Not sure how it happened, but the last Aethenor full length completely passed us by. We had it in the shop, but just never got around to reviewing, not cuz we didn't want to, or because it wasn't awesome, it was, it's just that we get so much stuff, as hard as we try, we can never seem to get to it all.
Well we won't let it happen with this one, Faking Gold & Murder, the latest from the 'supergroup' known as Aethenor, featuring one Mr. Stephen O'Malley, who plays in a few other bands you've probably heard of, as well as guys from Guapo and Shora. Oh, and that David Tibet guy. Current 93, you know. Anyway, the sound is maybe not what you'd expect, eschewing the roiling crush of O'Malley's other groups, and the wild psych prog of Guapo. Instead, Aethenor traffic in some sort of otherworldly avant abstract prog, or something, black ambient free folk drift maybe, it's actually pretty difficult to describe.
Four long songs, numbered instead of titled. The group offering up a lush backdrop of rumbling guitars and keening high end, bursts of dense drumming, billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, moaning minor key melodies, very abstract but not minimal, a very active, roiling sea of sound, over which Tibet does his thing, singing, speaking, testifying, hard not to compare it to C93, maybe if Current 93 were way heavier and splattered with wild drumming, but the same sort of primal alchemical vibe. The tracks do occasionally coalesce into something more propulsive, offering up grinding slow motion riffage, weird looped soundscapes, clattery almost free jazz, thick crumbling distorted walls of guitars, woozy minor key piano, wheezing organ, plenty of bombast and bluster, but also plenty of hushed whisper and delicate drift, all presided over by Tibet, whose high priest vocals perfectly suit the strange blackened backgrounds. Cool stuff. Fans hankering for that old Current 93 sound, well some of this might be the closest you'll get these days, and anyone into the dark and droney, the mystical and mysterious, the heavy and abstract, enter the temple and bow your head in reverence, the ritual has begun.
Gorgeous packaging, super thick three panel, metallic gold on black, letterpressed cardstock sleeves.
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Not too long ago we reviewed the recent reissues (on the Garden of Delights label) of the first two albums by this AQ-beloved krautrock band, an outfit up there with Pink Floyd, Ash Ra Tempel, Wishbone Ash, Can, Guru Guru, etc. in our book of cool '70s psych/prog.
Recorded live in 1973 and '74, and then originally released in '76, this is Agitation Free's third album (and, at the time, final album -- though there's been other posthumous live/archival releases since then). We thought since everybody likes their first two so much we ought to tell you about "Last"! Basically, if you liked the wide-open, psychedelic jamming guitars and electronic experimentation of Agitation Free's "Malesch" or "Second" you'll want to check this one out too. The three cosmic, spacey instrumental tracks here include a version of the lovely "Laila II" from their second album, and bits from their first. And track three, the VERY spacey, minimalist rock of "Looping IV" (which, at 23 minutes, covered the original LP's entire B-side), will lull you into a beatific trance just as well as anything by today's expert space/drone bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Landing, or Kinski...
It's been refreshing to see a new wave of female experimentalists emerge over the last few years. Grouper, Inca Ore, Avocet, there's something sweetly sinister about these female vocalists, like a siren's call from a distant sea. And thankfully Important records has answered this call, and brings forth a truly incredible new release from the female duo Anahita, the divine collaboration between Helena Espvall, distinguished cellist and member of the widely known Espers, and Tara Burke, also known as Fursaxa. Anahita, named after the Iranian goddess of fertility and water, together sculpt an absolutely gorgeous post-apocalyptic soundtrack, Eastern melodies bowed over layers of flute and secret hymns, deep drones emerging from cracks in the earth, the desert is still and bleak, but the air is filled with somber melody. Recorded straight to 4-track, Matrkaria was recorded between 2005 and 2008. Quiet, organic percussion sets the pace for desert dirges, and distant mirages appear and vanish all at once. Super beautiful and super bleak, Matrkaria is one of the most compelling and magical debuts we've heard in awhile. Think of a darker, dronier and more mystical Suarasma, not as rhythmic and much more transcendental and free-form. Take our advice and don't miss out on this incredible release from these two drone-folk priestesses!
We listed a split record between these guys, Anapparatus, and a band called Llange a while back, both bands doing their own version of the metallic post rock thing. Llange were definitely more of that sort of Godspeed / Explosions thing, but Anapparatus took their post metal whatever and injected some serious screamo into the mix, which definitely hit the spot.
When we got that split, they also sent us a handful of an older ep, and boy what a difference a year or two makes, the Anapparatus of old shows no sign of post rock, or post metal, or whatever you want to call it, instead they are full on mathy post punk screamo metal grind. Furious tempos, insane drumming, incredible riffing, buzz and blast, howled vocals, every song a lurching, sweat soaked, basement destroying, ultra dense math metal workout.
Sure they bliss out here and there, get all moody and doomy now and again, and there are melodies and hooks everywhere, and the recording is so good, the band sound loud and heavy and like you're right there in the pit about to get crushed by a volley of stage divers, but even in the frenzied fury of these short sweet songs, they also manage to inject a little Drive Like Jehu into the proceedings, making for some serious dense, complex post punk heaviness. No idea why these guys aren't HUGE, but we've practically been listening to nothing else since we first got these in.
Packaged in a full color sleeve, pressed onto one of those 3 inch cds embedded in a 5" plastic disc, super striking looking, and a killer bargain, eight songs, 22 minutes, 6 bucks. WAY recommended.
Arkha Sva are another one of our favorite black metal bands, who for whatever reason, have yet to appear on out list save for one solitary cassette listed way back in 2006. But holy shit, these guys are amazing, from Japan, these guys, along with aQ faves Avsolutized (who it's rumored might share a member or two) as well as Manierisme, make up a whole scene that seems to be lurking well beneath the underground, but we can't imagine for long, as the music of these bands is mind blowing, at once beholden to the BM that came before, but so much its own entity.
Arkha Sva create a soundworld both buzzy and murky, lo-fi, with tangled arrangements, droney blasting blackness, so super atmospheric and evocative, managing to be grim and buzzy, but also haunting and intense, with some of the most insane vocals ever, a wildly operatic shriek, that will later define the band's sound, but here only pops up once or twice, more often existing as a harsh howled hellish growl.
This disc collects two early tapes from 2005, and finds the band much more raw and primitive and rough, the sound only hinting at the more outsider and avant elements that would surface later. But in 2005, Arkha Sva were creating super grim, ultra murky buzz drenched black rituals. Channelling the spirit of the black legions, Mutiilation, Belktre, Vlad Tepes (one of the Black Legions members does all the cryptic calligraphy on AS records!), this is fierce and furious lo-fi blackness, the buzzing guitars a muddy swirl, the drums a throbbing murky pulse, all underpinning guttural strangled vocalisations, a swirling fuzzy black missive to the dark lord, there are some strange sonic surprises tucked away, most notably the aforementioned WAY louder-than-everything-else high pitched scream and weird falsetto. But for the most part this is just an awesome, droney blast of murky black buzz that is as hypnotic and space-y as it is blown out and brutal. They even do a couple covers, Mutiilation and Belketre!
So so so recommended. And we suggest you do whatever you can to get everything you can by these guys, and we can guarantee that their next full length will be an epochal moment in black metal. People freaking out over Paysage and Darkspace and whoever else might just find themselves switching their allegiance.
And check out this awesome live clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpuBqeCdOCM
Hailing from Poland, Artefactum is a project self-described as 'female esoterica' by the sole member, Merissa d'Erlette. Throughout her handful of releases, she's wrapped her dark ambience and occasional neo-classical sounds in the traditions of alchemy and hermeticism, pushing toward the more baroque ends of the Cold Meat Industry catalogue. Here, Artefactum offers a suitably mysterious set of recordings for the much-lauded Drone Records series of singles. Wordless vocals haunt the halls of these two recordings, as they form dark shadows that flicker alongside ghostly fragments of orchestral samples and bowed metallic drones. Rhythms from hand drums pulse in time with dark rumblings on one of the two tracks, creating a murky, moody atmosphere worthy of being the music of a secret society ritual of your choice. Limited to 300 copies with decoupage artwork and sewn shut with a pink ribbon.
It's a weird thing, but we've always noticed that musicians, especially avant outsider musicians (and even then ESPECIALLY metal musicians) seemed inordinately fond of electronic music. Every time a band would come in the store, they would head straight for the electronic section and end up buying a bunch of weird techno or jungle or whatever.
Which then might make it less surprising that recently some of our favorite noise makers seem to be heading in that direction with their own music. Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel is gone, and in its place, Our Love Will Destroy The World, whose first record was indeed some bastardized dance music, a strange hybrid of blurred buzzy drone music, and thumping club jamz. Similarly, Neil Campbell, aka Astral Social Club has been peppering his recent record with similarly club worthy jamz, but again, those sounds still soaked in the same sort of blissed out psychedelic ambience that most people associate with his Astral Social Club.
For this latest full length, Campbell once again starts things off with a track that would almost sound more at home on Planet Mu than VHF. A skittery bloopfest, with a thick grinding synth bass line, and bloopy bleepy beats, but all wreathed in processed guitars and blurred soft focus buzz, which leads right into the second track, still electronic, but not actually danceable, it sounded more like a club jam on 45, the beats stumbling over one another, like a jumbled, almost hyper speed Pierre Bastien, a million little mechanical men, spewing a symphony of clicks and bleeps and loops, all wound around buried melodies and long thick streaks of hiss and fuzz.
We kept expecting things to switch gears, and for the sound to gradually bliss out into the more 'traditional' ASC sound, long form ur-drones more along the lines of Sunroof! or Skullflower, but most of us were hoping just the opposite, that maybe he'd push further, take ASC somewhere no band like that had really felt at home, the dancefloor, albeit, some strange seriously fucked up and drug addled ALIEN dancefloor. And so he has, for the most part. The first half of the record is indeed, all fractured beats, and warped loops, woozy tripped out grooves, effects swirling and whirling everywhere, the beats playful and not quite funky, stuttery skittery, and seriously fun. This is the kind of stuff that just might lure the perpetual wallflowers out onto that dancefloor.
