Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind.
So if we were to pick six bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked these six, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were just a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was. Spread out over three 7"s, we almost didn't list these separately, but as a set, 'cause to our minds, who the heck would only want one or two of these? But you never know, so for those of you who didn't already freak out and toss all three into your cart, here's a brief bit about each specific 7":
Volume 2, "Psychedelic Warlords", features Acid Mothers Temple, who are an obvious choice to pay homage to a band who was doing the AMT thing 30 years ago, and in true AMT fashion, Kawabata and company go for it, covering "Brainstorm" although it's difficult to tell, as it's buried under sheets of wild freaked out psych guitar and blown out space rock effects EVERYWHERE. It really doesn't sound all that different from any number of other AMT jams, but that's basically because every AMT jam is a tribute to Hawkwind, isn't it?
AMT are matched up with NYC's White Hills, who ditch much of their usual spaceiness for something a bit harder, tackling "Be Yourself" with crunchy chugging guitars, pounding drums, wild tangles of distortion drenched leads over the top, the band not so much covering the original, as transforming it into an endless psychedelic hard rock loop, the band churning and grinding out a steady stream of psychedelia over that endless main riff, before drifting off into a cloud of glittering soft psych shimmer.
The packaging is brilliant, perfectly tripped out psychedelic acid flashback, naked lady, geometric design, cribbed from the original Hawkwind artwork (or at the very least, an incredible simulation), the sleeves are printed complete with shelf wear and corner creases (so don't complain, they're meant to look like they've been on your shelf for decades), each one SUPER LIMITED, and already sold out at the label, we have a bunch, but these will be the only copies we'll ever have!!
Very Special Nothing Music. Well, that's what Ed Pinsent at The Sound Projector calls the stuff found here. Recorded live at the Offsite space in Tokyo when London's uber-minimalist Mark Wastell was touring Japan in early 2002, this quartet revolves around the principles of very spare gestures for improvising. So quiet are these sounds that if someone were to wander into the performance off the street unawares, they might think that they found an audience staring at four men sitting quietly on a stage. But in fact, Wastell was working with three heavyweights of the Japanese improv community: Tetuzi Akiyama, who splits his time between the 'onkyo' aesthetics for generated silences and his avant-boogie rock explosions; Taku Sugimoto with his own take on minimalist compositions for numerous instruments and electronics; and Toshimaru Nakamura, whose no-input mixing board can emanate blistering feedback loops and systems of rarefied drone. Put these four artists on stage and their respectful hush only intensifies with subtle smears, acoustic scrabblings, a tiny arc of sinewaves, and pointillist plucks becoming a punctuation marks across vast silences. This is one of those records that is not served very well by the street noise bleeding through from outside. Headphones are recommended, if not required, and in doing so, you will most definitely be rewarded.
Pan Sonic's Ilpo V. and partner in crime Dirk from Schneider TM return with another Angel-ic recording, their follow up to last year's excellent and epic Kalmukia, which we likened to both KTL and Earth circa Hex. This time around they're not quite so much in that digitaldoomdrone mood... There's still plenty of digital glitch and distortion, and the 20-minute "Mirrorworld" is a loud n' lovely, humming white noise dronewerk, as is the shorter and sparser "Unsymmetric Distance", for instance, but many of the 10 tracks on Hedonism indulge in electronic noise and clatter that's a lot more active and buzzing.
The broken rhythms, grinding textures, and piercing pulses of tracks like "Holding Loose" and "Dropping The Ego" contrast with the more contemplative nature-sounds field recordings heard in the mix towards the end of the album, for a much more varied listen than Kalmukia.
There are already plenty of reviews out there proclaiming this album to be the pop equivalent of the second coming (at least for this year, anyhow). So we'll spare our readers the extensive details of our adoration and/or disdain and just say it's heaps better than last year's not so hot Strawberry Jam, displaying a nice fusion of both Avey Tare's and Panda Bears distinct sensibilities. Not so much a big difference in sound, just better production, more accessible songwriting, and heavier on the more blissful pop side than their spazzy oft-kilter folk side. We're a bit perplexed at the absurd amount of hype this has gotten and wish we got to hear it on its own merits free from the insane hyperbole doled out by critics, and that probably clouded our expectations a bit. It's certainly a good record but doesn't break much new ground in any real way, but then not everyone was hoping for progression, although for those who perhaps have never heard an Animal Collective record before, this will be pretty eye (or ear) opening. Not sure yet if it will top our favorites, Sung Tongs and Feels, but it could, over time, come pretty darn close. And we're even hearing some Vampire Weekend in the new retooled Collective sound in the very Highlife style vocal parts!
Fans of Panda Bear's Person Pitch will definitely dig this!
While we had the fantastic Another World ep to tide us over last year while we waited patiently, the time has finally come and we now get a brand new full length from Antony and it DOES NOT disappoint, not one bit!
I Am A Bird Now is a really touch act to follow, but The Crying Light glows in its own unique beauty. Filled with lush arrangements and gorgeous orchestration, and of course Antony's one of a kind magical voice that is absolutely heavenly. Exploring similarly emotional and stunning stratospheres as folks like Rene Joly, Nina Simone, Bryan Ferry, Arthur Russell and Boy George, while employing a remarkable group of musicians (Nico Mushily, Greg Cohen, Doug Wieselman, etc.), but ultimately it's Antony's incredible songwriting and delivery that elevate his work to that highest level of musical achievement.
While not a dramatic departure from the haunting and emotionally charged sounds of I Am A Bird Now, this record still finds its own voice. Focusing on nature, and our relationship to nature in the smallest and most grandiose ways, Antony ponders our lives, births and deaths, as these songs make you stop in your tracks and soak up the wind and air and spirits that surround us. This is the kind of record that keeps revealing itself on repeated listens. Of course, highly recommended!
We've been wanting to review anything from either of these bands for ages, one from Australia, the other from the UK, both trafficking in ultra depressive, hauntingly beautiful suicidal doom-ed black metal, but each with a distinctly different approach.
Austere are the Aussies, and have a black metal pedigree like you wouldn't believe (Funeral Mourning, Pestilential Shadows, Kinstrife & Blood, Nazxul to name a few). In their Austere incarnation, the duo of Sorrow and Desolate craft a dark swirling abyss of midtempo blackness, a mournful stretch of clean guitars and loping drums create a haunting moodiness, which morphs into something much more blackened and blown out, but no less ethereal and, well, austere. But it's the vocals that transcend here, an insane high pitched shriek, drifting in a cloud of reverb and delay, inhuman to say the least, occasionally growing into something much more growling and aggressive, but just as quickly becoming a disembodied wraith like shriek. All the while the music beneath drifts and lilts, reminding us of a way more washed out Katatonia, minor key and brooding, but strangely epic and expansive, and most definitely miserable and melancholy and darkly depressive.
The UK's Lyrinx are a good match, their sound equally grim and sorrowful, but the drums are much more of a presence, the guitars too are less ethereal and more buzzy and raw, the arrangements are very post rocky, loping and meandering, very reminiscent of Slint, and by extension Ved Buens Ende. The vocals here too are harsh and anguished, but like the rest of the sound, more abrasive, more caustic and raw, weirdly complimenting the hypnotic churning drift beneath. And unlike the monochromatic crawl of Austere, Lyrinx definitely mix it up, slipping into frenzied black metal blast, the drums exploding in tangles of wild octopoidal fury, before slipping into haunting half time breakdowns, all lingering minor key chords and abstract rhythms, a resulting sound both woozy and weary and sorrowful, as well as intense and chaotic.
Essential for the suicidal black metal hordes out there: Make A Change Kill Yourself, Hypothermia, Lutomysl, Silencer, I Shalt Become, Happy Days, Nortt, Holmgang, might as well add Lyrinx and Austere to the list...
Finally, Tab 7 of BAD ACID, the "warped outsider music bible", is here, covering pretty much everything we love, from postrock to shoegaze to doom to sludge to grind to ambient to electronic to punk to garage. A massive dose of sensory overload, sounds, images, text, music, videos, interviews, articles, from a ton of bands we know and love, as well as a ton more of which we've never heard.
The previous issue of Bad Acid was a huge hit around here, we could barely keep it in stock, even though it was crazy expensive because of the WEAK dollar and the overseas shipping. But the dollar is not so weak anymore, so this issue is WAY cheaper, but thankfully no less kick ass.
