THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The long overdue return of these Belgian musical miscreants, whose last release, the super limited tape and then not so limited cd Luizig, was a huge favorite around these parts, and why the hell not, a blown out blackened smear of in the red doom dirge weirdness, that we compared to folks like Ash Pool and Akitsa and Ancestors. But that had a lot more to do with the quality of the sound, the timbre and tone, the brutally lo-fi recording, the music itself was much more twisted and blurred and tangled and whatthefuck.
For this two song follow up, Alkerdeel change gears pretty dramatically, opening up with nearly 4 minutes of super spare stripped down doom. The guitar distorted, but surprisingly clean by Alkerdeel standards, the drums a simple funereal plod, until finally the vocals swoop in, a hellish shriek, WAY up in the mix, before just as quickly drifting off, leaving the same skeletal doom, but this time, the guitar explores a bit more, more melody, more sprawling ambience, and again, the vocals come in and the track shifts gear into a pounding lo-fi midtempo dirge, all buzzy guitar, stumbly drumming, growled howled vocals, even a stretch of buzzing blastbeat blackness, before fracturing into something more mathy and woozy and off kilter, and for the remainder of the track (a long one at 13 minutes) slipping from super dirgey atonal crawl, to furious frenzy of chaotic buzz, to blurred washed out blackness. Pretty awesome stuff. This time we might add to the above mentioned bands outfits like Moss and Bunkur and the like, much doomier this go round.
But then band go and follow up with an Ildjarn cover, total raw and primitive buzz drenched black metal d-beat pound. As crusty and punk rock as it is kvlt and grim, simple pounding drums, hypnotic almost looped sounding riffage, even a sort of double time more punk rock second half, the whole thing laced with perfectly yowled whiskey soaked crusty vokills.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! We managed to get the last 20, it's already out of print, so once these are gone, they are gone forever. Packaged in a cool mini 3" dvd style plastic clamshell case, full color insert, each one hand numbered of course.
We almost managed to do a list with only ONE Aidan Baker record, but found a stash of these hidden away in the closet and have actually been meaning to list them for a while now. Only have a handful, so these might be the last copies we see for a while.
Arc just so happens to be the the drone / free jazz / krautrock improv trio Baker heads up, the three members employing guitar, flute, percussion, electronics and multiple drumkits to produce the peculiar brand of avant amorphous outsider krautdrone that made their first disc, The Circle Is Not Round, such a hit around here.
Four sixteen and seventeen minute tracks, the first a glistening glimmering long form metallic shimmer, laced with rainfall like percussion, skittery snares, long stretches of glitched out electronics, muted barely there rhythms. The second starts off like a less jazzy Necks, lots of space, softly strummed guitars, strange scattered percussion, soft swarms of electronic FX, backwards swoops, processed cymbal sizzle, subtly ominous and haunting, eventually the drums explode and the pound out a reverb drenched rhythm, while the guitars grow thicker and slightly more propulsive, eventually blissing out and fading out completely. The final two tracks are quite similar, beginning as deep soft shimmers and building in intensity until they become these reverb heavy tribal free jams, thick with droned out shimmers, and layers of fuzzy gauzy ambience, sort of like the Swans meets the Necks, or a blissed out Einsterzende.
Not the sort of stuff we're used to from Baker, but definitely cool, and certainly a bit more challenging than much of his more soothing blissed out drone / dirge output. If you dug the other one, you'll for sure dig this, and if you're looking for something a bit abstract, a bit jazzy, a bit krauty and a bit drone-y, then this could well fit the bill.
Packaged in a striking sepia tone 6 panel digipack style sleeve, and again, we have very few copies, so when we sell out, please be patient while we try to get more.
We love Thee Armpit. Don't get to type that nearly enough, but it's true, this NZ drone combo, the strangely named Armpit, is in fact one of our favorites, every record we've gotten our hands on has offered up a bounty of dark and drone-y delights, and this one is no different. Well, actually it is a bit, in that we've actually had these here for quite a while, they somehow found there way into a corner in the closet and were only unearthed now after maybe a year or more of slipping through the cracks. All that means is that there's a good chance these might be impossible to restock, and very well may be out of print, so if you're a fan of Thee Armpit, like us, then do yourself a favor and don't dawdle, cuz these will most likely disappear right quick.
But if you do manage to get your hands on one, you'll be in some serious lo-fi free drone soft noise heaven. These guys have been known to rock out Dead C style now and again, but this disc tends toward the more introspective, long washed out fuzzy drones, fractured bedroom folk, all strummed guitar and tape hiss, warbly music box drift, super spare folky drift, fractured tape experiments, all very murky and muddy and woozy and gauzy and dreamy and weirdly pretty. Armpit freaks (c'mon, you know that's you!) are gonna want this for sure. But anyone into the folkier Dead C stuff, the Finnish forest folk, and all the sort of bedroom lo-fi 4-track stuff will definitely dig this as well.
Again, CRAZY LIMITED, get one while you can...
Here be the sad sounds of drowning. This Ohio-based pair has quietly amassed an intriguing catalogue of digitally treated dronemusic and manipulated field recordings, with Vryashn being maybe the best so far, oozing with a gorgeous subaquatic melancholia. Aside from all of their sound design tricks, the piano is the central instrument on Vryashn with its notes stretched and elongated into sinewy tones. While the treatments are quite similar to what Brian Eno did on Thursday Afternoon and to what Jonathan Coleclough achieved on Period, Bible and Henry attack the piano with much greater force through their heavy handed arpeggiations on the lower register keys. When wrapped into the slow-motion whirlpool of oceanic reverb and and cyclical drone construction, the brooding notes of the piano sound as if they are the last notes being played by some madman trapped on the ship slowly sinking into the depths of the Black Sea. Tactile bits of organic scrapes and cracklings sweep across the stereo field and dissolve into the ever deeper and blacker void of the waters below. Like Gavin Bryars' similar opus on oceanic collapse, The Sinking Of The Titanic, there is a sublime beauty to these sinking sounds. Recommended, for sure!
Our hyper prolific buddy Campbell Kneale returns with another piece in the puzzle that is Birchville Cat Motel. Three extended tracks, over 50 minutes! The first track displays the harsher side of our normally mild mannered noisenik, with warm white noise that slowly gets its jagged edges smoothed off until the raw spiky skree becomes a warm muted roar. Track two finds us in much more familiar territory. 30 minutes of what sounds like bells and chimes, that are stretched into a warm wash of overtones and reverberations, with occasional clatter and buzz bobbing to the surface. Gorgeously meditative. Track three sounds like an indie rock band caught in Kneale's sticky web, trying desperately to pick out notes on their guitars, struggling against the thick, unyielding pull of oblivion. Shimmering feedback and rumbling drones occasionally let a stray note or chord make it to the surface, but those are quickly swallowed up by the murky morass.
Japanese label Doubtmusic is, a heart, a jazz label. But usually on the fringes. Outside stuff like reissues of Masayuki Takayanagi, and improv rock crossovers like that recent Nambajazz album featuring Seiichi Yamamoto, ex-Boredoms. And there's lots of Doubtmusic albums featuring the adventurous Otomo Yoshihide of course.
But here's a Doubtmusic disc that's pretty much straight up jazz, definitely with a wild improv edge at times, but nice jazz nonetheless. From a trio of piano, baritone sax and trombone, all players no doubt noted in the Japanese underground jazz scene but not well known to us.
16-minute opener "Sky Clippings And Spinning Fragments" is lovely and lyrical, then skronky and squall-y, by turns. As is the rest of this disc. Their rhythms get pretty crazy too. If jazz gives you a headache, this is not the cure. But if you like jazz, with a sense of noirish danger and outright noisiness, this is quite enjoyable.
Swank Doubtmusic packaging as usual, this time the digipack looking like an airmail letter.
Imagine a blackened, funereal dooooooom band like Skepticism or Nortt morphed into the jazz idiom (after having kissed a frog, or some fairytale scenario like that), playing their slow, sad music in a smoky Berlin jazz club. The sound is jazz (electric piano, organ, vibes, sax, double bass, trap kit...) but the feeling is doom. That's our usual shorthand for describing the unique music made by longtime AQ fave, Germany's Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. Here at last is their eagerly anticipated 5th album, Dolores (not named after the San Francisco street near us, presumably). If you're fans like we are, you know what to expect, it's just as ponderously "heavy" as a "jazz" band can be. No, not loud, not harsh, not noisy. The opposite of all that. Rather, whisper-quiet, glacially slow, and spacious, with sparse snare hits keeping time like a wound-down clock ticking off the eternity between 2 minutes to midnight and the witching hour itself. Doomsday so slowly arrives on a velvety bed of somnolent deep bass notes, and the cool slinky tones of vintage Fender Rhodes. Cymbals shiver in a dark haze of ambient drones near to silence. Several of the songs are infused with the warmth of tenor or baritone sax breathes gorgeous expiring breaths. It's all so sad and woeful and achingly beautiful, Bohren nodding off, their fragile melodies trickling like tears, and by the end you may find you have shed a few too.
This newest Bohren differs mainly from their previous Ipecac outing Geisterfaust by being composed of somewhat shorter, sweeter tracks, ten in all, in about an hour. But it is, again, an-ever-more-perfected example of why Bohren is one of our all time favorite bands, especially at twilight and late at night...
Although we've been listening to and loving the Bon Iver debut For Emma, Forever Ago, somehow we neglected to review it this past year! Shame on us! In case you somehow missed it too, here's a chance for all of us to get caught up with and snuggle up to this terrific album by the fireplace during these chilly winter months. And, it's just now also available on vinyl. Very much at home on the Jagjaguwar label, main man Justin Vernon is sorta the male equivalent to the label's head mistress, sweet chanteuse Julie Doiron. Utterly bittersweet folksy introspection expressed in some mighty fine songwriting. Definitely also for fans of the gentle bristled, warm intimate voices of Will Oldham and Iron & Wine. So nice!
By itself, the name "Boris" on a new release creates a not-inconsiderable level of excitement amongst the heaviness-heads and Japanophiles 'round these parts. Add "with Michio Kurihara" to the cover and, well, the excitement, it's off the hook. You know what we mean, 'cause chances are, if you're reading this, you're already a Boris fan. And probably also are familiar with guitarist Kurihara from his 2006 collaboration with Boris, on the very wonderful Rainbow (he also guested on the more recent Smile, as well).
While Rainbow was a fairly song-oriented affair, with many moods and plenty of melodiousness, THIS new get-together is one for those of you into HUGE squalls of amps on 11, heavy duty GUITAR FREAK OUT. You won't really notice much in the way of, like, vocals on here. Or drums, for that matter. It's all about the motorpsycho guitar(s), which can sometimes sound more like airplane engines here (with, maybe, Neil Young flying the plane). Like we said, a guitar freakout. Not a stretch, of course, for Boris, who have albums with names like Feedbacker and Amplifier Worship, after all. And teamed up again with noted psychedelic axemaster Kurihara (White Heaven, Ghost) we're not surprised at all that they went for such a heavy, freeform guitar-centric sound. One that should be of instant appeal to anyone who's personal guitar gods are folks like Caspar Brotzmann, Keiji Haino, or China's Li Jianhong. Or, well, let's put it this way - at its mellowest, we could compare this to Nadja and/or SUNNO)))... the clouds in this Cloud Chamber are big but not exactly fluffy.
