Now available on vinyl too!
While he certainly sounds a bit more world weary with a warble of uncertainty in his voice in the opening track (and looks a bit more scruffily bearded in the inside photo), have no fear this is the A.C. Newman we all know and love! We have to admit that the new solo album from the New Pornographers' lord of the manor caught us a bit by surprise. We simply didn't expect it just yet! Hmmm, maybe the batteries in our trusty NP radar are on the fritz!
Anyhoo, we welcome Get Guilty gleefully with open arms and ears! As with his previous solo outing 2004's The Slow Wonder, the energy is definitely less exuberant and the mood far mellower than that of his main band, but the pop songs are as stellar as ever. He can at once nail both the heartswellingly grand and the sensitive smart guy introspective with the sweep of his songwriting quill. Not surprisingly after only a couple of listens, many of Newman's crafty pop hooks have embedded themselves solidly in our craniums. The sweet wistful mandolin lace air of "The Heartbreak Rides" is a definite standout, as is "Like A Hit Man, Like A Dancer" which with its similar instrumentation, female backing vocals and peppery tone could easily be seen as an epilogue or afterthought (not an outtake, mind you!) to the NPs' Challengers album... actually many of the other songs can too! Soooo, needless to say, "Very recommended if you like...."? You know it! Really, the only less that splendid thing about this release just might be the cd's art design and digipak packaging which sort made us think "local band demo". 'Tis a minor distraction though. Pssst, his backing band this time features Mates Of State's Kori and Jason which honeys up the musical confection quotient even more!
The cold winter nights stuck above the Arctic Circle have become the perfect climate for extended bouts of intoxication for many a Scandinavian. As a result, the capacity for the Icelandic duo Stilluppsteypa to consume alcohol is the stuff of legend. Alcohol has soaked into every fiber of their being; but its manifestation in their music (and their personalities for that matter) is closer to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allegory, as a raging alcoholic squirms just beneath the surface of a stoic Scandinavian temperment. Of course, where these two personalities come into conflict is where the art of Stilluppsteypa is realized. A schizoid tension runs throughout Stilluppsteypa's impressive catalogue of terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures; and often this tension is dished out with a smug dollop of black humour and Dadaist absurdity. So, it's hardly unusual to come across Stilluppsteypa celebrating Vikinga Brennivin, the stringent Icelandic alcohol that has undoubtably killed some of their collective brain cells. Yet it was the stoic BJ Nilsen -- the Swedish electron wrangler whose best known for his work as Hazard -- who invited Stilluppsteypa to collaborate on Vikinga Brennivin. Their resultant collaboration is an existentialist allegory in which the three drunkenly stumble out in a Scandinavian winter night and spiral toward the inevitable point in which they blackout. Lest this be construed as a derelict piece of method acting, the craft that Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa brought to Vikinga Brennivin is impeccable, as the extended dronescapes breath with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
We've got a handful of the first edition of Vikinga Brennivin which come housed in a jewel case with beautiful aged-copper inserts (as in actual metal, not copper ink) with white silk-screened printing. There's only 300 of the first edition, and the label has sold out of it! We'll let you know when the second edition will be released sometime in April 2005.
Yet another solo electronics album from Japanese guitarist and experimental musician KK Null. Again it's full of the glitchy zip and zap of his "cosmic noises", which are somewhat aggravating at first, but if you stay with it, can be enjoyable in a mad scientist's laboratory gone haywire / crash landing flying saucer sort of way, especially when you get to the more rhythmic parts. At the same time though, we'd much rather KK put his efforts back into his genius heavy rock band Zeni Geva, as we're not sure we really need another one of these solo discs that sound like he's playing video games in the recording studio...
Back in stock! But, without the bonus limited edition Morphological Echo cassette that accompanied the first 100 copies. So you're bummed if you didn't order one earlier. Still, the cd without the tape is well worth getting, so don't cry too much, slowpokes. Here's our review:
Nowadays the words Jewelled Antler are so widely known in underground outrock circles, that all we have to do really is just mention the name and y'all know we're talking about some seriously awesome sprawling nature-y goodness. It's true, the Jewelled Antler crew have been high on the sound worship, rural psychedelic trip for over a decade, with no signs of coming down. Between the recent Porter box set and several other discs released earlier this year on Nature Strip and the Helen Scarsdale Agency, Loren Chasse has established himself as a sort of mystical elder in the Jeweled Antler community. Recording/performing with Thuja, Kyrgyz, and The Blithe Sons (to name a few) and working as a SF public school teacher, its amazing Chasse ever has time to sleep, let alone record all of these effing remarkable collections of minimal innerspatial sound!
Recorded between 2005 and 2007, Rocks Will Open is a sonic escape across coastal worlds, through secret doorways beneath tree stumps and into iridescent waves of shimmering prismatic dust. And not your average list of instruments in the liner notes either: dulcimer, gravel, sand, stones, and khaen (a Southeast Asian mouth harp!) to name a few! The opening / title track starts things off with creeping dulcimer melodies, methodical plucks and strums over earthen textures, sonic topsoil moving and shifting on its own. "Trail of Hornfel", track two, is a dark drift, a choir of possessed singing bowls howling from the bowels of a partially submerged seaside cavern. Chasse has has perfected an organically rich sound all his own, recordings that sound more like he has somehow cast spells on each instrument, conjuring sounds and textures through divination and sorcery, channeling the pulse of the natural world. "The Paper Raft" is deep and somber, the earth splits open and melancholic passages of deep bowed tones swell dramatically and narrate the fall of Western civilization, a rarely visited shadowy realm for Chasse. But actually, all of Rocks Will Open has a mysterious haunting unsettling beauty sewn into its fabric, illiciting the kinds of feeling evoked by leafless trees in snow, or a blazing campfire flickering in a suffocatingly black nightscape, or like being quietly captivated by a towering tsunami seconds before it swallows you whole. A contemplative experience that unfolds and blooms with every listen as sounds hidden in the woodwork reveal themselves, this could easily be our favorite solo record from Chasse. Rocks Will Open is totally necessary for fans of Peter Wright, Tim Hecker, Gregg Kowolsky and anything Jewelled Antler (obviously). So if you know what's good for you, do not miss out on this super incredible release.
As we've mentioned in other reviews, we're kind of obsessed with Chinese black metal. We've done our best to track down all we could, but so far that's only been three bands, Be Persecuted, Ululate (who we have yet to review on the list), and these guys, er, well, this guy, name of Evil Soul, who makes music as Original Sin. The last Original Sin record was raw and primitive and intense and furious, tons of buzz all wrapped around some seriously relentless black metal.
But here, Evil Soul seems much more contemplative, at least on album opener "Silence Before Death", in fact not only is it midtempo, but there are lots of clean guitars, and drifty keyboards, the sound is distinctly lo-fi, very brittle and barren, with the harsh vox and buzzing guitar hovering at right about the same frequency, this is some serious tweeter metal, all hiss and whir, but man is it weirdly sad and pretty, moody slowly unfurling minor key guitars, those distinctly Burzumic keyboards, plinking out a strange melancholic melody, with the occasional little burst of frenzied double bass, the end of the song gets a bit more aggro, but the timbre of the sound is so odd, that even at it's heaviest it seems to flutter dreamily, albeit wreathed in buzz and blackness.
The second track follows suit, not nearly as trebly, but still loping and sorrowful, with flute like melodies draped over a waltzy rhythm, the black metal more washed out and melancholic that grim and buzzy.
The rest of the tracks drift from super spare skeletal clean guitar, to almost choral dirges, with woozy swirling vocals, and warbly whirring riffage, to galloping triumphant crunch to hushed almost post rock sounding reverbed guitarscape to the closer, which might be the heaviest of the bunch, but even then, it's laced with New Agey keyboards, and melodies so bittersweet, that the blackness and buzz is transformed into something much dreamier. Of course there are stretches of harsh vox and more intensive buzz, but those parts to hover over swirling synthscapes, the result being that no matter ho fierce or fast or heavy the songs get, they remain, pretty and haunting, and thus quite unique.
New on Drone Records! Ovro is a Finnish woman who has recorded a handful of dark, dark, dark electronic albums for the steel-eyed Some Place Else label. Her contribution to the Drone series curated by Stefan Knappe of Troum, features two tracks of underwater percolations and bubblings, not all of that far removed from the geothermal vent recordings that Jakob Kirkegaard presented through Touch a while back. On top of these thick, churning, low-end rumbles, Ovro musters an unsettled chorus of scraped guitars and found object manipulation that pushes what otherwise could have been a clinical investigation into geologic sound towards the sound esoterica of Cranioclast, Coil, and irr. app. (ext.). As with all Drone singles, this is limited to 300 copies; and for this edition, Ovro has hand mounted photo negatives to the covers.