First up, there's a DVD-r, featuring interviews with the Melvins and Celtic Frost, videos from Phantomsmasher, Jacula (!!!!!!) among others, as well as live footage of Morkobot, Ramesses and Isis! Then there's a SEVENTEEN HOUR, ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN band mp3 audio cd-r, featuring tracks from Witchcraft, Otesanek, Coffins, Tenhornedbeast, Numinous Eye, Seven That Spells, Rahdunes, Stumm, Primordial Undermind, Saviours, Aldebaran, Lietterschpich, Journey To Ixtlan, Jamnation, Grave In The Sky, Ovo, Von Thronstahl, Tractor, Zodiacs, Wicked Minds, Gentlemans Pistols, South Saturn Delta, Eptileptinomicon (one of our favorite band names ever) and loads of others.
Finally there's 90 pages of full screen PDF sleeve notes, full color and super psychedelic, featuring lengthy interviews with Sons Of Otis, Ovo, Randy Holden / Blue Cheer, Rahdunes, Fuckbuttons, Helios Creed from Chrome, and Lazarus Blackstar among others! Good grief.
And just to get an idea of how sprawling and expansive and nearly overwhelming Bad Acid is, here's an abbreviated list of the hundred plus bands, new to us, some of which are bound to become new favorites: Resting Rooster, Total System Failure, High Watt Electrocutions, Spitting Off Tall Buildings, Tigrova Mast, The Black Pine, Ventura, Bang Lassi, Tetrix, Phononics, Baby Woodrose, St. Erik, Army Of Flying Robots, Vomm, A Horse Called War, Dyse, Invasion, The Deep Blue, Couldron, El Thule, Sailor Winters, Malachia, Sermoniser, Propane, Nosmaus, Dead.Circuit, Tetriori, Astra, Aftercare, Zone Six, Holy Calibre, Church Of Hed, Rise To Thunder, Cellardoor, Bikini Eyebolt, Motley Motion, Vibravoid, Space Shuttle Pilots, Oresund Space Collective, Forever Changing Concept, Stunt Cock, and again, more more more.
Packaged in a psychedelic dvd sized, 8 panel booklet, with some cool tripped out illustrations, and liner notes.
Total essential reading / viewing / listening for all heavy droney spaced out post kraut free noise jazz avant electronic outsider sound obsessives!
So cool. We've been wanting to list this for a while, finally got a bunch of copies so we can. It's a disc collecting early pieces by one of our favorite idiosyncratic music makers and sonic visionaries, Pierre Bastien. For those who have yet to discover the joys of Bastien, imagine strange haunting lullabies, played BY ROBOTS. Real Robots! Well sort of. Bastien would take apart old turntables, use bits of random electronics, stuff laying around the garage, sometimes adding multiple tone arms to record players, sometimes using bits of metal and electronics to create little machines that would pluck strings, or make little rhythms, and he would play along usually on trumpet. It sounds strange, but the music he created was magical, mysterious, childlike, but strangely mechanical (obviously) and haunting. Like a super DIY bedroom Philip Jeck but with a band of homemade robots! Sold? We figured you'd have to be. We've been pretty obsessed with Bastien and his music ever since we first heard his Musiques Paralloidres album almost 10 years ago.
This compilation collects a bunch of early tracks, a handful never before released, all from well before his first proper album, mostly culled from the eighties although one track is from WAY back in 1968, an untitled track for prepared guitar and Metronome!
Soon, rather than utilizing a mundane metronome, he was indeed building his own mechanical music-making helpers, the "Meccano". Each one custom-designed to accompany Bastien on plucked strings, skipping record, scraped metal, automated percussion, whatever Bastien imagined as accompaniment for a specific song. The results are divine, tick-tocking, clicking and clacking, wavering and warbling, dark plucked melodies, dizzying fragmented loops, squiggle and scrapes, alternatingly mesmeric and gentle, chaotic and clattery, a sound like a ramshackle music box, gives way to a sweet child-like melody, the sound of a toybox coming to life once the children are asleep, a mini toy orchestra performed in the still of night, with only the moon and the stars looking on. Many of the tracks feature much more actual playing than later Bastien discs, but the robots are still out in full force, playing along, his own little mechanical band.
All of Bastien's records are fabulous, super creative, innovative, baffling, fun and funny, playful and sometimes silly, but just as often dark and beautifully brooding. Mecanoid, Pop, the recently reviewed Visions Of Doing, all of them deserve to be in the collection of any adventurous music lover, and Les Premieres Machines 1968-1988 most certainly does too!
The booklet features a few photos, liner notes in French only (unfortunately), and an extensive discography!
One of the more understated figures in Tropicalia gets one of his best but equally understated albums reissued. Forca Bruta, from 1970, didn't yield any of the hits he was known for such as "Chove Chuva", "Mas Que Nada" or "Umbabarauma", but it's still one of his best collections of songs. Backed by Trio Mocoto, who accompanied Ben through many of his biggest hits, Forca Bruta is a more mellow groover of samba soul that despite its simpler acoustic arrangements packs a powerful punch with some seriously amazing musicianship. Ben wasn't as radical a political figure as his compatriots Gilberto Gil or Caetano Veloso, but was instrumental in importing West African rhythm influences into his music which was influential in both Veloso's and Gil's musical development. Awesome reissue, highly recommended!
Everyone at aQ is super open minded when it comes to music, we all love all kinds of sounds, but each of us definitely has our favorite, our specialties, whether it be black metal, or indie rock or drone or post rock or power pop or whatever. So when a record shows up that has *everybody* freaking out, that's usually a sign that said record is something special, and in those cases we definitely try to mark the occasion by making that record our Record Of The Week.
Such is the case with The Fields by Blank Dogs, or should we say Blank Dog singular as this is a one man operation, some cat named Mike Sniper who for the last few years has been practically gushing limited cd-r's and tapes and short run releases, most so limited that for most of us, The Fields is our first real exposure to Sniper's gorgeous woozy lo-fi new wave, and new wave is really what this is, whereas a lot of the other Blank Dogs releases were super noisy and abrasive, The Fields is hooky and catchy and jangly, total perfect gloom pop, albeit drenched in plenty of tape hiss and amp buzz. Equal parts The Cure and Joy Division, huge fuzzed out downer basslines, simple drum rhythms or programmed beats, all wreathed in thick swirls of murky effects, fuzzy clouds of bloop and bleep, synthesizers spewing squiggly melodies, or unfurling thick undulating ribbons of warm buzz, and then the vocals, deep and drowsy, weary and worn, a mournful croon, super emotional and darkly evocative, all of those parts stitched together into haphazard perfect pop gems.
It's a super short record, seven songs in twenty minutes, but it's darn near perfect, the opening bass line and drum part are total Cure worship, all gothy and gloomy, with an irresistible hook buried in the mix, the deep main croon balanced by a weird processed almost falsetto, fucked up effects careening all over the place in the background, smoothly segueing into "Now Signals" the indie mixtape hit of the year if there ever was one, a sort of Interpol meets Magnetic Fields by way of Sebadoh, a simple guitar jangle over woozy synths, and a sweet sad boy vocal, until it shifts gear into a killer super rocking, heavy guitar bridge, that slips into a warm, almost heavy chorus, before returning to that lo-fi jangle and shimmer of the verse.
"Passing The Light" has a wicked blown out buzzy bass line, that would shame Interpol, the Joy Division melody strung between a constellation of glistening effects, the vocals dripping with delay and reverb and distortion, and again, all wrapped around a wicked hook. The last few tracks get almost frenetic, and mix in some classic pop era Eno into the moody new wave gloom, finishing things off with the weirdly ebullient "Spinning", that manages to glow and pulse with energy while retaining plenty of the rest of the record's glorious downer doompop vibe.
Of course this is on Woodsist, which has been on a roll lately releasing one amazing gem after another: Crystal Stilts, Wavves, Pocahaunted, Meneguar, and now Blank Dogs!! Even though we're only a few weeks into 2009, there's no doubt this disc will find its way onto lots of folks year end lists!
The eagerly awaited follow-up ep (four brand new songs) to last year's highly acclaimed debut, from a band who has gone from self-released wunderkind to critics' darlings in little over a year. We finally got around to reviewing their debut last list, not because we didn't like it, but we didn't really love it quite as much as the rest of the world seemed to. It's not at all bad, we just weren't sure why all the singular heaps of praise for a sound that has been pretty present throughout the past year. Heck, Sub Pop's current roster is ALL about this sound. Rootsy and sensitive songwriting with high quality musicianship and production value. Yeah, that's cool and all, but wouldn't the real challenge be to NOT make a sad record during the thick of winter in Wisconsin? OK, all snarkiness aside, if you loved the debut, you'll want this, especially for the last song where he throws his falsetto choir into computer auto-tune to interesting effect.
