fact, "Vinum Sabbati" has a bad ass riff grinding away, within a swirling cloud of high end insectoid shimmer, a gorgeous psych rock chug, lurching and lumbering beneath the surface, and the record finishes off with some total black metal worship, "Serene & Terrible Noontide Abyss" is a brittle buzzy Darkthrone-y riff, looped into a mesmerizing mantra, while underneath stripped down and spare percussive pound adds an abstract rhythmic element. Like pretty much every SF track lately, we'd love to hear this one expanded into a whole record!
Anyone who bought either the triple cd box on Turgid Animal or the Not Not Fun lp, or both, or heck NEITHER, is definitely going to want this. Heavy and blown out and hypnotic and metallic and brutal and pretty and buzzy and pretty much all we could hope for from Bower and company. And as always this is SUPER LIMITED. We did get a whole bunch of these, direct from Mr. Bower himself, but when we run out it may take us a while to get more, and at some point we most likely won't be able to get more, at all. And by now, you must know, that means get one NOW!
The aptly-named UK dronedoom duo Slomo creep forth once more! These Julian Cope compatriots (the drude dude himself contributes a 30-second poetic spoken word coda to this album) also have given this disc a perfectly descriptive title, The Bog. Slomo's Chris "Holy" McGrail ("Moog Taurus, Sunn Mustang 6 string, clatter") and Howard Marsden ("Korg MS10 & MS20, hiss") exude and extrude one loooong 65 minute track of sinister yet soothing rumbling. This Bog is a fog of burbling electronics and feedback, naturally slow and low and quietly creepy. It's like gastric gurgling from the cathedraloid stomach of some cumbersome, slumbersome, subterranean behemoth. The droning sounds of what may be subtle cymbal shimmer combine with electronic textures from the duo's synths and guitars, sometimes smoothly soaring like underwater whale calls, whilst elsewhere developing into a much grittier, frying, throbbing buzz and crackle. Other gentle chimes and pulsations come
in to play as well, layered throughout this mesmeric, mysterious disc, which we could liken to a milder SUNNO))), perhaps sleeping and snoring and drifting in dream. Certainly recommended.
(By the way, we have just a few copies of a new cd-r in stock from Slomo member Holy McGrail in stock as well, his infamous plunderphonic Stooges tribute, Raw Power Suite, so please ask about it if you're interested.)
Oh how nice! Want to feel the glow of summer's warmth no matter what it feels like outside. Som Imaginario have got the golden rays for all of us to bask in. Brazil, 1970 -- and yeah start thinking Os Mutantes and the Tropicalia revolution of sound. While they never got the wide attention that some of their peers would end up receiving, their music was just as dazzling, delightful and adventures as those whose names are now much more known (Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, etc). Som Imaginario were a six piece who initially came together to back up Milton Nascimento for his short lived Brazilian TV show. This their debut was never released outside of Brazil until now, and with Os Mutantes launching a reunion tour this spring, the time is ripe for other wonderful sounds from that scene to finally resurface. Equal parts sun soaked pop, fun-freak-out and an underlying irreverent spirit make this one of those reissues that doesn't just sound cool in theory but you actually want to listen to it over and over.
We only got 10 of these, direct from the band on their return from Europe. Pretty sure we got the last copies of a way too limited batch, but we figured at least a few Starving Weirdos fanatics should be able to get their grubby mitts on these. Cuz as much as we hate to say it when we have so few, this is pretty dang fantastic.
A 20 minute live set captured live in Portland Oregon, as a part of something called Challenge Night, organized by Pete Swanson from the Yellow Swans, and it seems the Weirdos were up to the challenge, offering up a strange drifty sort of skeletal doom. With detuned acoustic guitars, mantra like vocals, simple percussion, all set within a shimmering field of distorted squiggles and air raid siren like wails, eventually joined by some seriously tribal drumming, a la NoNeck or Sunburned Hand, the track transformed into a distortion drenched drum circle / free psych freakout. The guitars coalesce into post rocky almost metal riffage, the vocals slathered in distortion and spouting invective WAY down in the mix, the drums unleashing a woozy groove, and the guitars, the heaviest we've heard from these guys, tons of reverb and delay, like old school goth guitar style, but somehow rendered more jagged and metallic, not to say this is necessarily heavy, although it kind of is.