Hey Slumberland, where have you been? It turns out that the Oakland label didn't disappear after a lengthy hiatus from 2000 to 2007; and we'll admit that we didn't take too much notice of what these indie-rock tastemakers had been doing as of late until they released the Crystal Stilts masterpiece Alight The Night. And, after that ecstatic burst of noise & bliss pop on the Crystal Stilts disc, Slumberland delivers another great record that, well, sounds exactly like a Slumberland record should. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart hail from Brooklyn, but they could have easily been any number of the bands spawned by the C86 revolution of indie-pop around the likes of the Pastels, Heavenly, and of course My Bloody Valentine (circa Ecstasy & Wine, mind you). Within the not-quite-shoegazing wall of sound, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart craft a brightly jangling set of tunes, some of which get anthemic and punchy with all of the panache of a great power pop number with boy/girl vocals crooning all sorts of "oooohs" and "aaahs", and others smacking of a sugary '60s bubblegum jingle with all of the softened edges that Alan McGee wanted in every Creation band around 1990. For all of the British references that make their way into the Pains, they really sound a hell of lot like so many of those bands that made Slumberland so great to begin with: The Lilys, Velocity Girl, and Black Tambourine. We're not complaining one bit!
Adam Payne of Residual Echoes fame returns with a truly solo album. It's one of those where your appreciation (or lack thereof) of his singing may make it or break it for you. To us, his vocals here kinda sound like an uninspired, more conventional Dave Thomas (Peru Ubu). And rather than the blown out heavy psych weirdness (with some '80s SST label art-punk stylings) that we were used to from Residual Echoes, this is mostly much more of a straight ahead indie rock/bar rock blend, unfortunately tending towards the latter half of that equation. Sorry, we just weren't into most of this, at least not compared to Payne's earlier work in the Echoes, who we do really really like.
Not that this doesn't have its moments. For instance, the eight and a half minute meandering track five, "Incidental Arrangement" is a lovely, sinewy psych guitar instrumental that does sound rather SST (and also reminds us of the Sun City Girls).
Pizza is either the best name or the worst name for a band, depending on what the band sounds like. From the cover art, we were expecting this to be another Dodos wannabe band, in which case, the name would be terrible! But we we're pleasantly surprised and thankful that this doesn't sound anything like that. Pizza is a local Mission district male / female duo that channel the cute lo-fi pop of early Deerhoof, Tenniscoats and Coconut with the homemade woozy hip-hop vibe of groups like Black Moth Super Rainbow and Why? These six songs (strangely without titles) over 17 minutes are some of the most endearingly refreshing and snarky weirdo pop we've heard in awhile. Thus making their name oddly fitting. Who can say no to pizza?
Folks outside of San Francisco are probably unaware of the bitchin' underground rock scene going on here, and we're not talking about the experimental / drone / cd-r scene, that scene is happening too but those folks get way more press. We're talking about the bands, the rock bands, that play basements, play at Thrillhouse Records, a killer performance space / shop in the Mission, who release cd-r's too, but whose sound is more metal and sludge and rock than drone and drift and shimmer.
Wildildlife when they were here were part of that scene. So are Ovens, THE best pop band in the city (with a record coming out on tUMULt any day now), then there's Robocop III, who we've yet to hear, but like based entirely on their name. And then there's Prizehog, who have probably played with all those bands, but whose sound is all their own.
Their cd-r is 5 long songs, each one a slow building, brooding chunk of slow motion heaviness. It's metallic, but not really metal, heavy and sludgey and dark, but with weird bits of epicness and majesty mixed in. There's definitely a Harvey Milk thing going on, and we'd be WAY surprised if fans of that band didn't dig these guys as well. Not so say they're aping HM, more like they're sort of orbiting the same sonic black hole.
Plus Prizehog have a lot more spaciness going on, lots of swirl and shimmer, long drawn out stretches of dark drift, rumbling low end and ominous dronescapes, often sprawling into moody abstract slowcore drifts, peppered with synths, skeletal rhythms and blooping bleeping effects, that slowcore sometimes sounding almost like a blackened doom metal, before returning to their glacial downtuned pound, impossibly slow crawls through near static metal riffage, and squalls of drum splatter, and a howled guttural voice that sounds like it's gargling glass and spitting blood, the whole band a lumbering beast, lurching from chord to chord, note to note, occasionally pausing to rest beneath the glimmering starlight, before rising again to continue on its path of utter destruction.
Heavy, fucked up, freaked out, distorted and brutal, space-y and sometimes sorta pretty, bet these guys destroy live, but for now this chunk of filthy heaviness and sludgey crush will do just fine.
TWO brand new releases from this Santa Cruz psychedelic black metal one man band, one a haunting slab of oceanic dark ambience, the other a mesmerizing collection of drone drenched buzzing blackness.
Over the course of 10+ full lengths, Night, the man who is PV, has explored both sides of his sonic personality, the buzz of raw depressive melancholic black metal, and the drifting shimmer of ambient and dronemusic, often blending the two, into hazy blurs of blackened soundscapes and moody buzz and blast.
On Convoy (Pt.2) (we're pretty sure there wasn't a part one), Night offers up one of the more metal and aggressive releases we've heard from PV, there are still definitely moments of drift and shimmer, but this is definitely black metal, right off the bat, first few seconds, a frenzied blur of buzzing guitars and pounding programmed beats, with some insane inhuman, so processed they just sound like creepy machine like scrapes and rasps, the music looped and mesmerizing, the drums relentless and motorik, a mournful melody lurking within, the recording strange, wreathed in effects, reminding us quite a bit of the various EEE un-black metal projects, where the textures and timbres and the production are as much a part of the sound as the music itself, the black and the buzz fade away, leaving the drums to pound on, gradually changing shape until they too disappear, leaving just a keening high end drone, draped over deep rumbling low end tones, and haunting ghostly voices, before the blackness erupts once again, and that hissing metallic snake voice returns, and we're plunged back into more of that harrowing blackness.
And so it goes over the course of Convoy, doomy and dirgey and black and depressive and warm and fuzzy and washed out, the vocals that alien metallic rasp, the melodies languorous the drums solid and unswerving, very circular and meditative and entrancing, the whole record droney and dark. Once we get further into the record, the sound definitely sprawls and expands, from deep shimmery drifts of reverbed clean guitar and lilting moodiness, two mechanized strum and almost jazzy drumming, to swirling woozy shoegazey metallic whir, to dense soaring waves of epic blackness, not necessarily metal, but strangely heavy and dramatic, to near static almost looped sounding blackened grooves, to thick caustic almost abrasive black soundscapes, riddled with ominous thrum, brittle crackle, and more of that reverby moonlit guitar, but those bits all set within a landscape of harsh howling blackness, roaring smeared minor key buzz, roiling rhythmic crush, and swoonsome sorrowful melodies.
TWO brand new releases from this Santa Cruz psychedelic black metal one man band, one a haunting slab of oceanic dark ambience, the other a mesmerizing collection of drone drenched buzzing blackness.
Over the course of 10+ full lengths, Night, the man who is PV, has explored both sides of his sonic personality, the buzz of raw depressive melancholic black metal, and the drifting shimmer of ambient and dronemusic, often blending the two, into hazy blurs of blackened soundscapes and moody buzz and blast.
Unlike the heavy buzz and blast of Convoy, Saltwater & Glassmoon is all ambient, a bit of a concept record about the sea, the sound meant to emulate a submerged orchestra, to evoke the epic undersea kingdom, and the mystery of the deep.
The whole first half of the opening track is built on the sounds of crashing surf, gradually layered with gentle tinkling chimes, whirring wind, subtle processing and effects, before finally, a shimmering moody low end melody emerges from the deep, haunting and sorrowful and slow motion, drifting like dark shapes just below the surface of the sea, truly haunting and mysterious, and quite beautiful. The follow up sounds like the first track, only with the hiss and buzz of the crashing waves stripped away, leaving just strange minor key drones and barely there melodies, lots of swirling low end, suspended in wide open expanses of distant rumbles, very minimal, but still deep and ominous.
Most of the rest of the record sounds like movements of that same piece, a slowly sprawling world deep dark dronemusic, pretty and delicate, but always with a slightly sinister edge, the only dramatic deviation being the nearly 12 minute "Amaranth And Liqueur", which lets that slow smoldering drift build and build into a glacial wall of muted low end, a black cloud of SUNN-like shimmer, before once again, dissipating, laving ghostly traces and barely there shadows.
Quite dark and lovely, minimal and moody, might be of more interest to the cd-r experimental drone crowd than the black metal massive, but as far as we're concerned recommended to both!
