For those of you who haven't heard, Birchville Cat Motel is no more. Similarly, BCM mainman Campbell Kneale has also decided to close up shop on his long running Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. But fear not, 'tis not the end, merely a new beginning.
Taking on the name of a recent Birchville record, Kneale will be henceforth known as Our Love Will Destroy The World. Quite emo actually, but then BCM was always pretty emo stuff, especially in the drone / dirge / noise field. And if you throw on the B side of this the debut offering from the newly christened OLWDTW, it may seem to you like has changed. Another glorious BCM style sprawl of looped guitars and processed melodies, layered textures, swooping backwards pulsations, tangled bits of guitar and fragmented chunks of soft noise all blurred and smeared into a gorgeous woozy dreamy expanse of soft focus free noise bliss, would have fit just fine on any of the recent BCM records, if anything, it's slightly more pretty.
But flip the record over, and you'll see that maybe everything has changed after all. A weird nineties style Warp Records groove, all skittery robotic funk, with warped gurgly basslines, but also some weirdly out of place strummed acoustic guitars, all buried beneath constantly shifting layers of looped and processed sounds. A bizarre mashup of blissy free folk and alien dancefloor groove that sort of works. Will definitely hit the spot for folks who have been digging the dancier sounds coming out of the Astral Social Club camp. Curious to hear where Kneale takes his Love next.
And as is the case with many a 7" single, no indication as to whether it's meant to be played on 33 rpm or 45, we're going with 33, sound a bit more 'right' that way, but you never know, at 45, one side gets all high end and Sunroof!-y, while the other gets manic and spastic and almost skweee-like. Pick your poison.
We don't know too much about this strange Italian black metal band other than we fucking LOVE them. One of our new favorite BM outfits for sure. This is no ordinary buzzing black metal, although it does buzz and is most definitely BM, Ovskum, do some sort of midtempo, near ambient blackened plod. The guitars are huge and thick and seem to be crumbling into pieces, the drums are a midtempo trudge or a relentless martial march, the riffing is sometimes sludgy and thick, other times, angular and jangly, often both, a swirling slithering low end beneath keening upper register guitar skree and howled vocals. It's almost weird to call these guys black metal, they sound more like some super chaotic ambient noise rock, or spacey black sludge, or dreamy noise rock doom, all definitely fit... melodies are angular and obtuse, the drumming is sort of stumbly and simple, but the sound is HUGE, thick and swirling, raw and atmospheric, guitars are gnarled and convoluted, bits of melody and keening droneguitar are whispy streaks above the roiling fury below, some tracks forego the drums completely, and become these haunting abstract riffscapes, drifting and throbbing and crawling along malevolently... it's all so intense and dark and so so so good. No cds yet as far as we know, so needless to say both this and the Atto I - Atto II cassette are absolutely essential.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
By the time we reached Pavement's Brighten The Corners, the band had ceased being a fucked up lo-fi noise drenched fractured pop underground phenom, and had transformed into something much more respectable. They embodied nineties college rock, they were most definitely indie rock darlings big time. But to be fair, with what sounded like a bid for commercial success, the band did manage to retain plenty of their snarky humor, and the hooks and catchiness that used to be buried under sheets of white noise or recorded from within a tin can on a dictaphone, are now on display for all to see, the sound lush and thick and polished and rocking and heck, it suits them. The opening one two punch of "Stereo" and "Shady Lane" is pretty tough to beat. "Stereo" with it's crunchy guitar, and goofy lyrics about Geddy Lee, and Shady Lane, with it's lilting sing songy main melody, and that super simple guitar line that is more catchy than you might thing at first. And a gorgeously, slightly atonal chorus seals the deal. Fuck it, by this time, we had made peace with the fact that the band would never make another Westing or Slanted, and all that was left to do was to luxuriate in Pavement's twisted crafty pop genius, and so we did. And so we are again. Pop music has definitely changed a lot in the last decade, so it's refreshing to hear this stuff again, and it's comforting to realize just how great it still sounds. The record proper is peppered with some weirdness, some fractured production, some strange druggy jams, some sung spoken Velvets style jams, but those are all part and parcel of Pavement's weird lovable pop universe.
As with past deluxe reissues. Brighten gets all the bells and whistles, a gorgeous digipak, housed in a fancy diecut slipcover, a HUGE booklet with essays and liner notes and track info and tons of photos, and of course, a shitload of B-sides and unreleased tracks, a whole extra disc in fact, including some BBC sessions, a Clean cover (!), some live tracks, live on the radio performances, the aforementioned multitude of B-sides and two versions of the Space Ghost Theme!!!
'70s semi-survivors Pentagram, one of the only truly O.G. doom metal outfits still somewhat extant, their legend only growing in recent years, more people getting into them, hordes of Witchcraft fans prominent among 'em. When Review Your Choices first came out in 1999, Pentagram were not quite as "hip" a band as they are now. So lots of folks who missed out before should be happy it's been reissued, along with its 2001 follow-up Sub-Basement, together the one-two-punch of a (temporarily) revitalized, turn-of-the-century Pentagram. Both albums now come in styley digipacks, with 2 bonus tracks each.