There's but two tracks here, both of lengthy, "side-long" duration (18:53 and 17:30). The first, "Cloud Chamber I", begins with deep pulsations of subtle sub-bass, building and building, joined by skree, skullflowering into psychedelic sheets of drone, culminating with what comes close to sheer white noise at the end. Even at its grinding-est, though, delicate feedback trails caress one's ears amidst the din. "Cloud Chamber II" simply starts off grindingly distorted, fuzzing and buzzing with divebomb attacks. But then proceeds to get even heavier - louder - and noisier!! By not much more than three minutes in, it sounds like something (everything!) in the recording studio is beginning to vibrate and collapse, you can imagine sparks shooting from the amplifiers, cabinets toppling, walls shaking, brains melting. And of course they just keep upping the ante on this destructo-, distorto- delic assault. A thing of literally devastating beauty... which physically reaches a peak at about the 13 minute mark, a point where it could easily be mistaken for the extreme electronic likes of Masonna, then suddenly quieting into blissed-out ambience for the final four minutes of this track. Sweet.
And this limited edition (1500 copies) Japanese import is packaged nicely, with some nice, stylishly subtle "advanced" design that, well, makes it look like a Japanese import.
A greatest hits of sorts from these Wisconsin noisemakers. After several outrageously limited self released albums, mostly given to friends over the course of 4 years, this psycho redneck power electronic duo have remained almost totally unheard until now.
You did see the words power electronics above, so you know this ain't gonna be no easy listening, in fact, this is some seriously difficult listening, but surprisingly enough not in a harsh noise sort of way, this isn't just a continuous wall of Merzbowian white noise, the sounds here are surprisingly listenable, warped and cracked and damaged and fucked up, but for the iron eared, surprisingly pleasant. Jagged shards of fractured synths, chopped into strange rhythms, radio broadcasts buried in effects, loops colliding and overlapping, dense clouds of detuned instruments, amp buzz and tape hiss, howled distorted vox, some almost songs, tons of melting tones, babies crying over throbbing low end rumbles, thick billowing sheets of pulsating distorted crunch, tangled melodies so dense and blurred they become one huge squirming amorphous lump, distorted percussion, damaged tape player rehearsal tapes, and whatever the hell else these guys could come up with, all pulled apart, and jammed back together into heaping piles of thick droning, fucked up free form percussive and FX laden noise.
Definitely cool stuff, and for folks averse to truly harsh noise, Bruce Carkiss might just be your entree into a filthy, grimy, crusty soundworld you only dreamed about.
Been a while since we've heard from Burnt Hills. Our fault entirely. They may have been absent on the list, but they have most definitely not stopped releasing records, or partaking in a weekly jam at the Burnt Hills HQ, which is where we assume this massive psych jam blow out was captured on tape.
For those new to Burnt Hills, the group seems to be an ever changing collective, sometimes a duo or trio, other times, like here, expanded to a seven piece, heck they even got someone on XYLOPHONE this time around. No that you'd really be able to tell. The sound of Burnt Hills is a sonic mushroom cloud of grinding psych guitar squall, practice space drums, throbbing earthquake bass, all woven into a sprawling space-psych-kraut jam that could have gone on forever. Heck it could have started weeks ago, as the track opens jarringly mid-jam, just explodes right into it, expanding into a hazy, woozy, effects drenched expanse of druggy psych bliss. Folks who eat up every last thing by Acid Mothers Temple, Heavy Winged, Titan, all that modern psych shit, have no excuse for not being crazy obsessed with these guys too. Equal parts all those bands as well as plenty of Hawkwind, Monster Magnet, German Oak, Boris, White Heaven, just imagine a dingy black lit basement, packed to the rafters with amps, and a bunch of folks hunched over their instruments, probably high as a kite, channeling some mysterious otherworld spirits through the speakers into physical sound, into THIS, whatever this is.
You can almost imagine the whole neighborhood gathered around this unassuming house in the suburbs, clad in slippers and robes, bleary eyed and a bit terrified, staring at BH HQ, a dilapidated little house that seems to be coming alive, the whole thing shaking on its foundations, emanating kaleidoscopic lights, emitting a deafening roar unlike anything these normal folks have ever heard. They call the authorities, the police, the F.B.I., but by the time they arrive, the house is dark, and quiet, and empty.
Absolute ear candy for psych-kraut maniacs into blown out heavy psychedelic space rock freakouts, which as far as we're concerned should really be just about everyone reading this.
We were super into the first couple records from UK black metal outfit Caina, especially their entry in the HP Lovecraft 3" cd-r series, but then after that we sort of lost interest, not sure what it was exactly, the records started sounding more acoustic, more folky, not that we're opposed to that, it just wasn't doing it for us. So we almost skipped this new disc completely, but boy are we glad we didn't. Another instance that has us wondering what the hell we were thinking, and giving us cause to go back and see if maybe we just weren't way off the mark.
Because Temporary Antennae is really something else. Heavy, and folky, and creepy, and pretty goddamn weird. Beginning with some rumbling black ambience, assembled from what sounds like chants and guttural vocalizations, culminating in an incredibly freaky processed voice, leading us into the first song proper, a killer start stop blackened groove, that almost sounds like Led Zeppelin mixed with Lurker Of Chalice. We had compared Caina to Lurker way back when, and it still sort of applies. If you consider Lurker to be the gothier doomier creepier less distinctly black metal side of Leviathan. The sound her is definitely black, but not buzzy and blasty, instead, the guitars almost jangle, the voice is deep and dramatic, and the arrangement is more epic, almost post rocky, with haunting majestic melodies, warm reverb drenched ambience, all very moody and dour, another black metal band that seems to be leaning heavily toward old school slowcore. But filtering in all sorts of doom and folk and various other unlikely elements.
And so it goes with Temporary Antennae, simple skeletal drum machine rhythms beneath glimmering fx laden shimmer, haunting operatic vocals, all giving way to a super slow, but surprisingly not 'heavy' funereal doom, rife with clean guitar, and fucked up bellowed vox, atonal off kilter blasting blackness stutters into a lurching arrangement that makes it sound more like Ved Buens Ende than anything more traditionally black, and again, shot through with moody mathy clean guitar, crooned vocals, processed shoegazey guitars, and out of the blue drum machine throb and pulse, there's even what sounds like some eighties FM radio new wave, all synthy and poppy and jangly, which gradually transforms into something much heavier, like Jesu or Nadja, the same sort of M83 fuzziness, and then suddenly the record will shift again into a brooding gothic pop, all mournful melodies and spare drumming, guitar harmonics and distant hazy shimmer, only to change gears again moments later, taking the shape of a sort of melancholic sadcore jangle, like Mazzy Star or The For Carnation, and for the next few songs, the sound shifts, continually slipping from jangle to shimmer to drift, but never really returning to anything remotely metal, but by that point, you don't really want it to, you're in some sort of blissed out trance state, which is precisely the point.
Only the most adventurous and pop savvy metalheads are gonna dig this. Even at its heaviest, things are still pretty fuzzy and jangly and pretty, but if you've been digging stuff like Alcest and Amesoeurs, then this might just hit the spot.
We made the cd version of this Circle disc our Record Of The Week a while back, only for it to go out of print WAY quicker than anyone expected. So now, Tyrant is available once again, for a limited time, on vinyl, a double lp to be precise. But again, like all Latitudes stuff, very very limited, and add to that the fact that it's Circle, well, you should know what that means. Here's what we had to say about Tyrant when we first got it WAY back in 2006!! Be sure to read to the end though, as there's some extras with the lp edition....
BRAND NEW CIRCLE ALBUM!!! TYRANT!! INCREDIBLY LIMITED LATEST INSTALLMENT IN THE LATITUDES SERIES!!! IT'S HERE!!!!
Okay, just wanted to get your attention. We've been waiting for this for a long, long time. As have many of you, we imagine. We've all been loving the Latitudes series of ultra limited releases from bands like Ginnungagap, Shit And Shine, the Grails, Ariel Pink, Sir Richard Bishop... so when we heard that Finland's gods of metallic hypno drone rock were going to do one, we were so psyched, and so we waited anxiously, but patiently, until finally, after months of waiting, they arrived, just a few days ago, and as if we even have to tell you, IT'S AWESOME!!!
But this declaration of awesomeness does require a bit more elaboration, as Circle have a wide variety of awesome sounds: murky propulsive modern day krautrock, wild guitar heavy NWOFHM proto-metal, extended ambient drones, loping mesmeric jazzy shuffle, it's really hard to know where the band will head next. As if it were too much to wish for, Tyrant, somehow manages to combine all of their disparate sounds into one practically perfect whole, and some of us are declaring this our favorite Circle record in ages (no mean feat, since their last one, Miljard, was fantastic, a Record Of The Week too). Three 15 minute tracks, each one a slow building epic, droning, dense, dark, hypnotic, but each with its own unique elements.
The opener, "Screaming Luovutus", is an endlessly looping space rock drone mantra, a relentlessly throbbing bassline, haunting little swirls of fluttering keyboard melody, little bits of guitar filigree, simple propulsive rhythmic shuffle, all woven into a endlessly throbbing krautrocky swirl, when suddenly over the top strange whispery demonic growls surface, super distorted, another layer of fuzzy sound, howling and whispering all ragged and harsh, almost like Circle covering Abruptum or a black metal Necks, if that makes any sense. Dizzying and weirdly heavy, a black ambient krautrock drone groove, if such a thing were possible. And if it were, you know Circle would be the ones, ahem, ARE the ones to make it happen.
The second track, with the very metal title "Steel Torment Warrior", is maybe the least metal of the batch. A super creepy, almost jazzy, soundscape, of muted rumble, bursts of super effected dubbed out drums, flurries of spaced out FX, hushed hissed vocals, splattery free jazz skitter, warbly, seasick guitar tangles all wrapped in a druggy blissy ambience. It's like a less propulsive Necks, a damaged jazzy shuffle looping into infinity, but twisted into a uniquely Circular shape.
The closer, with the even MORE metal title of "Amputation Crusade", is the grooviest and space rockiest of the three, a simple darkly melodic guitar figure, loops lazily above a slow slithery bassline and a super laid back, barely there rhythmic shuffle, like Can or Faust in extreme slow motion... you can hear the Necks again, but the band add some extra druggy fuzz guitar, and the laid back riffing is pregnant with the possibility of imminent explosion. Strange vocals lurk below the surface, the whole thing an epic trawl through some jazzy black space rock soundscape. Near the end, things build to a bit of a subdued climax, the guitars ringing and chiming, the drums pounding a bit more, very epic and majestic, but still somehow muted and laid back, petering out into a creepy little coda of guitar FX and gurgling monster vocals...
Wow. Seriously, we love Circle and everything, more than most folks, but this disc is an absolute killer!! Heavy and droney, groovy and jazzy and completely epic and mesmerizing and amazing!!
Comes packaged in the usual black and white Latitudes diecut 12" sleeve, includes the same black and white insert from the cd, featuring the band posing with spiked gauntlets in front of Stonehenge!!! Well, actually, in front of the chainlink fence in front of Stonehenge, which somehow makes more sense. The inner lp label has two strange NWOFHM / Tyrant (the 't's in tyrant are battle axes of course) hooded knights. And as if that weren't enough, the second disc is a PICTURE DISC, one side features the Stonehenge band photo blown up, the other side is an image of... well, an lp, in fact the -other- record in the set, complete with the hooded knights in the center and printed record grooves, which while actually being playable grooves, seem to be there just for show....
Either way, one more chance to pick up this kick ass Circle record, and on vinyl to boot!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!!