Borg is a suitably anonymous project based out of New York, fusing occasionally blackened ambience with analog driven electronica. The first excursions that Borg released on Phaserprone crept through the Chain Reaction murk of heroin house as filtered through Wolf Eyes. On that debut, it was easy to take the Star Trek Next Generation reference to the Borg, a cybernetic absorption of everything into a dark pulsing mass; but for their / his / hers / its second release on Phaserprone, Borg take up a sound similar to our recent dark-electro crush Cold Cave. Here on I:A, Borg shifts things away from a drug addled techno and toward a skeletal electronic funk. There is something of a retrogarde reinterpretation of the Sheffield sound of Cabaret Voltaire and Hula crunched through Aaron Dilloway's suitcases of crusty gear while casting a longing gaze to the Ed Banger crowd of electro breaks and squiggliness. Sublimated melodies tumble in analogue glory across midtempo breakbeats that put a strangle hold on accompanying tribal rhythms and bass riffs. Haunted vibes from funhouse organ grinds underpin a couple of the tracks that otherwise might percolate alongside those Museum of Future Sound Skwee compilations.
Released on the Baltimore based label Phaserprone, known for the heavily embossed letterpressed artwork complimenting the hand-crafted brutality through noise and rhythm. Borg's I:A sticks out from the rest of the Phaserprone catalogue, as this album is certainly not brutal or purposefully ugly, even if it is monochrome in grey. Phaserprone sneers that "you will hate this." We think to the contrary. There's probably plenty of people who will love these beats 'n' synths, and maybe get sucked into the netherworld that is Phaserprone. Recommended? Oh, yes; and it's limited to a whopping 200 copies.
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Bridez front woman, and the cover star of this here 7" single, is none other then Liza Thorn, who was responsible for unleashing a thrilling and damaging whirlwind of fierce energy here in the Bay Area with her previous band So So Many White White Tigers. While Bridez is a much more song based endeavor, there is still that reckless energy and dirty quality to their songs that makes this such a fun, fiery and righteously sleazy debut. We hear healthy doses of Pussy Galore, early Hole and the early recordings of The Runaways. Bringing a much needed element of danger and drunken passion to fucked up rock n' roll. So good!
Of all the sub-genres of metal there are, one of our favorites, one of our specialties you might say, is doom metal. And even doom metal breaks down even further into many, many sub-sub-genres. While we sell a lot of the sludgier stuff, the more cleanly-sung, epic brand of doom is something we absolutely love as well. Bombastic, almost operatic, this variety is based in large part on the Dio-years Sabbath template, and was perfected in the late '80s/early '90s by the likes of Sweden's Candlemass and Texas's Solitude Aeturnus. So, who better than a rejuvenated Candlemass, with the vocalist from Solitude Aeturnus at the mic, to bring us exquisite new examples of this timeless style of doom metal today?
Following on from their excellent King Of The Grey Islands album last year, the current Robert Lowe-fronted version of Candlemass has released a full-length "ep" consisting of 2 new songs ("Lucifer Rising" and "White God"), one old Candlemass classic re-recorded ("Demon's Gate"), and a nine-song live recording from Athens, Greece in 2007, on which you'll quite often hear a horde of excited Greek doom freaks singing along.
So, fans get their money's worth here. Lowe is really one of the few people who could have taken over from iconic Candlemass vocalist Messiah Marcolin, and handles their old songs superbly. The new stuff is great too, fully in the glorious, gloomy Candlemass tradition of grandiose, depressive dirges and heavy metal headbanging. And like we said in our review of King Of The Grey Islands, there's definitely a dark, psychedelic aspect to the guitar soloing...
We had the one sided 12" version of this here disc a while back, but now it's been reissued with those 4 songs, as well as a whopping 9 more from an earlier lp and a split with fellow noisemakers Mass Movement Of The Moth. So all you record impaired folks can finally dig in to this monstrously noisy slab of post punk rrroooaaar.
This is some seriously crushing, heavy, post hardcore stoner grunge screamo heaviness coming at you straight from Richmond Virginia. Grinding, pummeling, super distorted and angular post punk, but with some serious groove, and vocals that go from howled to screeched to crooned (well almost), killer riffs, filthy and heavy, pounding drums, mathy and chaotic, think Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid, Mudhoney, Halo Of Flies, the Melvins, lots of AmRep, some Sub Pop, and here and there, Nirvana at their noisiest and heaviest.�
Definitely old school, and can't help but remind us of the good old grunge days, but it's hyped up, and filtered through a more modern take on post screamo hardcore, some seriously heavy, hooky ass kicking stuff.�
Way recommended.
It's so cool that Slumberland Records has been resurrected and is now based right across the bay in Oakland. We love so many of the seminal indie rock records they released over the years from bands like Boyracer, Aislers Set, Beatnik Film Stars, The Softies, Swirlies, etc. Now with bands like Crystal Stilts on their roster they're showing they still have a golden touch for catchy lo-fi greatness filled with irresistible pop hooks.
Cause Co-Motion! (exclamation point required!) fit with the label's new direction so perfectly. Borrowing heavily from the scrappier side of Beat Happening or the more lo-fi DIY sound of early Pastels. Short songs that sound like they're coming right out of a dusty garage, filled to the brim with catchy hooks, and played with reckless abandon. Fans of recent outings by folks like Vivian Girls, the aforementioned Crystal Stilts and the great Shop Assistants reissue we've been digging so much will find lots to love about Cause Co-Motion!
The later Cluster records, Grosses Wasser and Curiosum, recorded after the Cluster and Eno collaboration in 1977, often undeservedly get short shrift. Marked by a move back to Berlin to work with former Tangerine Dreamer, Peter Baumann, 1979's Grosses Wasser shows Cluster moving forward expansively in their "nature-man-machine" aesthetic while at the same time harkening back to the unformed melodies of their debut. This album is quite the grower, five short pieces with a nineteen minute closing track that is always a dramatically different listening experience each time we play it. Slippery and evasive, shifting subtlety from oceanic piano passages to lurching bell rhythms, trumpet call and responses, woozy funk, hints of klezmer, machine dub, even whale song, all soaking in an elementally warm haze that only Cluster could conjure. Soooo Nice!!!!!!!
Hopefully Water will consider reissuing Curiosum as well. AQ customer Wobbly, who is an avid Cluster fan, noticed that in the liner notes for this, that Water included the Cluster photo from the Curiosum album, sparking fears that a Curiosum reissue is not in the works. We can only hope this isn't so.
Not to bum out those of you in colder parts of the world, but we've been experiencing an amazing Summer-In-Winter this January. Sunny days that have had us flocking to the park and riding around with the top down (ok none of us have convertibles, but in our imaginations we're totally riding around with the top down!). So we've been yearning for some new summer-ish jams to blast as we catch the rays and soak it all up while it lasts. Common's latest was made for sunny days that feel like they're going to last forever. Uptempo hip-hop made to be played loud during BBQs and outdoor get-togethers. With guest appearances from Pharrell Williams and Kanye West, Common shows that he can let loose and have fun with the biggest names in hip-hop. While it seems like he's taken a break from some of his more mindful lyrics and expansive and risk taking sounds, he's still sounding pretty good and perfect for whenever that feeling of summertime hits you.
It's tough to resist a black metal record that is, according to the label: "an ambitious and profound concept album about the "spleen", the suffering of everyday life". Hmmm. Do they really mean the spleen? Does the spleen represent the suffering of everyday life? Weird. Guess they must be archaically referencing the melancholy humor, not the internal organ. But what do you expect? These Italian miserablists have crafted a single massive 64 minute epic, divided into eight movements, each flowing smoothly into the next, a sprawling doomic depressive emotional black metal, that spends as much time soaring majestically, or drifting melodically as it does blasting grimly.
The perfect mix of classic old school doom, a la My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost, and the more modern depressive folk infused black metal like Drudkh as well as plenty of darkened suicidal buzz (think Shining, Forgotten Tomb). Bleak and austere, the guitars seem to weep and moan, the melodies mournful and emotional, the vocals an anguished wail, a deep bellowing howl more than a black shriek, the drums relentless, even the midtempo parts underpinned by frenetic double kicks, all very moody and evocative, sweeping long stretches of epic blackened doom, separated by lilting clean guitar folk interludes as well and bursts of furious blackness, even some gnarled bits of mathy Deathspell style weirdness, but through it all runs a weary black sonic stream, a melodic thread that turns these songs into one epic songsuite, a gorgeous sprawling expanse of doom-ed melodic blackness.