Here's our original review of Review Your Choices: The long-awaited new album from doom metal legend Bobby Liebling and his cult band Pentagram, one of the most ancient bands in the genre (not much younger than their lords Black Sabbath themselves). Indeed, about half of the tunes on this album were originally recorded as demo tracks back in the mid-'70s when Gene Simmons and KISS took an interest in the Pentagram boys and were trying, unsuccessfully, to get them signed to their Casablanca label. Both the old stuff (recently rerecorded of course) and the newly-written stuff on here resound with an authentic '70s/Sabbath vibe (right down to Bobby's vocals, which sound like Ozzy at his most demented and troglodytic!). Imagine taking records by the heavy likes of Saint Vitus, Trouble, and Blue Cheer and mixing them in a bowl with several boxes of Count Chocula (the cereal paid homage to in the booklet photo spread!) and a quart of way-past-its-expiration-date milk. That's the curdled, dark and soggy breakfast of champions served up by Pentagram on Review Your Choices. What a way to start your day, or perhaps to end it all.
Not much more to say other than, a classic, full of Pentagram necessities old and new. The killer, slide-y main riff on "Megalania". The cheerful insanity of "Gilla?". The old, old utter classic "Forever My Queen".... all of it, really! The bonus tracks are alternative takes of album tracks, and their production or lack thereof is pretty raw, but then again the album proper has its own "gluey" production eccentricities... either way these tracks sound plenty doomy!
Now, since the release of these two albums, Pentagram fans have been exposed to more of the band's original '70s recordings via the two First Daze Here comps that Relapse put out. If you have those, you'll certainly recognize many of the songs on Review Your Choices and Sub-Basement. But not only are these recordings of 'em quite worthy in their own right (some of these versions being our preferred ones for sure), these albums also contain plenty of circa-Y2K penned Pentagram material that's equally worthy.
There's been a lot of activity lately from these semi-legendary lords of doom, surprising coming from a band that's been around for about thirty years and has dwindled down to only two members! But (thankfully for all fans of dark, doomy heavy metal)
Debut record from this legendary UK grime / dubstep DJ, and it's just more of that sound we just can't get enough of, dark brooding basslines, skeletal skitter, that loping instantly recognizable dubstep groove.
Take "Vio-lent", which begins with some haunting cinematic strings, locked into strange loops, while the beat stutters right along side it, and some seriously ominous low end rumbles up from below. This is like horror movie grime, like a dubstep Gravediggaz. Same goes for "Shallow Grave" another creepy grimy jam, the bass a ghostly presence lurking behind the shuffling beat, peppered with disembodied voices and smashing glass. "Japan" takes the same elements but mixes in some traditional Japanese instruments for some dark and moody Eastern style dubstep. "Hocus Pocus" is super spare and sparse, the only melodic element being a looped fuzzy bass riff and sirens wailing in the distance.
But the dubstep slips into grime territory with the addition of seriously grime-y gangstas Skepta and Frisco, on "Real Things", the two duel wildly, their tongue twisting flows all tangled up with the fractured dubbed out electro underneath, and then there's "Intensive Snare", which is a grime hit if there ever was one. A killer hook heavy groove, a wicked catchy chorus, and some killer vocals from Skepta, while beneath him the bass buzzes and rumbles, and the drums throb and shuffle. Fucking awesome.
Woah. Somebody somewhere just had a fantasy come true, and it's got nothing to do with the bondage photos that often adorn Merbow releases. It's Japanese noise master Masami "Merzbow" Akita jamming with American stoner rock outfit Porn, who feature none other than the mighty Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. Also Tim Moss on guitar, and heaviness engineering guru Billy Anderson on bass! Add in the Seldon Hunt art/design and this promises to be quite heavy, or noisy, or both. Definitely both, though it sounds much more like a Merzbow record than anything else. Shrieking electronic skree all over the place, with some plodding boombastic drums and heavy guitar riffs struggling through the dense muzzzzzz. Kinda what you might expect!
There are a dozen Roman numeral numbered tracks, each one individualized with Merzbow's noise dynamically varied and vibrating, from crinkum-crankum glitch to high pitched whine to howling, whooshing zapping. Porn's contributions (occasionally) add more structure and momentum. Distorted (natch) vocals surface at one point, the drumming speeds up.... or at other times, despite Porn's presence, the Merzbovian brutal harsh noise simply takes over entirely.
There's certainly precedent for Merbow to mix it up with "rock" music. His Hard Lovin' Man album some years back featured samples of Deep Purple, ferinstance - and of course let's not forget about his couple collaborations with Boris!! Maybe, like those, Porn + Merzbow will be a "gateway drug" for some stoner/doom fans to get into the total noise thing (note however that Merzbow here is far more extreme than his relatively subtle performance on Rock Dream with Boris).
Also, as (in principle) Merzbow fans, but ones often overwhelmed by his prolific output, we're quite partial to his collaborative efforts, giving high marks to recent discs he did with Keiji Haino and Richard Pinhas, juxtapositions like this one which somehow enhance the effect of Merbow's noise aesthetic.