We were big fans of previous outings by the Psychic Ills, which were dark and rocking Spacemen 3 and Joy Division inspired late night stompers. With Mirror Eye they have totally switched gears. No longer sounding much like a rock band but instead tapping into an even darker disposition. We heard one local journalist refer to the record as doomtronica, and we got to say that's pretty well put. With long songs that are much more concerned with atmosphere and space then with bringing the rawk. (Though you could say they bring the krautrock, here.) In lots of ways it reminds us of a similar shift that one of our favorite bands, Unwound made with what would be their last album, Leaves Turn Inside You, where they deftly added electronics and much spacier elements to create a totally stunning album. We imagine that Psychic Ills have been getting entranced by the drone as of late as well as the early years of Cabaret Voltaire. While we have to admit, we do miss the rocking-out moments, but only because they did it so well, but heck, there's lots to get lost in and space out to on this album, which will for sure please any and all ears that have an appreciation for drones with a burning, brooding disposition.
Somehow, we missed this one when it came out a few years back; but with Rick Reed's recent self-release from his archives dating back some 25 years, we figured you might also be as intrigued as we are in some of the other work that didn't make it onto Reed's massive and brilliant compendium Celestial Mudpie reviewed here a couple lists back. Reed hails from Texas, where he has been tinkering around with Moogs, shortwave radio, tone generators, and field recordings to construct his weighty drones. The title track on Dark Skies At Noon is an alternate version to a soundtrack that Reed composed for Ken Jacobs' film Seeing Is Believing. Jacobs, who has worked with Reed on numerous occasions over the past decade, had also used this same score for his Mountaineer Spinning film as well. The piece itself is grounded upon an industrial strength hum, the kind you would expect to hear in a nuclear power plant or some giant particle accelerator. Pierced tones, scabrous noises, and pure frequencies that have set up some unsettling standing waves here in the weirdo architecture of Aquarius all elegantly wax and wane across the surface of Reed's droning subtrata. Seeming infinite in slow-boiling currents of electricity and strangely psychedelic at times, somewhat like a cross between Emeralds and Troum. The second piece is a collaboration with former AMM member Keith Rowe, dialing in his shortwave to gather bits of static and garbled transmissions set against Reed's crawling set of analogue electronic drones. For all of Rowe's dynamic interplay of texture and noise, this is clearly a piece driven by Reed's sensibility. The finale to the album is the aptly named "Ghosts Of Energy" with its tone-bending vibrations, eerie wails of Forbidden Planet-esque electronics, and moire-patterns of sound grafted from dissonant frequencies. Altogether, this makes for an excellent collection! Elevator Bath tells us this is limited to just a hair over 300 copies.
We knew from the bastardized artwork on this 12" which uses Millie Jackson's classic Feeling Bitchy cover as its blueprint that there might be some super fun & funky sounds in these grooves and boy were we right! Lorenz Rhode comes from Dusseldorf, Germany and we get the feeling his home listening probably includes everything from Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Go Plastic era Squarepusher, lots of late '70s/early '80s funk to all kinds of synth heavy space-funk odysseys. We're sure folks like Lazer Sword, Chromeo, Simian Mobile Disco and Dam-Funk will all be loving these sounds. We sure are. Don't ever think Germans don't know how to let loose and boogie cause here is some golden proof that they know how to make totally great and contagious party sounds.
We'd be exceedingly remiss (in our duty to Satan) if we were never to list the most recent record from long-running Czech "black metal" (or "dark heavy metal") practitioners Root. Their eighth full-length studio album, 2007's Daemon Viam Invenient begins with an acoustic prologue, after which Root then launch into the storming "Human", an auspicious beginning to this fully epic and idiosyncratic collection of ripping tracks. Band mainstay, vocalist Big Boss (bedecked with face paint that makes his bald head look like a badly cracked egg) is in fine form, mixing up rasping croaks and whispers with almost-operatic bellowing that's melodic, yet deep and gruff. On that aforementioned intro, he even sings quite softly & sensitively, sounding a bit like a shaky Leonard Cohen with a Czech accent! Likewise, Root's music shifts gears continuously, moody moments swept aside by catchy riffs, choppy chunky rhythms, swarms of shred guitar soloing, and prominent basslines. Imagine a modernized version of '80s evil like Bathory and Mercyful Fate competing with the WTF? factor of a band like Sigh. And, as always with Root, there's an unholy dose of Eastern European eccentricity at play here too. Or, maybe the baroque bizarreness is all them. Fans, who have learned to expect the unexpected (and extreme) from these guys, should be satisfied.
The debut album from this Sacramento trio bursts forth with an untethered emotive outpouring set in a dusky deep South rural setting. Your Ghost Fits My Skin features a nice balance of boot stomp and murder balladry. Check out the mid-album one-two punch "Death: Has No Victory" and "Death: You Have To Believe"! The raw soulful vocal performances contrast well with the lush instrumentation (some trombone here, some musical saw there, some timpani here, various organs throughout). The overall vibe is remarkably akin to the Americana song stylings of Jason Molina and Will Oldham. Yes, they're two very prolific songmakers whose recordings can fill a library on their own, but surely you can find a little corner in your musical heart to tuck these fellows into as well! We think you'll be you did!
This is a hard one for us. On one hand we want to gush endlessly and write long paragraphs on how great this cd-r is, but on the other hand, this is a late discovery for us and we're not sure the band will be making any more copies of this. We got the last ten!!!!!! We don't really know too much about this band except they were local and recently relocated to Austin, and they revel in a sound that can be best described as shoegazey stoner country-rock. Thick, warm and gauzy with lots of reverbed slide guitar and heavy psych amp fuzz underscoring the female singer's pretty heavy-lidded and drawling vocals, the songs on Forces remind us of smoky perfumed parlors from a forgotten age. Reminiscent of a fuzzier Mazzy Star or a more heavier slow-rocking Beach House, Silver Pines has taken us all quite by surprise by their majestic grace and atmospheric beauty. So good!! Hopefully this won't be the last we hear from this band. Each cd-r hand silkscreened and colored. We only have ten! and we're not sure we can get more! You have been warned!
The aptly-named UK dronedoom duo Slomo creep forth once more! These Julian Cope compatriots (the drude dude himself contributes a 30-second poetic spoken word coda to this album) also have given this disc a perfectly descriptive title, The Bog. Slomo's Chris "Holy" McGrail ("Moog Taurus, Sunn Mustang 6 string, clatter") and Howard Marsden ("Korg MS10 & MS20, hiss") exude and extrude one loooong 65 minute track of sinister yet soothing rumbling. This Bog is a fog of burbling electronics and feedback, naturally slow and low and quietly creepy. It's like gastric gurgling from the cathedraloid stomach of some cumbersome, slumbersome, subterranean behemoth. The droning sounds of what may be subtle cymbal shimmer combine with electronic textures from the duo's synths and guitars, sometimes smoothly soaring like underwater whale calls, whilst elsewhere developing into a much grittier, frying, throbbing buzz and crackle. Other gentle chimes and pulsations come
in to play as well, layered throughout this mesmeric, mysterious disc, which we could liken to a milder SUNNO))), perhaps sleeping and snoring and drifting in dream. Certainly recommended.
(By the way, we have just a few copies of a new cd-r in stock from Slomo member Holy McGrail in stock as well, his infamous plunderphonic Stooges tribute, Raw Power Suite, so please ask about it if you're interested.)
Lately we've been revisiting some of our old favorites, with Records Of The Week from Loop, the Telescopes and Swervedriver, but as much as we love those bands, and we do LOVE them a LOT, we can't help it, our hearts will always belong to Spacemen 3. The dreamiest and druggiest of the bunch, pretty much every record, every different stage of the band, every song, has utterly entranced us. Blurred and bleary jangle pop stretched out into meditative space rock mantras, no one could conjure up the same sort of woozy elegance that these guys could. And while this is not a new record proper, and most of us have spent years tracking down every bit of recorded Spacemen 3, even a new ep with alternate mixes and some rare gems has us all in a tizzy. And judging from the responses of aQ customers, you're probably the same way. We've been selling out of these over and over, and have only just now gotten enough to list.
So drug addled space rock freaks of the world, we give to you, DJ Tones, a super limited (only 2000 copies) ep, containing TWO PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS(!!!), a radically different mix of their Red Krayola cover, and on cd for the first time, a track called "I Love You", originally released as a white label vinyl only promo, limited to 50 copies. And finally, a studio version of the track "Ecstasy Symphony".
For folks who are new to Spacemen 3, this might not be the place to start, although it wouldn't necessarily be bad, but may we recommend Playing With Fire, or Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To, for the rest of you, the obsessed, buy this now.