Now reissued on vinyl, Gal Costa's self-titled debut fits nicely into the canon of essential Tropicalia records. Beautiful production by Rogerio Duprat, and of course songwriting and vocal assistance from both Caetano Veloso, and Giberto Gil. While this only hints at the unhinged fuzz psych of her follow-up, Gal, there are some amazing moments that all fans of this crucial era of Brazilian music will love, especially her versions of "Nao Identificado", "Baby", and "Lost In The Paradise."
We found a handful of titles, maybe only 5 or 6 of each, from Aussie label Diagnosis� Don't! We've had these for ages, and odds are these are long gone as they were pretty limited to begin with, but for a few of you, here's your chance to grab one (or all) of these super limited 3" cd-r's.
Default Jamerson is a one man noise making machine from Australia, who crafts a lush and billowy low end, all deep whirling tones, thick speaker shredding dronemusic, even with the bass dialed all the way back, this single 20 minute track was sending seismic waves into the room, causing everything to vibrate gloriously. Lots of shifting textures, haunting melodies buried in the mix, the sound murky and muddy and underwater, woozy and warbly and totally hypnotic. Definitely bummed we slept on this. And bummed that only a handful of you will get to hear it. But what can you do? Heavy low end drone freaks should try to snag one while they can...
Packaged in thick cardstock mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. And again, we only have a VERY FEW of these....
A list of the members of this new group should be enough to have most black metallers diving for the add-to-cart button: Kvarforth of Shining and Diabolicum, Skyellg from Naer Mataron and Paradigma, Seldemann from 1349 and Pantheon I, S. Winter from Gehenna and Aeternus and finally Jormundgand from Dodheimsgard. Odds are you probably have records by most, if not all of those bands in your collection, and while the sounds of those various groups are pretty varied, it will probably not prepare you for the sound of Den Saakaldte (which some might recognize as a Ved Buens Ende song title!).
Self described as "depressive black metal music with a modern avantgardist touch", the record begins with a long stretch of haunting choral voices, processed FX, soaring strings, swirling synths, deep rumbling drones, cabaret piano, shortwave interference, bits of hiss and glitch. It's an intro, sure, but only inasmuch as it's at the beginning of a black metal record, there are plenty of avant free-rock groups who would kill to come up with a track this cool and weird. But it is a black metal record, and it is after all an intro, so when the first song kicks in all heavy downtuned guitar, we're ready, but what we're not ready for is the trumpet, yep TRUMPET, the guitar trumpet drum mix is pretty cool, but soon gives way to something much more black, a churning blackened chugfest, heavy as fuck, with super deep howled processed vocals, killer drumming, amazing guitar playing, and super catchy main riff, the song twisting and turning and returning to the intro with an Eastern sounding guitar melody replacing the trumpet, before exploding back into that unmistakable Norwegian buzz, before slipping into some woozy doom, before lurching to a stop, leaving just a muted crackly clean guitar, and moaning almost choral vocals, before one final flurry of black buzz and a creepy drifty outro.
The rest of the record follows suit, channeling the spirit of the Norwegian legends: Gorgoroth, Ulver, Arcturus, Burzum, but with a definite dramatic vibe, and plenty of avant flourishes, whether they be weird acoustic guitar / accordion interludes, or strangled maniacal almost operatic vocals, or whole songs of dubbed out rhythms and processed piano, skittery electronic beats and disembodied horn sections.
The record finishes off with the nearly 12 minute lone "Jag Ar Den Fallna", featuring a guitar part that is total Thorns, but again, laced with minor key trumpet flourishes, as well as spidery guitar melodies, a groovy doomy depressive dirge, that explodes into a blast of black fury before crumbling into a sort of stumbling depressive Joy Division-y lurch, the track slipping effortlessly back and forth, from moaning minor key lumber, to blasting shrieking blackness, and back again, eventually the two disparate elements becoming one, the song turning into some blackened My Dying Bride, all epic classic doom, before that Thorns-like riff returns to finish things off, leading directly into the sub-minute long coda, a super creepy collage of little girl voices and atonal synths, wrapped in a gauzy otherworldly swirl of dense delay and reverb.
It might sound cliched to say, but they really don't make records that sound so much like this anymore, that nineties Norwegian sound, heavy and dark and catchy and majestic and mysterious and brutal and black, these are the sounds that lured us over to the dark side, and it's easy to see why, and strangely enough it still sounds as good today as it did 15 years ago. WAY recommended.
Dodsferd are another black metal band that we all dig, but that has somehow managed to remain unlisted and unreviewed, until now.
This one man band from Greece, personifies misanthropy and hate, misery and total disdain for humanity. Just have a look at the liner notes: "Dodsfred does not belong to any kind of scene! No begging for anything! Support nothing, no-one should need anything from no-one! Dodsferd is Wrath and Wrath is Dosferd, no compromise, no respect for anything at all! Dodsferd is an ideal, a philosophy that only wrath stands for! Ignorance is the ultimate gift to your stupidity! I feel nothing for you leeches, you are a big nothing and you know it! I am getting stronger and stronger everyday! I am becoming sicker and sicker everyday with your pathetic existence and stupidity! Your incompetence makes me puke! Make a favor to yourselves and suicide! Bastard sons following ridiculous shepherds!"
And the music is appropriately hateful and harsh. The record begins with some sort of evil incantation, some dark ritual, minor key guitars drifting through black clouds of blackened shimmer, and a harsh rasp, reciting some sort of unholy prayer, and then the metal kicks in and we're into some seriously raw old school thrashing blackness, so stripped down it's almost crusty and punky more than metal, fans of Akitsa and Ash Pool and Malveillance and Bone Awl will definitely dig. But then Dodsferd launches into something much more bleak and black, a lurching midtempo Burzumic dirge, all minor key and miserable, before lurching into a full on blackened blast, chaotic and frenzied and fierce as fuck, that spills over into the next song, another thrashing chunk of black hate, all blast beats and buzzing riffage.
Denying With Arrogance is actually an older demo, recorded in 2004, and available briefly in 2007 as a split with Ganzmord, now finally available on its own, in all it's hateful black glory, with the 4 tracks from the original demo, plus a killer live track, ultra raw and necro and brutal, and a live Burzum cover, appropriately heavy and blown out and super distorted.
And as if the liner notes didn't convince you that Dodsferd indeed despised you, there's a note in the special thanks: "A big fuck-off to all those who tried to gain power and respect from my ideal! Retarded people! For another time, a big "go fuck yourselves and die" to all those who tried to take advantage of the name of my band and gain things that they didn't deserve! Losers and parasites! Go hide in your shit holes again!"
There must be something about the wondrous landscapes of Norway that seems to breed some of the most epic, gorgeously somber music around. Frigid cold and towering crags rising from the Arctic water, it's no wonder Tommy Jansen, the composer behind Elegi, is a living example of this Norwegian vision that never fails to blow us away.
Varde, the title of Elegi's second album in a trilogy from the excellent Miasmah label, translates to cairn, a pile of stones usually left to mark a pathway. Which is totally appropriate considering Varde was written as an instrumental narrative retelling the adventures and hardships of the first polar explorations. With electronics, piano, quiet percussion, various field recordings and lush violin, Jansen lures the listener into a world not unlike the experience of those brave explorers: icy bleakness, uncertainty and impending doom. Shimmering drones grow and subside, slow trudging footsteps in the distance, cascading swirls of snow are lifted and thrown about by the wind. Jensen is a master at crafting an incredibly vivid atmosphere, evoking frozen memories of the desolate north, gorgeous and inspirational. Combining modern composition, ambient drones, and his love for Victorian storytelling, Jensen offers up his most accomplished and touching masterpiece, a seriously beautiful and haunting experience. Kinda like if Andrew Chalk, Goldmund and Stars of the Lid met up in the Arctic to write an epic score for the apocalypse. Super dark dreamy goodness here, we couldn't be more impressed. Already we've played this a bunch in the store, and really can't get enough of it. Varde is just one of those records where you hear something new every time you listen to it, subtle textures and details that surface from the constantly shifting background. Highly recommended for fans of washed out midnight ambience, similar to the dreamier stuff the Type label has been releasing lately, beautiful melodies laced with a sinister darkness that lurks just below the surface. Oh and, uh, just in case you couldn't tell already, we REALLY dig this album!!! Highly recommended, especially for fans of any of the other recent killer releases on the Misamah label!!
Now on Vinyl!!
The combination of Brian Eno and Cluster proved to be a golden match. The sounds they delicately created together have been echoed again and again in the three decades since their collaborations. A feeling of both effortlessness and a total awareness of the space and sounds they were building radiates throughout the recording. You can hear the tinkering hands of Moebius and Roedelius giving elements of warped spaced out bliss. Eno approaching the songs in a magic space somewhere between Before & After Science and Another Green World. When his vocals appear they just begin to melt and dissolve into your ears. For sure the best backwards vocal delivery we've ever heard can be found on the track "Tzima N'arki". There is such a sublime feeling of melting on this record. These three knew how to meld warmth with an motherly feeling that takes you into golden horizons, mesmerizing twilight and an afterglow that you just want to surrender yourself to. Originally released in '78, once again 4 Men With Beards has done the fine service of bringing it back to a world that's more ready for these sounds then ever.