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Rick Reed isn't really doing himself any favors by calling this anthology of his electronic compositions 'Celestial Mudpie', but if you have the opportunity to sit down with the man for a drink (and you really should!), the title suits his personality perfectly. A Texas gentleman with a bawdy side to match his ever charming demeanor, Rick Reed does not exude the bookish reclusiveness one might attribute to an avid consumer and composer of delirious if occasionally claustrophobic smears of analogue electronics fashioned after the likes of Klaus Schulze, Arcane Device, and Conrad Schnitzler. It's a little strange that Reed has been off the radar here at Aquarius for all these years, as he's released a handful of recordings through Ecstatic Peace, Elevator Bath, and Beta-Lactam Ring. He's also developed a close working relationship with the avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, having scored several soundtracks. As relative newcomers to his work, we were flabbergasted at how good Reed has been over the years thanks to this fantastic compendium of works that date back from the past 2 decades. His primary instruments are Moog, sine-wave generator, and shortwave radio which must go through innumerable analogue treatments and filters before entering the domain of the digital workstation. Rarified atmospherics and spectral transmissions dominate his compositions which can start as hypnotizing electronic meditations on the music of the spheres before accelerating to a dramatic crescendo of blistered vibration, gaping drones, and some Broken Flag teeth gnashing menace found on the earlier works. He's included both tracks from a recent picture disc LP released on Elevator Bath (for those not inclined to vinyl), as well as several of those excerpted soundtracks for Ken Jacobs, plus some works dating back as far as 1986. Each of the three discs come with a hand-painted piece of artwork of densely sprayed paint, that somehow does not reek of petrochemicals. Kudos to Reed for not stinking up the joint. And kudos to Reed for such impressive work.
As if we weren't totally blown away by their first release, Aja Rose and Gabriel Saloman (who is one half of the late Yellow Swans) have once again conjured up some of the most shimmery and gorgeous lo-fi ambience around. Two sides of live collaborations recorded last year in Portland, distant voices and guitar passages ring out, the faint sound of haunted bell towers ringing miles away, glowing horizons warm with evening's fading light. Really captivating stuff here, mysterious clanging and ominous reverbed hush, a band of ghost gypsies passing through the darkened woods. So good. Too bad it was LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Of which we have about 8 left. Gorgeous handmade packaging you sort of have to see to believe. Each one hand numbered.
Apparently this will be reissued on vinyl later this year, we'll relist it then and give it a bit more love and more of an extensive description, for now, quickest on the draw gets the prize...
Released In conjunction with the new Deathspell Omega ep (reviewed elsewhere on this list, and both are available together on a single lp, also on this list), Veritas Diaboli Manet In Aeternum heralds 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 part way 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.
As mentioned above, S.V.E.S.T.'s three tracks are actually half of a split, released in conjunction with a new record from Deathspell Omega, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and equally as essential.
And again, 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!
We've been in intrigued (and a bit obsessed) with these Norwegian black metal weirdos for a while now. Frontman Aatselgribb, always sporting a white magistrate's powdered wig, usually a hat, and some sort of old fashioned garment, big wide cuffs, flowing coats, very striking, but pretty what the fuck as well. The covers and band photos are routinely super dramatic staged shots with the band members preceding over some sort of tribunal, or standing with arms outstretched batlike in the orchestra pit at an opera. On top of all that, Aatselgribb's sidekicks in Slagmaur are called General Gribbsphilser and Lt. Warder.
There are two other proper full lengths, neither of which we've been able to track down to list, both packed with buzzing blackness, haunting industrial stomp, soaring symphonic pomp, and all manner of gothic ambience. Domfeldt is the band's demo from 2007, reissued on cd for the first time, and as most people's entree into the sick soundworld of Slagmaur, it's a pretty great one.
After a dense swirling drone intro, like a symphony of swarming insects over a tuning up orchestra, the band launch into a sound that hovers somewhere between a depressive lurching black metal dirge, a Godflesh like industrial stomp, and woozy tripped out blackened doom. The guitars buzz and soar, not way up in the mix, sort of muted and off in the distance, the drums, machinelike and motorik, everything wreathed in a haunting murky oppressive ambience, the melodies ascending and descending maniacally, the whole sound very seasick and warped sounding, in the distance, strings sing, the vocals a harsh raspy croak, atonal piano pounds somewhere down in the mix, the rhythms sounding almost martial at times, elsewhere horns moan ominously, random bits of percussive clunk and clatter drift on heaving seas of twisted muted riffage, guitars unfurl prickly detuned sort-of-leads, the sound shifts from hellish circus, to stripped down new wave-y doom, to gothic crush, to 16rpm black metal, to fucked up SST inflected doom. It's pretty tough to describe. It's too slow and fucked up to really be pure black metal, but it's too black and twisted to be doom or anything else. At times it sounds a bit like The Cure if they were raised on Abruptum and Burzum, and fed loads and loads of bad acid and PCP. Some moments sound like a more specifically metal Gnaw Their Tongues, but for the most part Slagmaur do their own thing, a fucked up, sick and twisted, and gloriously damaged and demented thing. Yet another new name to add to the ever expanding aQ canon of super fucked outsider blackness. Needless to say (but we will anyway), absolutely essential.
Before there were a million 'drone' records, before every other person had their own cd-r drone music label, before anyone with a computer and a cd burner had their own 'drone project', and well before all it took was holding down a few keys on a keyboard or leaning a guitar against an amplifier to become an underground sensation, there was Stars Of The Lid. Armed with little more than a couple guitars, some effects and a four track, the duo of Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie were capable of crafting incredibly lush and expansive dronescapes unlike anything we'd ever heard. Quietly channeling the druggy drift of Spacemen 3, the blissful ambience of Brian Eno and the processed guitar based landscapes of post-Loop project Main, the duo conjured up long sprawling expanses of near static guitar drift, crumbling distortion and shimmering feedback sculpted into billowing stretches of soft swirling sound. Sites set high, even their early works aspired to the modern minimalism they would eventually master, but well before the group enlisted extra players and string sections and incorporated flutes and pianos and began crafting multi movement minimal epics, equal parts Arvo Part and Morton Feldman, the band's sound was much more raw and immediate, much more lo-fi, but somehow managing to sound lush at the same time, music so perfectly crafted it seemed to transcend its source. A gorgeous, living organic world of sound, evocative and cinematic, dark and brooding, soft and utterly beautiful.