Up first is "These Blues", a gorgeous laid back jangle pop jam, that might convince us that Oasis probably own some Spacemen 3 records, along with "Modulated Tones", a gorgeous fuzzy minor key minute and a half of looped echo drenched guitar, so great, the kind of thing that could have stretched out into a whole Spacemen 3 set, both those tracks UNRELEASED!
Their cover of the Red Krayola's "Transparent Radiation" is the Violin Mix, so besides the skeletal guitar and drawled vocals, the bulk of the song is carried by strings, and the result is pretty divine. "I Love You" is a weird one, a programmed beat, beneath a stuttering synth rhythm, super echoey vocals, spare guitars, all moody and woozy and eighties sounding. Quite cool for sure, a little garage-y, a bit poppy, and all very druggy and dreamy. And finally, "Ecstasy Symphony", nine minutes of lush drones, dense and layered, slow motion melodies played out over long streaks of near static sound, total divine, sun dappled ur-drone bliss.
Packaged in a trippy little paper sleeve, a bit pricey for 5 songs (although it is nearly half an hour) but for fans of all things Spacemen 3, absolutely worth it.
And again, LIMITED TO 2000 COPIES WORLDWIDE!
We seem to be in the midst of another round of Springsteen mania, with The Boss recently wowing the crowd at the Super Bowl, coming out with a brand new record and once again flexing his muscle as one of rock n roll's strongest shepherds. While we all have our own favorite Springsteen document (Nebraska, Greetings From Asbury Park, etc.) we have to say we were pretty thrown off in a pleasant way a few years back when we caught a YouTube clip of The Boss doing an incredible live rendition of the Suicide classic "Dream Baby Dream." Made us have way more respect for the Boss and also made us realize that no matter how much of an underground sensation those first two Suicide albums were, underneath it all were totally brilliant and long lasting pop songs.
So with The Boss in the spotlight once again we thought we'd get around to listing this 10" that's part of Blast First Petite's series of Suicide splits with the other bands all doing their own versions of Suicide classics. We listed the Lydia Lunch/Suicide split a little while ago. We're not sure if it was the unexpected delight of when we first saw the clip of Springsteen playing "Dream Baby Dream" that made it seem so incredible but it's not quite as mind blowing here. Still pretty cool to hear him doing it. The flipside finds Suicide performing their track back in 1979 for an NBC late night show and then another Suicide cover by a contemporary group called Beat The Devil with their take of "Mr Ray." We just found out that all these Suicide splits have been released in honor of Alan Vega's 70th birthday, how cool!
It's always tough with DJ mixes, to figure out how much credit to give to the DJ, sure, we all have rad record collections, so why does this or that DJ get his mixtape pressed up and released as an actual cd and not us? Well, to be fair, some of those DJ's DO have way cooler record collections than any of us, and no matter how kick ass your mixtape skills are, there's something about actually having a job, that essentially IS making a mixtape every night for a living, that's gonna mean that person is probably gonna come up with some seriously kick ass mixes. That situation is made all the more reasonable when the DJ in question is also a music maker himself, which not only means he or she has a good ear for sounds and arrangements, but can link the mix with their own tracks, and assuming their tracks also kick ass, well then heck, we'll happily fork over our hard earned cash.
And such is the case with this mix from dubstepper Starkey, who offers up a pretty wild and schizophrenic mix, that does indeed touch on dubstep and grind, but spends most of its time careening wildly between techno and house and hip hop and Miami bass, all tangled up with bits of dubstep and techno, some jungle, and some stuff that doesn't at all fit in any one genre. That said, fans of all the dubstep mixes we've been digging over the last little while, Mary Anne Hobbs, Box Of Dub, Science Faction, will for sure want to check this out, and folks into techno and electronica, will probably find this an easy way to ease into those offshoots.
It's pretty solid all the way through, and from a mixing standpoint, the songs flow smoothy into each other, so much so that sometimes it's hard to tell when one stops and another starts, but there are some definite standouts, Drop The Lime's "Crazy Love" is an awesome chopped pop workout, very eighties, but all revved up and transformed into a lurching start stop stutter. DZ's "Oooh" is an awesomely heavy slab of woozy synth and dubstep skitter, fuzzy and new wavy, buzzy, almost like a grimier Justice, Zomby's "Aquafre5h" is a dizzying underwater bloopy groove, constructed almost entirely from eighties video game sounds, Pacheko offers seasickly ebb and flow of chopped synths and rumbling buzzing basslines, Food For Animals do their own 8-bit freakout, with skeletal drums over a constantly mutating wall of fractured electronics, and some weird murky rapping, and of course Starkey delivers 5 or 6 of his own tracks, ranging from dark harrowing dubbed out minimalism, to almost cheesy eighties disco, to pounding synth bangers, to a strange piano outro, all smoky and jazzy, laced with bits of intercepted radio transmissions and streaks of warm whirring hiss.
KILLER mix. And thus, needless to say, WAY recommended. Packaged in an eye popping bright orange jewel case. Total dancefloor destruction, easily one of the best mixes of the year. So far...
We have pretty good reason to assume that the guys in Fayetteville, Arkansas' Storm The Castle! (exclamation point theirs, but wholly appropriate) won't mind us comparing their band to Hammers Of Misfortune, the beloved "operatic" metal act from here in San Francisco, related to the somewhat similar sounding Slough Feg. They'd better not mind, 'cause that's what happens when you play over the top progtastic power metal that's part '80s, part indie-artsy-postrockishness, with clean, dramatic vox and technical instrumental shred, including of course twin guitar harmonies galore! Sure there's differences - no female vocalist, no Hammond organ - and the singer of Storm The Castle! sounds something like (a very theatrical version of) Metallica's James Hetfield, moreso than he does any of Hammer's male singers past or present. But we DO think that Hammers Of Misfortune fans might dig this big time. In fact, Allan was playing it in the office 'round about when the most recent Hammers opus came out and Cup was momentarily convinced that this WAS the new Hammers.
"The Chief Goal Of Alchemy" opens the proceedings with an atmospheric electronic effects + mysterious spoken word sample into, which gives way to gentle acoustic guitars, bursting almost immediately into bombastic, triumphing true metal ass kickery. Later tracks are also crammed with complexities of hectic riffage, heroic melodies, and unexpected interludes. Slough Feg fans will find familiar the (heavy) folky motifs in "Victory, But At What Price", while "Laugh Track" is simply a ripper. This five song, half-hour-plus debut wraps up with its longest epic, grand finale "Here, Be Dragons" (10:54) which again features some very Slough Feggy guitar parts, we must say. It's all very VERY metal and yet paradoxically otherwise, or at least unexpectedly artier, giving us suspicion that this was seemingly conceptualized as a collection of metallic signifiers juxtaposed with the otherwise, to obtain an alloy that transcends such labeling. All in all, this is one that we suggest, nay insist that fans of Hammers check out, as you've already gathered. Same goes for fans of the 'Feg, Blind Guardian, The Fucking Champs, Zebulon Pike... oh and NYC's Under Satan's Sun (a band who get the award for sounding even more like Hammers, however).
Here's a second collection of cover tunes by songstress Susanna Wallumrod (also of .... And The Magical Orchestra fame)! With her hushed lilting melancholic interpretation of a remarkably diverse selection of songs such as Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", ABBA's "Lay All Your Love On Me" (we'd have hoped for "Dancing Queen" or "Mamma Mia", but it wasn't to be!), Prince's "Dance On", Black Sabbath's "Changes", Roy Harper's "Forever", Will Oldham's "Joy And Jubilee", Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", Nico's "Janitor Of Lunacy", and Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More", it's easy to think of her as a Norwegian equivalent to Cat Power, but with perhaps a bit of a broader appeal a la Lilith Fair or Tori Amos! Quite lovely.
Another super limited vinyl only missive, broadcast as always from some dark sonic underworld, courtesy of the man known as Svarte Greiner (Erik Skodvin to his mother), following the equally haunting and mysterious Man Beard Dress lp from the end of last year.
As we've mentioned before, this is doom. But not doom as you know it. Not heavy and crushing and downtuned and distorted, instead, spectral and ghostlike, abstract and ambient, doom in vibe, intention, spirit, as much as in sound. It's not about riffs or beats, it's about mood and space and soul, and taking a cold hard look through the cracks into the crumbling wasteland that lies inside all of us.
The opening track deviates from SG's usual M.O., taking the soft blackened shimmers and distant foghorn like drones, and adding a layer of grit, a swirling skree reminiscent of Skullflower or Sunroof! Like rattling chains, or bits of rusty metal falling from decaying structures, this extra element turns acoustic doom into something far more harrowing, a soundtrack to the descent, of slick stone walls and flickering grey lights, of black clouds obscuring burning skies, everything fading to nothing as the music lowers us deeper and deeper into the abyss.