Volume 3 in the ongoing Audio Archive series from our favorite droney, krautrock inspired combo, Expo '70, whose recent Black Ohms record we made Record Of The Week. And heck we really could have (and maybe should have) made all of Expo '70's Records Of The Week. They all seem to be part of some epic swirling black sonic universe, each cd-r a satellite of sound circling a mysterious sonic black hole, every release another stage, another leap forward into the abyss, an ever expanding sea of deep black drones, of rumbling whirring drift, guitars and synths woven into vast expanses of starry sky shimmer, and underwater moonlight drift.
Volume 3 takes up right where number two left off, taking the glacial crush of SUNNO)), and the blissed out ambience of Popol Vuh, and fusing them into a thick undulating mass, an organic world of sound, painted in shades of grey and black, mesmerizing, hypnotic, lulling us into a black trance, carrying us off on a sluggish stream of downtuned blur and smeared soft focus melodies, these are lullabyes for dark stormy nights, this is meditation music for channeling the dark side.
At once heavy, and mysterious, thick, and buzzing, warm, and dark and expansive, almost metallic, blackened and blissful, ominous and intense, this is some seriously uneasy listening, dark music for dead souls, each track a step further into a dying black sun, into a bottomless black pit, a living sound that entrances, enthralls, ensorcels... we are unable to resist, we give in, we let go, we slowly sink into the inky blackness, letting the drones and rumbles and whirs, fill our ears, our lungs, wrapping us in a gauzy hazy swirl of low end, releasing our spirit from its earthly bonds, letting us pass over into a glorious and haunting otherworld of sound.
Another dark, heavy, blackened missive from these krautdrone innerspace explorers. And like the others, recommended.
Simple packaging, silver and black ink on cardstock, with printed insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
We've referenced these drugged and ugly New Orleans masters of sludge-core in tons of reviews, as they're one of the ur-bands that established the rituals practiced by anything heavy and feedback laden, like Cavity, Corrupted, Khanate, Iron Monkey, Grief,
So it's about time we listed our favorite EHG album, their dark and dirgey debut "In The Name Of Suffering", first released in 1990 on the French Intellectual Convulsion label, later re-issued domestically by Century Media, with the original's gross medical cover pictures prudently tucked inside. When this came out, EHG immediately joined the Melvins, Skullflower, and Hellhammer in the pantheon of the heaviest, most fucked up bands ever. Misanthropic metallic misery, complete with samples of Charles Manson's wisdom. Later EHG albums are good too, but this one was never surpassed. If you are one of Aquarius' "doom" customers and you don't have this disc, we urge you, in the name of suffering, get it!
Another one of the Japrocksampler's Top 50 makes it to cd, this reissue via the same label who brought us Melting Glass Box a little while back. Unlike the more gentle folk-psych of MGB, power trio Gedo were counter-cultural hard rockers, beloved of bikers. As aficionados of both '70s heaviness and Japanese psych, we've been curious to hear 'em for a long time, never finding a complete album reissued until now. This, their 1973 debut, is a live record that finds 'em kicking out the jams in front of an appreciative festival audience, with all their clapping, cheering and laughter kept intact, none of it edited out. In fact, tracks 4 and 11 are ALL applause. How'd they get the crowd so excited? Well, Gedo mainly deal in an energetic brand of hectic hard rock action, with a few surprising mellow, melodic, melancholic detours (such as track 12, "Tender Betrayal"). They're sort of a Japanese mixture, maybe, of Steppenwolf and the Pink Fairies, some Eddie Cochran too, Gedo keeping it simple stupid, with a clear '50s rock n' roll lineage (which you can hear most overtly on the excellently-titled track "Rock 'n' Roll Stupid"). With big distorted riffs, raucous vocals, and even the sound of revving motorcycle engines (comprising the album's final track, as Gedo perhaps leaving the stage to go and recreate the cover of the first Flower Travellin Band album), this is proto-metal and/or proto-punk (we could imagine kids pogoing to a lot of this). Definitely "proto", as in raw.
Not understanding the Japanese language, let alone being a participant in the counterculture scene within which Gedo flourished, means you're not gonna "get" some of this. On the other hand, "getting" Gedo on such frantic tracks as "Scent" is not an issue!
This limited edition digipack reish comes with helpful liner notes in English, revealing that Gedo once upon a time not only jammed with members of Mountain and the New York Dolls, but also even played a concert with the cast of (the stage production of?) the Rocky Horror Picture Show!
We first heard from Ghast on their split with Yoga, we were pretty obsessed with both bands and have been on the hunt for more from both ever since.
So Ghast have returned, on yet another split, offering up two more loooong tracks of their unique not-quite-doom, a dirgey crawl, that spends as much time shimmering and buzzing as it does pounding and lumbering. The opener here is 21 minutes of grinding corrosive soft buzz, think Tunnels, Wolf Eyes, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, that sort of thing, deep whirring low end, drifting beneath clouds of metallic buzz, plenty of fuzz and hiss, beneath it all, there does seem to be some sort of thick tarpit like riffing, but it's WAY down, more like a distant drone than anything overtly metal, but it does lend the track a serious sense of dread and foreboding, as if any second the track might splinter into pieces and explode into crushing doom, but it never does, instead ratcheting up the tension, like the soundtrack to some super abstract foreign horror film. An actual rhythm dose seem to develop, but it's cobbled together using hissy white noise, ominous whirring synths, buried and blurred vocals, and a super drawn out low end melody, creeping and creeping before the low end drops out leaving just a sea of high end electrical buzz, and weirdly enough the sound of sheep (!). The second track clocks in at nearly 12 minutes, and again, is more ambient than anything, bits of crackle, melted tape loops, field recordings, processed electronics, all blurred into a strange undulating drone, peppered with fragments of melody, some buried riffing, which finally crawls up from the murk, and the band, for the first time in nearly half an hour, launch into some lurching lumbering doom. But the sound is not massive or crushing, instead, it remains murky and muted, more bass heavy than anything, if there is guitar it's tuned WAY down and is locked in with the rumbling bass, the rhythm mechanical and machinelike, with a definite industrial vibe, the track slipping into brief stretches of ambient drone-like shimmer, before the band lurches back into action, pounding away, stripped down, but still heavy and doomy and mysteriously grim.
Rape-X existed until now, as an MP3 file someone sent us a looong time ago, a half hour slab of blown out metalnoise, industrial drone weirdness. We'd notice it on the computer every once in a while and fire it up, and always think, "wow, this is pretty great, I wonder when they'll have a record". Well here it is. And Rape-X is a pretty good match for Ghast, seeing as they traffic in a similarly abstract doomy ambience, falling closer to Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer than any classic sort of doom. The vocals are huge part of the sound, and are harsh and super processed, demonic and maniacal sounding, giving the track a bit of a Whitehouse feel, ranting and proselytizing over a constantly shifting backdrop of blackened noise and droning harsh ambience. A glorious metallic cacophony, wreathed in hiss and skree, a bit like a way more static Sunroof!, the sound roiling and churning below the surface like some rough black sea, while that hellish voice continues to testify, the unholy scripture from some lost black gospel.
Caveat Emptor, though: these have a pressing defect, it's minor, but it's definitely noticeable. The band was contacted about it, but apparently there's some bad blood with the label, so there will never be a new, corrected version, so we figured we would list it anyway, since otherwise it's pretty amazing, and the defect is so slight. Basically, the problem is, there's a digitial click at the beginning of each track. Annoying, distracting, yes, but it doesn't affect the songs themselves, so if you can handle that (you can also edit out the clicks yourself on your computer when you import it into your iTunes or whatever), then by all means pick this up, some seriously abject and harrowing doom-ed blacknoize.
We only just started reading this but holy crap is it awesome. An in depth exploration of the UK anarcho punk scene. Which means, for those of you unclear on the concept, groups like Crass, Poison Girls, Flux Of Pink Indians, Rudimentary Peni, Icons Of Filth, Dirt, Subhumans, Conflict, Citizen Fish, Amebix, Chumbawamba (before they sold out!!), Zounds, The Mob, Kukl, Lack Of Knowledge, Disrupters, Flowers In The Dustbin, Antisect, Epileptics, Faction and more more more.