But by the halfway mark, the drums have dropped out, the guitar have shed their metal coats, and everything is muted and blurred and smeared into an oozing organic soundscape of what sounds like moaning horns and shimmering strings, thick swells that ebb and flow, finally grinding to a halt in a whirling cloud of soft feedback and washed out drones. Really nice. Too bad we only have a handful.
Cool packaging too, mini 3" jewel cases, with gold metallic ink on black covers, each one hand drawn and every one different. LIMITED TO 58 COPIES!!
Pretty much everybody, country fan or not, recognizes the names of Jimmie Rodgers, and the Carter Family, but even country aficionados might not be familiar with Ernest V Stoneman, even though he played as big a part, if not bigger, than more recognizable performers, in the birth of recorded country music.
His relative obscurity is all the more shocking when one realizes his career stretches from the days of wax cylinders all the way to the advent of compact discs, not to mention the fact that he was not only the first rural singer / songwriter to record his own compositions, but he was also the first to record on the autoharp. He was an amazing musician, and a fantastic performer, and an innovator who never really got his due.
This collection gathers some of Stoneman's most famous songs, as well as including 20 tracks never before reissued. Ranging from old timey bluegrass to folk hymns to spirituals, many recorded for the first time by Stoneman, and there are even a few tracks that include skits and spoken word segments, as if they were recordings of a radio broadcast or a school performance. And since these are all mastered from old 78s, the sound is wonderfully warm and scratchy. Anyone who loves the Anthology Of American Folk Music (which includes Stoneman), or any of the Folkways reissues like Mountain Music Of Kentucky, or reissued recordings by Roscoe Holcomb and Elizabeth Cotten, will definitely love this.
And the packaging is fantastic. So deluxe. 5-String is definitely offering Dust-To-Digital some serious competition. An oversized hardcover book, with a massive booklet, with liner notes, photos, histories, and notes on each song, where they were recorded, when, and various anecdotes, like with "The Titanic", the first song Stoneman ever recorded, and the story goes that he wanted to make a great impression for his audition, so he decided to play the autoharp (he was thus the first to record on the instrument), and he built his own multiple harmonica harness!
Fantastic stuff. Another absolutely essential document of the early years of country music.
One of our Danish customers, an experimental musician named Peter Bach Nicholaisen, aka Stormhat, sent us this a while back - his first cd after a couple cd-r releases. It kind of got lost in the shuffle but we just discovered we had a little pile of them so here's a review! It's a brief (21 minute) disc consisting of six fairly abstract, textural tracks made from field recordings and glitchy digital manipulations. It's mostly quite gentle, yet active. Sometimes quite pretty, at others maybe even a little bit sinister-sounding. There's sounds of a baby gurgling, tinkling fragments of music-box melodies, falling rain and indistinct voices... various crunchings and rustlings, edits and echoes... The droning hiss and weird noises suggesting a nest of small, fantastical creatures, their mysterious activities being listened-in upon from a safe distance via sensitive microphone equipment. The final, title track is our favorite, as these critters settle in for a long winter with ringing drone and drowsy birdlike twittering, the night drawing in, wind at the window, hush, hush...
This is not unlike something that you might find on Hapna, Helen Scarsdale, or Kning Disk. It's packaged in a gatefold digi-sleeve thing, the cd itself being one of those nifty ones that's like a 3" cd inside a 5" clear plastic disc.
Recorded just one year after the classic Lanquidity, our all time AQ Sun Ra favorite, our ears are finally getting to groove on the spaced out soulful and funk fueled sounds of On Jupiter. As always Sun Ra was in his own galaxy, and the orbit he was inhabiting here was sort of in a great Funkadelic gone cosmic jazz sensation armed with tripped out ensemble vocals as well as the voice of June Tyson on the title track.