BUT!!! Hidden between the opening salvo of beats and loops, and the closing outer space house jam, lurks some of the prettiest droned out ambience we've heard from ASC. Processed glitchery, smeared into grainy expanses of glistening blur and shimmery starburst, draped with delicate melodies, gradually growing into a glorious wall of warm fuzz, super thick grinding buzz, smoothed into hypnotic loops and pulsing soundscapes, a more caffeinated Tim Hecker, gauzy and washed out but propulsive and kinetic, glorious sun baked upper register blow outs, wrapped around crystalline acoustic guitars, all woven into a wheezing heaving whole, some sort of super abstract avant garde raga, and finally, a brief but fantastical tangle of crunch and buzz, off hiss and glitch, warped melodies and damaged arrangements, lo-fi tape hiss slithers beneath stuttering chopped up samples, again all blurred into something dreamlike and bleary eyed. WOW.
It all might seem a little schizophrenic, and it is, but it's also the best of both worlds, and the key being that the more beat oriented tracks, are still able to function like the more ambient drone based sounds, if you're laying in the dark, headphones strapped on, those beats might not induce you to shake your tail feathers, but they'll still be able to suck you under, to transport you to some crazed soundworld, to totally mesmerize and hypnotize, which makes the whole record either the weirdest most fucked up electronic dance record EVER, or quite possibly just the best Astral Social Club release so far. Maybe both...
Well, the folk may be less present, but the freak is still going strong as ever. And why shouldn't he be when he's the charmed breather of life into this strange Topanga Canyon cocktail party. No, Neil Young couldn't make it, neither could Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, or any of the usual suspects you might expect from ground zero of the west coast singer-songwriter renaissance in the seventies. Instead Devendra and cohorts with their ever-changing band names (Hairy Fairy, Navajo Gospel, White Rainbow Moccassin Woman, and lately The Spiritual Boner) have imported some remarkably far-flung musical touch-stones. From Vegas Elvis to Caetano Veloso to J.J. Cale. Throw in a little Byrds with a pinch of Led Zeppelin, add some Lover's Rock, some Post-Tropicalia, a bit of gender-bending, a taste of gospel and even a hint of Al Jolson mixed with Allan Sherman. It's a pretty daring concoction that, with a couple of notable exceptions (The treacly gospel choir of "Saved" and the cringe-inducing doo-wop of "Shabop Shalom"), works rather brilliantly. It's definitely a stretching-out record with Devendra bravely exploring more theatrical musical niches that would terrify most artists, and while at moments it can border on cheese, for the most part it's got some of the best songwriting, band performances and production that he's committed to wax (or plastic) so far. Deluxe edition features full color booklet of Devendra's lyrics, drawings and paintings. Recommended!
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep hitting and soul satisfying drone anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, they finally have a release that while still limited will at least get to reach a lot more ears then anything they've put out so far. These are sounds that deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare when you hear one that you really feel true soul and spirited passion from. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The lp format suits the duo so well, as their songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just listened to one side over and over and over before we even moved on to the second side with which we then did the same. There is both patience and payoff in Barn Owl's sound. Music that makes you want to close your eyes because you know you are entranced by atrists that know so well what they are doing. While they pressed up way more lps than anything else they've released, it's all relative, meaning these LP's are not going to be around too long, in fact we weren't even able to get as many as we ordered. Highly recommended, but act fast!
Loss is an apt title in describing a sensibility that we find super compelling in music, each list tends to have at least one example of a record that taps into the ideas behind the nostalgic loss of memory and the triggers that cause those memories to flood back into consciousness. For an example, have a gander at the introductory paragraph of the review of Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet. Bass Communion's Loss, while not exactly aesthetically sympathetic to Mr. Hecker's pixel smear masterpiece, shares the sensorial drama of residual sounds evoking things past. Steven Wilson, the sole proprietor of Bass Communion, has commented that Loss is an extension of the ideas he previously investigated on Ghosts On Magnetic Tape, which related to the parapsychological research into the Electronic Voice Phenomena, whereby voices (presumably from beyond the grave) break through mediated sound in order to communicate with the living. Of course, that record complete with its spectral droning clouds of sound went over quite well here at Aquarius; and its follow-up does not dissapoint. Sourced from reverb saturated piano, old 78 RPM records, and supposedly a vibraphone, Wilson offers yet another compelling perspective upon the nature of memory and loss through a spartan and occassionally grim unveiling of drones and low-end piano notes.
Included in both 5.1 (as heard on the DVD component of this twin set), and as a regular CD.
Folks may not be able to pronounce Ithdabquth Qliphoth, and probably have no idea what it means, but that most definitely didn't keep the recent IQ disc from being a runaway hit around these parts. And heck, we sort of knew it would be, being heavy, noisy, blown out raw black metal from Russia, steeped in bizarre mythologies, the sound as fractured and fucked up as it is grim black and buzzing.
So in the interest of digging deeper into the Qliphoth mythos, we managed to track down a handful of these splits, not new, released back in 2006, but until now we had given up hope of ever getting them for the store. But here they are, we have about 20, not sure if there are more to be had, so if we run out (when is probably more realistic), please be patient as we try to get our hands on more, cuz needless to say, fans of freaky black metal and weirdo outsider blackness, as well as ANYONE who bought that Qliphoth disc, will most likely want (NEED!) this too.
Which is not to say that it sounds anything like Ithdabquth Qliphoth, because it doesn't really. The Hammer Ov Qliphoth here is wielded by Al-La-Sht-Orr, one half of the IQ duo, and his half of this split is a mournful, midtempo, doom drenched black metal. Minor key guitars, simple circular riffing, the vocals a murky growl, the drums simple and solid, the pace a glacial crawl, sometimes slipping into a slowish midtempo plod. Super evocative and atmospheric, morose and moody, probably more for folks into depressive miserbalist doooooom than black metal, but fear not, it's harsh and grim enough to retain much of its blackness. Three tracks, the first two loping dismal dirges, surprisingly melodic, the main riffs almost punky if they were faster, but slowed down, it almost sounds like Darkthrone at 16rpm, slightly dissonant, mesmerizingly repetitive, droney, the final track might be our favorite, a super sloooooow, spaced out plod, the vocals and guitars locked into a strange sea sick slow motion rhythm, tons of space, the bursts of crushing heaviness held together by spidery guitar melodies, the whole thing suffused with buzz and hum and grit, super distorted and in-the-red, but weirdly melodic and pretty. Worth it already for sure. But the other half of the split might be even better. It's definitely weirder, and way more twisted.
Blackness hail from Belarus, and are a duo, which only stops making sense once you hear them, since they sound to these ears, like one guy, a guitar and a 4 track. Ultra raw, stripped down buzzing black metal, but just guitars and vocals, no drums, no keyboards, almost like some sort of black metal Jandek. Our listening to scratch tracks from some classic old school BM record. The riffs are awesome, brittle and grim and definitely lo-fi, the vocals harsh and WAY up in the mix so they totally overpower the guitar, a surprising amount of melody though, very harsh and haunting, but really cool, odds are you've probably never heard anything like this, and hell we're dying to hear more.
LIMITED TO 280 COPIES. We have about 20. Might be the last copies we can get. Packaged in one of those oversized super jewel cases, with nice full color textured inserts, and each copy hand numbered.
Blood Cult are as far as we know, the only purveyors of Redneck Black Metal around, or maybe more accurately the only ones who admit to it. And Blood Cult are damn proud of being BM rednecks, as their apparent theme song "Redneck Black Metal" proves (oh, and it's printed in huge letters along the spine of the cd!). This is the first proper release from this Illinois horde after a slew of cd-r, cassettes and demos. Definitely their best -sounding- record by a long shot, equal parts splatter rock, crossover, early black metal, NWOBHM, and thrash. Think Venom, D.R.I., the Accused -- primitive and thrashy, noisy and chaotic, with some killer riffs n' some splattery chaotic drumming. They're definitely a little tongue in cheek for sure with some of the lyrics and song titles ("The Moweaqua Coal Mine Disaster", "Cheap Guitars", "Illinoisan Thunder", etc.). This boasts some killer catoony artwork too, from the same label that brought us Enbilulugugal!!
Finally!!! New music from The Body, who at one time, might just have ranked as one of, if not THE, favorite heavy band around these parts. Their self titled debut is incredible (and sadly out of print), a dizzying mix of post rock, ultra doom, and sludge metal, with a penchant for mathy rhythms, lots of space, and some seriously anguished vocals.
They released a super limited cd-r a bit later (which we have more of for a very short time, see elsewhere on this list!) which was more of the same, and included a totally over the top Judas Priest cover, the original totally transformed, which then leads us to this, a brand new tour ep, ALL covers, and not the sort of covers you might expect from a band like the Body, which is precisely why we love these guys so much.
Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and, wait for it, Sinead O'Connor. Yep. Hard to believe but it works, and they don't just turn it into a pointless sludgefest, they have obvious affection for the original. But before we get to "Black Boys On Mopeds", let's run through the other covers first.
Crass's "Do They Owe Us A Living" is all buzzing low end, and tribal drumming. The vocals a processed feral bark, the whole thing lurching and lumbering and seriously harrowingly intense. Makes the original sound like a lullaby. The Danzig track is a loping low slung groove, with a fierce downtuned riff, and hysterical shrieking vocals, the band totally own it, and again, add untold heaviness and harshness to the original. Black Flag's "Police Story" is pulled apart and gutted, before exploding into a punk rock frenzy, who knew a sludge band could rock so hard? It's a muddy, murky free for all, not that far removed from the original other than the downtuned guitars and the insane vox.