It's a little difficult for us to read this personally, as aQ pal Lance Hahn from J-Church was working on his own Anarcho-crust book when he passed away, but besides that, there's really no reason to not buy this, read up on all these amazing bands, and then buy all their records.
Covering the scene during the years 1980-1984, The Day The Country Died is packed with tons of photos, exclusive interviews, scene histories, discographies, we were 30 pages in when we got to Flux Of Pink Indians, maybe one of our favorite bands from that scene, and we had our Flux records out, reading and listening. And it's not just about the bands, and the records, it's the movement, the politics, pretty inspiring for sure.
Like we said, we only just started it, but we're digging this book BIG TIME, and apparently it's a companion to Glasper's other book, Burning Britain, so we'll probably have to track that one down too!
This is a split cd-r of pure analogue synth sweeping and Kosmische dirges from Grasslung and Pulse Emitter. Portland's Daryl Groetsch has been pumping out the micro-edition releases with anybody willing to release his gnarled take on '70s electronic expansiveness; whereas Grasslung, the solo project of Jonas Asher who also hails from the incredible UW Owl and operates the Phaserprone label, has been much more particular in releasing his sounds. On first investigation into this work, it seemed to be a collaborative project with uniformly blackened surfaces of smoldering saw-tooth noise generation and undulating surfaces that spoke of dead-eyed electronics and sci-fi bleakness. As plausible as this seems, the first track of rippling electronics, half-consumed melodies, and amorphously twisting drones is that of Pulse Emitter; and the second two pieces of chilling, horror tonefloat mired in sickening gloom, hail from Grasslung with equal aplomb. Think Expo '70, Omit, Emeralds, and even Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion, and you won't be far from the mark on this great piece of modular synth sprawl. Packaged in very impressive letterpress / die-cut packaging, and limited to something like 200 copies.
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So it seems like you can't be a singer/songwriter these days without having a bio involving, either Eastern gurus, nomadic quests or shamanic encounters. Larkin Grimm is definitely no exception, with her lengthy bio reading more like a fairy tale then a back-story. Between growing up in rural Appalachia and hitchhiking through Alaska, the elegant songwriter's magical lifestyle has inspired her vibrant career and her latest and most promising release, Parplar. Ms. Grimm has succeeded in conjuring a sound that is solely her own, haunting finger-picked, acoustic sorcery that cuts to the bone. But don't think this album is so easy to wrap your head around, it's dense with all kinds of instrumentation and fantastical production. With some songs that are stripped down, sparse and folk oriented, and others that are rather twisted in a child-like, whimsical way. Kind of like a fucked up Disneyland nightmare, or a malfunctioning carnival ride. Really bizarre and twisted, but unique and intriguing, Parplar is finely crafted and is the perfect addition to the Young God records catalogue.
Yet another awesome vinyl-only document from the mighty Sublime Frequencies, this one a continuation of sorts, again exploring the world of Tuareg guitar music from Agadez in Niger, first explored on the amazing Group Inerane release a while back. And strangely enough, both band share members, so folks who loved the Group Inerane will likely love this too.
The music scene in Agadez is unique in many ways, but perhaps the strangest element is the fact that none of the bands can afford to own their own instruments, there is one PA and one set of amps that get passed from show to show, and guitars are borrowed and lent out, as are band members, with musicians joining different groups as they are available. Remarkably, while the sounds are indeed similar, they are also quite unique.
Group Bombino is headed up by 28 year old Oumara Almoctar, aka Bombino, who was inspired by more well known Tuareg musicians like Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure to create his own music and to continue to spread the sounds and spirit of Tuareg and Agadez.
So here we have the first proper worldwide release by Bombino and his group, and it's gorgeous. Two distinct sides, the A side features Bombino's "dry" guitar sound, sort of acoustic, the guitars, spidery and slinky, the percussion simple and spare, hand claps, hand drums, the vocals lilting and emotional, all very repetitive and hypnotic, the vocals chantlike over the propulsive rhythms and the almost looped sounding guitar parts.
The flip side features Group Bombino plugging in and letting loose, the root sound is quite similar, but the guitars buzz and wail, chugging out those hypnotic riffs, but also spiralling out into wild leads, tangled melodies, the drums a bit hard, the vocals sitting further back in the mix, ebullient and joyous, but not without tension and emotion and some subtle sorrow and anger, this is after all the sounds or rebellion and revolution, an outlet for the frustration at the unrest and upheaval in Niger and Agadez. So fantastic.
As with pretty much everything Sublime Frequencies, ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED, and for sure, anyone who dug the Group Inerane (a past Record Of The Week), will go crazy for Group Bombino as well!
We're really happy that this is back in print, originally released back in 2001 this was the score to the Icelandic film Englar Alheimisins (Angels Of The Universe). Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson is an amazing composer whose brooding, moody and elegant post-classical sounds evokes such a dark and heavenly cinematic quality. He has collaborated over the years with the likes of Current 93, The Hafler Trio and Psychic TV. It makes so much sense that he enlisted Sigur Ros to join him for this score. Don't be expecting a Sigur Ros record though, as this really is the brainchild of Hilmarsson, but you can still hear the band's sound very clearly on a few of the tracks, hints of Sigur Ros' distinctive dark and dreamy sounds. Elegant and lush, with a haunting quality that's made this a favorite of ours for those late rainy nights and somber afternoons.
Ezekiel Honig has a delicate musical touch, and has crafted some well textured and nuanced electronica albums over the years, so we were surprised to find that somehow we had never actually listed any of his records. His latest, Surfaces Of A Broken Machine Band, is a great place to start for newcomers and a welcome addition to his backcatalog for those who've kept up with his warm and crackling soundscapes. Seamlessly melding bits of field recordings with minimalist beats and dreamy tones for a sound not unlike the most tender moments of Fennesz, Boards Of Canada, Mountains, Machinefabriek or Jasper TX. In fact Honig would make a great contributor to Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, as these are sounds made to drift, dream and get lost to. So nice!
As Mego had been shifting towards the power-electronic and blackened noise end of the spectrum, this one is something of a surprise for us. The Olde English blackletter script which adorns the cover belies the agitated silence found within. Ibitsu is the work of Shunichiro Okada, whose debut for Editions Mego follows in the hushed footsteps of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing or perhaps even Nurse With Wound's similarly minded composition A Missing Sense. Okada situates his composition in two distinct levels, a higher frequency ceiling and a lower than low subharmonic base with nothing (and do we mean nothing!) in between. Above there are insect-like vibrations that circle and buzz about the stereo field with occasional brushes with softened white noise; and below are agitated rumblings that sound like somebody trying to push a giant piece of furniture in the apartment upstairs. Even as the album gradually moves from inaudibility to microsound glitchiness, Ibitsu maintains a even-handed control which always favors the 'objectness' of silence. A bit of a warning: this is a mere 25 minutes long.
We found a handful of titles, maybe only 5 or 6 of each, from Aussie label Diagnosis� Don't! We've had these for ages, and odds are these are long gone as they were pretty limited to begin with, but for a few of you, here's your chance to grab one (or all) of these super limited 3" cd-r's.
The Impromptulons are an improvising (get it?) free noise collective from Brisbane, who use a confusional mix of instruments to create their sound, from found objects to actual percussion, lots of feedback, very rhythmic and ritualistic, one single extended jam, equal parts Avarus and the Dead C, very tribal, with plenty of click and glitch, rumble and thump, all wrapped in a swirling haze of tape hiss and distant bowed strings, not really noisy so much as much as hypnotic. Strings are plucked, drones shimmer, percussion clanks and clunks, and somehow the result is a gorgeous piece of rhythmic dronemusic.
Packaged in thick cardstock mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. And again, we only have a VERY FEW of these....
Intrusion is the solo project of Steve Hitchell, who alongside Rod Modell forms the impressive heroin-house meets dub-factory duo Echospace. Just as Modell's solo recordings don't veer too far from the Echospace mantra, the Intrusion sound doesn't see any reason to break the mold either. If it ain't broke, why fix it? This is the beloved muted blur of the Detroit / Berlin axis of techno that spurned the whole Basic Channel / Chain Reaction sound and which then slowed itself down into the murky dub of Burial Mix. Hitchell and Modell have both been so captivated by this particular sound, that they've collected many of the modular synths, signal processors, and classic drum machines that Moritz Von Oswald and Juan Atkins used back in the day to perfect the mimesis of that abstracted techno that steadily cruises through the dronefields. The bulk of the album finds a hypnotizing rhythm sublimated behind atmospheric synth chords rippling in sync with the cascading wash of echo and heaping snow drifts of tape hiss; but Hitchell does make a few noteworthy detours. "Intrusion Dub" is a decidedly uptempo digidub number, with Augustus Pablo-esque trills across the melodica and an insistent hi-hat uncannily similar to the metronomic rhythms provided by Public Image Limited on Metal Box, but of course pixel-pointed into a Chain Reactive / Burial Mix cloud of digital hiss. Elsewhere, he recruits the Burial Mix toaster par excellence Paul St. Hillaire to offer his ghostly croon to the mix. Mighty fine, mighty fine.