With just three perfectly titled tracks "On Jupiter", "UFO", and "Seductive Fantasy" you really can judge the record based on those song titles and its intergalactic spacefreefunk cover art. We got a feeling that this Sun Ra album gets heavy rotation in the living rooms of Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (Gnarls Barkley) as well as in the homes of all the Beastie Boys who have tried to channel Sun Ra's intergalactic and genre defying freewheeling spirit into their own sounds. On Jupiter really does pack a bit of everything into its half hour, from beautifully played forward thinking jazz (Sun Ra's piano playing on the closing track is so pretty!) to its more cosmic-funk freakouts filled with dirty bass and guitar, and somehow it maintains a total cohesion that many Sun Ra recordings, in all their genius, seem to lack. We're loving this!
For a record produced and assembled by Weasel Walter of the Flying Luttenbachers, and titled The Unlistenable Years, and documenting some lost never before heard No Wave recordings, this Toy Killers disc is in fact, surprisingly listenable. But listenability is for sure relative, as this is still some pretty out there and difficult listening.
The names Mark E. Miller and Charles K Noyes are probably unknown to all but the most obsessive No Wave / No New York fanatics, but Miller and Noyes were both percussionists, who began life in the seventies as a crazed noise duo, that would morph into a strange noise / punk / free jazz hybid often playing with more well known NY scene luminaries like John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Elliott Sharp, Bill Laswell, Wayne Horvitz, all of whom appear on these recordings right here, culled from a trove of unreleased and until now virtually unheard studio and live recordings captured on tape in the early eighties.
A spastic, dubbed out anti-funk, collaged noise groove free jazz what the fuck that veers from groovy woozy Material like post-dub to maniacal frenetic Ruins like skronk, and various stops in between, Krautrock rhythms underpin buzzing new wave synths, bursts of drums-down-the-stairs rhythmic freakouts, garbled speaking in tongues vocals, blown out wah wah bass and exotic percussion, angular guitar scrape and wail, chopped up samples and junkyard clang and clatter. The songs skip wildly from fuzzy anti disco funk to super skeletal This Heat skitter to super distorted almost grindcore to abstract atonal pound to total no wave vocal / drum / horn damage, to minimal noise dub and on and on and on.
The record finishes off with nearly half an hour of improvisations, that offer up all manner of minimal drone and dirge and buzz and skronk, ambient drift and stumbling deconstructed jazz, wild percussive freakouts, haunting collaged soundscapes, some deep and creepy dronemusic, and a whole lot of noise.
Features liner notes by Weasel Walter, who put this record together, and Anton Fier, who was THERE, and got to see some of this shit GO DOWN!
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
This mind bending comp back in stock again!
You know those Sublime Frequencies "Radio" compilations we love so much, the ones that just sound like someone sitting in a hotel room in another country flipping stations on the radio and recording the results. Well imagine a similar compilation, but in this case, the listener/recorder has an extreme case of ADD, and is flipping between some insane non existent all avant freaked out noise satellite radio station and all the strange little non-stations you discover when you're driving across the country, flipping through the dials at 4am. Little chunks of beautiful pastoral sound, bursts of ear gouging static, voices, snippets of speeches, some crazy guy testifying, some country or classical music that is just out of range so the sound �is all skittery and blurred, delicate swaths of soft plinked piano, blasts of grinding deathmetal, talk radio, skittery rhythms, lots of textures and timbres, noises and melodies, most often swallowed up before they can develop into anything more than a fragment, than a partially formed musical thought, but that's sort of the point. This comp will definitely enrapturously engorge the ears of aural adventurers and noise devotees, but just might rattle the nerves of those less prepared. Despite the incredibly lengthy list of incredibly eclectic artists who participated in this brand new compilation titled (Triskaidekaphobia) 13,000.00 Milliseconds:
Venetian Snares, Matmos, Thrones, MGR, I Am Spoonbender, Wildildlife, David Scott Stone (Melvins), Blevin Blectum, Winters In Osaka, Leslie Keffer, Microwaves, Sword Heaven, To Live And Shave In L.A., Wobbly, The White Mice, Skozey Fetish, Brad Laner, Rubber O Cement, Bobb Bruno, Cock ESP, Panicsville, Otto Von Schirach, Crank Sturgeon, Deletist, Drums Like Machineguns, Valerio Cosi, Eats Tapes, Evil Moisture, No Doctors, Two Dead Sluts, One Good Fuck, Leslie Keffer and about a million more....