Another mysterious musical missive from Finland, record number two of alchemical magickal dronemusic and deep otherworldly black ambience from a group that features members of one of our favorite Finnish combos, the mighty Dead Reptile Shrine (who have a new double cd coming out on tUMULt this year). We raved about the last C+B disc, a collection of raw and primal sound rituals, not all that far removed from the music of countrymen Tiermes.
Separated into 4 suites, Cloak Of Fire, Cloak Of Doom, Cloak of Darkness, and Cloak Of... um.. well Cloak Of Cloak oddly enough, this disc is in fact a reissue of a long out of print cd-r, originally released in an edition of 100 copies. As with the other Cloama & Blutleuchte disc, the sounds here are dark and ominous, rumbling and whirring and shimmering, but this is not mere ambient music, or drone music, there is much more going on, texture and noise, and all manner of difficult to describe sonic happenings.
The drone is for sure the root of the sound, but that drone is twisted and stretched out, wreathed in strange effects and peppered with bursts of hiss and buzz. Some tracks are simple sprawling black blurs, while others, incorporate haunting sung spoken vocals, simple tribal percussion, a bit like a more raw and freaked out Muslimgauze, while others are thick grinding walls of distortion, dense crumbling heaviness, shot through with haunting melodies, and creaking groaning crunch, as well as strange voices and snippets of conversation, and still others are rich swirls of blurred soft focus colors and slowed down riffs, mysterious crawls through vast expanses of deep stellar buzz. String sections wrap around military speeches, industrial percussion is buried beneath seas of grinding metallic shimmer, long long stretches of deep hushed thrum, and haunting chantlike vocals, all culminating in what sounds like a hissy, washed out, black metal blur, a swirling digitized buzz laced drone, that slows and thickens until it becomes an ominous flickering downtuned dirge-y drift.
Gorgeous packaging, the booklet filled with all manner of symbols and landscape photos as well as some seriously strange liner notes.
File this one right next to your Alan Lamb discs of singing telegraph wires and the Broken Hearted Dragonflies album on Sublime Frequencies, as the British sound art duo of Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender have presented us with some seemingly implausible recordings of 'booming sand.' These are monotone frequencies generated by an avalanche of a sand dune under just the right environmental conditions. Such sounds have been reported in numerous times and places with Marco Polo recounting them on his excursions to China, and with Charles Darwin finding similar sounds in the deserts of Chile! At the onset of one of their recordings, we hear Isobel huffing and puffing up to the top of a massive sand dune, before she puts her ears to the ground (quite literally) in order to locate the origin of the rumbling drone. Such a bracketing episode of human presence is very useful to frame the stillness of the desert even as the booming sound resonates through the landscape. It also helps to distance these natural sounds from their manmade doomscape kin of a lowslung bass slumped in subharmonic stupor against a rumbling amplifier. Aside from these impressively heavy recordings, Clouter and Mullender offer some additional recordings from elsewhere in Asia: hissing textures from windswept sand comingling with cicadas buzzing in the summer sun, and a Tibetan prayer wheel revolving through its wooden cycles of creaks and moans. These are good extracts of pure phonography, but pale next to the thoroughly impressive booming sand phenomenon.
CLP is probably a new name to most everybody, but the group's pedigree might ring some bells, as one half of the duo used to do time in Funkstorung. The sound of CLP has very little on common with the IDM funk of Funkstorung, instead, the sound of CLP is a wild and kick ass mix of old school hip hop, Miami bass, crunk, electro, ghetto-tech and the sounds of the Dirty South. The result musically, is kinda nuts, the ultimate dance party, and quite possibly one of the coolest, and maybe best hip hop records we've heard in forever, equal parts Missy Elliott, Timbaland, 2 Live Crew, Hyphy, and fuck knows who else. The duo used Myspace to track down obscure and unknown rappers from all over the world, primarily in the US and South Africa, which just pushes it over the top.
Every track is different, but they all share some sonic similarities, beats that slip from skittery to block rockin, fuzzy basslines, blown out distorted synths, soaring strings, stuttery grooves, off kilter loops, and some hooks that kill, if this wasn't some obscure hip hop record on Shitkatapult, this would and SHOULD be all over the radio. And the rapping is all over the place too, from sultry and sinister to goofy and over the top, from robotic bark to woozy laidback druggy drawl, but it all works, perfectly. Instead of skits, there are some musical interludes, that end up sounding just as off kilter as the songs themselves.
Not sure what else to say, other than hip hop record of the year. Last year? This year? Probably both...
Although, from their not particularly atypical name and logo, you might expect just another business-as-usual Nordic black metal horde, corpsepainted and kvlt-y, this is NOT just another BM (or, USBM in their case as they hail from New Hampshire) band. Nosirree. We figured that out right away, when the vocals started up on "A Dangerous Wayfaring" and weren't a grim rasp, but rather a faux-British accented chorus. The more usual sort of guttural gruffness also soon appears, but CNV had piqued our interest, and we kept listening with curious anticipation that was quickly rewarded by this album's unexpected and unusual blend of underground black metal, goth rock, and industrial. Actually CNV also had our attention 'cause this comes from the same label, Bindrune, who last brought us Blood Of The Black Owl's A Feral Spirit, another unique and experimental metal offering.
This isn't quite as weird as that record, but this eclectic effort certainly captivates chaotically with majestically catchy riffage, Gobliny soundtrack synths, clean vocal singalongs, and even all-acoustic mellow moodiness ("The Shores Of New England"). Our favorite element though is what might be termed their Satanic industrial sound, with sampling and sequencing, the best example of which is "The By-Paths To Chaos", a rhythmic exercise in sinister, cut-and-paste percussive clockwork. Very cool. Hail Cold Northern Vengeance!!
It's been nearly a year and a half since the venerable British drone composer Jonathan Coleclough has offered us something new; and this collaboration between Coleclough and Murmer (aka Patrick McGinley) is well worth the wait! The two met a couple years back after contributing works to the same compilation. Soon after, Coleclough began making regular contributions to McGinley's weekly radio series Framework for Resonance FM in London; and their continued communication sparked the interest for a collaboration. Much of the music found on Husk originated from semi-improvised sessions whereby the two processed various field recordings, small tactile events, and other electronic devices -- gradually developing beyond the gestural and into a monumental sprawling album which is in the running for best drone album of 2006. The two had cited their source material as refrigerators, thunderstorms, sheep, car horns, ferryboats, windblown sand, and crackling charcoal; and it's a crap shoot to discern which of these electrically blurred drones hails from an overheating kitchen appliance or from farm animals. Not that any of that really matters, as the art of Coleclough and McGinley is in their alchemy, transforming the commonplace into the celestial (albeit, a very dark and very cold heavenly body). Throbbing drones of low end harmonics are joined by secondary sustained timbres which undulate as polyamorous tangles, spreading rhizomes, and slippery knots bristling with tactility and spotted with plenty of hints of the organic. Each of the four tracks proposes a variation on glassine drones counterpointed by rasping textures, at times hedging for the subdued drama of smoldering crescendos and others the sublime stare at glacial immobility. Coleclough's work has always been exceptional, and his collaboration with Murmer is no different! Highly recommended.
Not sure how many folks remember the late great Stretchheads, a Scottish quartet who kicked up a serious din back in the early nineties, fast heavy and so fucked up, culminating in the genus Pish In Your Sleazebag album, a record of total percussive grinding chopped up, dubbed out heavy heavy weirdness. Not sure what those guys have been doing for the last couple decades, but at least a few of them have resurfaced in De Salvo, whose first disc Mood Poisoner has just come out on Mogwai's Rock Action label. But don't let the Mogwai connection mislead you, this is not any sort of brooding post rock shoe gazey shit, this is super abrasive, ultra technical, harsh and brutal, grinding, chugging metallic post punk hardcore heaviness. Imagine Black Flag, Converge, Coalesce, Butthole Surfers and of course the aforementioned Stretchheads, all pulled apart and tangled up into a whole new whirling dervish of hardcore metallic fury.
But it's not just heavy for heavy's sake, there are melodies all over the place, the arrangements are tight, and super complex. Some tracks slip into slithery almost stoner rock, others into lurching doom, but for the most part the sound here is jagged and relentless, stuttery start stop riffage, freaked out drumming, the vocals a harsh high yelp slipping from Jesus Lizard howl to Cradle Of Filth shriek, more often some impossible mix of the two, and yeah, cool guitar harmonics lacing the churning chug, the drums and bass locked tight into super staccato bursts, flurries of double kick, brief stretches of woozy prettiness, but always quickly swallowed up by a wall of crumbling corrosive blown out rrroooaaar. There are hooks, everywhere, the more you listen the deeper they sink, and the more those wounds bleed and fester. The opener is like a super charged tech metal Halo Of Flies, or like Converge's Jane Doe and Brutal Truth's Need To Control melted down and covered by the Refused. Just listen to the sound samples. Heavy record of the year, easy. And another fearsome export from Scotland (see Black Sun on the last list!), that has us dying to hear more.
Finally, after waiting and waiting, a brand new Deathspell Omega record. Or track. OK, record. Same difference really. One single sprawling massive 22 minute epic with more parts and compositional complexities than most bands can cram into a record three times as long. And it's the perfect blend of DSO's two disparate sides, their grim and gnarled, frosty, thrashing buzzy black side, and their more obtuse, mathy melodic post rock side. In the past, it seemed like the band would lean heavily in one direction or the other depending on the record, Kenose with it's total slavish and apparently unintentional Slint worship, and then FAS, which seemed to ditch those post rock proclivities in favor of something much more old school.
So it was pretty much a toss up where the band would take their sound, and weirdly enough, this is almost exactly what we were hoping for. A perfect hybrid of the two, with no clear delineation, each side, those battling influences, blurring and bleeding into one another, confusionally bafflingly brilliant, bursts of furious grinding black buzz lead directly into warped stretches of spidery clean guitars and lurching impossible rhythms, soft hushed whispered interludes obliterated by thick roiling black riffery, only to slowly melt before our eyes, twisting and almost detuning, the guitar parts very Polvo-esque, strange tunings, almost skeletal sounding, until the band offer up some impossibly dense complicated BM fury, stop start arrangements, INCREDIBLE drumming, the guitars totally unhinged, but still weirdly catchy. Songs this long are always difficult to pull off, for the best of bands, either parts get recycled, the band repeats itself, or it gets tiresome and then it's a matter of waiting for the song to end. But nothing like that here. So many parts, all thematically and musically linked, but all totally unique, the guitars especially, seem to come to life, like some black weed, while the drums inhumanly stay locked in perfectly. The track shifts from intense frenzy, to woozy groove, to lumbering doom, to jagged mathy stutter, and back again, there even seems to be some horns happening, reminding us of later period Gore.
Even as a musician, it baffles the mind, how anyone is capable of conceiving music this dense and complex and subtly melodic, let along performing it. This just might seal the deal, as if it wasn't sealed already, Deathspell Omega just might be the most progressive, most avant, and fuck it most mind blowing black metal band on the planet right now. Period.
DSO's twenty two minute track is actually from a split, released in conjunction with a new record from countrymen S.V.E.S.T., reviewed elsewhere on this list, and equally as essential, and vinyl folks, you are in luck, both the DSO material and the S.V.E.S.T. songs, while released as separate cds, are available together on a single lp!
The long awaited split from two of our all time favorite black metal outfits, Deathspell Omega and S.V.E.S.T.! Weirdly enough, each band's half of the vinyl split was also released on a separate cd, so if you're a digital kind of person, you're gonna have to buy both cds, and believe us it's well worth it, just read on. But if vinyl is your thing, then you're in luck, cuz both halves, all the material from both cds, is contained on this here lp.