Originally released way back in 1995, Music For Nitrous Oxide was the very first Stars Of The Lid release, and it's sound can be summed up by one of the song titles: "Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy". Apparently, so did strange samples, bizarre snippets of dialogue, and most importantly, thick smears of distorted guitar. Total bedroom ambient bliss, but light on the 'ambient', the music on Nitrous Oxide is anything but ambient, it moves and flows and buzzes and howls, the sound is not smooth, it's raw and rough, distorted and warped, the production low on fidelity, but heavy on hazy, gauzy, washed out shimmer. This is almost like the sound of old SUNNO))) records, with all the distortion removed. Slow motion riffage, unfurling lazily into thick tendrils of dark melody, textures and timbres stretched and smeared and smoothed and blurred, tape hiss everywhere, but instead of an impediment, the hiss is alive, swirling and undulating, another layer of warm whir, giving the sounds more texture and more grit. There is percussion, but it sounds like someone tapping on the body of the guitar, then slathering it in reverb and delay. The sounds of trains and cars driving by surface here and there, as do bursts of radio and short wave interference, but the core of all these pieces is delicately and perfectly arranged bits of guitar, whether they be looped streaks of whispery high end, or deep rumbling slabs of crumbling low end, the guitars are looped and repeated and all tangled up with other complimentary loops, allowed to spread out, to expand, to fill up the speakers and overflow, or to trickle out like a summer stream.
The sound shifts from hushed whisper to thick dense almost chaotic swirl, often in the same song. Deep bell like tones drift in wide open expanses of dreamily dramatic soft focus buzz, thick, super distorted guitar buzz is wound around a simple barely there drum beat, cymbals sizzle in a thick roiling black sea of disembodied and fragmented riffage, while elsewhere rubbery low end warbles beneath strange creaks and scrapes, swallowed whole by the occasional wash of blurred distorted buzz, and finally the sound of rainfall surrounds deep lush rumbling chords as they create an almost choral drone for perhaps one of the most moving pieces of drone music ever, certainly an impossibly perfect way to end the record.
Captivating, mesmerizing, one minute soft and shimmery, the next dense and heavy, but always perfect, always personal and intimate, always mysterious and utterly magical. The name Stars Of The Lid comes from the strange images you see when you close your eyes, electrical impulses, mysterious shapes and textures, and never has a name so perfectly reflected the sound of the band so named, and rarely, has band so perfectly represented something so ineffable in sound. Practically perfect. And absolutely essential.
Here's a second collection of cover tunes by songstress Susanna Wallumrod (also of .... And The Magical Orchestra fame)! With her hushed lilting melancholic interpretation of a remarkably diverse selection of songs such as Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", ABBA's "Lay All Your Love On Me" (we'd have hoped for "Dancing Queen" or "Mamma Mia", but it wasn't to be!), Prince's "Dance On", Black Sabbath's "Changes", Roy Harper's "Forever", Will Oldham's "Joy And Jubilee", Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", Nico's "Janitor Of Lunacy", and Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More", it's easy to think of her as a Norwegian equivalent to Cat Power, but with perhaps a bit of a broader appeal a la Lilith Fair or Tori Amos! Quite lovely.
Here's an easy one, anyone who bought those Loop reissues we made Records Of The Week back on list 307, should probably pick this up too. If you dig Loop and Spacemen 3 and Jesus And Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, then the Telescopes druggy dirgey spaced out garage rock will definitely find an honored spot alongside those aforementioned outfits.
Formed in 1987, the Telescopes first release was a split with Loop oddly enough, a flexi disc released with a fanzine, pretty auspicious beginning for sure, yet ever since, they have constantly and continually been overshadowed by their drone rock brothers in arms Spacemen 3 and Loop. Which is weird considering how similar their sounds are.
Similar they may have been, but the Telescopes always seemed much more rocking and heavy and WAY more noisy that either, but were definitely not averse to the occasional blissed out Spacemen style druggy drift, or some metallic Loop-ed pound. But those moments were scattered amidst a minefield of amp destroying ear drum splitting spaced out noise rock, with a definite grunge element. Re-listening to these tracks now, it definitely sounds like the seeds that spawned Mudhoney and some of the more raw and rocking early Sub Pop bands.
Pretty much every Telescopes record is worth owning, but this singles collection is especially transcendent, gathering up some of their earliest singles, which means raw and lo-fi, and fuzz drenched, and noisy as fuck and gloriously poppy, and HEAVY, always on the verge of total collapse. Killer hooks doused in distortion, verse chorus verse imploding into a squall of psychguitar freakout and total off-kilter drum damage. Every space filled up with wild streaks of lightning bold feedback, drums and guitar locked into killer stop start grooves, the vocals drenched in distortion, yowling and growling, some serious Stooges infused space rock garage mayhem.
But the band did mellow a bit as time went on, so the second half of the disc offers up another side of the band, groovy tripped out almost paisley sounding sixties jangle drift, pretty strummed soft pop, blissy shoegazey shuffle, lush Beatlesesque shimmer, but still plenty of warbly organ, some surprising banjo, fuzzy reverb, everything in a softly druggy haze.