The nature of 215+ 13-second compositions strung together non-stop without room to take a breath pretty much ensures that this cd will be catalogued in most libraries and music shops in the experimental/noise section. Unfortunate really, since while it definitely has its share of earwax-dislodging aggressive assaults, it also has quite a few shining moments of artful sound design and subtle songcraft that defy genre-fication. And somehow, the bits of noise, and the bits of prettier sound, do balance out, almost seeming to play off one another, or at the very least, slowly seep into each other, helping form what is ultimately a constantly shifting somewhat schizophrenic sonic whole. It's an overwhelming and intense listening experience, another one for the iron eared, or at least the adventure eared, and while we just listened to the whole thing all the way through, for the third or fourth time, for some folks it might work better in smaller chunks, because admittedly for some tracks the 13 seconds seems like an eternity, while others fly by all too swiftly. That said, we just started it over again from the top...
What more do you need to know!?! It's a compilation called GRIND BASTARDS. Subtitled "For The Grind Freaks". Released on the label run by legendary Japanese grinders Unholy Grave. And check out the band list. Tons of killer groups, and a whole bunch new to us, almost all heavy and brutal and kick ass: Mortalized, Insect Warfare, Butcher ABC, Unholy Grave (of course), Exgreed, Disgust, Top Breeder, Motiveless, Gods Of Grind, Little Bastard, Red, 48, Gate, Spiral and more.
Plenty of downtuned chug, furious blasts, growled cookie monster grunts, wild hysterical shrieks, insane chaotic riffing, most songs clocking in at under two minutes, many of those under one, short sharp jagged blasts of grinding fury, with some songs super well produced and heavy as fuck, others blown out almost Japanoise sounding boombox blur, a handful of crusty D-beat pounding, super varied, but super cohesive, heavy as hell, should totally hit the spot for punk rockers and metalheads alike, as long as you like it ultra heavy, ultra sick and blazing fast. The biggest surprise for us, is probably the 51 second long Mortalized track, "Nailing Descartes To The Wall", which just might be the catchiest minute of grind we've ever heard. Similar to how Jon Chang's new bands incorporate eighties metal and crazy power metal hooks into impossible complex grind, Mortalized sound a little like Iron Maiden on 78, or maybe some super catchy 3 minute pop single spun as fast as it will go, the guitars raging and soaring, the hooks undeniable, even some leads, but that main melody has been stuck in our head nonstop. The only solution seems to be listening to that track over and over again. Which we're still doing. And it does seem to be working. We just. Can't. Ever. Stop.
Packaged in cool fold out punk rock sleeve style with each band getting their own little square for artwork and liner notes.
What an awesomely punny title, Messthetics Greatest Hiss. Meaning, these are all tracks (circa 1979-'82), representing from the DIY cassette culture only, not taken from vinyl singles and 12" comps, as underground as they may be. Which means the stuff here is maybe even more "outsidery" than the usual run of Messthetics treats, as DIY got -really- DIY when the cassette culture thing took off. So, you can expect lots of fantastic -and- really weird tracks here, possibly more so than usual with a Messthetics comp. And the timing of this release is perfect too, as funnily enough cassettes have been making a bit of comeback. Maybe it's that kids today find 'em to be more of novelty than cds and cd-rs, or it's part of an analog backlash against digital, we've certainly been selling limited run cassette tapes like crazy here at AQ lately. Cassette tape, the new (old) cd-r!