Up first, Deathspell Omega:
Finally, after waiting and waiting, a brand new Deathspell Omega record. Or track. OK, record. Same difference really. One single sprawling massive 22 minute epic with more parts and compositional complexities than most bands can cram into a record three times as long. And it's the perfect blend of DSO's two disparate sides, their grim and gnarled, frosty, thrashing buzzy black side, and their more obtuse, mathy melodic post rock side. In the past, it seemed like the band would lean heavily in one direction or the other depending on the record, Kenose with it's total slavish and apparently unintentional Slint worship, and then FAS, which seemed to ditch those post rock proclivities in favor of something much more old school.
So it was pretty much a toss up where the band would take their sound, and weirdly enough, this is almost exactly what we were hoping for. A perfect hybrid of the two, with no clear delineation, each side, those battling influences, blurring and bleeding into one another, confusionally bafflingly brilliant, bursts of furious grinding black buzz lead directly into warped stretches of spidery clean guitars and lurching impossible rhythms, soft hushed whispered interludes obliterated by thick roiling black riffery, only to slowly melt before our eyes, twisting and almost detuning, the guitar parts very Polvo-esque, strange tunings, almost skeletal sounding, until the band offer up some impossibly dense complicated BM fury, stop start arrangements, INCREDIBLE drumming, the guitars totally unhinged, but still weirdly catchy. Songs this long are always difficult to pull off, for the best of bands, either parts get recycled, the band repeats itself, or it gets tiresome and then it's a matter of waiting for the song to end. But nothing like that here. So many parts, all thematically and musically linked, but all totally unique, the guitars especially, seem to come to life, like some black weed, while the drums inhumanly stay locked in perfectly. The track shifts from intense frenzy, to woozy groove, to lumbering doom, to jagged mathy stutter, and back again, there even seems to be some horns happening, reminding us of later period Gore.
Even as a musician, it baffles the mind, how anyone is capable of conceiving music this dense and complex and subtly melodic, let along performing it. This just might seal the deal, as if it wasn't sealed already, Deathspell Omega just might be the most progressive, most avant, and fuck it most mind blowing black metal band on the planet right now. Period.
And then S.V.E.S.T.:
The return of an old favorite, French duo S.V.E.S.T., who strangely enough haven't released a proper record since 2003 (2005's Coagula compiled older demos), but within 30 seconds, we were totally reminded exactly why we loved these guys so much. And they're a perfect foil for Deathspell, their sound equally fractured and convoluted and fucked up, but where DSO go for something darker and moodier and more melodic, S.V.E.S.T. go in the other direction completely, spitting out frenzied swaths of blurred buzz and wild squalls of intense tangled blackness. These three tracks, are so awesome, we almost, and we're well aware of the sacrilege involved here, but we just might like them as much as, if not even more than the Deathspell half of the split.
Their sound is hard to describe. The first track opens with a dizzying swirl of squiggly guitars, woozy riffs, wild splattery drumming, that seems already like it's bordering on total meltdown, yet that's just the intro, and the band launch into a frenzied assault even more fucked up and dense, but pepper it with cool little melodies and parts that almost sound Viking, albeit buried beneath a roiling black blowout. The guitar does these cool little descending trills, the song lurches and stutters, the drums are relentless, mind blowingly fast and heavy and intricate, until partway through, the sound shifts, and there's a bit of doomy crawl, before leaping right back into the fray. Throughout, there are bursts of total drumming chaos, extra guitars howling and adding yet more layers of buzz. It's so thick and heavy and dense, it takes close listening to pick out all the amazing stuff going on beneath the buzzy black surface.
The second track continues on in much the same vein, with the guitars even more twisted and gnarled, the drums still relentlessly mathy and intricate, slipping from total chaotic black noise, to stumbling groove, to cool pounding dirge, the drums leaping out from the mix, the guitars thick and raw, but soaring majestically at the same time. The sound manages to be epic and classic and technical while also murky and lo-fi, the sounds all blurring together, a heaving mass of constantly shifting blown out blackness, still rife with all manner of tangled little melodies, and sweeping epic ambience.
The closer is short and sweet, the weirdest and creepiest of the bunch, beginning with a staccato machine gun burst of drums and riffage, before slipping into a swirling high end guitardrone, all woozy and overlapping, disembodied riffs and smeared melodies, dizzying and mesmerizing, growing more and more intense, the drums barely there, just those high end guitars glowing hotter and hotter, until finally, the drums kick in, and the track resolves in a totally twisted soaring post rock black metal what the fuck epic outro, that fades out WAY too soon. Holy shit. These guys need to deliver a full length ASAP. and we definitely don't want to wait another 6 years.
LIMITED OF COURSE. And it would be hard not to think, even only nine days into the new year, that this wasn't gonna be the best black metal record of '09. We'll see...
When we first got this record in, we thought we had it totally figured out. Just take a look at the lineup: Tony Dryer, an accomplished double bassist and former touring member of the Flying Luttenbachers, Jacob Lindsay, local clarinet free-jazz virtuoso, and last but not least, Jacob Heule, a member of SF's only acoustic free/death/grind duo Ettrick! So naturally we figured this record would be a chaotic frenzy of fierce free jazzy madness. And while it is definitely loosely composed and rather abstract, the trio delve into some unexpected territory here. We checked out Heule's website and he describes the Idea of West as an album of "quiet and static acoustic musical territories explored through the pragmatic application of compositional and improvisational structures". Damn, and we thought we had this one figured out!
"In Order to Reroute the Wind" starts things off on a rather minimal note. Rickety scratching and scraping that sound like creaking boats swaying in a harbor of sizzling electric waste. Quiet industrial, barely there type of sound meanderings, a reserved and delicate sound for these ferocious free jazz contemporaries. On first listen, the jazz aesthetic of Idea of West is a bit hidden underneath a more ambient guise. Don't get us wrong, this sounds more like a jazz collaboration than a drone/ambient record, but it defiantly lacks the smack you in the face ferocity of other releases put out by these dudes. But that doesn't mean Idea of the West isn't an awesome piece of work in its own right. On the contrary, the trio confidently evolve Idea of West into a beautifully arranged aural invitation into a strange world of alchemic precision and skilled musicianship. Like a sorcerer who meticulously adds ingredients to a potion, paying careful attention to every detail in hopes of casting the perfect spell, these dudes play with close attention to detail. The record builds up and dissipates as the trio feed off each other's playing, letting chance determination sculpt their meditations into a hauntingly beautiful sonic narrative. Perfect for those of you aQ-addicts open to the weirder, more mystical side of free jazz!! And most certainly recommended by us!
Second solo record from our very own Jon Porras, half of dronefolk duo Barn Owl, after his first disc on Digitalis, Bxogonoas, sold out in a matter of days. This one is crazy limited too, so if you want one, better be quick.
Woven Into Light is more of the glorious same, a druggy, bleary eyed hybrid of slow shimmery free folk and deep minimal dronemusick, taking later period Earth somewhere much dreamier and darker. Muted twang and deep smoldering shimmer, all stretched out in diaphanous sheets across heavy clouded moonlit skies. Spidery tendrils of skeletal guitar spread out like branches on leafless trees, but rather than sounding wintry, Porras wreathes his guitars in soft billows of warm whir, gauzy and lightly blurred, where other bands might turn these downtuned tones into something doomy, Porras lets them drift wraithlike, the sound windswept and barren, the sound of flickering lights above the never ending expanse of desert.
Occasionally, the guitars wind into thick sinewy streaks of coruscating buzz, spitting sparks but still wreathed in a halo or reverb and delay, soft whispery strum transformed into squalls of muted psychguitar and slow shifting almost symphonic buzz. The sound touches on some familiar territory, Sunroof!, Fear Falls Burning, Earth, Nadja, Birchville Cat Motel, and the like, there's some hints of Morricone, Scenic, but Elm most definitely occupies it's own magical mysterious sonic space.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. and if past releases are any indication, these will sell out quick, and there's a good chance this might be the last copies we ever see...
Another blast of glorious noisy weirdness from the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis...Don't! label, this time from the strangely name EOH (named for Rob from the Daturas' son Max's imaginary friend! cool), a trio of drinking buddies (featuring Rob from the Daturas) who channel their drunken unruliness into recording session after recording session. This 20 minute chunk of dark drones and abstract free noise was culled from hours and hours of wild drunken recording, and the results are surprisingly cohesive and listenable. Still dense and noisy and intense, but with a soft touch. More whisper than roar, more drone than screech. A Wolf Eyesian industrial murk march. Dense swirling layers of thick pulsing guitar distortion, wavering and warbling in thick sheets laid over everything, peppered with occasional cymbal crashes and what sounds like some sort of throat singing. This is some seriously massive ur-drone shit. Huge industrial wastescapes, abstract spare stretches of low end rumble swirling like black fog over ruined landscapes of damaged amplifiers and detuned guitars. Haunting, and desolate but strangely lovely. Essential listening for the drone obsessed among you.
Packaged in thick textured paper grey mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
And as always, this is SUPER LIMITED, and odds are we won't be able to get more. We did get a whole bunch, but don't let that keep you from ordering it now or you'll be kicking yourself when these are gone...
1971 strikes again. Holy moly, the planets must have been extra-aligned that year. Here's a krautrock classic from '71 that kinda fell through the cracks (though not the cracks in the cosmic egg). Well, it's certainly been lauded by some but we'd never heard it before now, anyway. In fact, this is its first time on cd, apparently, and we're glad to have it! Wild stuff here, a trip indeed, starting off with a serious dose of crazed, freakout action for synth and drums entitled "Thursday Morning Sunrise". Seriously psychedelic jamming jazz weirdness, like Sun Ra gone heavy. The synth squiggles and squeaks, growls and grumbles, and drums tumble and splatter, for almost 12 minutes. Some sunrise! But if you think that this is gonna be an album of improvised, uh, "drug jazz" (which it is, in part), you'll be surprised by what's to come on this disc... lovely acoustic guitar melodies ("Mellodrama Nr. 2 A"), faux-Eastern bliss-out vibes ("Raga"), and spoken word beat poetry set amidst angelic vocal arrangements ("Lady Blue")... like we said, a trip! But then again, all this eclectic awesomeness - from moody jazz to ethnic groove to fuzzy acid rock instrumentals - isn't all that unexpected in a krautrock band, especially one featuring members of Embryo and Exmagma, as well as mastermind Wolfgang Dauner (of The Oimels fame). They deliver the goods with a great deal of groove and gusto, making music both beautiful and bizarre... it could be the soundtrack to some avantgarde psychedelic art film from the '70s, like a Jodorowsky epic. Despite the not-so-cheap import price, this is a recommended reissue, done right. Snazzy, colorful cover, remastered sound (from original masters), 3 lengthy & quite excellent bonus tracks, liner notes... the works!
We've always been pretty into Ethereal Woods and their twisted strain of eco-black metal. But regardless of their political agenda or lyrical themes, their root sound was something much more raw and immediate, a sort of blackened thrash, not super furious and fast, and not really super fucked up, more sort of pounding and loping and midtempo, but EW most definitely do have their specific peculiarities (are there any bands on Supernal who don't?), and that stuff is fully evident here.