The second track is a bit less harsh, more spacious and sprawling, skeletal, soft swells of moaning minimalism drift through a wide open expanse of far away throbs, and muted pulses, ghostly voices lurk beneath the surface, the slow motion sound of decay and despair, pretty, but ominous, and sinister, and beautifully bleak.
The flipside begins with another soundscape of space and soft sound, like a super abstract ambient Wolf Eyes, bits of feedback are streaked through hushed black whispers, creaking industrial whir wraps itself around desiccated barely there melodies, the sound of wandering through an empty and dead city, smashed windows like black eyes looking down from above, splintered doors like gaping mouths, the sky unleashing a cleansing rain of soft hiss, doing very little to combat the emptiness and loneliness evoked by Svarte Greiner's delicate doomic drift.
And finally, the record fades to black with the doomiest (and weirdly enough, prettiest) track of the bunch, a soft focus smear of effected black guitar shimmer, blurred into a throbbing dronescape, rife with fragmented melody and soft edged buzz, a strange and warm, almost ebullient sonic center, glowing faintly beneath the roiling lowend, a smoldering, crumbling, shadowy,and quite lovely doomdrone coda...
Beautiful full color covers, pressed on thick vinyl, and once again, WAY LIMITED!!!
After a few years as a drum-machine backed two-piece, Andy Zevallos and Cynthia Mansourian have joined forces with Jim Andersen (former drummer of The Pattern & Year Future) to make an extraordinary EP of dark post-rock.
Possibly the best song on the record is the haunting "Siren Song" which shows off Andy's talents on the bass and Cynthia's rich vocals to their fullest. Backed by just a tambourine, the bass sounds like Three Mile Pilot's Zac at his finger-picking best.
The minimal pounding of the last track, "Thin and Gold", uses space and delay just as effectively as the opening track "You Were Down" uses relentless and almost breathless pounding. In addition to the bass, drums and heavily effected guitar, there's all these weird little shimmers and buzzes floating around in the backgrounds of the songs, like gothic insects. Recommended.
Indie cult flick fans, here's something to celebrate! It's the dvd release of Jon Moritsugu's wild'n'weird underground classic Terminal USA! Yep, his 1993 twisted, gritty ode to a most unconventional Asian American family has finally followed the slow but steady dvd birthings of his more recent films Scum Rock, Fame Whore, and Mod Fuck Explosion. What's possibly most bizarre about the film itself is that its creation was actually commissioned by PBS (yes, that meant a serious production budget for the usually shoestring Moritsugu!), was broadcast across the land in 1994-1995, and was screened at film fests around the globe. That and the film itself might not seem all that strange by today's standards, but need we say, it was a whole different world in the early '90s. This probably caused convulsions and conniptions in many unexpecting viewers. Totally raw, gnarly, and punk-as-fuck on PBS! Yow, keep your eyes peeled for appearances by Neil Hamburger and a bleach blonde haired Moritsugu! This dvd features the original cut as well as Moritsugu's director's cut which includes 14 additional minutes.
It's been almost 5 years since we last heard from Greek duo THE ONE, who back then, were maybe not a duo, and who were most definitely in our pantheon of weirdo black metal, along with Necrofrost, Abruptum and Vondur, vying for the top spot with their heavily reverbed blackness and insane vocals.
But here we are years later, and The One are not nearly as weird as they once were. Like Necrofrost, who have also resurfaced and whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this list, it might not be that they are less weird, but that the weirdness is better integrated into their sound.
Before, the music was a stumbling chaotic blur, everything tangled up with everything else, the mix super erratic, with various elements exploding out of the mix, the drumming wild and off kilter, lots of grunts and some of the growliest monster vocals ever, and we'd be lying if we didn't say we weren't initially disappointed that this record was so GOOD. And tight. And solid. Cuz it is. Good. Really good. Heavy and black, the guitars intense and thick and full, some awesome riffing, the drums hard hitting and audible in the mix, the mix itself lush and LOUD, plenty of groove and hooks hidden here and there, but not damaged or demented or fucked up. At least at first. No one can make music that weird and then suddenly ditch all the various elements that made that music so strange. So here, on I, Master, the weird shit is subtle, and generally tucked away amidst thrashing blasting blackness and chugging riffage, whether it's an impossibly long and harsh hissy howl, or some weird dubbed out cymbal shimmer, or even a creepy circusy interlude with a looped music box groove and whispered vocals, the weird stuff is definitely there, but that's no longer why we're here, this is some heavy Ravenstormy Blizzard Beastly blown out buzz drenched heaviness, with just the right amount of crooning chanted vocals and midtempo doominess to keep it interesting, but they have definitely ditched their fucked up fractured past in favor of something ultimately way more pleasing, a super epic, ultra heavy, dense and destructive, blasting and buzzing black metal, and so far today, we've listened to the whole record all the way through THREE times, and the night is still young...
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Very few record labels attain the sort of iconic status usually reserved for artists, and those that do, often spend YEARS cultivating a roster, and developing a fanbase, made up of the sort of fans that will buy ANYTHING and everything on the label. In the past, Sub Pop, Touch And Go, Homestead, tUMULt (sez Andee!), but lately a couple labels have managed to make that leap in a matter of months rather than years. Mississippi of course. Reissuing all manner or blues, gospel and punk rock rarities on vinyl, and now Plus Tapes, who are doing the same, albeit with international sounds instead, and focusing on the cassette tape as the format of choice. Always limited, and always guaranteed to sell out in a heartbeat.
And this latest reissue from Plus Tapes will most likely be no different, aside from those folks who will buy ANYTHING, regardless of what it is, before they hear it or even know anything about it, this collection from Travellers, will be of great interest to fans of all the Sublime Frequencies releases for sure. From Singapore, Travellers, traffic in a sort of groovy jazzy surf pop, rife with Morricone-isms, plenty of twang, groovy Mariachi horns, fluttering flutes, simple shuffling drums, spidery guitar melodies, cheesy synthesizers and lots of reverby surf rock , occasional wild rock saxophone, all with a distinctly Eastern vibe.
Lots of this sounds like the soundtrack from some long lost Western or kung fu epic, surfy, jazzy, funky, folky, playful, slipping from minor key moodiness to fun sunshine-y poppiness, always dramatic and evocative and most definitely always groovy.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! Already sold out at the label, we have the last copies, more than a third of the pressing came to aQ, but these still probably won't last long. Full color covers, hand numbered, green tapes, correspondingly numbered!
The Germanic and dark drone outfit Troum embark on a collaboration with the equally dark, Russian ensemble Reutoff, although the conceptual framework of their album isn't one wholly wrapped in mystery, occlusion, and shadow. Creatura Per Creaturam Continetur is based upon the cosmology of Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th century German abbess, whose richly detailed visions through her unshakeable Christian faith offered feminine descriptions of the cosmic order sprinkled with sexually charged metaphor. In addition to her writings, Hildegard had developed an impressive musical canon of monophonic chorales and plainsong melodies, whose recursive elements certainly look forward to all sorts of drone-based musics of the 20th and 21st centuries.
While the drone connection is easy to make, how Troum and Reutoff view Hildegard von Bingen's faith and art is unclear. Regardless, the majestic swells that immediately surge at the introduction of this album are some of the most beatific and heavensent that either project has produced to date. Troum have always been known for their glacial pacing of drone crescendos for spiralling guitars heavily processed in effects; and on this album, they leave no doubt that they excel at their craft. For those seeking the dark, almost blackened ambience that both Troum and Reutoff have mustered in the past, there's plenty of industrial bellows, clanking rhythms, creepily whispered vocals, and subaquatic reverberations to cast a somber pall across these recordings.
This is a Russian import, and may be very difficult to get back in stock once we sell out of this initial batch.
First off, how amazing is the name Stellar Auditorium for a label. Heck, for anything. We only recently discovered this label, who have released a handful of cd-r's so far, all of them amazing, and all of them gorgeously packaged, so much so we almost wonder why they only make cd-r's, as the packaging is so deluxe and fantastic, full color digpaks, multiple inserts, the whole nine yards, but thankfully, even the cd-r's are pretty swank, black on one side, and professionally printed on the other.
Anyway, none of that would make a difference if the music wasn't worthwhile, but as we mentioned above, it most certainly is. Elsewhere on this list you'll find one of the new Procer Veneficus releases, also on Stellar Auditorium (love even typing it!) and then this, the first full length from Swedish black metal horde Underjordiska.
Thanks to our pal Ben at Amoeba for turning us to these guys, took us a while, hadn't been able to track down actual copies of the record, until in a strange bit of serendipity, the label just contacted us out of the blue, so now we finally have this to list, and holy shit is it amazing. Minutes in and we can already tell the aQ black metal hordes will lose their shit for this stuff. Don't know anything about these guys, they're not even on Encyclopedia Metallum, all we know is they're from Sweden, and they totally destroy.