And finally, "Black Boys On Mopeds", a gorgeous sprawling dirge, and wisely the band opted to get some help with the vocals, a gorgeous female voice, underpinned by howled shrieked back up vocals way off in the distance, the bulk of the song a single buzzing throbbing note stretched out into a thick undulating drone, the rhythm a metronome like clack buried in the mix, the end gets all trippy and dubbed out, but damn if this isn't creepier and prettier than the original.
The Body is back, and we couldn't be happier. Now someone just needs to sign these guys and give them tons of money so they can finally put out a new full length!!!!!
The return of the Body! We've been chomping at the bit, waiting for these sludgelords to come up with record number two, might still be a while, but in the meantime we've got this super limited 20 minute cd-r ep to tide us over. Four tracks of abstract sludge doom. Think a more skeletal Khanate, with dubbed out drums, and replace Alan Dubin's vocals, with a hysterical shriek bordering on Bathtub Shitter territory. Weird but so fucking cool and creepy. Massive sheets of blacktar guitars, sometimes a grinding trudge through a viscous cloud of noxious grime, at others, a slow motion stumble through stark post rock territory, one track features a doom dub breakdown, where the snare sort of carreens lazily in a wide open spce before eventually being stomped flat by a wall of anvil guitars, another track is peppered with creepy soundbites, adding to the paranoid creepiness. The final track, a Judas Priest cover (!) is a blown out white noise drenched dirge, crumbling and crushing. Fuck yeah.
Packaged in a cool hand stamped cardboard sleeve. SUPER LIMITED so act fast!
Seeing this Tucson band live is such a true joy! In a dream world, there'd be a Calexico gig at a cozy little venue right around the corner from our store (just like they did a couple years ago at the Make-Out Room... sigh!) once a month (at least!). Alas, the chances of that happening are pretty much zero. So we must catch glimpses every chance we get in between their few and far between big venue concerts. This dvd serves that purpose wonderfully well! It captures fifteen songs from their September 13, 2006 performances for the Austin City Limits television show. Yes, that was right around the time of the release of their awesome fifth full length, the '70s classic pop/rock leaning Garden Ruin (and around the time of the abovementioned intimate show). Hence, there's plenty of songs from that album! Excellent! Yay! Yay! Recommended! (And remember, even Andee's non-show going Mom made it out to see them and was totally blown away!)
If you got the chance to record and play music in a Geodesic Dome off the coast of Northern California, wouldn't you form a band just for the occasion? Well that's the modus operandi of this strangely monikered band made up of former members of Zen Guerilla and friends, who ventured up to Point Arena (an area rife with Utopian minded dwellings including the Sea Ranch) for this once in a lifetime opportunity. But don't expect this to sound like Zen Guerilla's trashy MC5-inspired garage R&B, instead Carlton Melton experiment with a sound more sonically befitting to the dome's acoustic resonance, Space Rock! Equally krauty, droney, and at times cosmically ramshackle, Carlton Melton channel White Hills, Wooden Shjips, Cave, bits of Kinski, Steve Hillage, and of course the less proto-metal leanings of Hawkwind with dual guitars, bass and organ hypnotically riffing through the domed stratosphere. Trippy and Limited!!!!!
This one somehow slipped by us back in October... actually right around the same time that another seemingly likeminded album was haunting our ears - Dark Developments by Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power & Amorphous Strums. We're really sorry it did because it's a fine companion! If you've dug the recent collaborations that Mr. Chesnutt has been up to with various artists on the Constellation Records roster (aka Godspeed You Black Emperor, Hangedup, A Silver Mt. Zion, et al), the Castanets' latest full length will surely please! No, there's no sign of the Chesnutt, but main man Ray Raposa's vocal delivery is quite often a deadringer for him or maybe somewhere between that and Carla Bozulich whose Evangelista band is also very much a kin!
An overriding sense of despair permeated City Of Refuge. The lonesome ghostly twang and looming gloomy atmospheres offer a gravity unheard on any other Castanets recordings that have come before. An ultra bleak beauty!
Certain bands around these parts don't really need much more than a "NEW RECORD OUT NOW" style announcement to get their fans all in a tizzy. Those groups engender a certain sort of slavish worship and maniacal obsession, that used to be reserved for top 40 bands and their teenage minions. But heck, what's wrong with loving a band enough to want it all?! Everything they do, every cd, ep, lp, 7", whatever. A list of those bands will probably look mighty familiar to most of you, and will quite possibly elicit that record nerd Pavlovian response that even we can never quite seem to shake. SUNNO))), Boris, Corrupted, Earth, and yes of course Circle. Longtime readers of the aQ New Arrivals list are well aware of our obsession with Circle, odds are most of them share it, as well as a certain obsession with Finnish music in general, but Circle are for sure our favorite group of musical Finns. And for good reason.
Going on two decades, Circle have managed to take a simple sound, and twist it all up, keeping it fresh and exciting and surprising, a sort of hypnotic and yes CIRCULAR sound, simple arrangements, repetitive riffing, motorik drumming, a little kraut rock, a little space rock, but Circle have taken those sounds and run them through the wringer, transforming them into murky mantra like hypno rock for one record, bombastic eighties style metal for another, long brooding dronescapes for one disc, majestic triumphant over the top prog for another, and never hesitating to mix and blur and blend their various sounds and personas to suit their whim and whimsy.
For those folks who have seen Circle live, they understand the magic of this band, the improvisation, the incredible stage presence, the killer riffing, we never would have thought a weirdo space-kraut-prog rock band from Finland could get US audience losing their shit, but we've seen it. Heck at one show, bass player Jussi Lehtisalo ripped his shirt off midsong, and we were nearly deafened by a gaggle of shrieking girls right in front of us.
But we digress, Circle rule. You know it. We know it. Live especially, which is why there are so many live records in their discography, because those songs that you've listened to a million times, sound totally different live. Thus we have Triumph, a vinyl only double lp documenting Circle's second time performing live on WFMU (the first was released as Arkades back in 2006).
Triumph was recorded in New Jersey, in 2007, on Brian Turner's show on WFMU, and finds the band tackling a couple live Circle classics, and offering up a bunch of new stuff to boot. The record begins with "Virsi", which some of you may remember from Rakennus, another live album, a total live set staple, "Virsi" finds Circle at their bombastic prog rock epic best, totally dynamic and majestic, Mika Ratto's vocals even more unhinged than usual, slipping into an almost black metal shriek, when not crooning dramatically, such a killer part, you kind of want it to go on forever, but the band slip smoothly into a super minimal circular groove, with atonal piano, and the bass and drums locked tight, sounding like some cocktail jazz combo gone krautrock, before returning to the opening bombast to finish it off.
The shorter second track is so awesome, and is either a new song, or a dramatically reworked version of an old one, but finds the band unfurling lush strings and shimmering effects, simple drumming, very proggy and dramatic but understated and smokey, very Scott Walker or Serge Gainsbourg, like some lost sixties ballad, albeit slightly tweaked.
The flipside is all spidery guitars and skittery jazzy percussion, with wild speaking-in-tongues vocals, a massive tripped out psychedelic drift, super spare and minimal, but with a relentless groove hovering right below the surface.
The second record begins with a gorgeous deep resonant shimmery drone, laced with delicate melodies, whispered vocals, spacey FX, the vocals eventually getting deeper and more dramatic, the whole thing building to an abstract almost free jazz sounding climax, a bit like a space rock torch song gradually going haywire.
Flip the record over, and we've got what might be our new favorite Circle song, a looped music box melody (or maybe a toy piano), all tangled up with soft flurries of real piano, a strange push and pull between the fluid melodies of the piano, and the mechanical loop of the toy piano, the end result sounds a bit like some strange hybrid of Lubomyr Melnyk and Pierre Bastien. Machinelike, meditative, repetitive and hypnotic, the various notes and tones building into a gorgeous swirl of melodic fragments and splintering sonic overtones. So awesome.
And finally, the band finish off with another live staple, "Murheenkryyni", also found on Rakennus, but again, it's a whole 'nother beast here, the heaviest of the bunch, a total classic rock prog rock dirge, with crunchy distorted guitars, bombastic drums, and Mika's operatic howl. Yowza!
Packaged in a beautifully designed heavy gatefold sleeve, with all the liner notes printed on the lp labels, including a brief missive from Jussi of Circle about how he's worried that Brian Turner might just be losing his mind haha....
Here's ten more piano-pop gems from Colossal Yes. Both catchy and somehow laid back, this is a record for outdoor barbeques and conversations with old friends. Not overly sappy, the record walks right through sweetness and sentimentality and emerges on the other side without the ickyness of either. The ubiquitous vocal/piano/guitar combination is fleshed out nicely with the occasional flute, organ or horn, especially noticeable in "They Feast on Us / We Feed on Them" and the penultimate jazzy track, "Outskirts of Radiant". Listening to the album on headphones (always recommended) allows the give and take between guitar (panned left) and piano (panned right) to stand out. Although at times the mix feels like the piano and guitar are fighting amongst themselves for sonic hegemony, they usually compliment each other in a way that shows quality musicianship and songwriting.
Nothing excites us more then discovering a new talent at the beginning of what we know will be a long run of brilliant and inspiring releases. Such is the case with this cassette-only release from Mira Cook. While dancing is her main mode of creative expression she began playing with tape loops, recording her beautiful voice and the various instruments in her bedroom, and started to construct these wonderfully simple yet elegant songs. Eventually, those sounds and songs demanded to move beyond the confines of her four walls and into the ears of music lovers everywhere. And hopefully that will begin to happen more and more, as she's started playing shows around town and is slowly becoming more comfortable with recording herself as well.
Many of us got to see Mira play live for the first time just a few weeks ago when she played a set at Irwin aQ's film screening over at ATA. You couldn't help but be won over by her glowing presence and her lovely songs, created by building harmonies from her looped voice and her subtle instrumentation (organ, marimba, dulcimer, etc.) with totally electrifying results.