"Approaching The Castle By Night" begins all moody and minor key, a sort of brooding intro before the band launch into some seriously heavy thrashing black metal. A bit chaotic, and fiercely furious, the drums wild and off kilter, the vocals weirdly sung / grunted, complete with a cool crunchy chugging breakdown, until the band whip out the synths and head heavenward with a stretch of swirling waltzy epic pomp, the drums suddenly a shuffle the guitars strumming beneath the soaring synths, and then back again, as if that was just some Mr. Hyde shit, it won't happen again. But oh it will. Again and again, and that's precisely what makes this record, and Ethereal Woods more than just some British black thrash outfit.
"Le Plesannz En Mary" begins with another surprisingly melodic intro, some post rocky blissy guitars over tangled tribal drumming, and then some super dramatic Goblin-y synths, before slipping back into something a bit more black metal. But even then the arrangements are fractured and not at all typical, a bit mathy, and a bit fucked up. Then there's "An Elizabethan Fantasy", that begins like some warped power pop jam, before settling into a more blackly dour groove, but never quite shedding that strange hooky intro. The drums here are especially strange, stuttery and hiccuppy and skittery. And once the song really gets rolling, there are all sorts of strange dynamic stops and starts, a really damaged sort of lurching post doom or something.
And so it goes for the rest of the record, plenty of weirdly poppy blackness, lots of warped keyboards, those gruff growly vocals draped over soaring epic guitars, and tangled up with strange stumbling drums, culminating in what might just be our favorite track, "Woodnymph", a sprawling 10 minute epic, whose main refrain is a ridiculously catchy ascending reach-for-the-heavens sort of majestic riff, paired with really abstract drumming, and a killer Sabbathy groove in-between, but that's only the beginning, over the next 10 minutes the track shifts from blissed out shoegazy doom, to lumbering crunchy chug, the total furious black thrash, and finally back to that awesome opening riff.
Way recommended, but only for those who like their black metal warped and twisted and poppy and pretty much not that black at all...
NOW ON VINYL!!!!!
Leave it to the Numero Group to dig up a soundtrack so lost that the film it accompanies was never even made. Cut back to 1975, when the blaxploitation film era was at its peak before its downhill slide from socially uplifting noirs to clowning ninja-pimp buffoonery, and you have the seeds of a film in the making. A former gangster turned preacher who robs the robbers and gives to the poor. Brotherman! But first, before casting, before even finishing the script, what's needed is a Grade A soundtrack. Cue guitarist, songwriter and arranger Carl Wolfolk and his fledgling Chicago-based vocal group, The Final Solution. Dipping into the SuperFly well, but with enough uniquely inventive guitar work that allows it to stand apart firmly on its own, Wolfolk created an amazing score of songs and instrumentals that still sounds remarkably fresh and non-cliched. Using flamenco style funk guitar flourishes that stab around the four part harmonies, Wolfolk interjected socially smart song-writing with sweet Northern soul nuances. Unfortunately, the plug was pulled on the film before even a still was shot, leaving Wolfolk to carry around his masterwork for more than 30 years, hoping someday the music would be released. Well, Brotherman, your time has come!
Regarding the title and the cover art here, Ferrara Brain Pan - the lone pilot of San Francisco's obscurant project Forms Of Things Unknown - is taking the piss out of the perennial flirtations of Nazi culture found in experimental and post-punk musics over the past 30 or 40 years. It's an odd form of humor, but one that stops at the cover art, never to be brought up within these eccentric and disparate tracks that harken back to the early days of United Daires. Whimsical collages, complete with bongo-boy rhythms and cut-up vocal samples (which really could be an extract from Nurse With Wound's Funeral Music For Perez Prado), are juxtaposed against icy cold electronic tone workouts that draw from the precisely constructed, psychoacoustic experiments of Ryoji Ikeda or John Duncan. Ferrara also interjects his favorite instrument, the bass clarinet, on a few somber pieces that warp the brassy notes of a maudlin funereal passage into air raid sirens. As beautiful as some of these pieces can be, Ferrara's deft use of electronics and the digital razor blade is all the better. All of these tracks are demos, outtakes, or compilation rarities, including the Forms Of Things Unknown contribution to the Nurse With Wound remix album of Two Shaves And A Shine. While there is a disjointed quality to the album, this is a well needed investigation into this music of this seldom heard musician.
"Cross Purposes" is an half-hour of weird, spooky music from longtime AQ patron and obscure music-maker Ferrara Brain Pan. Yes, that's his name -- but here he goes by the Forms Of Things Unknown moniker, a suitably vague and creepy name for this disc of Gothic dark ambient experimentation, that seems to be vying for retroactive inclusion on the famed "Nurse With Wound list". Indeed, NWW's Stephen "Babs Santini" Stapleton makes a guest appearance somewhere on here (see if you can find it)!
The first track, evocatively named "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit", is sixteen minutes of sinister drone and wind instrument dolefulness. On this album, Ferrara plays bass clarinet, flutes, recorders, saxophones, along with various other mostly archaic and/or ethnic instruments -- and electronics too of course. Perhaps to illustrate that FoTU's influences are eclectic and extend back further than the goth/industrial heyday, "Black Candles..." is followed by an anonymous 14th century composition in both instrumental and vocal versions -- the vocal by lovely soprano Shannon Wolfe, not Ferrara. It's somewhat sombre, but not scary like the first piece. Rather beautiful. Then, again shifting gears and displaying esoteric influence, this disc's final cut turns out to be a moody cover of "Stupid Blood", a song from the Beast Box album by Howard Devoto's post-Buzzcocks band Luxuria. With one Bob Ayres handling the portentous baritone vox, and Ferrara's horns and flutes, this track could just as easily be taken as a tribute to Peter Hammill's Van Der Graaf Generator!
What happens when you open a hotel that rests on one of the seven gateways of hell? Let me tell you - eyes will be gouged out, skin burned off, heads melted away, humans will be crucified and spiders will eat out tongues (and lets not fail to mention all the flesh-eating zombies). Thank Satan himself that Lucio Fulci's masterpiece THE BEYOND is back on the racks, rereleased just in time for a Merry Xmas (whoops, we should have listed it last month!). This gored-out unrated, uncensored, nauseatingly unyielding version of said splatter masterpiece now features a 5.1 surround sound experience, providing live bleeding from the eerie score by Fabio Frizzi (The Gates Of Hell, Manhattan Baby, Zombi 2). With an intro and commentary by actress/screamer Catriona MacColl. A must see film for those who like to test how dark their visuals can get.
While lots of B-side collections end up being mostly throwaway or forgettable tracks, we think we might be loving this collection of odds and ends from Glass Candy even MORE than their latest full length, Beat Box, which we already liked a lot. You can tell they must have been listening to lots of late-night cosmic disco and some great cold/synth-wave when they recorded these tracks as they really nail both of those sounds perfectly.
The combination of Johnny Jewell's great musical chops and Ida No's sizzling, sexy and detached vocal delivery is pretty much ideal. The sound of Deep Gems is pretty similar to Beat Box, even though these are all outtakes and B-sides, which makes it the perfect companion for folks already loving the album proper.
An unlikely contributor, Eyvind Kang, adds his violin and viola playing on a few tracks, but make no mistake this collection is all about slow burners and smoke filled late night dance floor grooves.
What it is exactly that constitutes Krautrock is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedlia ever recorded. UFO is the former band's debut effort. Fans of heavy psych, German rock of the '70s, and free improv jams will consider this absolutely essential. And chances are, those fans already own this, or they simply haven't found a copy yet... here's the currently in print, Japanese mini-LP sleeve version. Repetitive, hypnotic, transcendent. And at the same time jarring. This is a fist full of mushrooms being shoved through the speakers. Embrace it.
Super limited lp sampling the current state of Portland underground sounds, with a couple well known outfits, and a couple brand new ones (at least to us), all paying tribute to a long lost Portland band called Alarmist.
Up first is Inca Ore, who most folks are probably familiar with, and her tracks here are lovely as always, dark and contemplative, lo-fi bedroom folk, deep bell-like tones and whispered vocals, the whole thing super hushed with weird rubbery bass and of course tone of reverb and delay. The strange thing, is that in between these super quiet songs, are super raucous crowd noise, people shouting and howling and cheering, it's weirdly jarring.
Up next is Argumentix, and for most folks it will definitely be an acquired taste. Beginning with some strange a capella almost off key vocalizing over a backdrop of murky crumbling distant drones, which quickly gives way to some super lo-fi hip hop (!), lots of bleeps and bloops and strange, sort of goofy rapping. A little bit Magnetic Fields actually. The last few tracks are chunks of abstract noise, weird ambience, clicks and buzz drone, and another bunch of goofy crooning vocals. Argumentix might take a few more exposures to win us over completely.
The flip side begins with Ghost To Falco, who we had heard OF, but never heard. Beginning with some random banter, and then a poem, we weren't sure what to expect, but then the band slips into some dark mopey slowcore, a bit reminiscent of The For Carnation, spidery guitars sad mumbled vocals, muted percussion, shuffling drums, dark and moody and quite nice, before slipping into a more traditional sounding, but no less dark sort of indie folk.
Finally, long time aQ fave Tunnels returns, but instead of deep long drones, or abstract freaked out psychfolk, he offers up something else entirely, starting things off with a wild squall of blown out psychguitar, but then adds some seriously tweaked, strangled mewly vocals. Hot on the heels of that comes some skittery new wave moaned vocals, gloomy synths, robotic drum machine, before the sound shifts again and becomes a sort of unhinged cabaret super dramatic deep vocals, lots of percussive crunch, all very over the top, yet still gloomy and goth and dark.
Weird record. And all over the place even for a 4 way split. Almost plays like a recording of some strange stage production, with bands maybe trying stuff they might not normally, or more likely channeling the spirit of Alarmist, who we have not heard, all a bit campy and very over the top in places, but balanced by the darker more somber bits.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in nice thick silk screened sleeves. Includes photocopied inserts with liner notes and track info.
Man, sometimes this business of actually "reviewing" things just seems superfluous...or ridiculous... or even supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. All those terms apply in the case of this, a TEN cd box set by Japanese noise band Incapacitants, that says "Incapacitants Box Is Stupid" right on the front of it fergoshsakes. That's the title, in silvery metallic print on the lid of the black cardboard box that contains these ten compact discs full of sheer, unrelenting, exploding, horrible grinding noise by one of the most extreme Japanese noise bands in the biz. What more need we say? Other than to explain that Box Is Stupid, released on Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk label, heroically collects the contents of the duo's cassette-only releases from the nineties, stuff released in limited editions that we'd never seen or heard before. And they're all "remastered from the original master tapes" (which you might find to be a pretty funny statement after hearing this). Each cd comes in a cardboard sleeve, bearing graphics from the original cassette releases, or sometime a color photo of the actual cassette(s). The discs are: Stupid Is Stupid [Studio Materials], Stupid Is Stupid [Live Materials], Extreme Gospel Nights, Ad Nauseam [Edition Mikawa], Ad Nauseam [Edition Kosakai], Ad Nauseam [Edition Live], D.D.D.D., The Tongue, Cosmic Incapacitants, and I, Residuum. That's about XX hours of dense, dynamic, uber-distorted NOISE. Also packed in the box is a thick, 40 page booklet, with full color photos from various spasming live Incapacitants actions, and liner notes printed in both English and Japanese from fans/fellow musicians Otomo Yoshihide (Ground Zero, ONJO, etc.) and Jim Sauter (Borbetomagus), as well as personal band histories from both members of Incapacitants, founder Toshiji Mikawa and loyal sidekick Fumio Kosakai.