The label describes Journey To Ixtlan as "new age doom & occult desert rock", and heck, who are we to argue? The sound here is dark and swirling and mysterious, the guitars are dusty and sun baked, the production is lysergic, the drums pound abstractly through a haze of pot smoke and sandstorms, the bass is a beast like growl, the melodies are woozy and weary and laid back. Imagine the music Kyuss must listen to when they want to chill out. Or maybe picture Earth, but if instead of being based in the Northwest, wreathed in clouds and surrounded by verdant mountains, imagine they called the desert home, endless expanses of sand, an unforgiving sun hanging in a vast slate grey sky - and then maybe they'd be churning out druggy ritualistic doom like this instead of the gospel flecked slowcore they've grown into.
Journey To Ixtlan introduce mantra like chants, the sound of rain, of crackling fire, distant crashes, strange percussion, warm whirring keyboards, channeling the slow motion blackness of Skepticism, but filtered through something much more lo-fi and much less heavy, the heaviness here rendered in a tarpit thickness, huge heaving walls of crumbling sound, that give way to soft, shimmery, slow motion folk, the guitar still psychedelic, drifting like smoke through a hazy expanse of barely there buzz, a simple spaced out drum beat, and some seriously ominous gurgling vokills over the top.
This is most definitely some glorious drug addled desert hippy folk drone doom heaviness, the songs blending cookie monster gurgles and warm sun dappled synths, wrapping fluttery flutes, and ominous glacial riffing, around hushed whispered voices and cool soulful crooning, tripped out effects swirling around gorgeous blown out high end ur-drones, peppered with the croak of some underworld priest, or mysterious beast, shimmery chiming guitars spread out over abstract drums and more of those creepy vox, shakers and hand drums, gongs and rattles give way to a seriously downtuned stoner dirge, laced with insane prog keyboards, at once genius and totally bizarre, until the record closes with some sort of low end chant drone ritual, minimal, haunting, and otherworldly.
Definitely drone-y, and doomy, and dirge-y but maybe a bit to tripped out and fucked up and psychedelic for the troo doomlords out there, as for the rest of us, Journey To Ixtlan offer a mind bending, soul searching psychotropic soundworld that we're more than happy to get lost in...
We're so glad Bardes Records unearthed these Peruvian gems, the work of Juaneco Y Su Combo, who were one of the main proponents of the 'Chicha' sound that blossomed throughout South America in the 1970s, a thrilling sound that merged Peruvian traditional music with Brazilian carimbo, Colombian cumbia, Western surf guitar stylings and infectious psychedelic organs.
There's no doubt these sounds had an influence on the newer generation of Peruvian musicians, possibly as well as on the now sounds that we love from the Colombian collective Las Malas Amistades and international scavengers like Senor Coconut. The story behind this group is so fascinating, filled with lots of psychedelic drugs, a father handing over the band he created over to his son, and tragically, a plane crash in 1977 that took the life of five of the members of the band. Luckily these joyous sounds are finally getting their well deserved chance to reach a much wider international audience. Fans of garage rock, surf, Latin rhythms and international pop will find so much to love in these classic Chicha tracks.
Perfect for the dead of winter, it's another quietly creepy, digital dronedoom opus from this two-man stupor group, featuring Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita), this time with production assistance from Jim O'Rourke. If you've heard KTL's I, II, or III (which was vinyl-only) you have an idea of what to expect - and are probably already plotting to purchase this. This is their first studio album constructed entirely for their own dark purposes, as opposed to having been commissioned as a soundtrack for live theatrical performance or film, though it certainly still has mysterious, soundtrack-y qualities. The sort that usually causes us, in reviews of KTL (and other dronesters too) to paint word-pictures of what the music evokes in our mind's eye. Subterranean caverns, bottomless pits, fallen angelic choirs, airplanes buzzing over dark forests... but we won't bother this time, you should just listen to this and your own imagination should have no difficulty providing all sorts of esoteric imagery. It may be soothing, it may be scary. Probably scary, it's up to you though. We find a lot of this to be as sinister and grim as Dick Cheney was in his Dr. Strangelove wheelchair at Obama's inauguration!
These six tracks are full of seismic rumble, high end hiss, eerie abstract glitch, sweeping drones, ringing electronics... some more epic and/or active than others. Distorted industrial rhythms shudder through several cuts, notably the disc's longest piece, the 21+ minute "Paratrooper", which features doomic beats by the drummer from Japan's Boris (who also brings his gong for an appearance on the disc's final track). While that's KTL IV at its heaviest, most of this is more like the sound of SUNNO))) sighing and whispering... or, conversely, Pita busting out a guitar to play along to a half-melted Swans record he found in the ashes of a burned-down church.
Latest from these East Coast psych rockers, a group who share members with another aQ fave, Titan, both bands offering up spaced out prog psych heaviness. On this latest La Otracia disc though, the L.O. trio get even proggier and heavier, the first side is mostly a single sprawling jam, rife with wildly intense drum freakouts, soulful soaring distorted guitars, thick buzzing bass, all wound tight into some super propulsive metallic prog.
The band churn out some surprisingly heavy riffage and heart-of-the-sun psychedelia, slipping from full on blown out prog to long stretches of swirling space rock and thick wall-of-sound drones, the proggier parts laced with squiggly synths, fractured riffs, fluttering flutes, all locked into some seriously complex arrangements, a multi part epic that could have gone on for another several lp sides (and as far as we're concerned should have!) but instead gives way to a tripped out moody reverb soaked coda.
The flipside is not so incendiary, but still plenty heavy and psychedelic, from druggy glistening shimmer, into loping almost Polvo-y postrock, humid guitar buzz over distant abstract percussion, hushed muted thrum lurching into frenetic krautrockiness, ending with an awesome final track, a head spinning collage of super psychedelic backwards guitars over simple subtle drumming, another awesome track that could easily have spread out over another album side.
Total kick ass space psych prog nirvana, and as always, essential listening for fans of Earthless, Guapo, Dead Meadow, Acid Mothers Temple, Titan, Mammatus, Bardo Pond, Hawkwind, Monster Magnet and the drugged out, spaced out like.
Gone are the days when Larsen would hire Michael Gira to produce one of their claustrophobic albums under suspiciously odd circumstances. After 13 years in existence, the Italian post-rock collective has emerged as a champion of cinematic pop on La Fever Lit, sharing a sound that has more in common now a days with Sigur Ros than with the Swans. Sure, the band's sound on La Fever Lit persists in their hypnotizing arrangements for cyclical rhythms buttressing slow-burning crescendos of guitars and electronics, but the moodiness and abject urgency which marked their earlier recordings have been supplanted with an opulence, majesty, and a celebratory nature with occasional detours back into the bittersweet. On a handful of the tracks, Larsen's usually instrumental pieces have been augmented with vocals by Annie Anxiety, the one time member of Crass and contributor to Current 93, who presents herself as a detached diva singing torch songs of urban decay, which is well suited for Larsen's sweeping overtures.
Everybody except a tiny handful of folks missed out on that Josh Lay cd-r on the last list, sold out in a flash, but for those of you who missed out, here's a brand new 7" from Mr. Lay, drummer for aQ faves Cadaver In Drag. But of course the sound here is a bit different than the cd-r. The first side begins with a noisy drone, but soft noise, an undulating layer of deep gurgly rumble and highend whir that gradually grows thicker and more ominous, until it explodes into a blast of chaotic blackness, a weird abstract black ambience with howled demonic vokills, a bit like a black metal track with the guitars and drums removed, haunting and evil and black, but more a sort of blackdrone. The flipside is all drone however, never exploding into any sort of evil blackness, instead opting to lurk in shades of grey, slithering and shimmering and whirring.
Super fancy trifold gold ink on thick black cardstock sleeve, and LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!
With the blink of an eye Lemonade have left San Francisco and relocated to New York, but before they moved away they injected the SF scene with a great shot of left-field dance floor vision, playing at and DJ'ing some of the most sweaty and fun filled parties around town. Musically they pump out hyper-color splashes imbedded in a sound that brings to mind Public Image Ltd, Gang Gang Dance, The Rapture, !!!, Gang of Four, and Tussle. We're sad we don't have the privilege of getting to see them play as often as we used to, but now we finally have their record to blast as loud as we like.