After a gorgeously creepy intro, all ominous drones and high end short wave interference sonic squiggles, the first song kicks in, an incredibly lush, thick wall of warm buzz, shoegazey for sure, but more sort of washed out sounding, sepia toned, bleary and blurry, the drums lost in a distorted haze, and the vocals, harsh and hateful, but not so abrasive and jagged, still weirdly warm and thick, like little bursts of pink noise, barely shaped into words, the riffing is warped and warbly, slipping into strange atonal shapes, but always snapping back into frenzied blasts of soaring riffage, and soaring is pretty right on the mark, this stuff is totally epic and majestic, like a lo-fi grim and raw black metal Godspeed. That same sort of sweeping expansive vibe, but all wound up into these streaks of buzzing blackness.
The tracks are repetitive and hypnotic, the band locking onto a riff and creating these lush tranced out buzzscapes, but those riffs are super fluid, it almost sounds like someone changing the tape speed, as the riffs sort of slip and slither, bend and change shape, the songs follow, like listening through some sort of funhouse mirror, sometimes the buzz is so thick and blurred, that the song seems to disappear in a cloud of effects and cymbal swells and processed vox, like noise, but soft noise, soft black noise, spread out over riffs and beats, only their shadows visible through the wall of sound.
The final track is easily the most epic, and not just because of its length (18+ minutes), it almost sounds like some sort of anthem, totally majestic, and melodic, but like the rest of the record, underneath layer after layer of buzz and whir and haze, slowly transforming into something more noisy and off kilter, more warped, the vocals ghostlike and abstract, the drums gone, swallowed by the buzz, the riffing modulating and flitting from note to note, almost like someone flipping a switch, jarring and off kilter and really really weird, but somehow all that buzz smooths it into something strangely dreamlike (and a tad bit nightmarish), before everything drops out, and the record drifts off in a hazy, ethereal fog. So awesome. Can't believe we had never heard these guys before.
Anyone into the black, the buzz, the blur, the blissed out and the blast, this is IT.
"Feedback-laden West Country psychedelic free-noise garage metal" eh? Released by the record label division of druid rock dude Julian Cope's indispensable Head Heritage website? Gotta check that out!! And so we did, and so here it is... Urthona's I Refute It Thus.
The cover of this disc bears a picture of a giant granite outcropping on a remote moor in England, beneath white clouds and a curiously pink sky. These massive, lichen-encrusted rocks have loomed over this particular Dartmoor hilltop for untold ages. If you look closely at this photograph, you'll see the figure of a long-haired man standing amidst the stones, facing the dawning sun, holding an upside down electric guitar, headstock jammed into the earth. Now imagine that his guitar is actually powered up, feeding back, plugged in somehow to the cyclopean stones, themselves both a source of earth-energy and also an obvious visual parallel to a wall of Marshall amplifiers... well, that's just about what the music on this cd sounds like!! Rock, from the rocks. (Except, Urthona use Fender amps not Marshalls... the liner notes also tell us Urthona play Les Paul guitars, and "make frequent use of the Durham Electronics Crazy Horse fuzz pedal", aha.)
There's three long instrumental tracks on this mystic silver disc... beginning with the woozy, vertigo-inducing electric strum and howl of the ten minute "Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed", which sorta sounds like the Dr. Who theme being played on primitive feedback guitar by krautrock hippies Amon Duul... nice. Track two, "The Bright Burst Of Morning" (19:34) is dronier, calmer, yet expectant with doomic potential. And finally, the third track, "Sun And Moon So Heavy" (21:44) does indeed do justice to its title. Waves of deep, grinding, spaced out guitar, so heavy indeed. Blissful at low volumes, vibrationally destructive at louder ones... seriously you need to be carefully turning this disc up! It's certainly heavy, but in an in-the-red atmospheric way that can reward a quiet listen...
The primal sheets of shrieking skree and dense distortion unfurled by Urthona's guitars (multitracked, as it's a one-man-band; Neil Mortimer take a bow) are also intertwined with pretty, folkish melodies, with also brief bouts of hand percussion or field recordings of gurgling waters mixed in... We're put in mind of the gritter moments of Steven R. Smith's Ulaan Khol I. Or perhaps a heavy Keiji Haino session, if he were channelling some cosmic acid-folk concept in his mind's ear. The other Neil (Young) and SUNNO))) could be further comparisons.
This cd comes in a unique eco-friendly tri-fold cardboard sleeve, with card inserts bearing details of art by William Blake and quotations from Walt Whitman and Albert Einstein, amongst other thought-provoking text found here. The photograph of the "Hound Tor" on the front is by J. Cope himself... The packaging, designed by like minded pagan droner and fellow Cope associate, Holy McGrail, is fantastic, except that we have preferred if the cd itself had been given its own paper sleeve. The pocket it sits in, along with the two inserts, isn't snug enough to hold it completely securely, and some minor cosmetic scuffing might occur to the disc's playing surface as a result.
Bah, but that's a minor complaint, and interferes not a whit with our enjoyment of Urthona's glorious shoegazing freeform rural-psych-noise-guitar-drone!! We love this, and a lot of you are sure to, too.
Holy shit, this is what we've been waiting for! Soul Jazz comes correct with an essential collection of the fierce and fired up sounds of the early queens of hip-hop. This is basically everything we love about hip-hop, captured in one monstrous collection, perfectly reflecting out love of both old school hip hop and more specifically female MC's, proving one again that the ladies knew how to do it best!
Filled with sass, strength, humor and charged sexuality, these ladies weren't just trailblazers, they made songs that still sound so damn catchy and irresistible all these years later.
While a big shift happened for sure it's important to remember that hip-hop's origins were strongly connected to strong females and even queer spirit. Coming out of the disco and funk scenes of late '70s New York there was a whole generation of girls who grew up empowered to take the mic and take no prisoners as they did so. So many of those amazing women are on this collection. Roxanne Shante, Sweet Tee, Sequence, Cookie Crew, JJ Fad, Queen Latifah (yes, she once was way fierce!), MC Lyte, Dimples D, Missy Elliott, and way more. There are those of us who remember these tracks from back in the day and we're equally excited for a whole new generation to get blown away by the colorful energy in these sounds, kids who have grown up on MIA, Lil' Kim, Fannypack, and Yo Majesty will get to hear just where those sounds came from! While the early '80s was the heyday for these sounds, what makes Fly Girls such a cool collection is that it's a three decade retrospective which brings the best of the female MCs from the late '70s all the way to the early '90s. These tracks make us wanna dust off our old sneakers and head to the playground with nothing but a boombox, a piece of cardboard and some friends 'cause with these songs blasting that's all you need for an instant party!
Holy shit, this is what we've been waiting for! Soul Jazz comes correct with an essential collection of the fierce and fired up sounds of the early queens of hip-hop. This is basically everything we love about hip-hop, captured in one monstrous collection, perfectly reflecting out love of both old school hip hop and more specifically female MC's, proving one again that the ladies knew how to do it best!
Filled with sass, strength, humor and charged sexuality, these ladies weren't just trailblazers, they made songs that still sound so damn catchy and irresistible all these years later.
While a big shift happened for sure it's important to remember that hip-hop's origins were strongly connected to strong females and even queer spirit. Coming out of the disco and funk scenes of late '70s New York there was a whole generation of girls who grew up empowered to take the mic and take no prisoners as they did so. So many of those amazing women are on this collection. Roxanne Shante, Sweet Tee, Sequence, Cookie Crew, JJ Fad, Queen Latifah (yes, she once was way fierce!), MC Lyte, Dimples D, Missy Elliott, and way more. There are those of us who remember these tracks from back in the day and we're equally excited for a whole new generation to get blown away by the colorful energy in these sounds, kids who have grown up on MIA, Lil' Kim, Fannypack, and Yo Majesty will get to hear just where those sounds came from! While the early '80s was the heyday for these sounds, what makes Fly Girls such a cool collection is that it's a three decade retrospective which brings the best of the female MCs from the late '70s all the way to the early '90s. These tracks make us wanna dust off our old sneakers and head to the playground with nothing but a boombox, a piece of cardboard and some friends 'cause with these songs blasting that's all you need for an instant party!
Holy shit, this is what we've been waiting for! Soul Jazz comes correct with an essential collection of the fierce and fired up sounds of the early queens of hip-hop. This is basically everything we love about hip-hop, captured in one monstrous collection, perfectly reflecting out love of both old school hip hop and more specifically female MC's, proving one again that the ladies knew how to do it best!
Filled with sass, strength, humor and charged sexuality, these ladies weren't just trailblazers, they made songs that still sound so damn catchy and irresistible all these years later.