Otomo's essay is entitled "I Love The Incapacitants More Than Anything"!! He doesn't think Box Is Stupid. To him, Incapacitants are the ultimate questing expression of what got him into improvised music and noise to begin with, the legacy of Japanese free jazz masters Masayuki Takayanagi and Kaoru Abe. Elsewhere in these essays, we learn that Eye from the Boredoms was once Mikawa's collaborator in Incapacitants, early on before Kosakai joined. We also find out from Mikawa why they're called Incapacitants (it's worth quoting: "The term is a military one used to designate the various kinds of chemical substances which can be used in times of war or terrorism, not to injure or kill enemy combatants, but rather to render them incapable of resistance. My intention was consciously extreme - to attack the audience's auditory canals with my noise and thus render them incapable of fighting back."). It's clear from their writings that Mikawa and Kosakai both bring a lot of serious thought and artistic passion to the noise they make. And clear from the noise they make that they are INSANE. Just kidding. While listening to Box Is Stupid might drive some folks mad, others of us will find it almost psychedelically trance-inducing.
Incapacitants is not only beloved by Otomo Yoshihide, but they're also Allan here at AQ's all time favorite Japanese noise group. Why? Maybe he was smitten by the sharp graphics of their Alchemy label cd releases. Maybe he likes the idea of two middle-aged, mild mannered, slightly chubby Japanese professionals indulging in freaked out electronic mayhem. Maybe they ARE the noisiest. And maybe it just makes sense to pick a favorite Japanese noise artist, 'cause it would be tough to keep up with 'em all. Heck you could go broke trying to buy every Merzbow release, for example. (Though, Allan does own the 50-cd Merzbox, as do several others of us here at AQ.) While Box Is Stupid isn't a fetish object quite on the scale of the Merzbox, it still pushes many of the same absurd noise-lovin' buttons. Gotta have it, if you're a real Incapacitants fan. In fact, that's the definition of anyone who would buy this!
Black metal logos by their very nature are cryptic, for most impossible to read, a jumble of squiggles and spidery lines and upside down crosses, pentagrams, sharp angles and jagged edges. But once translated into actual letters, the magic is lost, it's usually BLOOD something, or DEMON something, or perhaps a very common word with wintery connotations, or some variation of the word forest. But what of the band with no 'logo', as their very name is an impossibly tangled web, whose letters have no right to be side by side, an unpronounceable jumble that somehow still manages to evoke mystery, to conjure up images of darkness and despair, even though we've never met anyone who knows how to actually pronounce it?
Such is the case with Russian duo Ithdabquth Qliphoth, who are another one of those bands who have long been aQ black metal favorites, but whose records we were never able to attain in enough abundance to review on the list. Until now.
But it's not just the name that makes these guys a mystery. Three long multi part songs, each an epic suite, with titles like "3 142 742 836 021 Times Hotter Than Earthly Fire", and "Your Fucking Creation Is Bleeding Away" or "Thy Omnislaying Revelation". And instead of names, the two band members are represented by strange Anthony Braxton like diagrams, many of the lyrics appear to be in Hebrew, and include shapes as well as words, and then the sound, at once raw and buzzing, furious and hateful, at the same time strangely melodic, the record begins with a jumble of samples, church organ, yodeling, the sound of terrified screams and the sound of fire, until the band lurch into action, a woozy midtempo black buzz, underpinned by a relentless double kick, strange processed inhuman vocals buried in the mix, all wreathed in a gauzy haze, even when the band switches gears and channels some classic Norwegian buzz, they still sound weirdly off kilter, a bit like Katatonia crossed with Immortal crossed with Burzum, but way more twisted. The melodies haunting and mournful, the guitars buzzy, but still dripping with effects, as if the whole record was being broadcast from within a fog filled cave.
The three song suites are just that, not single epic tracks, but each, three shorter tracks somehow linked, lyrically, thematically, hardly matters, they seem quite varied but do manage to flow into each other, from moody melancholia to blown out super distorted blackness, from weirdly melodic to harsh and raw, IQ take these opposing forces and tangle them up into something gloriously confusional. The opening track of the second suite, "Introduction To Burning Death" is a dramatic shift from the almost relentless onslaught of the opening salvo, a loping melodic metallic groove, that gives way to a half time, even more melodic breakdown, all epic and doomy, and almost dreamy, before shifting gears into a weirdly groovy, almost punky jam, that reminds us a bit of Khold, but super charged , with the relentless double kick drumming, and a harsh distorted ambience wrapped around the whole thing, By the third part of the second act (each act is numbered 0., 00. and 000. by the way) the band have returned to something much more gnarled and truly black, but still shot through with streaks of melody and melancholy. Which segues smoothly into the final 3 part suite, from furious epic black buzz, to grinding downtuned crunch, to soaring melodic blur, to crunchy chugging chaotic mathy pummel, to brief folky drift to warped doomy dirge, sounding almost like a black metal Paradise Lost for a moment, before ending everything with several minutes of crumbling distorted blackened drones, deep resonant tones, gurgled voices, strange percussive crunch, blurred rumbles and what almost sounds like some super distorted ping pong, all buried beneath layer after layer of smeared bleary black buzz.
Packaged in 6 panel black and white digipacks adorned with all manner of symbols and lyrics and mysterious liner notes. LIMITED TO 777 COPIES. Every one hand numbered in silver ink.
We're always on about '70s prog. Well what about prog in the '80s? Here's a nice example, though it's from the very early in the decade (recorded 1980, released 1981) so it's practically '70s anyway. A rather obscure Swedish outfit called Kultivator, whose sole album Barndomens Stigar (which boasts a b&w engraving on the cover by none other than conceptual artist & experimental musician Leif Elggren) blends the quirky herky jerky of prog complexity with blissful melody, tilting at times towards the twee whilst menacingly muscle-flexing at others. There's sizzling instrumental solo sections, and also much in the way of delightful female vocals (mostly wordless ba-ba-ba's).
Kultivator were a quartet, with lots of Fender Rhodes electric piano, as well as other organ and synth keyboards. Also recorder and/or flute. And on occasional backing vocals, a boy's choir. Yup, very proggy indeed. Armchair prog percussionists are provided with their fair share of air-drumming opportunities, percolating energetically as the drumming here does!
All those keyboards create a moody, slightly jazzistic sound which reminds us a bit of the brilliant Bo Hansson, '70s Swedish prog royalty. There's also a definite Magma influence at work (the thick bass riffing and martial drumming in the middle of "Kara Jord" for instance, leading some to go so far as to label Kultivator a genuine "zeuhl" band), and you'll hear hints of traditional Scandinavian folk music as well. Further reference points: fellow Swedes Samla Mammas Manna and Kebnekajse, also '70s UK prog like Genesis and Gentle Giant, RIO a la Henry Cow, and specifically Canterbury groups like Soft Machine, among others. Guess that's what happens when you make prog in 1980, with a whole previous decade of genius from which to draw inspiration! Although Kultivator, um, certainly cultivated their own unique spin on what came before. We'd also say this is a good one for folks who enjoyed the modern day Swedish prog of Gosta Berlings Saga, reviewed here last year.
This brand-new reissue on the Mellotronen label features three bonus tracks added to the original LP's eight cuts, plus a whole extra bonus disc, called Waiting Paths, featuring four songs recorded by the now-reunited band in 2006. Since they already seemed a bit "out of time" (& we don't mean rhythmically!) even back in '81, it's no surprise that this more recent material sounds like a more modern Kultivator... but not that much more modern. Also included in this nice digipacked reissue, a big booklet with vintage photos and lengthy liner notes. Prog-lovin' AQ customers, check this out!
Light Of Shipwreck, while a long time favorite around here, has always been a tough outfit to describe. In the past we've compared the sound of LoS to Wolf Eyes, This Heat and the Necks, but that only scratches the surface. There was all sorts of blurred digital shimmer, dubby beats, lurching almost metallic heaviness, it really was a wild assemblage of sounds, but they were somehow woven into something listenable, heck, more than listenable, something pretty fucked up and far out.
So finally, another full length, and as we might have expected, while some of those references still apply, In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream is a whole 'nother beast.
Two loooong songs, the first clocking in at nearly half an hour, and beginning with a strange cacophony of industrial clatter, warm low end pulsations, a sort of muted noisescape, that manages to be heavy, but strangely soothing, until the drums come in, and then it's just chaos, programmed beats careen all over the place, skittering and pulsing beneath a suddenly active swirling squall of moaning feedback, of grinding metallic crunch, a dark billowing cloud shot through with bits of melody, chunks of throbbing bass, but for the most part the sounds is an ever shifting cloud of hiss and buzz and blur surrounding a looped skeletal beat. Eventually all of the skitter and pound, the skree and crunch slough off, leaving a gorgeous heaving river of low end drones and layered buzz, thick and dense and blackened, slowly drifting like some sonic black tar, until the sound again shifts, more of the low end falling away, leaving a gleaming and glistening shimmer, all soft edged high end that is swallowed up by the darkness almost as quickly as it emerged. The track buzzes and crawls, a moaning drone behemoth, before it finally dissipates leaving nothing but a spectral whisper.
The second track, slightly shorter at 21 minutes, is another multi part epic. This one a gloomy gothic sprawl, again, a sky full of dark clouds, wrapped around more off kilter programmed skitter. The tones thick and heavy, moaning and groaning, like the sound of hellish beasts letting out their final wails of anguish, or some blackened city crumbling to dust, with nothing but the drums to play it out. Weirdly tribal and raw, it could almost be some super obscure eighties goth rock combo, jamming out, drugged out of their gourds, unfurling some impossibly otherworldly murk jam, but it too gives way to something more ethereal and ephemeral, the drums still present, more as echoes, eventually dropping out completely, leaving nothing but shadowy tones to drift weightless in a sky full of FX. Weird as hell, even for a band who already traffic in the weird, but if you're into droney heavy fucked up ambient drum heavy noise drenched weirdness, then In The Empty Wreckage Of A Dream should definitely hit the spot.
Not sure how it happened, but we've never listed any records by Ukrainian one man black metal horde Lutomysl. Even though most of the black metal folks, ourselves included, are WAY into Lutomysl's furious black metal buzz. So let's remedy that shall we...
Sonically similar to many of his countrymen, Drudkh, Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Lucifugum (of which he was once a member), Astrofaes, Blood Of Kingu... etc. Lutomysl spews raw blasting grim Ukrainian black metal of the sort we never seem to tire of, buzzing chainsaw guitars, blasting double kick beats, harsh vokills that go from weird and mysterious clean singing to full on suicidal shriek, and a surprising amount of dynamics, lots of twisted convoluted transitions, strange off kilter rhythms, all wound up into the otherwise seemingly straight ahead grim blackness. But like other Ukrainian BM, there is also plenty of melody, even at its harshest and most frenzied, the riffs are catchy, and often unravel into something almost folky before exploding back in a furious onslaught of buzz and howl.
The songs are peppered with distinctly un-black metal breaks, giving the songs a seriously avant / progressive vibe here and there, which nicely balances the relentless lightning fast drone drenched buzz that constitutes the core of Lutomysl's sound. There's also plenty of bass, or at least low end, which as we've discussed before is rare in black metal, and probably goes a long way to making this record sound so thick and heavy.
Grim and kvlt and necro, and just weird enough to keep it interesting, essential for fans of all things black and Ukrainian, and heck, probably pretty worthwhile if you just need a buzzing black soul crushing blast of sonic fury.