While most of the current crop of loop-based musicians seem more interested in getting lost in muddy drones (which we like lots for sure) it's so nice to hear someone who sounds so assured and you can actually hear what is being sung and feel the meaning of the songs through their ghostly repetition. We're reminded a bit of Samara Lubelski, Bjork, or what it might sound like if you could match a voice to the delicate and intimate sounds Colleen creates with her dreamy instrumentals. There is something so pure and sincere that comes across in these songs, Mira Cook is not trying to be a part of any kind of scene or sound, instead she is following a very instinctual and unique vision and we have a feeling this is going to be one of those cassettes that you will be able to brag about owning in a few years. Highly recommended!
Here's yet another record that under different circumstances could have been and yeah probably should have been a Record Of The Week. But for one thing, it's crazy expensive, and for another, it's taken us months to get enough just to list, and highlight, let alone make it ROTW. So that said, be prepared when we sell out to patiently wait while we try to get more. But for now, dig it:
Classical music by Ravel and Mussorgsky, recut, remixed, and recontextualized by techno legends Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald. The result? A gloriously plunderphonic soundscape that slips from shimmery soft focus drift, to a subtly chopped and screwed version of the original piece, to jumbled and blurred Oval-like digital collages, to skittery minimal house music, to dubbed out electronica, to groovy cinematic disco, to spaced out rhythmic ambience, well heck, needless to say, these guys basically pulled off the techno version of a kick ass Tim Hecker / Philip Jeck / Oval record.
The liner notes go into great detail about the process and the idea and the recording, but as with most records, it's the sounds that matter most, and the sounds here are divine. And the whole record somehow works as a single multi movement-ed piece. Each one drifting into the next, the segues seamless, even if the tracks are dramatically different.
The intro is a gorgeous hushed drone, laced with delicate melodies and soft breathless shimmers, almost new agey, a gorgeous ethereal drift that introduces the fanfare that will be the basis for the next few movements. And thus the first movement, a bit of dramatic fanfare, shuffling snares, stuttering horns, the arrangement is subtle, so on the surface it almost feels unaltered, but the notes seem to skitter, and overlap, creating a subtle yet dizzy march, until the second movement introduces the trill of still other horns, locked into a loop over the original, that in turn draped over the deep soft shimmer of the intro, a dense layered landscapes of sampled snares and horns, that grows more hypnotic and mesmerizing, until near the end, the first sign of added rhythms surfaces, a simple high hat pattern draped over that looped horn mesmer, building even more in the beginning of the third movement, before shifting gears completely part way through, the drums taking the lead, the Mussorgsky and the Ravel, relegated mere building blocks, samples transformed into wholly new shapes. The fourth movement follows suit, a gorgeous skittery, late night chunk of minimal Kompakt style techno, with plenty of synth buzz and dubby effects.
There's a brief interlude beginning with some jagged rhythms, and ending with some swoonsome swirling synths, which is simply preparing us for the two loooong closers.
The first, Movement 5, begins with a flurry of deep ominous horns, and dramatic strings, subtly looped into a never ending high end drone, the click in the loop a rhythmic pulse, pounded piano, all very ominous and sinister and epic, before giving way to something much more house-y and clubby, sounding a bit like a house music version of the James Bond theme, complete with those ominous horns, and plenty of sinister strings, which brings us to the final movement, quickly becoming our favorite, a woozy soundscape, all the various strings and horns muted and blurred into a slow shifting backdrop to simple stripped down percussion, distant drones, moaning strings, all hovering beneath the surface, an awesomely hypnotic main loop, and a groovy minimal rhythm, bells chiming in the distance, the backdrop gradually growing ever more ominous and atonal, but fading out completely. Leaving just the rhythm to play itself out.
So so good. Occupies some strange nether region between minimal techno, processed soundscapery, classical, new age, avant dronemusic, plunderphonics, pushes all our buttons, and most likely yours too. Gorgeously packaged like an old Deutsche Grammophon classical record, deluxe booklet with lots of photos and liner notes, and again, these have been tough to get a hold of so please be patient if we run out.
Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the brand new album Spirit Animal, by AQ faves Zombi, the horror soundtrack obsessed synth/math rock duo from Pittsburgh. So it's kind of perfect to list this too, a reissued, mostly instrumental, extremely electronic prog rock album from 1980 by Australia's Cybotron, a band who were basically the Zombi of their day, Down Under. Seriously, if the Zombi dudes are reading this, you're just the folks to whom we'd recommend this - you gotta hear it! Same goes for Zombi fans.
This Cybotron, who are not to be confused with the seminal Detroit electro act of the very same name, were a massively synth-crazed space rock act, making music full of sweeping sci-fi synth sounds, propulsive beats, vibratory pulsations, and krautrocky electronic atmospheres, eventually venturing into a proto New Wave synthpop zone too. Band leader Steve Maxwell Von Braund had spent some time in Europe in the early '70s, checking out the freak rock scene, going to see bands like Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Can and Amon Duul II, whilst buying crucial krautrock records as they came out, getting into stuff by Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel among others. Once back in Australia he soon formed Cybotron, which started off as an experimental electronics duo, but built up into a more prog rock oriented, symphonic sounding enterprise, reaching its peak on Implosion, their third and final album as a band. We'd love to hear their earlier ones, and also Von Braund's pre-Cybotron all-electronic solo record Monster Planet (which must be pretty cool if we can judge it by the cover reproduced in this cd's booklet).
The album under discussion, Implosion, definitely displays loads of influence from the '70s German kosmische krautrock artists that Von Braund and Co. enjoyed. The title track in particular, with its melodic, happy synth motifs frolicking amidst plodding, ominous rhythms and darker, dronier electronics, is VERY Cluster / Harmonia sounding. With more than a hint of John Carpenter too as it progresses, as does much of the rest of this album. Elsewhere it's easy to draw comparisons to the likes of Tangerine Dream and Novalis, as well as to contemporaneous French bands such as Heldon and Lard Free. "Black Devil's Triangle", at about 10 minutes long, is the album's most epic and mesmerizing space voyage, kind of like something by Klaus Schulze but with an added exotic, Eastern flavor to it, via squiggly synth melodies that at moments actually remind us of the music from the video game Rastan that we have here in the store. So good.
FYI, as a warning to the unyieldingly sax-adverse, there's some saxophone on the track "Encounter", which gives it more of a jazzy, '70s cop show groove. The sax returns again on "We'll Be Around", appearing along with handclaps and the rare instance of some vocoder processed chanting vocals. It's an oddly, enjoyably poppy finale to the Implosion album proper. They even released those two songs as a 7" single, which didn't exactly make the charts.
Things get perhaps a bit quirkier later in the disc, as we get into a slew of bonus tracks that's mostly material from a never-completed, more commercial follow-up to Implosion, tracks that are a bit more novelty-esque, like a New Wave take on Perry & Kingsley. We're also reminded of Art Of Noise - in fact, Cybotron do a cover of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn" (also known to the video arcade generation as the theme to "Spy Hunter" game) which was also covered by the Art Of Noise later in the '80s if we recall correctly. Fun stuff if not exactly "kosmiche". However, the last bonus track is probably the HEAVIEST thing on here, a beefed-up "guitar version" of the already killer opening track "Eureka". Obscure krautrock reference that this track vaguely reminds us of: My Solid Ground.
As with most Aztec releases, this is a fairly swanky digpack with extensive liner notes, the cd booklet also fully illustrated with vintage photos and full-color graphics.
Every now and again, it's always healthy to rock out to some good, old fashion, trashy, hard hitting, fuzz drenched garage rock. All the better if the band is trashy as heck, we're talkin' Stooges meets the Misfits, or something like that. Either way, Da Willys is a garage punk machine, too cool for school with a KILLER female vocalist who sounds remarkably like to Danzig. YES! Pretty straight-forward stuff, guitar driven songs full of drunken swagger and bad boy (or girl) aggression and raw energy. Exactly how we like it.
After much sought after cd-r, vinyl & cassette releases Death Sentence: Panda! are back with a full on widely distributed full length and it's great that finally more folks will get a chance to get caught up in the band's electrifying spell of no wave inspired spazziness and postmodern rhythm & freakout. Think Teenage Jesus & The Jerks playing the last OOIOO record and you start to get a feeling of what kind of spirited ruckus this trio creates. No shortage of energy, imagination and color in these songs that come bursting out of the speakers waiting to hit your ears and make your body start twisting, turning and moving in all kinds of frantic frenetic ways...
We sure do love Decibel. Covers tons of music we love, and does it with a sense of humor. Plus John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has a monthly column, one of the few metal mags we read on a regular basis besides Terrorizer.
This month it's ALL GRINDCORE! Pig Destroyer, Repulsion, Mick Harris, Napalm Death on the cover, Extreme Noise Terror, Defeatist, Graf Orlock, Kill The Client, Cripple Bastards, Phobia, Maruta and more! Also a special on Pornogrind, and best of all, the Decibel Hall OF Fame Inductee this month is Discordance Axis' groudnbreaking artgrind epic The Inalienable Dreamless!
When John Duncan sent us this collaboration with the members of Pan Sonic, he warned us that the first two tracks would be a little hard to take on headphones. Oh yes, that warning should be heeded by all, headphones or not; especially if you're expecting the electric seduction of Duncan's Phantom Broadcast. But don't let the warning scare you off; as this is an incredible fusion of caustic electronics, shortwave radio signal manipulation, and the hammering arpeggiations which have become a trademark of the Finnish techno minimalists. So Nine Suggestions begins with some 15 minutes of white-knuckle noise tightly composed from siren squall electronics, volatile data streams from shortwave utility signals, and plenty of sawtoothed abrasiveness. In this introduction, Nine Suggestions harkens to the Pan Sonic masterpiece 4CD box set Kesto, which expressed plenty of noxious intensity in its rhythmic overload. Even as the album calms considerably in the expanse of the album, Kesto still stands the most accurate comparison as that album shifts from aggression and explosion to contemplation and eerieness. In the shadowy half-melodies, tectonic rumblings, nocturnal drones, dental drill vibrations, submariner sonar pings, and delicate modulation of electronic tones found within the latter two-thirds of Nine Suggestions, Duncan, Vainio, and Vaisanen have created something that really is as one would expect from these high-calliber artists. Highly recommended!