We reviewed the Telescopes Altered Perception record a while back, another collection of sorts, and while the first two tracks are indeed the same, those are the only two tracks to be found on both. Which means not only is THIS essential, but odds are you're probably gonna want that one too. Cuz as far as we're concerned you can never have too much blurry and buzzy and druggy spaced out noisy garage-y psychedelic drone rock in your life. EVER.
By now, most readers of the aQ list know just how much we love the turntable, and all the non musical sounds associated with it, hiss and crackle and pop, skips and scrapes, we've reviewed records featuring turntables without records, recordings of ONLY the surface noise of lps, we love it. So of course we love folks like Philip Jeck, Martin Tetreault and Strotter Inst., who have truly stretched the boundaries of turntable as instrument, but our first exposure to what could be done with a turntable, as was probably lots of folks', was via hip hop and DJs. aQ used to be the source for all things turntablism, Qbert, Invisbl Skratch Piklz, and especially Kid Koala, who had amazing DJ skills, but gave them his own distinct spin (remember the Charlie Brown "I gotta rock" jam?, Or the warbly record player horn solos?). For whatever reason, that stuff seemed to fade back into the underground, or the more under, underground, whatever happened, we hadn't heard a peep from Kid Koala in almost 3 years.
But what a return! Two masters of the turntable, both approaching it from different backgrounds and with different influences, a dizzying mash up of textures and beats, of loops and song fragments, a live multiple turntable jam session captured on tape, and holy shit is it good.
Scratchy old jazz records begin to skip before morphing into big booming low end rhythms, wild drum solos are looped and layered, strange voices surface and then fade away, scratches are transformed into bird calls, blurred streaks of melody, crackle everywhere like rainfall, gorgeous sheets of low end buzz underpin skittery squiggles and jagged shards of hiss, effects drenched scratching unfurls like wild spaced out psychedelic freakouts, groovy fractured funk assembled from strange voices, nature records, and who knows what else, left to drift through a sea of haunting rumbles and mysterious grinding noise, finishing off with a wild assemblage of manipulated voices, super minimal click and thump beats, deformed music box melodies, and a symphony of scrapes and scratches and pops and clicks. Really amazing stuff. Weird and dark and playful and wild. Turntable freaks will dig this big time.
Well, it's about fucking time! During the past two and half decades, this uncompromising Italian sound artist released only two solo records and a handful of noteworthy collaborations, all of which had earned him a reputation for incredible compositions nestled within an intellectual framework dealing with semiotics, esoteric languages, psychogeography, cosmology, and plenty of other topics that are way above the heads of 99% of everybody else. For all of Toniutti's high-falutin' ideas, his sound design isn't nearly as obtuse as you might think. There is an expressionism to Toniutti's work that you might also find in Xenakis' electronic works or Chris Watson's high quality field recordings, although Toniutti's idiosyncrasies make it difficult to draw apt comparisons. So with the release of Qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik, Toniutti has finally issued something new. Almost 19 years after the last proper full length album, and 11 years since the last major collaborative project. There have been entire careers that have risen and then fallen during that span of time, and Giancarlo quietly toiled away with his research into dying languages and an occasional flurry of recording which only now has been resolved. The title itself translates from Nuxalk, an indigenous Canadian language, if you must know.
As for music, Toniutti built an instrument which he calls a 'rattle-harp' out of a large piece of found metal, several long thin pieces of wire, and some bones. The sounds that emanate from this instrument are haunted drones and rattles which create an unsettled ground of activity that is anything but static. Sure, the surfaces of these shadowy subharmonic thumbs and oceanic tone bursts could fall into the darkened ambient catageory that we love so much; but as Toniutti slips the layers against each other, unnerving ruptures in frequency provide a woozy feel to these occluded drones. Even at low volumes, these tectonic rumblings can be very potent.
At the time of this writing, Toniutti has announced a slew of archival recordings including his bleak electronic album La Mutazione which Broken Flag released back in 1985, as well as a 3lp set for Vinyl On Demand; and yes, there might even be another new record. So, Giancarlo Toniutti does not appear to be the Kevin Shields of noise culture, rather just a highly exceptional composer with a pretty sizeable time gap in his discography.
They had us at "Trench Hell". (Could do without the rape-themed cover art though.) Anyway as you might guess from the band name, album title, and record label, this is raw thrashing metal from Down Under, old school in the early '80s style of Venom and Hellhammer. And boy howdy, do these youngsters do it well. Trench Hell ROCKS. We gotta describe 'em the same way we'd have done for Venom back in the day - they take the speed demon, white line fever rock n' roll of Motorhead and jack it up, making it extra evil and filthy sounding in the process.
Buzzsaw guitar riffage, echoey blown out production, violent battery, throat ripped vox (with lots of Tom G. Warrior style ugghs), backing screams of utter damnation... what's not to like? If you're into the old school extreme, that is. You'll be spinning this six song ep again and again in a frenzy of headbanging lust. Even if you don't spin it again, at least you were briefly a cool, badass metal dude (or dudette) for the 22 minutes you had it on.
More spiraling, spastic yet melodic punk-prog from this radical Brooklyn band - radical both politically, and in the, like, "rad, dude!" sense of the term. A mere two-piece (with the occasional guest helping out on a couple songs herein, when the use of trombone and throat singing became necessary), The Usaisamonster draw comparisons to Lightning Bolt but go off in a lot more directions fancy and fantastical than that band. Maybe, imagine a hectic hybrid of Lightning Bolt, Koenjihyakkei, Heavy Vegetable, Deerhoof, Sun City Girls, and Uz Jsme Doma... Certainly opener "Cocaine Wedding" sounds something like that. Though later in this album, Usaisamonster mellow out a bit (never, however indulging in much of the campfire hippy folk stuff that imbalanced some of their previous albums).