While a big shift happened for sure it's important to remember that hip-hop's origins were strongly connected to strong females and even queer spirit. Coming out of the disco and funk scenes of late '70s New York there was a whole generation of girls who grew up empowered to take the mic and take no prisoners as they did so. So many of those amazing women are on this collection. Roxanne Shante, Sweet Tee, Sequence, Cookie Crew, JJ Fad, Queen Latifah (yes, she once was way fierce!), MC Lyte, Dimples D, Missy Elliott, and way more. There are those of us who remember these tracks from back in the day and we're equally excited for a whole new generation to get blown away by the colorful energy in these sounds, kids who have grown up on MIA, Lil' Kim, Fannypack, and Yo Majesty will get to hear just where those sounds came from! While the early '80s was the heyday for these sounds, what makes Fly Girls such a cool collection is that it's a three decade retrospective which brings the best of the female MCs from the late '70s all the way to the early '90s. These tracks make us wanna dust off our old sneakers and head to the playground with nothing but a boombox, a piece of cardboard and some friends 'cause with these songs blasting that's all you need for an instant party!
When you think weird '70s spacey synthesizer music, you might usually think of Germany and all the kosmic krautrockers over there. But as we've learned, France had their fair share of analog synth-psych pioneers too, experimenting with Moogs and ARPs and other machines... from academic electronics to proggy astral travel to noisier new wavey proto-industrial, this comp covers some fantastic stuff.
We got this in when we got the Pierre Bastien 1968-1988 collection we highlighted last time, it's on the same French prog label, Gazul. But we had to wait and order more of these before reviewing it, 'cause the copies we got the first time flew out of here without us even putting it on our list. We guess customers in the store just saw the cover and were taken in by the b&w image of a vintage EMS Synthi AKS, and a few words in French. But maybe it's not just the evocative graphics that got 'em, it's the lineup on this comp: Richard Pinhas/Heldon, Gilbert Artman/Lard Free, Verto, Camizole, Video-Adventures, and Pascale Comlade (collaborating with Victor Nubla and David Cunningham). Here's the deal: if you know those names, you probably already want this compilation. If you don't know 'em, and we'll admit we weren't familiar with a few, that's all the more reason to get this. 9 tracks, 70 minutes, much of it never-before-released material exclusive to this comp. However, the Pinhas, Heldon and Lard Free tracks we know are from albums that some folks might already have, all are amazing, though, and well worth hearing again in this context... Meanwhile, we'd never encountered the likes of Verto before, ferinstance. And their 15+ minute cut has to be one of this disc's highlights, an epic for Fender Stratocaster guitar and electronics ("Modules RSF"), that sounds something like a cross between Fripp & Eno and SUNNO)))... Fairly heavy stuff for '76, when it was recorded! There's lots of other treats here, from Pinhas's masterful minimalist Moog pulsations on "Variations VII" to the drifting droning synthscapes of Camizole's "Electronic Alarm" to the dense, dubby rhythmic swirl of Lard Free's supremely tripped out 17+ minute "Spiral Malax", the disc's most out-rock selection. Video-Adventures provides the more playful gurgling and burbling, blipping and bleeping sci-fi noises, while Comelade and Cunningham's collaborative 15:07 of blissful waves of grinding hypnosis seems a lot more serious... And there's more, all of it excellent.
The liner notes are all in French, unfortunately. But there is a selected discography that's not to hard to decipher, and photos of both musicians and their machines... Quite recommended!
Could there be a more aQuarius record? A compilation of recordings by various cults, including Ya Ho Wa 13, the Manson Family, the Aum Shinrikyo (we had a 7" by them a while back), the Hare Krishnas, as well as a bunch of others we had never heard of. But that's just the beginning. These recordings were supposedly recovered from beneath a compost heap behind the house of Peggy Luciene, who, during her life had followed a bunch of those cults and who eventually went missing. Assumed dead and buried, some assume she ascended or transformed, depending on which cult you believe. The truth is, this disc is part of an art project, which involves the fictional life and death of Peggy Luciene, the cults she was involved in, the people she knew...it's pretty immersive. The cd features a hidden track, that is the audio of the art project, a sort of guided tour through the Mission and Dolores Park, you can also listen on a walkman radio, tuned to 107.9. We've yet to do the actual walkthrough, but listening to the disc, we can almost visualize the various buildings and spots the mother and daughter visit over the course of the 17 minutes. It's pretty awesome. A huge project, beautifully realized, from the audio to the concept. And then there's the comp.
Even without all that art angles, we would have flipped for this comp. Some awesome rarities, with each group / cult getting a little paragraph description. There's the awesome "Mechanical Man" by Charles Manson and the Family, some awesome outsider folk, with some very creepy lyrics, plus you can hear various other family members talking and laughing in the background. Then there's some awesome psychedelic rock courtesy of Father Yod and -his- family. But what about the Shiva Lillas, who we had never heard of? There track is a creepy piano ballad, with a child speaking over the top. Followed by Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, whose folky hippy jam is pretty groovy, could be any seventies folkie, but of course these guys were obsessed with doomsday!
The Hare Krishnas offer up an Indian influenced chant / raga, that again, if it was on some weird world comp, folks would be freaking out. The People's Temple, led by Jim Jones (although Jones wasn't part of the band as far as we know) deliver a joyous gospel celebration, while the All Saved Freak Band unfurl some gorgeously lush freaky Christian folk. Up next is Sun Ra, whose Interstellar Arkestra commune is about the uncultiest of these cults, but heck, Sun Ra is pretty inspirational, and if any one could convince us to sit in a field naked and wait for aliens it would definitely be him. The Bugotak Project is more modern, and do a sort of metallized throat singing rock, pretty trippy and far out, and would also probably be a big hit around here if it was some weird cd-r from who knows where, and finally, the Breatharian Institute Of America, whose members aspire to a state of ascension where they can exist without consuming food, their musical contribution is a creepy recitation over a sea of chimes and bells, really haunting, and super intense.
A killer comp for sure, seemingly custom made for all you freaky folks into far out sounds and underground weirdness, an obsession with cults probably helps too, and the fact that it's all tangled up with the imagined life of a lost directionless young woman who spent her life looking for meaning in these sounds and with these groups, only makes it that much cooler. Definitely recommended, and for folks in the Bay Area, you should definitely lose yourself in the piece, throw some headphones on, and wander through another time and another world, right here in the Mission.
Beautifully packaged, full color cover, with pictures and notes for each group / artist / cult, as well as liner notes pertaining to the art project.
The tongue twistingly monickered Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere, who shell henceforth be referred to as VEGA, has been a huge favorite around these parts, ever since we first laid ears on their Cocaine album.
When we first got that record we were really expecting something fucked up and damaged and bizarre, but instead, Cocaine ended up being one of the fiercest most frenzied and fastest black metal discs we had ever heard, a total soul shearing onslaught so drenched in buzz it seems impossible that the whole thing didn't collapse under the weight of all that buzzing and blasting.
Well here we are revisiting VEGA's past, and guess what, they actually did used to be seriously fucked up and bizarre, their black metal still fierce and frenetic, but tempered by weird eighties style Goblin-y synthscapes and weirdo new wave and all sorts of other whatthefuck-ness.
The opener is appropriately black metal, an intro, but even there, the brooding synths and ominous drones are laced with processed children's voices which are FREAKY. So then, as black metal record law dictates, the next track should be a serious blast of black metal fury, but here, well, it sounds like some eighties John Carpenter soundtrack, or the chase scene in some cheesy sci-fi flick, or Goblin at their new waviest, but fuck it, who cares what the BM bylaws dictate, this stuff is awesome. Haunting and cheesy, dramatic and so over the top, and all over the place, slipping into some ominous synthy drones, before transforming into some minimal almost jungle jam, the skittery beats underneath warm woozy synths and creepy minor key melodies, and finally some harsh black metal vox over the top. And then buzzing guitars. Dropping in with about 50 seconds to go. Fuck yeah. Did we mention we love these guys? Well we love them even more now.
It's not all insane cheesy new wave weirdness, the follow up "Kill Me" explodes in a frenzy of grinding blackness, but even then, part way in, shifts gears and becomes super melodic with soaring melodies, and mathy rhythms, but you know what, by the end, the track has somehow transformed into another synth drenched skittery new wave outro.
And so it goes. Easily half the record is soundtracky new wave-y weirdness. And these guys nail it. Zombi, Proscriptor, you Carpenter / Goblin revisionists better watch your asses, cuz this takes all that stuff and gets it all tangled up with black buzz and blurred blasts. And those are definitely the best moments, when harsh vocals are laid over skittery electronic drums and whirling synths, so wrong it's right!