Ostensibly a black metal record, A Sword Of Death For The Prince seems more like sort of an abstract experimental industrial dark ambient record. Or something. Actually, to be totally honest, we're not sure what the hell it is. We are sure of one thing though, this is quite possibly the weirdest fucking record we've ever heard. Reverby riffs, not distorted at all, sort of clangy and chime-y, are struck violently and sent into space to hang there in wide open expanses of haunting creaks and drones, everything heavily delayed, so each riff sort of reverberates into the ether, echoing endlessly, with creepy almost spoken vocals also drenched in delay. It's like someone took a pop record, took out ALL the song structures and all the melodies, ran the whole thing through a bank of effects peddles and then had King Tubby make a dub version of the whole thing. Like songs by Wolf Eyes or the Dead C being reinterpreted by Benighted Leams. Riffs and notes are spit out seemingly haphazardly, as they careen back and forth, echoing and colliding with vocals and all the notes that follow. This is one of those records, that is either so completely high concept that no matter how hard we try, we will not be able to wrap our puny minds around it, or it's just some kid fucking around with a 4 Track and his first delay pedal. Either way, we LOVE it. So completely damaged and far out and WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD.
Last year, in our never ending quest for the weirdest black metal ever, we discovered the mysterious and perplexing Emit. And while technically they may in fact be black metal, realistically, they are more of some sort of ambient, ethereal, damaged drone outfit, spewing a deconstructed, abstract whatthefuck crash, clang and creep. Definitely black, but more in mood than sound. Either way, we were totally taken and were super psyched to discover a new record from these freaks, a split with Vrolok, more on them later. On their half of this split, Emit start off the proceedings with all vocals, the first track a soft shimmery swirl of ghostly reverbed vocals, floating and drifting, the second track is more vocals, this time some sort of monkish chant, low and liturgical, over a whirring distant drone. It's only by track three, that any sort of 'metal' becomes evident, but even then, it's metal of the most abstract fucked up kind. A buzzing blasting burst of lo-fi blackness, that starts of blazing but as it forges forward it falls apart more and more, each separate element becoming more distorted and more twisted and tweaked, until it's like listening to Darkthrone on a transistor radio through an endless series of funhouse mirrors. Woah! The rest of the tracks delve deeply into a dark realm of medieval ambient drones, a sort of more damaged Abruptum, with haunting atonal detuned guitars, and creepy tiny monster vocals, occasional bursts of super distorted black buzz and sonic shrapnel, but for the most part, a dizzying onslaught of chaotic creepiness and bizarre blackness.
Vrolok while not nearly as weird as Emit, are definitely a bit more overtly black metal, but are the perfect match for Emit with their furious and fucked up black buzz. From the tumultuous blast of blazing lo-fi blackness of the first track "Hellchoir (Pestilence 1440)", a snarling, squirming riff, tangled up with lightspeed blast beats and buried under all sorts of suffocating sonic sludge, to the weird martial soundscape of "Black Chemical Waltz", a super blown out simple drum beat, amidst swirls of subsonic drones and buzzing weirdness peppered with creepy distorted snatches of found sound and bits of conversation, to the epic blackness of "Inverse Devotion" sounding like a glorious collision between Xasthur and Immortal, albeit recorded on a busted 4-track, to the epic closer "Between The Astral Shades", which starts off as a shimmering creeped out ambient soundscape, turns into what sounds like Bathory recorded in a high school gymnasium, and finally morphs into an ultra distorted seasick black dirge, replete with anguished howls and washed out black drone guitars, the whole thing blurring into a glorious blackened dronedrenched waltz.
More absolutely essential bizarre blackness for sure!
Oh man, have we been waiting for this. Been ages since we heard from the mighty Enbilulugugal, and who better to share a split with those blacknoize freaks, than redneck black metallers Blood Cult?
So yeah, Blood Cult first, who we've raved about in the past, from Illinois, with a singer who moonlights as a country singer, who are seriously twisted and whose sound is like classic Scandinavian black metal, run through the raw primitive scum of Von, and then peppered with all sorts of weirdness, samples, clean guitars, catchy melodies, strange falsetto vocals, and whatever weird shit they can cram into a song.
Their half of the split starts off with some strange movie samples, than then explodes into what sounds like some furious grindcore before the band inject some strange spidery post rocky guitars, some haunting childlike vocals, and then more samples. But then the next track drops and it's as serious as all get out, dark and buzzy, with an incredible main hook, the riff churning, the drums blasting, but it's Blood Cult, so there's some weird twangy breakdown in the middle, that sounds a bit like the Butthole Surfers! The track after that is all strange keyboards and tribal drumming, mysterious vocals, the sound almost new wave, and a bit surfy. Later on they totally steal a Fleetwood Mac riff and blacken it all up. What the fuck? These guys are so amazing. Anyone who slept on We Who Walk Behind The Rows, the last BC full length needs to get into these guys. So fucked up and bizarre and heavy and genius. In fact, what the heck, we'll relist that record so check elsewhere on this list and if you don't own it already, do the right thing! You won't regret it.
But Blood Cult are only fucked up and demented sounding when they're NOT up against Enbilulugugal, who are indeed, one of the most freaky and damaged sounding black metal bands EVER. Think Faxed Head if they were black metal, and you might be getting close. Most of what they do is only barely black metal, instead it's like noise, and Butthole Surfers, and fucked up punk rock, and blacknoize, and D-beat and grindcore all tangled up into one seriously confusional chunk of blackened noise drenched whatthefuck.
Guitars buzz maniacally, shrieking hysterical vocals draped over everything, tons of sample and film clips, wild chaotic drumming, their sound slipping from punkish ultra raw pound to, chunky eighties style metal, to freaked out grind, to total damaged noise. Lo-fi, and accidentally experimental, the vocals totally remind us of Dr. Rockzo, the rock and roll clown from Metalocalypse, which is a VERY good thing. We always talk about how we're constantly on the search for the most retarded, fucked up, demented and bizarre black metal, but bands like Enbilulugugal (are there bands like Enbilulugugal) pretty much ruin the curve.
As always awesome high school rock binder, seventies van black metal cover art, and as always, we say YOU NEED THIS.
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 anyone heavy and feedback laden, like Moss, Bunkur, Boris, Dot [.], Cavity, Corrupted, Khanate, Iron Monkey, Grief, Wellington, Acid Bath, Garadama, etc.
So we were so psyched to discover that EHG's first three discs were getting the deluxe reissue treatment. Elsewhere on this list we review In The Name Of Suffering, most people's fave EHG record, their third, Dopesick, and this one, Andee's favorite Eyehategod record, Take As Needed For Pain.
Their debut was a hateful, feedback drenched trawl through a world of sludge, creeping and slithering, uncompromisingly brutal and crushingly heavy. Pretty much defining the sound of ALL sludge to come. With Take As Needed For Pain, they added a little bit of that NOLA groove (you know, Down, Superjoint Ritual, Acid Bath, Crowbar, Soilent Green, Goatwhore, etc.) to their sound, making their plodding shrieking sludge, a tiny bit more melodic and dare we say, catchy at moments. But take that with a grain of salt, melodic and catchy for a band like Eyehategod is still about a million times more caustic and corrosive than almost any other -heavy- band. It's really strange to revisit these EHG records and realize how many bands these days sound EXACTLY LIKE EYEHATEGOD!!! It's almost criminal. Sort of similar to the way SUNNO))) were basically an Earth tribute band, it's almost like EVERY one of the new breed of sludge bands is in fact an Eyehategod tribute band. But hey, who's complaining, it's a dark and disturbing sound we can never seem to get enough of. And as long as EHG are getting the props they deserve, then hell, bring on the sludge!!! Fans of ANY of the above mentioned bands who do not own this, are required by ALL THAT IS UNHOLY to pick this up immediately!!!!!!
As far as bonus tracks, Take As Needed For Pain is probably the best of bunch, 3 tracks from the long out of print Ruptured Heart Theory 7", a track from the also long OOP split 7" with 13, and two tracks from another long gone 7", another split with fellow sludge mavens 13.
Includes revised artwork and new liner notes from EHG frontman Mike Williams.
The well of Henry Flynt music never seems to dry up. Here, billed as Dharma Warriors, Flynt collaborates with C.C. Hennix on drums on two long guitar pieces recorded to boombox in Woodstock in 1983. Like a stripped down minimalist boogie version of Rhys Chatham or Glenn Branca, Flynt brings a lo-fi backwoods zen vibe to his raw and earthy modal jamming of repetitive riffs and fuzzy chords, while Hennix ties it together with his clattering scattershot drumming. Celestial indeed!
Lately some of our favorite San Francisco musical minds have also added record label mogul to their resumes. John Dwyer launched Castle Face records to start putting out Oh Sees records and of course he released that Ty Segall full length which we are so in love with. Also newly a record label head is Kelly Stoltz (responsible for recording the latest Oh Sees album, as well as crafting some of the finest pop songs your ears are likely to hear). Chuffed is the name of his new label and The Fresh & Onlys kick things off with a debut 7" that's sure to please garage rock fans and lo-fi pop enthusiasts. Many folks might have seen the band play live without even knowing it, as they were picked to be the backing band for the legendary performance in town recently by Rodriguez in support of the reissue of his amazing album Cold Fact. Loyal AQ list readers will also be familiar with Tim from the other bands he also plays in: 3 Leafs, Black Fiction and others. Makes perfect sense that they are about to tour with Thee Oh Sees and that their full length will be on Dwyer's label, as these four songs are chock full of fuzzy hooky and raw garage pop spirit.