"Above All It's The Songs" is the title of one such mellower song here, one that comes the closest to being playable on '70s AM radio of anything these freaks have done, which is not too close of course. And above all it IS the songs we love 'em for, Space Programs simply being another fine collection of the Usaisamonster brand of bizarre but sincere-sounding songsmithery. Done with distorted stabbing guitars, catchy quirky rhythmic grooves, deliberate vocal chant (a la Om), sudden changes (from gentle placidity to roiling frenzy), and interesting, odd lyrics (as always evincing their interest in Native American heritage).
Okay Finnish forest freeks, we only got a few of these, and it's CRAZY limited anyway, only 55 copies made, so we'll make this brief, even though it's pretty dang rad.
We're used to all kindsa craziness from Uton, from dark drones to wild fractured folk, from dirgey noise rock to pretty shimmery ambience, but the title should be your first clue that this is none of those.
This is indeed some serious violin massage, in fact you might as well change violin to vioLENT as this is some serious wild and wooly scrape and skree. According to the label, "Nothing is used besides a violin, de-tuned, abused", which is pretty much what this sounds like, but whereas that makes it sound almost unlistenable, the truth is that the sound here is pretty hypnotic, weirdly atonal and brittle, indeed a bit harsh, but not really that far removed from the classic minimal violin freakouts of Henry Flynt, albeit a tad more fractured and primitive. But heck if you like those Flynt discs, with their relentlessly sawed violin and screech detuned and deconstructed avant bluegrass, then you might be just the candidate for an Uton Violin Massage!
Nice printed sleeves, every one hand drawn and painted, every one different and each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 55 COPIES!!!!
***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.
Oh Graveyard, You Can't Hold Me Always is Mississippi Record's third (and arguably best) compilation of obscure gospel recordings. But instead of focusing on church revival songs featured on Life is a Problem, or the personal redemptive blues of Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long, here we have a compilation of joyous private pressing recordings from the sixties and seventies featuring mostly small family vocal groups and band ensembles, like the Mosby Family singers, Straight Street Holiness Group, Laura Rivers, Rev. Lonnie Farris, Radio Four, Joe Townsend, White Family, Silver Quintette, James Carter & The Mighty Stars, Farris and Williams, Traveling Echoes, Brother Willie Eason, Happy Travelers and an anonymous final track that sounds like either small children or munchkins singing "We Shall Overcome". Often sounding like they were recorded on street corners or in small community halls or city shelters, we can imagine that like the picture on the cover, these songs were recorded with the whole group surrounding one microphone. Although there are a few old school blues moments, there is a greater emphasis here on R&B and soul motifs than on previous gospel comps. Many of the songs feature mostly just guitar and bass, with the guitars playing out chiming circular riffs in an almost Afro-Caribbean vein, suggesting that many of the tracks were recorded far outside American urban centers (there's no liner notes, so we're guessing). One sweet instrumental track features some very nice Hawaiian-style slide guitar. This is a stunning collection of gospel tunes, amazing for its atypicality, showcasing an innocent simplicity and a transcendent independent spirit.
The world is full of massive metal labels, Century Media, Relapse, Metal Blade, each home to hundreds and hundreds of bands, lots of bands we love, but plenty we could certainly do without. There are way more tiny little metal labels doing their own thing, WAY below the commercial radar, each cultivating their own unique little scene, based on a combination of location, style, and in the case of Rusty Axe, a totally brilliant, massively fucked and utterly idiosyncratic DIY approach to metal music. Every little while, Rusty Axe release a super cheap label sampler and every time we are totally blown away by the sheer weirdness and genius of the bands they dig up.
This time around (volume 4!) there are way more familiar names than usual, but that in no way makes this comp any less appealing. In fact the known names will still seem pretty obscure to all but the most obsessive metalheads: The Wizar'd, Godless, Enbilulugugal, Black Vomit, V.A.C.K., Tjolgtjar, Marks Of The Masochist, and that's really about the only bands we know. Other until-now-unknown-to-us bands include Sermon Of Foulness, Trasher, Dead... Again, Sacrificial Blood, Talk Sick Earth, Esprit Derange, Brobdingnagian, Infinite Missiles, well we could go on and on, needless to say, for adventurous metalheads, this is the shit! Heavy on the black metal, but with plenty of doom and noise and fuzz and buzz and howl.
Highlights include: a new track from aQ faves Black Vomit, purveyors of True Sheffield Black Psychedelia, which hear means a plodding blown out wall of buzz, peppered with fucked up effects and creepy inhuman vox, so heavy and in the red, it manages to almost slip into shoegaze territory. Almost. Toil offer up some lo-fi blackness, rife with classic metal riffing, but some seriously fucked up howled vocals and some tangled confusional leads. The Wizar'd cover Witchfinder General, the drums stumble gloriously, the guitars SO buzzy and hot, the vocals like a karaoke Zeeb Parkes. Enbilulugugal don't disappoint (do they ever?) with some retro thrash, but rendered all scribbly and lo-fi with INSANE vocals that sound like a million pterodactyls. Infinite Missiles are all old school retro punky thrash, with killer riffing and shouted vocals. Gaiman offer up the 'short version' of their track, which clocks in at almost 8 minutes, a sluggish Burzumy trawl through sonic black swamps with some gurgling underwater vokills and a bit of Viking riffage here and there. V.A.C.K. offer up some maniacal basement black metal, furious drumming, buzzsaw riffs and howled hellish shrieks�Fuck, who are we kidding, all the tracks here rule, not all of them will have us running out to track everything down by the band, but in the context of this comp, they are all pretty darn near perfect, in their own totally fucked and fractured, demented and damaged way.