We'd been going through a sort of Shimmy Disc revival lately, digging out all of our old favorites, the first Gwar record, Bongwater, Dogbowl, Jellyfish Kiss... We had sort of forgotten how good all that stuff was. One of our favorites though was this little Brit pop gem by a band called The Mabuses. One of the most perfect slabs of clever hook filled pop ever. The track, "Kicking A Pigeon", has to be, all hyperbole aside, one of the greatest and most lyrically bizarre pop songs EVER. So much so that on hearing it, Allan went on a tear trying to track a copy down for himself (and fear not, Andee is trying to figure� out a way to reissue that record on tUMULt!).�
We were sort of just enjoying this pop flashback, when our pal Brian at WFMU emailed to inform us that not only were the Mabuses still in fact a band, they were playing shows AND had a brand new record. So we got in touch with the band and here it is, a glorious new record from one of our favoritest pop bands, The Mabuses.�
There's no point in comparing the sound of this record to the Shimmy Disc one, since most folks probably missed it entirely, but for those who remember, the sound is relatively unchanged, lush and slightly twee, jangly guitars, soft horns, strings, all very lush and classic sounding, with clever lyrics and dreamy vocal harmonies, but with some BITE too. Some songs are super washed out and dreamy, others are angular and propulsive. The sound borrows from much that came before, but manages to distill it all into something, that once you've been Mabused, can sound like no one else. Bits and pieces of bands like the�High Llamas, Steely Dan, Robyn Hitchcock, Cardinal, Jellyfish, that classic Flying Nun sound... that should give you a rough idea...
Every song here is a pop gem, but "Byayaba" might be the new "Kicking A Pigeon", a super catchy riff, sharp edged and distorted, the vocals doubled and delivered in a commanding baritone, like a pissed off more punk rock Magnetic Fields, then there's the strange garden party strings and horns jam of "Garden Devils", the fuzzy slithery grind of "Russian Roulette" featuring Kramer on bass, the harpsichord pounding Jellyfish jam of "Seasider"... it's just all so good...
To be totally honest, on first listen we couldn't help but compare Mabused! to their self titled record on Shimmy Disc, but the more we listen, the more this disc has grown on us, unfolding like a garden full of strange and wonderful flowers, and now, it seems to be permanently stuck in our players. Total pop nirvana! So so recommended.�
Gorgeously packaged too, a super elaborate die cut digipak, with a massive fold out poster / lyric sheet.
We're often a little wary when hip-hop producers and DJs make mixes that seem all about showing off what an awesome record collection they have.
But on the other hand, we've always been fans of Madlib's many productions and we are of course rabid fans of Brasilian music in all forms, so there's plenty to love about this latest mix. Collected during the same trip to Recife documented on the dvd Brasilintime: Batucada Com Discos we reviewed a while back, this is the first in a series of six mixes of the most obscure corners of Musica Popular Brasileira: Folkloric Chants, Samba, Bossa, and Tropicalia. There are only a couple of songs we recognize, but we've been playing this non-stop since we got it as it's a mind-melting hour long trip that unveils one solid gem after another.
Abject, miserable, mournful, agonized, anguished, tortured and tormented ultra mega doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! That's right. We've officially reached an all time high in o's (40 in case you were counting), and an all time loooooow in DOOM. Every time we hear from these crushing creeps they've pushed it even further into the deep dark damnable depths, forcing us to add more and more o's. That's right, it's the return of Moss, the UK's heaviest, slowest, sludgiest slow motion downtuned doom metal behemoth. Moss take the paint peeling acidic abrasiveness of Khanate and combine it with the warm suffocating murk of bands like Skepticism or Thergothon, or even aQ faves Nadja (who did a split with Moss a while back). Ultra minimal and nearly static in its sludginess, with the simple caveman plod of the drums the only thing keeping this from turning into a full on drone, this is like one HUGE riff, pulled and stretched into two epic streaks of fuzz and pound, with vocals that might even give Alan Dubin from Khanate a bit of a fright, like a demon howling through a mouthful of broken glass and rusty bottlecaps, teeth black with the blood of a thousand vanquished souls, the sound that finally comes out is a noxious black cloud that causes everything it touches to wither and die, totally blown out and so harsh it makes our throats sore just listening to it.
But like the best sludge / doom, there is some sort of subtle melodic undercurrent going on, maybe it's deliberate and these guys are on some whole other musical level or maybe it's just some chance occurance, some strange alignment of overtones or some lucky bit of abstract composition, it hardly matters, the end result is somehow both hauntingly beautiful and horrifically harsh, there's definitely some dark beauty hidden beneath Moss' black sludge exterior, but the joy of music like this is the fact that the music's beauty is buried and bruised, battered and brutalized, the sonic search for the beauty within is like wading waist deep through boiling hot pitch, ears plugged with hot tar, all the while being showered from above by the tears of angels.
Mount Eerie has always been a bit hit or miss for us, same with the Microphones, both musical projects of the quite prolific Phil Elverum. The sound tends towards a hushed downer bedroom folk, simple instrumentation, heartfelt lyrics, vocals almost whispered, but various record have twisted that sound into different shapes, especially in the Microphones, where Elverum would add bursts of distorted psychedelic rock, jagged guitars, or horns, or Stereolab style Moog buzz, but the thing with the Microphones was that the sound was always better than the songs it was wrapped around. With Mount Eerie, it seemed Elverum was exploring a more intimate side to his sound, his Sentridoh to the Microphones' Sebadoh. But even then, we were never totally taken with any of the Mount Eerie releases. At least until now.
Lost Wisdom is absolutely gorgeous. We're tempted to credit the addition of Eric's Trip's Julie Doiron, but while that's a HUGE part of it, the songs here are fantastic. Recorded beautifully, wonderfully arranged. At times it sounds like an acoustic Built To Spill covering the first Iron & Wine record, if that makes any sense. Acoustic guitars, some subtle distorted crunch, simple barely there percussion, it's mostly about the vocals, Elverum and Doiron creating amazing harmonies, each wandering off on their own here and there, before returning once again only to get all wrapped up in each others' melodies. Sweet and sorrowful and sad, dreamy and melancholy, Elverum slips from warm soft croon to fluttery falsetto, Doiron's voice is fantastic as always, so melodic and rich, but also raw and rough around the edges, passionate and the perfect foil to Elverum's sad boy swoon. And the songs are gorgeous. Minor key and strangely lush for being so stripped down. The opening title track is worth the price of admission alone, just listen to the sound sample, so dark and beautiful, so wistful and haunting, a strange arrangement, full of tension and release, and some gorgeously obtuse melodies, even some strange room clatter in the background that ends up sounding like as much a part of the song as any of the instruments. We've been playing this whole record like crazy, but that first track, wow, just might be one of our favorite songs of the year.
WAY recommended.
When you think of legendary sixties jazz, you probably don't think of Australia, but this 1967 disc from Charlie Munro and his quartet might just change all that.
Arguably one of the most important jazz groups to emerge from Australia, Munro's Eastern Horizons most definitely predates other more well known Eastern Influenced jazz discs of that era, and is just as good. It's definitely free jazz, but the skronk level is quite low, in fact much of the record is moody and muted, due in no small part to the presence of cello and bass violin which add a warm wistful quality to many of the songs. Plus there's marimba and vibraharp as well as "brushes on record cover" (!).
Record opener "Islamic Suite" definitely sets the tone, with the horns emulating Eastern instruments, the melodies appropriately Eastern as well, based on an Arab scale according to the liner notes, long form ragas, drones, that slip smoothly into some more traditional sounding bop, but even then, the Eastern influence is still strong. "Malahari Raga" is in fact based on an Indian raga and begins all woozy and swoony, before the drums kick in double time and the song is tranformed into something much more skittery and jazzy. Many of the remaining tracks are delicate and dark, fluttering flute over warm fluid basslines, muted trumpets and lush marimba melodies, until "Minimum", a sprawling free jazz jam, where the horns finally let loose and go wild, pausing briefly for an awesome extended drum solo. There's one more mournful jazzy ballad before the record closes with another chunk of jumpin' jive, skittery rhythms, soaring horns, and an awesome bass solo outro. Killer stuff.
This record was pretty much custom made for most of you. A three way split of extreme heavy bliss out dream doom, featuring the WAY too prolific Nadja, who continue to get a pass, because we STILL can't get enough of -that- sound, the not nearly prolific enough Atavist, and a new name to add to the list of bands to obsess over, Satori, a duo featuring the head honcho of the always awesome Cold Spring label who made this disc happen.
Not sure if there was a reason for this three way split, a tour or something, or maybe it's just cuz the three bands fit pretty nicely together, whatever the reason for this happening, we're glad it did.
Starting with Nadja, who again offer up a gorgeously gauzy sprawl of Jesu meets M83, all super distorted crumbling melodies, lurching buried in the mix drum machine, weary ethereal vocals, melancholy minor key melodies, wrapped into an awesome chunk of doomed metallic slowcore, lots of dynamics and texture, a loooooong slow build a la Godspeed, with an epic and triumphant climax. So good. One of the best Nadja track yet maybe.
Atavist do their own sort of doom thing, this time a skeletal mathy post rock, clean guitars spread out over spare drumming, very Slint-ish, all spidery and delicate, until a minute or so in, when the hammer falls, shrieked blackened vox, super distorted crumbling guitars, pounding percussion, a strange flurry of off kilter jagged mathiness, before it's back to the moody Slinty sprawl. Eventually, the track becomes blown out and so in-the-red all the instruments seem to melt together, until the band unfurl a blackened post metal jam that might sound more at home on a Deathspell Omega record, culminating in a gorgeous almost symphonic sounding high end coda.
Finally, Satori, who have a lot to prove in such esteemed company, take an entirely different tack, with processed garbled vocals, over distant whirring drones, a creepy hellish machinelike soundscape of post industrial hiss and grind, deep rumbling swells, thick hissing walls of muted buzz, buried melodies, disembodied voices and buried melodies, all very grim and apocalyptic, think MZ412, Lustmord or Wolf Eyes, some seriously haunting and harrowing black ambience.
Packaged in a multi paneled black and white jacked and housed in a plastic sleeve. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
It's been ages since we've heard from Bellingham Washington's Narrows, whose last two (and only two) records, Alligator and The Skull At Life Size, were huge AQ favorites. Our Narrows obsession was solidified by a mindblowing show at the Hemlock where the band laid waste to all post rock past and present in a matter of 30 or 40 minutes, managing to rock so hard, even with the frontman / guitar player seated the whole time. A mix of lurching loping metallic bombast and lilting whispery post rock moodiness, not like the current crop of metallic post rockers though, no the Narrows were something much more unique... all the best parts of nineties mathrock, June Of 44, Slint, Rodan, but filtered through that weird Bellingham outsider vibe (also responsible for Reeks And The Wrecks) and lovingly wrapped in some serious skull crushing riffage. And of course songs. Killer songs. Moody and mournful, personal and emotional, and catchy as all get out.
We had sort of given up on the Narrows, we knew there was a record in the works, but they sort of seemed to drop off the musical map completely, until all of our fears were assuaged by the sudden appearance of this here brand new full length, that is somehow even better than their first two discs, heavier, prettier, weirder....
Beginning with the nine minute near perfect post rock epic "The Sasquatch", a sequence of big groaning downtuned riffage, huge pounding drums all wrapped around a strange insistent loping groove, with wailed super emo vocals, like a prettier Melvins almost, or a resurrected Engine Kid, some Unwound, a little bit of Sub Pop, a little Amrep. These super dynamic nine minutes might as well go on for 90 minutes as far as we're concerned.