Listening to this, you'll definitely have a flashback to your own home taping experiences. The clicks of the cassette deck starting and stopping as edits are made - such as at the start of Funhouse's track "Teenage Bedrooms", which begins with someone yelling "Roight! Enough of this pratting about [click], this song's called 'Teenage Bedrooms'"... and then what follows almost could be the Frogs.
The clicks, the whir, the (yes) hiss. Of course, production values vary from half-decent to practically non-existent. But that lo-fi-ness is all part of the charm. As is the creative, anything goes aesthetic of these bands and "bands". Some "well-known" names (relatively speaking) here and some less-so, from this most underground of underground scenes. Some of 'em quite "pop", others more experimental/industrial/electronic, many combining both.
Thee artists: The Jelly Babies, Danny & the Dressmakers, Storm Bugs, Colin Potter, Event Group, The Get, Instant Automatons, Missing Persons, Gravity Craze, Farming Jim & his Hepcat Groovstas, 391, The Chromosomes, Mike Jones, The Living Dead no. 5, Digital Dinosaurs, The Twizlers, Aconite, Casual Labourers, Midnight Circus, Milkshake Melon, Funhouse, Cultural Amnesia, Stripey Zebras, Chimp Eats Bananas (pre-Chumbawamba we're told), and Dean Johnson.
Everything from crunching electronic distortion to percussive jams (The Event Group) to sub-sub-sub New Wave. Talk about "noise pop", try Cultural Amnesia's track on for size! So much great stuff.
As usual, bursting with value. 25 songs on the cd, plus five more mp3 bonus tracks! A thick, info-packed 24 page cd booklet! And of course it's but volume 1. Bring on volumes 2, 3, 4, etc. we say!
New 7" single from the latest covers ep by local folk rock giants, Vetiver. Features "Hey Doll Baby" a classic fifties R&B hit for both The Clovers and The Everly Brothers and the previously unreleased track "Miles Apart" from late eighties dream popsters, A. R. Kane. The B-side is the reason to get this as they turn a later-period track from these minor 4AD stars into an even better pop confection than the original. Our favorite of all their covers!!!
Ok, maybe this is weird to admit, but you know how sometimes you get to thinking about your own inevitable death? And all the things you'd miss about being alive? Well, I (Allan) can remember back in 1993 having such morbid thoughts, and specifically thinking how one major bummer about being dead would be that I'd never ever get to listen to THIS particular album again. I mean, it's not like I was thinking that The Outer Limits by Canadian cult metallers Voivod was, like, a reason to live, it didn't prevent me from trying suicide or anything dramatic like that. But it was something that, when contemplating my own mortality, I knew I'd miss. Considering my endless spinning of this when it came out, maybe that's no surprise. The riffs, the lyrics, the artwork, there was a lot to obsess over here!
Now, 15 years later, it's finally been reissued. And so of course I've got to recommend it, maybe you won't like it as much as I did (and still do) but do you really want to go to your grave without ever finding out? It's the Voivod album that followed their somewhat controversial leftfield stab at college radio alt-metal Angel Rat (1991), and for this Voivod fan turned out to be exactly what I wanted to hear from them, becoming my favorite Voivod ever next to their to their previous masterpiece Nothingface (1989), putting their psych, punk, and prog influences - from Pink Floyd to Iggy Pop - together in a practically perfect package. It took the avant-thrash complexities of Nothingface and mixed 'em with the more accessible, trippy melodicism of Angel Rat, making for a polished, technically brilliant album of individually memorable songs. Can't really even pick favorites among 'em, every one of the nine tracks here is so great, from the soaring, storming opener "Fix My Heart" to the the creepy "Le Pont Noir" to the album's 17-minute epic sci-fi centerpiece "Jack Luminous" (PROG!) to the groovy dark rocker "Wrong-Way Street". They also do another great Pink Floyd cover (after Nothingface's version of "Astronomy Domine"), this time powering up "The Nile Song".