A killer comp from the fairly new Singing Knives label, a who's who of underground cd-r artists, only a few of which we've actually heard, a bunch of which we will most definitely be trying to find more music by. Not sure exactly what the theme of this comp is, maybe all these folks have records coming out on SK, or maybe it's just a killer mix tape, either way, it's a beauty and flows really well. One of those comps that sounds like it could be the best record by the best (and obviously most eclectic) band ever....
From the super blown out ultra distorted Eastern buzz of Tirath Singh Nirmala to the haunting gypsy folk of The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden to the murky string buzzing drone of Bridget Hayden to the burbling underwater drift of Ben Reynolds to the simple stripped down moody folk of the Feather Gatherers to the flute flecked spacey krautrocky drone (fuck yeah!!!) of the Michael Flower Band and every stop in between. Those and a handful of equally pretty and buzzy and droning tracks from Peril Hill, Chora, McWatt, Directing Hand, James Green, Inecto School, Nalle, Tau Emerald and the Big Eyes Family Players might not have you singing at the moon, but at the very least will have you in absolute headphone mixtape bliss!
From the label that brought us the amazing Unicorn cd-r we reviewed a while back and the WAY too limited Lhasa Shore Leave (don't ask, long gone!) comes this compilation of 'ambient music' or 'drone music', various artists exploring ambience in their own unique way, giving that glorious drift and drone we love so much subtly different spins. And the results are pretty darn amazing.
First up is Unicorn, who unleash a totally creepy and gorgeous funereal trudge through warms swells of sound and huge reverberating low end pulses, like standing on the side of a black river beneath a sky of ash, as a barge piled high with bodies drifts by. Tendrils of backward guitar drift by like smoke from funeral pyres, everything speckled with little glitchy sparkles like sun refelecting off the water.
Then comes Japanese sound technician Aube, whose modus operandi is the use of a single item or element for all the sounds on a track. This one is called "Shackle" but it's hard to imagine any sort of shackle or chain being used to produce these sounds, but Aube routinely baffles us with is deft sonic manipulation. "Shackle" is a long drawn out chorus of electronic cricket chirps floating above a dense tapestry of glistening dog whistle high end, all warped and warbly like listening through a cracked kaleidoscope.
Bastard Noise show their softer side, a surprisingly restrained (for these guys at least) rumbling swirl of hissing black metal voices, creaking, keening feedback, thick warm drones, and soft shimmering whir, definitely intense and threatening, but simultaneously gorgeous and dreamy.
Next up, Luasa Raelon, who we've never heard of, but we definitely need to hear more. A thick slab of slow swelling ambience, grand and ominous, soft distant distorted guitar shimmer drifts beside jagged slabs of muted white noise and smeared percussion. Lovely!
The next track features one man noise outift Guilty Connector teamed up with Zeni Geva guitarist Tabata for an intense and cinematic dronescape, guitars and synths and electronics, all tangled and twisted, into a long slow, low expanse of moody sonic exploration.
Finally, finishing things up is Oblong Box, who unfurl a soft subtle cavernous rumble, like feeling your way through the pitch black, whirls and whorls of dark sound and low end vibrations shimmer and spread out like ripples in a tarpit.
An essential batch of ambient drone for sure!
We've got ourselves a new obsession! We knew very little about Wavves before we put this disc in but oh my god once we did we became so instantly addicted. This is some TOTALLY BLOWN OUT beach party crusty pop that's as bombastic as it is so totally catchy. We think they're from San Diego and that makes perfect sense, cause these songs just make you want to skate and hang out by the ocean getting baked by the sun and throwing caution to the wind. Imagine No Age and Thee Oh Sees collaborating together or what it might sound like to play the Beach Boys and JFA at the same time. This is some seriously gritty grimey pop that makes you glad you still have that shitty car stereo, as this was meant to be blasted in the most lo-fi blown out way possible, while driving around getting lost in these sun soaked washed out anthems. Filled with such contagious youthful exuberance it's making us feel like we're 19 again, in the best possible way.
There is such a bold urgency to this record, it grabs your attention and never lets go and we never want it to. As soon as it's over we pretty much only want to listen to it over and over again. We're reminded a bit of Holy Shit, Abe Vigoda, and the great and often overlooked 90's noise-pop outfit Further. But what makes Wavves so addictive is that they aren't a one trick pony, the few atmospheric electronic interludes and slower spacey tracks are just as potent as their wide eyed and full throttle jams. We've got a feeling there is a great future ahead for Wavves and what a totally awesome way for it to start. So rad!!!
The return of White Medal. And that's MEDAL not METAL. There's nothing god fearing or white or light or positive or hopeful about the sound this grim horde spew forth. We had their 7" a while back, and it was a primo slab of blown out almost industrial sounding blackness. Like a black metal Godflesh, crossed with maybe some of the more raw stuff like Bone Awl or Ash Pool, but with a bit of post rock epic-ness mixed in. Not sure how all that stuff worked together but it did. We dug it big time.