What's that? A whole disc of unreleased vintage Funkadelic jams?? You don't gotta say that twice, we're on it like Michael Phelps on any passing bong. Yep, we were pretty excited when this showed up here, as Funkadelic are one of our favoritest bands ever. Early '70s psychedelic funk rock genius, y'know. If you're not already hip to the whole Parliament-Funkadelic "thang" (which we don't have room to properly enthuse over here), this wouldn't be the first disc of theirs to get, though it would certainly whet your appetite to hear more. If you want our advice, noobs should pick up Maggot Brain and Up For the Down Stroke and a few other "actual" P-Funk albums first, before getting Toys. For folks who are already fans, though, we heartily recommend this disc to y'all!!
Toys features four songs with vocals and five live-in-the-studio instrumentals, the best of which really let Funkadelic axemaster Eddie Hazel show off his Jimi Hendrix inspired wah-wah wailin'. There's alternate (slower, heavier, harder) versions of "You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure" (herein called "Heart Trouble") and "The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg" (sans vocals) which appeared on later Funkadelic and Parliament records, respectively. Other tracks, like the nearly 11 minute long "Slide On In", are total (and totally badass) improvs. Though not all are so extended, to wit the brief laidback goof "2 Dollars & 2 Dimes". Meanwhile, poppier, songi-er fare includes "Talk About Jesus" (a gospel-ly tune, duh) and "Stink Finger", a bright and sunny number, which you might not guess from its title. Now, we'll admit this buried treasure ain't all gold, one of the lesser tracks here to our ears would be the just a bit too straight jazzy "Magnifunk", though this keyboard-led jam does get wilder as it goes on. But Funkadelic's throwaways are still way better than most other bands' best stuff, of course.
Also this includes an alternate "karaoke" version of the throbbing freakfunk classic from Maggot Brain, "Wars Of Armageddon", the original of which probably inspired half of that Wicked Witch album we highlighted recently. And another reason to buy Toys is for the bonus mpeg video clip, a 16mm promo film shot for "Cosmic Slop" featuring the band in outlandish outfits frolicking in the streets of New York City circa 1971. Wow. It's about the coolest thing ever. What a bunch of groovy freaks!!
Can't imagine true Funkadelic fans not wanting this. We only wish could dig up even more from the Westbound vaults! And it's nicely packaged with colorful graphics, and lengthy, enlightening liner notes by P-Funk expert Peter Bowman.
It's impossible to predict which bands will get that big break and blow up and which bands will never get all the love and glory they deserve. It seems like the Gris Gris were always on the verge of their big break but for one reason or another it never seemed to happen, and we're not sure why. To our ears they were one of the most impressive and refreshing in the recent onslaught of psych revivalists. Fueled by a 13th Floor Elevators inspiration they cranked out songs with some serious fire and substance. In fact it's Greg Ashley's sophisticated songwriting chops that really set the Gris Gris head and shoulders above so many of the others, the bands who knew how to look the look and make all the right psychedelic signifier sounds and images but didn't really have the true songs to back it all up. Sadly they called it quits or at least decided to take a long hiatus a few months ago, but luckily their legend can live on through this great record, a live show recorded in Oakland this past spring. Fiery renditions of lots of our favorite Gris Gris tracks and further proof that this is a band that deserves more ears to hear just what made them so special.
Tim Hardin is a classic example of a great artist who should have been much bigger than he was, but who also contributed plenty to his own undoing. Releasing a string of great records on the Verve label in the mid-sixties, he largely became known for songs that were hits for other people, such as Rod Stewart ("Reason To Believe"), Nico ("Eulogy To Lenny Bruce"), The Sandpipers ("Misty Roses") and Scott Walker ("Black Sheep Boy", "Lady Came From Baltimore"). Karen Dalton also covered his "Green Rocky Road" and "While You're On Your Way". Possessed of an easy but soulful teddy bear croon, Hardin tackled jazz-inflected blues and folk motifs with a sublime melancholic pop sensibility that barely veiled a profound cynicism towards life and love. In fact, Hardin's best songs were bittersweet reality checks to the era's promise of brotherhood and love. Two of those songs, "Don't Make Promises", and "How Can We Hang On To A Dream", bookend this stellar debut record. However, the former song's inclusion of string accompaniments without Hardin's permission began an ongoing and troubling distrust with record companies, that only added to the pile of his own personal demons (including the drug abuse that finally killed him in 1980). Inversely it's these strings and vibes that add a distinctiveness to the production that he would later use on his more successful follow-up record, 2 (and must have been what made Scott Walker take notice!). But it's the rough polish of the debut where we are introduced to Hardin's range. The hints of the Greenwich Village folkie maturing into a soulful and profound songwriter, broadening his palette into open jazz and blues forms that at the time, Tim Buckley and Fred Neil were only beginning to expand on more deeply. Essential!!!!!!!
ATTENTION DOOM FANATICS, DOOMLORDS and DOOM MAIDENS!!!
HC Minds began life way back in the early nineties, in the placid little town of Eugene Oregon, and while the name might not be immediately familiar to many of you, the bands that were spawned from HC Minds most likey are familiar: the legendary YOB, and the not nearly so legendary, but equally awesome Aldebaran. HC Minds released a handful of records, including a split with Japanese sludgelords Dot [.], most of which faded away with little or no fanfare, but maybe it was just that their doom was a bit ahead of its time. Now that we're in the midst of a doom renaissance, what better time than now for HC Minds to rise from the grave and offer up a new batch of filthy, downtuned doomy sludge!
Their first record in 6 years, The Beginning Of The End is a gloriously heavy sludgefest, doomy yes, but not ultra doomy like Corrupted and Bunkur and Moss, no this is way more rocking, we're talking Eyehategod, Grief, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Acrimony, Church Of Misery, that sort of thing.
The opener here is a short sharp blast of groovy stoner doom, with a killer almost NOLA sounding main riff, recorded HOT and way in-the-red, lo-fi, but fierce and intense, but that brief blast quickly gives way to some massive slow motion Sabbathian doom, lurching, lumbering, tuned way down, the drums spread way out but pounding heavily, total classic old school dooooom. But the record closes with another uptempo jam, a super heavy grinding stoner doom workout, mathy, jagged, with wild drumming and a killer main riff.
The first track on the B side is the record's centerpiece though, HC Minds get all Corrupted, starting off with 5 or 6 minutes of dark languorous piano, atmospheric and haunting, before the hammer falls and the band launch into the meat of the song, WAY heavier, but no less atmospheric and mysterious, this time bordering on ultradoom, with the riff unfurling and ringing out into long stretched spaced out crumbling decaying distortion, before the riff winds up and goes again, the drums a massive pound, but striking every few seconds, the vocals a raspy whisper, the whole thing gorgeously depressive and sloooooooow.
The band close out with an even slooower doom jam, super abstract, and ultra distorted, a lugubrious crawl, but peppered with furious squalls of wild grinding psychedelic freakouts, and some harsh demonic almost black metal vox, so fucking awesome, almost wish this track had been given a whole side of its own.
Heavy, and slow, and doomy, and downtuned, which in case you're still not getting it means total stoner doom dirge NIRVANA.
LIMITED TO 380 COPIES!!!! On black vinyl, although amidst the 30 copies we got, there are 4 or 5 of the super limited white vinyl version, maybe you'll get lucky. Comes in an awesome full color eye popping sleeve, with a printed insert, and an equally eye popping poster of the cover.
Some of us who hadn't heard The Hospitals before always assumed they were just some ordinary garage rock band, at least based on the context of how we had heard about them or flyers we had seen, but when we finally got to hear Hairdryer Peace we quickly discovered that something much more fucked up and unique was at play!
This ain't no garage rock, in fact we think most folks into your ordinary punky garage rock wouldn't know what to do with this record and that's a very good thing. Dense with layers of fuzz, junk and some serious noise, The Hospitals have created an album that is always just on the verge of self-destruction and which often erupts into something brilliant just when you thought the ship was about to go down.
This is some full on weirdo-rock, we hear hints of the most extreme lo-fi wonder of the New Zealand scene as well as the freakout psychedelics of the Japanese underground. Jandek on meth playing High Rise covers?! A pumped up Pumice joining forces with The Shining Path, Black Dice and Excepter!? The Skaters covering the first Comets On Fire album?! If you can start to imagine any of those scenarios then you start getting an idea of the charged and bizarre world in which Hospitals are operating. We slept on this album when it came out last year and you may have seen it listed as the number 3 record of the year picked by the Bible of the avant underground, The Wire. While a cd release of the album is in the works, this is your last chance to snag a copy of the vinyl as the band is down to it's last batch. Get it while you can!
Canadian sound artist Jim Dejong has been recontextualizing all sorts of sounds into thoroughly abstracted compositions and ashen dark ambience for well over a decade as The Infant Cycle. This Zoviet-France inspired set of looping hypnosis, echoplex-riddled events, and grim sound design strategies heralds from the Drone Records series of singles, curated by Stefan Knappe of Troum / Maeror Tri. Trombone, birdcage, marimba, guitar, and chimes are some of the instruments that Dejong sites as the origins to the sounds on Secret Hidden Message, but little of those sources are made evident behind the veil of chilled atmospheres and infernal howlings, blended to a very well constructed set of electro-acoustic manipulation. Limited to 300 copies!
Here's one of those albums that we KNEW we'd make Record Of The Week - IF ever it was reissued. And now it has been! Here's a fully legit reish of this cult '70s hard rock rarity, a record by one of those bands who seem simultaneously to be both testosterone-tanked young men and wizened ol' wise wizards. Yeah, a Record Of The Week easy, on account of it not only being an old fave of some of us here, but something that immediately caught on with the AQ staffers who hadn't heard it before, this reissue getting played in the store quite steadily (and loudly!) since it arrived. Let's listen in, as Jerusalem's vocalist belts it out, in an emotive yowl a bit like Robert Plant but with Ozzy Osbourne's paranoid feelings: "Hey girl, will you never learn? Who d'you think you're fooling with your lyin' and your cryin'? You'll only be happy the day you see me dyin'!" But then, in more of a normal speaking voice, we get the casual aside: "Oh yeah, that's the way it happens sometimes. Ha."