The whole album has a majestically moody, ominous, vaguely sinister vibe, especially so when you pay attention to the narrative of such songs as "The Lost Machine" (one of the heavier numbers here, which could have appeared on Nothingface for sure, as could have the punkishly frantic "We Are Not Alone"). And, at the same time, these songs are all super catchy - in a quirky Voivod way, sometimes, or just plain catchy a la classic '70s rock like Alice Cooper. The Outer Limits sees Voivod perfecting their ability to totally rock out whist remaining spacey and psychedelic, with lyrics to match, with both "Time Warp" and "Moonbeam Rider" being great examples of this. Well, I could go on and on, talk about Snake's unique, compelling vocals and Piggy's stellar guitar playing and all, but instead let's leave it at that, for old Voivod fans and curious noobs! I will mention drummer Away's artwork - he provides evocative illustrations for each song in the cd booklet. Not only are they done in a cool, retro sci-fi style, but they, like the his cover drawing, are all in 3-D. And this numbered, limited edition, digipacked, digitally remastered, gold disk (whew!) reissue does indeed come with lil' red and blue 3-D glasses with which to properly view and appreciate Away's art!
After a whole mess of crazy limited cd-r releases, this is only the 2nd proper, actual cd release from these East Coast blown out garage psych space rockers. Avid readers of the list will no doubt by now, be hip to these guys, their wall of guitar, Hawkwind meets the Stooges meets Monster Magnet meets the Heads is tough to beat, every song drenched in wild outer space FX, the drums pounding beneath an avalanche of psychedelic guitar, the vocals, shadows flitting across the molten surface of these tracks, barely audible just another layer of dense fuzz.
So how does this record stack up to the rest? We mentioned that the last release, the tour only Abstractions And Mutations, was the band's fiercest yet, but Heads On Fire might have us reassessing. Cuz this has to be exactly what it would sound like if your head was indeed on fire.
The opener is a heavy as fuck space rock romp, right out of the gate, a wall of buzzing wah wah guitar is loosed, and all you can do is hang on for the ride, it's like Spacemen 3 on speed, that same sort of billowy tripped out warm guitar buzz, but souped WAY up, supercharged, a blinding supernova of freaked out garage rock psychedelia. But the track right after that is way riffier, a serious Stooges-y stomp, plenty of guitar crunch and psychedelic squalls, but the vocals are more present, a sort of Wyndorf style lord mother fucker drawl, wrapped in reverb and draped over the jagged riffing and pounding drums.
Then there's "Don't Be Afraid", which begins with whipping wind and distant foghorns, ominous and mysterious, a phone being dialed, ringing and ringing, the band gradually coming in, a slow lope, simple tribal drums, a laid back guitar line, soft fuzzy swells of sound in the background, a lugubrious slow build, the vocals howled and spacey, reverbed and dripping with delay, the guitar getting gradually more and more jagged and distorted, until everything drops out, just wind, and muted electronics, muffled FX, the bass line creeping along steadily, bits of melody drifting by, the vocals come back in and BAM the band takes off, the guitar spitting flames, the drums falling down a mineshaft, a huge tangle of psychedelic space rock chaos, and then nothing, a weird, barely there, 5 minute outro, bits of guitar, creaking and buzzing, more wind, and finally silence.
And in case that last 30 minutes, and those last 5 in particular, had you forgetting just where you were, the band shuts things down with 4+ minutes of furious fuzz and pummeling pound, thick and corrosive, and so distorted the riffs seem to melt into each other, the vocals sung from the bottom of a well, a bit of start stop dynamics, replete with creepy giggling children, and then the perfect send off, a sky full of psychedelic fireworks, multicolored streaks of white hot guitar, a blinding ear full of sonic pyrotechnics like staring straight into the sun.
"2008 Rewind"! It's that time of the year, time for this crucial music mag's annual look back on the year that was - a big chunk of the magazine all about the records of the year, with lots of lists and commentary and thoughts about what went down in 2008. Also this ish: Animal Collective (doing the "Invisible Jukebox" feature), Emeralds and Peverlist interviewed, a Joy Division epiphany, a Knoxville scene report, and tons more, including the usual reviews and charts and columns and so forth. ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