From its humble beginnings as a genre, black metal has changed dramatically, transformed into something style and sound based rather than belief based. And where black metal was once strictly the province of the grim and kvlt, and yes, the actual metalheads, it's now gained a certain cache, a definite hip factor, where any band, metal or not, is likely to feature one member with his or her own solo black metal project. We're not complaining, not in the least, it's these fresh injections into black metal's sonic gene pool that keep it interesting, that produce more and more strange and wonderful variations, a great many perpetrated by folks new to metal completely, who were lured to the darkside by black metal specifically, its mystery and unique sound, the sonic possibilities offered by its murky symphony of buzz and blast, rumble and shriek, sounds easily twisted into all manner of shapes.
We got this particular cd-r in the mail a few weeks ago, and as we've mentioned before we do get quite a few. Our first impression was that it would most likely be some sort of minimal drone record, very stark white packaging, hand made, the band is called Light, with song titles like "When The Green Midwestern Sky Comes Crashing Down", and "When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In", the packaging unfolds to reveal nothing but the song titles, rendered in a flowery script, but on the disc, there was what appears to be a smear of actual blood (which we later discovered was in fact menstrual blood!). The first clue as to what sort of mysterious darkness lurked inside...
Once we threw it on, we knew this was something else entirely, there is plenty of drone indeed, but the drone is only one element of Light's mysterious lugubrious buzz drenched blackened crawl. Almost like a more lo-fi Skepticism, Light trudge along at tarpit tempos, the guitars not so much riffing as unfurling thick swirls of soft fuzz, the vocals howled and wailed, but way off in the distance, the drums strangely un-drumlike, more like pots and pans, a clattery, skeletal percussion, the whole thing held together by the warm dramatic keyboards, that sound like the Haunted Mansion soundtrack played at 16rpm, all smeared and blurred together into something only barely black metal, only barely doom, a thick lurching slow motion black doomdrone, evocative and cinematic, at once epic and sprawling, lo-fi and ultra personal. Creepy and haunting, but strangely melodic and beautiful. Think Trollmann, Abruptum, Celestiial, Catacombs, Monument of Urns and again Skepticism, but filtered through the cracked lo-fi filter of underground cd-r dronemusic. If one was unfamiliar with black metal, one might be reminded of Lustmord, or some other sort of deathambient, but with the confusional addition of actual riffs, and those hellish vox, and the strange primitive percussion, the end result a sort of metallicized slowcore, or a washed out ultradoom, or a blurred bleary black metal, however you describe it, Light have crafted some truly original, gorgeously bleak, warm and almost dreamy, slow motion buzzing black beauty.
Hand folded, hand assembled, stark white sleeves, with a Japanese style obi, and an extra inner sleeve, crazy limited to maybe 50 copies or so.
We kind of slept on this record when it came out a few months ago but when we finally gave it a chance we totally fell in love. Most supergroups tend to be kind of all hype and no substance, but the opposite is the case for this trio consisting of Fabrizio Moretti (The Strokes), Rodrigo Amarante (Los Hermanos) and Binki Shapiro. Seems like being in Little Joy really let the players truly have fun and create sweet and breezy songs that make you want to get lost wandering with your friends or that special someone as you lay in the park or daydream on a hammock letting the weight of the world just drift away.
Injecting lots of tropical sounds influenced by Hawaiian, Brazilian & Latin American soft-psychedelic pop with such great results. Makes a lot of sense that this was produced by Noah Georgeson who's had a strong hand in the works of folks like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. Devendra adds his voice to a few of the songs and you can tell that Little Joy have a strong feeling of kinship with him, as this record really taps into the more laid back sound of Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon and Cripple Crow. Breezy, easy and so delightfully catchy and assured.
Over the course of several records, M83 have virtually invented their own genre, we're not even sure what to call it, but it's some sort of gossamer, fuzzed out blissy dream pop, so much so that, the name M83 itself became an oft referenced descriptor when referring to bands of all stripes that borrowed bits of fuzz or buzz or bliss from M83's sonic palette.
The last record, Before The Dawn Heals Us, found the band shedding some of their more arty influences, much of the krautrock, some of the electronica, lots of the buzzy shoegaze, opting instead for some straight up eighties pop, replete with cheesy electronic drums, big choruses, super effected guitars, a gloriously retro chunk of sweetly dated pop, BUT, they balanced that with some seriously over the top fuzzed out bombast.
However, that record definitely hinted at what was to come, and now years later, the bombast is long gone, and if anything, the band has delved even further into our teenage years, and reinvented themselves as a band plucked right from MTV circa 1985, and we love it! This is total emo. Before there was emo. The soundtrack to hanging out in parking lots, crushes, love notes, first kisses, John Hughes movies, falling in love, break ups, mix tapes and all that stuff.
The sound of Saturday = Youth is that, the sound of Saturdays, no school, hanging out with friends, the sound of being young, your whole life ahead of you, but with every second feeling like it could be your last. So much angst, so much passion, so much hope, and so much fear. All perfectly represented by this collection of gloriously glistening sunshine-y pop and fuzzy synthy electro pop.
The record begins with melancholy piano and swoonsome synths, fluttery female vocals somewhere between Kate Bush and Elizabeth Fraser, an intro that quickly gives way to some straight up eighties style MTV pop, a la Tears For Fears, all wooshing and emotional and dramatic, but so awesome. Not sure if this would be quite as appealing to someone who hadn't grown up on this kind of stuff, but for those of us who did, it's pretty irresistible. The next song is all electronic drums, and super processed soaring female vocals, squiggly synths, electric piano, and more super dramatic soaring choruses.
Our favorite so far is probably "Graveyard Girl", with its Cranberries-esque intro, all big jangling guitars, and crooned vocals, the melody super sweet and melancholy, drifting over swooning synths and a relentless rhythm, this is perfect pop, harmonies and hooks, all filtered through that particular time. It helps that there's a video that pretty much perfectly captures the spirit of the song. With a cute gothy girl who visits the pet cemetery and leaves dog toys and kibble on gravestones, pining after the cute boy. Filmed all fuzzy and old, so it looks just like out memories feel. There's even a spoken word part in the middle, delivered by a young girl, talking about loneliness and love, it's pretty perfectly heart wrenching. And then the artwork, all fuzzed out photos of various teens, the jock, the goth girl, the cute guy, the hot girl, the nerd, the punk, all hanging out in some sun dappled park on a Saturday, killing time, being young.
The whole record is like that, so totally moving and jubilant and emotional and slightly cheesy but in a really good way. Whether they're channeling the electronic skitter of New Order, or the fluttery dramatic pop of Kate Bush, or the jangle rock bombast of the Hooters, it's the very best kind of retro. It all makes us feel either really really old, or secretly sort of young again. Or like we're in some awesome eighties teen movie. Regardless, we love it, and can't seem to stop listening to it...
Magic Leaves has all the elements of things we love to listen to on Sundays. Sunny pop, soft psych-tinged harmonies, and catchy songs that get stuck in our heads for days. Reminiscent of Emitt Rhodes, Paul McCartney and Olivia Tremor Control, Magic Leaves are a more simplified lo-fi heir-apparent to the Beatlesy pop we often go nuts for, but no less charming. A very sweet debut!
Another backroom discovery, we got these more than a year ago, and somehow they never made it out on the floor. This trio of Australia underground vets have teamed up for some gorgeous sprawling free rock / free jazz weirdness. Warm and languid, abstract and pretty dreamy, taking guitars, vocals and drums, some feedback and processing, and even a bit of saxophone, into a weird blend of Necks like jazzy minimalism, and slow burning post rock ambience, like the Dirty Three covering the Dead C! All deep reverby guitars, sizzling cymbals, creaking bits of percussion, soft swirls of effects, very moody and fuzzy and ethereal. Some female vocals surface here and there, a soft torch songy croon over the smoldering post jazz skitter underneath, building to something a bit more abstract, a little more noisy, the cymbals still unleashing clouds of metallic shimmer, deep distant rumbles and whirs, some spidery guitars, and some woozy washed out ambience.
As the end draws near, the drone grows a bit more caustic, multiple layers of cymbals and soft feedback, and muted barely there low end, drift and swirl into a gorgeously hazy near static drone, rife with overtones and subtly shifting barely there melodies, and again, that skeletal guitar reaches up from the murk, grounding the free drift in something slightly more postrock, before closing off with a sub 2 minute outro, all angular Marc Ribot like guitar and breathless female vocals, haunting and quite pretty.
Think Necks, Bohren, Dirty Three, For Carnation, but a bit more avant and abstract, quite lovely...