So now here's release number two, this time a super limited cassette / patch combo, limited to 100 copies, and finds the band going in a bit more of a raw, old school black metal direction. Beginning with an awesome washed out creepy ambient intro, all clean guitar shimmer and dark moody creep, the band soon launch into a full on buzzy pound, the guitars murky and muddy, the drums a buried in the mix plod, the vocals weirdly effected, the whole thing gloriously gurgly and lo-fi, almost d-beat sounding at times, with some cool languid and woozy folky interludes.
The flip side is much more frenzied and furious and somehow even more-lo-fi, total washed out black buzz murk, everything wreathed in hiss and distortion and buried in an all mids and lows and no highs mix, making the sound almost sludgey and doomy even though the band is blasting frantically. So blurred and smeared, that the buzz and blast gets smudged into droning epic blackness, that occasionally slips back into crunch and chug, but more often swirls and shimmers, if the sound was even a tiny bit more washed out or even a little bit more lo-fi this could have ended up an awesome blackdrone record. Killer stuff. We definitely need to hear a full length from these guys one of these days.
Comes with a cool cassette sized embroidered black and white patch, featuring the band name, the legend: Tread The Earth, and a cool image of a strange skeletal figure wielding a scythe over a garden of what appears to be body parts.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!!! We got about 20, and after that we will not be able to get more.
Holy shit!!! This has to be our krautrock (re)discovery of the year. Definitely contender for krautrock reissue of the year!! We have been listening to this NONSTOP since it came in. We had heard OF Yatha Sidhra, a German group whose only record, A Meditation Mass, was released in 1974, but until now we had never actually heard it. Apparently the record was massive flop which is utterly shocking hearing this now. Everything we could want in a krautrock record, loooong tracks, simple tribal percussion, flute all over the place, simple effected guitar, crooned almost chantlike vocals, squalls of totally heavy super distorted freaked out psychedelia, wild drumming, tons of effects, as well as long stretches of tranquil drift and fluttery folky shimmer.
The opening movement of the Mass begins with all manner of rumbles and drones, before it slips into a lilting laid back groove, all soft guitar curlicues, spare percussion, warm languid bass, and flittering flute, the track drifts lazily, occasionally erupting into ultra brief psychedelic blowouts, the flute howling, a cacophony of frenzied drumming, only to settle right back into the mellow drift. The second movement is a little more active, the drums more propulsive, piano draped over deep dubby bass, and the flute fired up and swooping wildly, jazzy but still pretty krautrocky.
The third movement is probably our favorite, clocking in at 12 minutes, the song starts out by returning to the opening groove, loping bass, fluttery flute, spare guitar, the drums a bit more aggressive, some angular guitar solos, all wrapped up in tripped out FX, eventually the song shifts into a more upbeat shuffle, the drums getting wilder and more chaotic, the guitar going nuts, spitting out psych leads all over the place, until the band locks into a serious blowout, the guitar white hot, the drums freaking out, the bass swooping back and forth, everything doused in so many effects the whole track seems to crumple and crumble under the weight, flanger and phaser and echo have everything totally tripped out and druggy, the drums and flute engage in a wild battle, a free jazz krautrock psychedelic frenzy, before finally simmering down, and slipping into a super soft lazy lope, the flute floating over a deep bass and minimal drum workout, finishing off with another drum vs. flute freakout, everything again dripping with echo and delay, as of the whole band was slipping deeper and deeper, moving further and further away.
The final movement, revisits the opening, the band slip smoothly back into that original groove, the guitars way more effected, the drums a bit more tribal, the flute still drifting above it all, the whole band locked into a totally dreamy, blissed out krautdrone drift, with the instruments dropping out one by one, eventually leaving just the guitar, wreathed in effects to shimmer and finally fade out.
So freaking amazing. Boggles the mind that these guys, and this record aren't spoken of in hushed reverence and worshipped along with Can and Faust and all the other krautrock legends. Hopefully that will change with this reissue, and even if it doesn't, at least we know how mysterious and magical A Meditation Mass really is...
Packaged in a super spare digipak, with a big book of liner notes (in English and German) and a bunch of photos.
What if the ravers hijacked dubstep!? Well the UK's Zomby has done just that and we couldn't be more thrilled. We've selfishly been loving their 12"s but never were able to get enough to list, but with their debut full length we knew we had to make sure to let the world know just how much we love us some Zomby! Most faithful AQ list readers know that how much we dig so much of the dubstep that's come out in the last couple years, but we will also be the first to admit that it's a genre that can tend to get very same-y, so Zomby's sound here is so refreshing and invigorating, especially in a scene that was in some dire needs of some playful spirit and a bit more flamboyant charisma.
Imagine Benge mixed with Deee-Lite and you start to get the idea of what kind of ecstatic territory Zomby is dancing, stomping and having so much fun all over. The title of the record makes no apologies for their love of the early '90s rave/house scene yet they give it a nuanced facelift dipped in the sweat of dubstep that pretty much blows away anything we can remember coming out of that scene. While so many dubstep artists are so dark and serious, often to the point of self-parody, Zomby brings a levity and sense of play to the table that's not only much needed but he also imbues his sound with so much spirit and soul. We imagine this blasting at after-partys in the dressing rooms of everyone from Pinch to the Basement Jaxx. It's so cool that someone has found a way to bring the dark and brooding elements of dubstep that we love and light them on fire with dance floor hi-jinks and an wickedly irreverent spirit. So damn good!