Right on, brilliant. That's from "Frustration", the first of nine fantastic tracks on the one and only album by this English band, recorded in 1971, released in '72 on Deram/Decca, produced by Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. Why Jerusalem didn't get big is a mystery, though the liner notes give some clues as to why they disbanded. Heck they're even fairly unknown (or a well-kept secret) among connoisseurs of '70s heavy psych and hard rock, with this being its first ever official, non-bootleg reissue on compact disc. Now, there's lots of great obscure heavy rock rarities from the early '70s. We've raved about reissues of many of them (Dust, Leaf Hound, Toad, Bang, T2, etc.). But as far as unheralded proto-metal goes, this belongs pretty much at the top of that longhaired, bellbottomed heap, as essential as any of 'em anyway. Pentagram, Bedemon, Blues Creation, Budgie, Night Sun, you name it.
Allan here first heard Jerusalem a few years back when a friend who shares his taste for proto-metal passed along a cd-r copy of this otherwise unavailable album (thanks, Glenn!). Killer stuff indeed, damn it was good. One of the heaviest things from the era he'd ever heard, Jerusalem took it to an extreme that most of their peers didn't approach. With elements of both biggies Sabbath and Zeppelin, but more frenzied and frantic on one hand, more plodding and suicidal on the other.
Crashing, fuzzed out guitars. Energetic hectic riffage. Doomy, thudding blues. Wicked stinging, sliding soloing. Punkish attitude (competitive with contemporaries Crushed Butler). The vocals often hoarse, on the verge of screaming, or gone over that edge. Yeah, pretty heavy for '72! This is rough, raw, proto headbanging mania mixed with mystical, melodic proggy interludes, of course we love it. Plus it's got a genuine dark, occult, despairing vibe, with poetic lyrics about madness, murder and death... And you can't get much more "downer rock genocidal" sounding than the truly, uh, primitive bludgeon what might be the heaviest track here, "Primitive Man".
Pretty darn metal when it comes down to it, forget the "proto". In their own way though, Jerusalem sounding halfway betwixt '60s garage rock and '80s New Wave Of British Heavy Metal... which on balance puts them a bit ahead of their time. In fact, since what's old is new again, this actually sounds like if could have been made now, not because it sounds modern (it doesn't) but because it's so line with certain stonery retro-stylings popular today, particularly in Sweden. In other words, if you like Witchcraft, you'll love Jerusalem!! We always thought that of all the obscure '70s bands that are their forebears, Witchcraft sound most like Jerusalem (well, next to Pentagram). Remember what we said in all caps about Witchcraft's debut? "PERHAPS THEE BEST '70s INSPIRED DOOM ALBUM EVER!" Well the same would go for this, except that it's the real deal, which makes it even better.
Anyway, to return to our story, after Allan got that cd-r dub, he knew he had to find a proper cd. There HAD to be one, this was too good not to have been reissued, right? But, after looking and looking, no luck. Then, one day, Allan came to work at Aquarius and lo and behold what did he hear, but Jerusalem blaring from the store stereo! No, it wasn't this reissue. This was still a few years ago. Turns out, Andee had found a used copy of a bootleg cd someplace, and had bought it simply 'cause he thought the cover looked cool (he's like that), without knowing anything about the band. Life is so unfair, thought Allan. But he was able to eventually guilt Andee into giving him the cd for a birthday present (thanks, Andee! You can have that one back now). Later on, we discovered a Japanese reissue that may or may not have been a boot but in any event was way too expensive and hard to get, nothing we could easily stock and sell for a reasonable price. But NOW, we happily are able to share Jerusalem with you thanks to this nicely done reissue on the Rockadrome label's Vintage imprint! Yeah!
In addition to the nine songs from the original LP, this cd comes with five bonus tracks, including non-album single "Kamakazi Moth". The thick booklet is filled with lengthy liner notes, complete lyrics, vintage photos, all that good stuff you want in a reissue. Once more, yeah!
With a bicycle wheel, a reel-to-reel tape machine, and a few bits of electronics, Jim Kaiser has been a stalwart in the Bay Area improv / experimental community, having worked in French Radio (with Bruce Anderson of MX80), NF Orchest, and Thomas Carnacki's ensemble. But one of his more prolific collaborations has been with Angela Hsu, who's a classically trained violinist who pushes her instrument with tone-bending effects and improvisational techniques. For all of their performances over many years, we're pretty sure that this is their first released recording. Despite the date-as-title alluding to this being a live recording, this is actually a studio production, albeit one that was recorded straight to tape, or more likely to hard drive. During this session, Hsu's violin offers up descending plinks that cascade in a delay ridden tumble, sounding like crumbled bits from some undisclosed orchestral score. Beneath this, there is a grey dinscape constructed from Kaiser's bowed bike wheel and a muddled hiss from the tape machine. It could be a field recording of some sort, playing through the corroded heads of that reel-to-reel, but it's so obfuscated as to be a thick cloud of Philip Jeck dust warbling with varispeed jolts alongside scattered noises and caterwauling screeches, ripping in an agitated field of delay patterns. Limited to something like 25 copies. Don't expect these around for long!
The Last Theft is a 1987 short film by the Czech stop-motion animator Jiri Barta, whose sensibility is not far from that of Jan Svankmejer. East Bay improvisers Jim Kaiser and Angela Hsu took up the challenge of working with this baroquely dark fairy tale of a short, using their signature instrumentation for reel-to-reel tape, bicycle wheel, violin, and a few choice effects pedals. Where their collaborations are typically clustered around squiggles and screeches from bowing the bike wheel and scraping against the violin, this 'alternate soundtrack' is considerably moodier and spun around the a warbling industrial-strength drone axis. Long-form bellows and primeval discordant textures weave a growling, ominous atmospheres rich with opium smoke laced with asbestos dust, altogether sounding not all that far from the classic works by Organum or Taj Mahal Travellers. It should also be noted that Spoonbender 1.1.1. scored a very different piece to a condensed version of the film!
Channeling the orchestral pop sound of many of the Elephant Six bands (Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples In Stereo, The Minders) this Bay Area five piece has got some mighty fine pop chops of their own. "Saber Ace" is probably our favorite of the bunch which is so delightfully sweet & sour and benefits from the somewhat lo-fi and dirty recording. They do a really nice job of sprinkling tasteful horns on a few of these tracks. Six sweet songs grace this red vinyl record which also comes with a code for a free download.
Sometimes you just need some guy rock (or should that be "Guy Rock"). Yeah, you do. The kind with tons of dudely testosterone with just a tiny squirt of fabric softener so that the ol' grey hoodie is comfy enough and not too stinky for the girlfriend. Whenever this is playing, Cup makes a beeline for her old Seaweed albums whose fierce yet catchy emo punk pop tunes are a clear influence. Chris Machmuller and Jamie Massey's muscular double-barrelled guitar riffin' flexes along with the sharp punch of Pat Oakes' drums while the deep boil of Ethan Jones' bass guitar provides the imposing scowl. What brings this band's music out of the '90s is the emotive scream-yelp-croon vocal range of Chris Machmuller which alternately brings to mind Seaweed's Aaron Stauffer and Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme. Cool stuff!
Here's another fantastic transmission from the Black Snowflake Sound studio in Sapporo, Japan, sent out by these prolific psych peddlers! The duo of Michishita Shinsuke on vocals/guitar and Takahashi Ikuro (ex-Fushitusha) on drums have crafted what sounds to us like sort of a cross between two of their recent releases, Constellation Of Tragedy on Important (the gentle, twilight ballads) and Uretakumo Nakunarutorika on Beta-Lactam (freaky, experimental WTF?). Of course, with more than a few flashes of the heavy Les Rallizes Denudes-style amped-up throb and grit we all love included as well. Starting off all slow sad and soft, this disc would be a good LSD-march for Nagisa Ni Te fans as well as those into Rallizes. Moody melody abounds. "Bisyonure No Kimi" is lovely and languid, but also blanketed with shivering guitar feedback and distortion, clouding over Michishita's gentle vocals. Meanwhile Takahashi's drumming is also an crucial contributor to the mood. His deliberate, echoing clank and plink of rhythms on "Ai No Sakebi" are especially effective, in unsettling combination with the piercing Quicksilvery lead guitar unleashed by Michishita.
At about halfway through the disc, LSD-march kicks the volume up a few notches for the lumbering, distorto-rocker "Dare Ga Hoeru". But then the very next track, "Taiyoko No Uta" is so weird and glitchy it could be by Starfuckers or US Maple - it's a good example of the abstract, experimental side of LSD-march to which we referred above, like something from Uretakumo Nakunarutorika. They do channel the Rallizes once more, though, on the disc's final and longest named track, "Kimi No Uta Wo Kiite Boku Wa Akuma Ni Natta" (7:17) a slow burner which eventually erupts into muzzy heaviness, mustering quite a bit of drama in the manner of Up-Tight or Shizuka.
That's the last song, sort of, but the disc ain't over. And just gets stranger. There's two unlisted, untitled bonus tracks yet to come, including an 8 minute cut stringing together botched takes of a song called "My Mother's Killed Me" (?), featuring all their flubs and false starts, including talkback from the increasingly frustrated (and British?) sound engineer. At one point, they have to stop 'cause someone's cell phone goes off and ruins the take. Whoops. But eventually, by the end, they get the song on tape in its entirety, and it's a nice garagey groover. We're really into the fact that they included all the screw-ups. We love stuff like that. And halfway think that's how they wanted it to sound, based on some of their other strange ideas... There's another, similar bonus track that's only 18 seconds though. More WTF? for you.