The second track, the even longer "Last Of The Norsemen", is all slithery slowcore, with crooned sadboy vocals, spidery guitar melodies, shuffled drums, until the crashing chorus, a gorgeous minor key stop start lurch, along the same lines as Codeine's "Cave In", with burbling underwater bass added to the mix, and a convoluted mathy arrangement, before drifting back into the moody lope of the first few minutes, peppered with strange slippery guitar chords and unexpected dynamics, somehow totally off kilter and alien sounding, but super catchy and melodic and surprisingly pretty!
"Quellish" is up next with its serpentine distorted crunch and crashing blown out drumming, letting up here and there for some muted shuffle and croon, before the bombast is brought in again, a super emotional musical seesaw, that manages to subvert the tired loud-soft-loud-soft thing and turn it into something new and exciting sounding.
As if the deal wasn't already sealed for best post-math-whatever-rock / slowcore record ever already, they finish it off with the heartwrenching "Over and Out", a sort of damaged Pinback on horse tranquilizers mathy groove, with big booming Albini-ish drums, over blooping underwater bass, and slithery minor key distorted guitar melodies, and a super subtle hook to die for. The song has a wicked, super dramatic coda with crumbling distorted riffing, and super emotional leads, yeah LEADS, what self respecting post rock band can whip out the leads and bring you to your knees without sounding the least bit cheesy? Can't think of very many (or any really)... but The Narrows pull it off effortlessly. There's an "Over and Out" part two, but it's more sort of a coda, that now burned into your ears/heart/soul melody is pulled apart, wrapped in some twangy Morricone-ish guitar, some tinkling music box like keyboards, and allowed to unfurl lazily into the distance, becoming more and more abstract and indistinct, culminating in seven minutes of silence... Needless to say one of our favorite new records, pushing all our buttons, old math rock, new post rock, metal, pop, heavy, pretty, strange... Absolutely and utterly recommended (as is seeing these guys live if you get the chance)!
***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!***
Like a Pavlovian bell, just the mere utterance of this vinyl-only Portland label gets everyone aflutter, ready to eagerly acquire, no matter what the sounds contained inside. We suppose if they put out a record solely of sounds made by cement mixers, back-hoes or traffic noises and packaged it in a sweet homemade album cover with nostalgic photos of antique construction equipment, and called it something like "My Heart Belongs To The Public Works", we'd sell out of them just as fast as their awesome compilations of pre-war blues or their reissues of obscure post-punk groups. As cool as that actually sounds, the not one, but TWO Mississippi releases we have this week are both super stellar and we know everyone is going to want at least one if not both of them.
Earth Groove is a reissue of the debut 1968 recording by Master Hindustani classical singer Pandit Pran Nath. Considering his major influence on the giants of twentieth-century minimalist composition and drone music of all forms, as well as the amazing dearth of available recordings on cd let alone on vinyl, this is a MUST HAVE!! Featuring two fantastic side long ragas, Raaga Bhoopali designed for meditation after sunset and Raaga Asavari designed for meditation after sunrise, this is spiritual music of the highest order made for the purpose of destroying negative energy. But it is its amazing sounds of buzzing tamboura drones and tabla rhythms with Pran Nath's perfectly intonated and slowly unfolding vocal style that should please all fans of otherworldly cosmic sounds.
Master of the Kirana Ghirana school, it is believed that Pran Nath spent five years of his life in a cave perfecting his austere intonated singing style. Heavily emphasizing the alap, the opening section of the raga that is unmetered, improvised and unaccompanied (except for the tamboura drone), that sets up a slow tempo and can often last more than an hour. Pran Nath's unwavering adherence to the principles of his vocal style was not that popular to the ears of modern Indians, but it is this recording that reached the open minds of minimalist composer La Monte Young and visual artist Marion Zazeela who persuaded Pran Nath to move to America and start his own school of music in New York. Just rattling off the names of his top students shows what an indelible influence Pran Nath was to late twentieth century music: Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine, Henry Flynt, Jon Hassell, Douglas Leedy, Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, Jon Gibson, Yoshi Wada, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, W. A. Mathieu, Sufi Pir Shabda Kahn, Catherine Christer Hennix, and Simone Forti. Enough said.
After being completely enraptured with the extensive and expensive double disc Midnight we reviewed a while back, some folks may not have had the time or means to see what we were raving about, so it's really nice to have this perfect and affordable introduction to Pran Nath's intense and penetratingly beautiful sound world, while they last!
This is not a new record, but we have been dying to review something, ANYTHING, by these terrifying Swedes, and this is as good a place to start as any, their debut full length from 2002. Folks familiar with Swedish black metal will probably at least have a rough idea of what they're getting into, Watain, Marduk, Kill (in fact Kill and Necroplasma share a member or two), you know, fast and furious and frenzied and fucked up, but you'll doubtfully be prepared for just how intense and heavy and utterly soul crushing Necroplasma really are.
Beginning with a weird fuzzy Brainbombs-ish bassline, the band almost immediately launch into an impossibly blasting onslaught, lightning fast blastbeat, super blown out distorted bass (which is probably what makes this sound so fucking heavy, most black metal records have ZERO bass), wild insectoid guitar buzz, inhuman throat shredding demon vokills, only the occasional breakdown, where just the main riff is unfurled only to be obliterated seconds later by the band lurching into yet another frenzied attack.
Within all this blasting and buzzing, there is some seriously twisted shit going on too, within the title track there are some strange stretches of muddy muted tribal weirdness happening, "Heavens Above" is a fucked up lurching dirge that sounds almost like an entirely different band, until the sound suddenly launches into a hyperspeed blast, the opening riff for "Blessed By Him" is a dead ringer for Bastro's "Shoot Me A Deer", the same sort of muted damaged chug, but none of that stuff is what Necroplasma are all about, those are merely drops of black blood in NP's sonic cauldron of crusty filth and sick buzz, a fantastically fucked up and utterly relentless black metal assault that makes the music of most of their compatriots sound downright tame in comparison.
Strangely enough, we had never managed to get any of these records in stock when it originally came out in 2002 as the companion to the now out of print album Confluence, which had been released on the Intransitive label. Stria is one of many collaborative projects between these two impressive sound artists, straddling the realm of dronescape delirium and dislocated field recordings. Seth Nehil and John Grzinich first began working together in the humidity of Austin, Texas in the revolving door collective of Alial Straa, which also proved formative for Michael Northam and Olivia Block. But as all of these folks wandered to various corners of the globe (Grzinich in Estonia, Nehil to Portland, Block to Chicago, and who the hell knows where Northam currently calls home), the collaborations have become impressively focused projects, even as they take several years to complete. Like its companion piece, Stria centers upon the idea of resonance, spread across three longform pieces. The first of which collects various bowed tones from a huge ensemble of musicians and twists them all into a sinewy mass of slowburning drones and gradual progressions. The reference in the liner notes to Alvin Lucier makes complete sense in view of this impressive dronesmear crescendo on par with anything that Jonathan Coleclough or Organum had mustered. The second piece is more in keeping with Grzinich's recent work with clattering stone and found objects in concrete bunkers, as scrabbling sounds and tactile noises echo back and forth against murky atmospheres. The final piece returns to the drone work with motors agitating long thin wires with phase shifting oscillations and eerie turbulence rattling what otherwise would be some very pretty ambience, but instead becomes a sublime listening experience. An excellent piece of work all around.
The label goes on and on about how this latest No Neck Blues Band record is a watershed moment, a defining release in their oeuvre, a new sound, a clarity of vision never heard before on past releases, but we have to say we simply don't agree. At this point NNCK are in a privileged position, one they most assuredly earned, a position of power for sure. They just do what they do, theirs a sound that borrows from many sources, but that is distilled into something utterly unique, so yeah, they do what they do, but they do it better than ANYONE else. Period. Maybe that's what the label was actually trying to say before they got bogged down in artspeak. Regardless, this is another fantastic NNCK missive, one that sprawls across lots of genres and sounds, but manages to stay together by force of will and the innate talent of the players who have been honing their craft in this setting, with these players for nearly 15 years. And it shows.
The record begins like the rock band equivalent of an orchestra tuning up, guitars twang and detune, percussion clanks and thumps, everything drifts aimlessly, but as the track progresses, the various pieces seem to slowly flow together, a female voices surfaces, and croons over the settling chaos beneath, eventually leaving the chaos to sort itself out, a bit like a more serene forest folk combo, accordions wheeze (or is that a harmonica), guitars shimmer and squiggle, the drummer offers up washes of cymbals and eventually a slow simple stripped down groove, and without even realizing it, the whole mood and sound has shifted, and we're in some twangy meandering moody krautrock slowjam, that builds gradually to a seriously psychedelic crescendo, before the next track explodes with a flurry of skronky horns and maniacal vocalizing (a la Yoko), and woozy slide guitar, that track eventually builds to a strange sort of jazz metal blowout, pounding drums, growled demonic vocals, the slide still slithering all over and those Yoko like vocals still going crazy, definitely the toughest track on the disc. But maybe the most interesting.
The rest of the disc slips seamlessly from slow burning outrock sprawl, to propulsive space rock groove, to super minimal scrape and thunk, to wah wah guitar drenched soft pop balladry, to glimmering abstract free jazz freakout, to super tripped out psych rock weirdness, to gorgeous swirling soft focus dronemusic, but the thing is, within those various sounds, NNCK, twist everything all up, adding all kinds of sonic detritus, haunting noises, mysterious rumbles, ghostly voices, droning buzz, swirling ambience, adding extra layers, uncomfortable harmonies, taking perfectly pretty melodies and pulling them apart, in lesser hands, the whole structure would crumble, but NNCK possess only greater hands, perfect to hold it all together, and shape and stretch and form those sounds into something distinctly and utterly No Neck.
The return of black ambient darklord Nordvargr. A quick look at the aQ website reveals a long love and appreciation for the dark art of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, from his early days in black ambient terrorists MZ412, to more recent guitar based dronemusik, to his collaborations with MZ412 Drakh, heck, Andee even released the last Nordvargr / Drakh disc on tUMULt. Needless to say, for folks into dark drones and ambient blackness, sinister soundscapes and bleak and abject sounds, it's hard to do any better than Nordvargr.�
While the last few discs have displayed a renewed interest in the guitar, with a much more song oriented approach, Helvete finds Nordvargr returning to the miserablist blackdrone world of his past, offering up some seriously intense and caustic brutality, a collection of grim, utterly hellish soundscapes, all crumbling low end, cavernous black rumbles, haunting mysterious blackness, a definite old school industrial vibe. This disc has been anxiously anticipated due to the fact that Leviathan's Wrest contributes vocals to one track, and his demonic croak is totally unmistakable. He growls and gurgles ominously over deep black drones and all manner of distorted crash and crunch, some seriously frightening stuff for sure. If you think stuff like Lustmord is way too lightweight, then this is definitely for you.
"Dronevessel Part II" is a harrowing expanse of dense metallic low end buzz, sprawling like the roots of some gnarled black tree, impossibly heavy and suffocatingly black. "Part III" begins with a series of strange grinding metal klaxons, before slithering back into the pitch black from whence it came. Drakh offers up vocals on "Exit Cult, Enter Hell", a super distorted snakelike hiss, draped over a crumbling churning black sonic sea.
The final track begins with almost a minute of near silence, before a raw metal buzz surfaces, stumbling blast beats, buzzing riffage, harsh demonic vocals, some full on lo-fi grim black metal for a brief moment, but it quickly blackens and slips back into sinister grimnity. But beyond that brief dalliance with the black blast, this is indeed a soul consuming black hole of sound.
This is easily one of the darkest, heaviest, scariest black drone discs EVER. And we don't make that proclamation lightly. WAY recommended.