Basically, Under Milk Wood manages to incorporate everything we already loved about LSD-march, plus some other confusional stuff we didn't even know they were into that's also rad. And everyone here seems to be digging it, even if they weren't already huge LSD-march fans. The band's best yet? Maybe, certainly a good one to get!!
Here is the second pressing of Maeror Tri's 1996 album Language Of Flames And Sound, which has long been noted for the brain-shaped packaging (faithfully restored in the second edition) and also has the distinction as being Maeror Tri's noisiest recording. This German trio began in the early '90s as a bleak, Dark Ambient project that brought a simple, if elegant use of effects-driven melodies to post-industrial noisescapes proposed by the Hafler Trio, Lustmord, and Illusion of Safety. While there are plenty of drawn out periods of flanging drones, spectral hiss, and those evanescent melodies which have become the trademark for the post-Maeror Tri project Troum, Language Of Flames And Sound brutally slams down on the distortion boxes, turning these languid, pseudo-Goth drones into thickened buzzsaws of melodic guitar noise that's not all that far from where black metal has progressed in recent years. An album like this should also make Aidan Baker blush as so many of these sounds have been mirrored in Najda. Throughout these megawatt explosions of radioactive noise splattering the all-consuming, ever dark ambience, Maeror Tri set down grinding loops of mekanoid pulsations that get at the band's Industrial roots. It's nice to have this back in print, although it's pretty limited. So who knows how long this batch will last.
Yeay! We are so excited that SF's own Mi Ami were recently snapped up by Quarterstick and as we type this are on the road touring the States! It's just a matter of time before these guys start becoming loved all across the map for their high energy approach to genre bending, percussive, heavy and sweat inducing colorful rhythms. Echonoecho is the first song on what will be their new full length Watersports and once again they get to let shine their love of the 12" format. Side A finds the song in its full almost nine minutes of glory. High pitched vocals come blasting right out of the gate along with frenzied instrumentation for a totally epic and catchy track that sounds like some kind of joyous meeting of Nation Of Ulysses, The Rapture and Liquid Liquid. And we have to say that Mi Ami shine so brightly with the 'Version' sides of their singles. Dubbed out for maximum slow burn perfection. We can't wait for the full length, but we hope they keep cranking out 12"s as well cause they are one of the few groups around today who really know how to make the most of this special format.
Latest issue of one of our favorite mags, one we read cover to cover, even if on first glance the contents don't seem that interesting. Every issue we just glance at some article, and end up engrossed and read the whole thing.
This month MOTOWN! The 100 greatest tracks as selected by various other musicians: Iggy Pop, the MC5, Johnny Marr, the Clash, and more.
Plus, Todd Rundgren, Franz Ferdinand, Mitch Mitchell, as well as loads of reviews and columns and whatveer else they can pack in there.
Plus includes a cd packed with rad Motown hits and rarities.
It seems romantic to think about living out in the country, sleeping in a trailer and spending all your time making music and hanging out with a dog named Zuma. That's sort of a reality for East Coast trippers MV and EE. And it's funny to us how many people love to label this band as "that hippy, Neil Young wanna-be" duo. Which is sorta true, I mean they DO live a very alternative lifestyle, and take a listen to any of their albums and tell us you can't hear the Neil Young similarities. Buuuuut, on the other hand, MV and EE have been on the lo-fi psych folk tip for over a decade! Yes it's true, some aQ customers might even remember Matt Valentine's super influential acid-folk band from the nineties Tower Recordings, killer stuff that was sadly overlooked. And while we don't completely disagree with the insensitive hype that hovers around MV & EE, we DO have to say that Drone Trailer, the latest release from these extraordinary acid folk experts, is AWESOME, some of their best material yet! A murky glimpse into some sprawling cosmic countryside, more of the usual sun-baked tripped-out Americana, but thanks to the heavy hitting Golden Road backing band, Drone trailer is more driving and rockin' then most other MV and EE releases. Barn burning space fuzz meets twangy foot-stomping psychedelic meltdown. Loosely arranged jammers that waver under the blaring sun, mind-warping drones laced with lazy day vocals and bluesy guitar, the clumsy rhythms of Crazy Horse meet the expansive sprawl of Flying Saucer Attack. Kinda like if Ignatz recorded his last record with a full band, or if Spacemen 3 did a folk record. Spaced-out rural twang, the perfect soundtrack for your next lazy Sunday afternoon, highly recommended!
It's been 8 long years, but German black metal weirdoes Necrofrost have resurfaced with a brand new record. Their 2000 / 2001 one two punch: In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor and Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrungas' Dunkle Necrotoner, pretty much set the bar around here for fucked up freaked out supremely damaged and fractured outsider black metal. There's probably not an aQ favorite black metal record that didn't get compared to Necrofrost. And until very recently we just assumed that Necrofrost were indeed dead and gone, laying forever dormant beneath that swampy floor where dead things go to rot and fade away.
But Blackeon Lightharvest proves otherwise, finding the dreadful duo of Seirim and Fimbulraven offering up another glorious collection of sick, murky black filth. Not too much has changed soundwise since the last bit of necro frost, the songs are still woozy and midtempo, stumbling and buzzy, the vocals harsh and hellish, the songs simple and stripped down, locked into long stretched of furious blurred blackness, with the occasional chunk of more lurching doominess.
If anything, the band sound better. More polished, but not obviously so, unless you're super familiar with the other two records. Where those records sounded fucked up, and almost retarded at times (a compliment btw), here the weirdness seems more an organic part of the whole. The songs are simple, but dense and textured and layered, the recording is still bizarre, some songs super in-the-red, others muddy and muted sounding, and all kinds of tape drop outs and blasts of too-much-distortion that cause the levels to fluctuate, but much like Faxed Head, those bits of fucked up production only add to the mood and vibe, making a weird record sound even more weird.
Some might be disappointed by the inclusion of a band photo, showing Fumbulraven as a normal looking sideburned guy wearing a knit cap and Seirim as a pretty average looking metal dude, but the band photo is labeled "The Checkered Forest Sofa", um, okay, and the guys are credited with "space signals and vector echoes" as well as guitars and drums, and there are still awesome song titles like "Your Flesh Is My Convenience", "Steel Forests Of My Deserted Dreams", and in a bid to describe their sound, "Ugly Misanthropic Metal". Plus Sin Nanna of Striborg contributed to the record's intro somehow, supposedly. Needless to say, this all adds up to some good old Necrofrostian weirdness, and thankfully, the record lives up to all that, a seriously skewed chunk of surprisingly melodic, but WAY damaged black buzz.
First there's the intro, which does indeed remind us of Striborg, trash can drumming, over blurred sheets of mournful minor key guitars, and a super harsh rasped vocal, but that quickly gives way to a dirgey, almost punky bit of raw midtempo old school black metal. Definitely melodic, and sort of loping and lumbering tempo wise, but with some fractured more frenetic breaks, and some wild squiggly guitar bits, all very cyclical and hypnotic, and the sound very muddy and lo-fi, which leaves you pretty unprepared for "Steel Forests" which just might be our favorite track on the disc, a furious blast of super charged buzz drenched guitars, a wild insectoid main riff, wild blasting drums all but buried in the mix, the vocals also pretty buried, all wound into a tight, seriously blistering black metal frenzy, and hooks galore, too, that main riff will stick in your had like mad, and then when the track shifts gears, and gets all dynamic, that's when the levels go haywire, the sound shifting from overblown saturated tape blur, to muted underwater thrum, with some awesome off kilter edits and breaks, might just be BM jam of the year.
And of course the next track switched gears again, with a cool almost post rock crunch chug, with little flurries of harmonics, before lurching into and almost D-beat pound, which makes the long piano part in the middle all the more unexpected, a pretty, moody, minor key vamp, replete with shimmering dramatic strings. Huh? Well, it is Necrofrost after all.
The title track offers up so more weirdness, beginning with backwards processed guitars before launching into a plodding groove, the buzz and pound laced with tangled almost NWOBHM guitar harmonies, and then comes "Ugly Misanthropic Metal" which is indeed all those things, a raw, almost doomy blackened dirge, the vocals extra harsh, the guitars super tense and dramatic, which is followed by a weirdly keyboard heavy jam, which sounds like a Black Sabbath outtake slowed waaaaay down and smeared in black filth, before exploding into a super intense blast, complete with more of those guitar harmonies, before finishing off with a track of haunting creeped out ambience, all chittering insects, whirring New Age synths, deep ominous rumbles and soaring guitar leads.
The first few times we listened to Blackeon Lightharvest, we were convinced it was not nearly as weird as the other two records, but now we're not so sure, like we mentioned above, the weirdness seems to be just less obvious, instead, it lurks inside every note and riff and melody, so even when on the surface, it seems just like classic blasting black metal, it's really not. At all.
No surprise really, considering that Necrofrost is definitely in our black metal pantheon, but this is quickly becoming one of our new favorite BM records.
Seth Nehil and John Grzinich have been collaborating in various sound ventures off and on for well over a decade, back when the two met in Austin, Texas. Gyre marks the conclusion of a body of field recordings and agitated environments that the two began working on while travelling throughout Eastern Europe and later manipulated into installation soundtracks, arriving at three lengthy tracks. A constant fluidity of gray sounds wraps around the opening track of Gyre, which gives the impression of being deep underwater investigating the nether regions; yet the tactile sounds of various rubbings and cracked details contrast the subaqueous references with earthen found sounds of soil, stone, wood, and metal. The second piece acts as a call and response to the acoustics of some crumbling Soviet warehouse, with wooden tappings echoing from various parts of the space, presumably from the two participants. Gradually, a thick rumble of low end thrumb reverberates through additional layers of chattering birds which serves to counter the 'industrial' sound debris. The creaking from a high tension wire sets the stage for the final piece on Gyre, with ringing metallic vibrations amassing into a beautiful aura of hallowed droning. On par with the likes of Murmer, Loren Chasse, Tarab, Eric La Casa, and Small Cruel Party, Gyre is an excellent album.