The band are still capable of spewing black filth with the best of them, "Insex Infect" is a solid 4 minutes of blown out in-the-red black heaviness, putting most BM bands to shame, but then moments later, they offer up a creepy bit of synthy ambience, only to lurch right back into another black frenzy.
The black metal here is top notch, so heavy and brutal and grim, incredible riffs and wild drumming, harsh vokills, and dense tangled arrangements, but the other stuff, it's not just throw away, like most bands tossing in a little keyboard interlude, it's well crafted, dark and mysterious and haunting, ominous and sinister, even without the metal, this would have been an awesome retro chunk of new wave Goblin worship, but with the metal, it's something far more fucked up and GENIUS.
Packaged in one of those oversized super jewel cases. Andee's black metal reissue of the year!!!!
Yo, it's the "Philly Issue". Soul masters Gamble & Huff on the cover. ?uestlove from the Roots. Radio DJ Sonny Hopson. Vibraphonist Vincent Montana Jr., and the whole Philly jazz scene back in the day. The Stylistics. And plenty more!! (But wait, where's Schooly D?)
As usual, this magazine of all things groovy (jazz, funk, hiphop, soul, disco...) and worth diggin' delves deep with extensive interviews and colorful pictures.
In terms of DOOM CRED, you really can't do much better than a split with legendary German doomlords Worship, and that's pretty much the only thing these Australians had on their doom resume before this here brand new ep.
Two long-ish songs (the cd version adds a couple short tracks, an intro and an outro), not as bleak and heavy as Worship or lots of other doom outfits, instead Wither do a sort of washed out and weary melancholic blackened doom, falling somewhere between the abject plod of ultra doom, and the shimmery black drift of suicidal depressive black metal. It's a pretty nice mix. The guitars buzz and shimmer, raw and lo-fi and not at all heavy, instead, they drone in the background, beneath a skeletal rhythm, and a echo drenched rasped vocal. The pace is indeed glacial, or at the very least, on the low side of midtempo, the melodies are melancholic, miserable, forlorn, but also surprisingly pretty. Strip the vocals away, and you'd almost have something bordering on shoegazey, and definitely some nocturnal soporific dronemetal drift.
The second of the two tracks is the blacker, the guitars a bit more jagged, the howls a bit more hellish, but again, it's dark and sorrowful and pretty in that looking-at-a-cloudy-sky-through-eyes-full-of-tears way. Suicidal black metallers (fans of Make A Change fer instance) will dig this big time, as well as all you depressive doomsters.
The extra tracks on the cd are brief but lovely, the intro very Factory Records sounding, with reverbed clean guitars, streaked with high end synths, while the outro is all harmonized guitars, and majestic melody, stretched out into a sprawling albeit brief classic doom sounding instrumental.
Olympia, Washington's black metal titans Wolves In The Throne Room follow up their acclaimed Two Hunters album with this lengthy two song vinyl only ep, the first to feature their new lineup, and the band's most focused and hypnotic creation to date. The formula has not changed, it's just sounding, well, better than ever before. More insular. While Wolves in the Throne Room has always possessed a talent for wrapping majestic melodies within relentless black metal riffing, Malevolent Grain most successfully blurs the distinction between blissed out beauty and brutality. The band is shrouded in an ever present haze of melancholy and despair that is just so much more genuine and effective than guys prancing around in corpse paint like some sort of old school black metal tribute act. They speak as a unique voice in an international scene where so many bands are preoccupied with their bullshit fairy tale take on satanism. All the while, they are heavy as fuck. A Wolves In The Throne Room song plays out as an expansive journey of multiple chapters before fading away into eternity. There is tons of ambience and atmosphere along the way, complete with gorgeous, clearly sung female vocals (courtesy once again of Jamie Meyers, formerly of Hammers of Misfortune), somber melodies, and warm waves of creeping distortion, but ultimately this is total BLACK METAL. Yes, all caps. "METAL" being the key word, the band never falls short on the blazing riffs, unstoppable drumming, and rasping vocals that they built their name on.
In keeping with Southern Lord's reputation for visual, as well as musical, awesomeness, Malevolent Grain comes housed in an appropriately hallucinatory jacket featuring blurry images of lush forest untouched by humanity and the band's new candelabra-esque logo embossed in stunning gold foil. Those who act quickly may be of the lucky few (er, lucky thousand, apparently) to receive the ep on cool "Dark Forest Green" vinyl. Oh, and a quick note, this record is to be played at 45 rpm. Considering how much we were digging it at the wrong speed for over six minutes, you know this comes to you highly recommended.
While we have always loved Zombi's proggy and tense synth thrillers, we've secretly wished they would cut loose a bit, add some hi-hat fills and give us the dark and sexy slow euro-disco we always knew they were capable of. The actively atmospheric sounds of John Carpenter's Escape From New York and French disco pioneers, Cerrone were really baby steps apart from each other in the first place, so we weren't surprised (but we were elated!) when a Zombi track, "Sapphire" showed up on Swedish DJ Prins Thomas's awesome compilation, Cosmo Galactic Prism, that really honed in on that late seventies / early eighties coke-mirror sound. "Sapphire" had earlier appeared on Zombi's out of print, tour-only ep Digitalis. Well, we finally have the 12" single release of "Sapphire" in its entire extended nine+ minute glory, and it's killer!! The vibe is definitely inspired by Cerrone's Frankenstein fantasy, "Supernature", with its vaguely sinister build-up, but it expands in interesting ways taking us into trancey rhythmic shifts and changes that never let up the dirty space disco late-night groove. The b-side features a track, "Long Mirrored Corridor", that ups the dark druggy disco perversions of Black Devil Disco Club, while the Escort Remix of "Sapphire" distills the long version's twists and turns into a more digestible dancefloor friendly version. So good!!!
Only the second release on this new The Rapture-run label, and doubtless limited in edition.
While we're quite taken by the groovy Italo-disco direction displayed on Zombi's new "Sapphire" 12" on The Rapture's Throne Of Blood label (reviewed nearby this list), that doesn't mean we don't also want to hear the Pittsburgh duo doing their good ol' ordinary Zombi schtick, which is what we get on the also brand new Spirit Animal. Heck we love Zombi, 'cause we love the same stuff that the guys in Zombi so obviously are into: Goblin, George Romero's Living Dead series, the works of John Carpenter (movies and soundtracks), spaced out '70s kosmische krautrock stuff... add in some more modern mathrock/postrock elements, and you've got Zombi, and you've got Spirit Animal.
As usual, an all-instrumental affair, one that could easily serve as the soundtrack for something suspenseful (have these guys hooked up with Hollywood yet? If only it was still 1985, they'd be making a second income, easy). The album starts off with the majestic melodies of title track "Spirit Animal", a proggy piece that reminds of ELO's "Fire On High". Could be a big hit if New Age radio would ever play a band called Zombi (IS there New Age radio?). The Tangerine Dreaminess of this sends us wonderful late '70s mellow kraut vibes. While not as spacey as, say Arp, or Alps, or Expo '70, we're sure they'd geek out about the same vintage analog synths. The thing with Zombi, though, compared to the likes of Arp (and Arp et.al.'s inspirations like Harmonia) is that that Zombi tend towards the tense, the tight. Less open. Not quite noodly but busier anyway with math rock chops. That's not so much in evidence on "Spirit Animal" but when track two kicks in, "Spirit Warrior", the repetitive urgent keyboard motif and relentless rhythms certainly provide some proof of that assertion. This piece reminds us of something we said in a review a long time ago about an avantgarde academic electronic act from the '70s, Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co., that one of their minimalist compositions was a lot like a TV nightly news theme... this is too, but harder, more intense, one that seems to be saying: "You'd better tune into the news! The economy's fucked up! Don't change the channel!". A good example of Zombi's trademark hectic/hypnotic duality.
Spirit Animal navigates these waters - dark churning rapids and placid calms and the undertow of spiralling whirlpools - with prog precision and no lack of big melodic magnificence. All six tracks do the job of eating our brains, Zombi-style, and making us like it. Highlights to cite would be "Cosmic Powers", which starts off as another one of Zombi's John Carpenter style suspense steppers but eventually, before fading out, drops into a percussion-only otherworld, going down a drum tunnel of layered echoing beats, begging for a DJ 12" remix deal... Also we'll mention "Through Time", the disc's final statement, and its heaviest. Zombi don't let us off easy, the blissful stuff happening earlier in the album while this track is dense with distorted throbbing, percussion pounding amidst the wonderful waves of synth. Maybe this is where the Jesu/Isis comparisons on this disc's obi come from.
Yep, another good one for fans of Zombi (or Circle, or John Carpenter, or '70s krautronica, or...). And since we'd actually been hearing rumors that the band had split up, we're extra extra pleased to have all these new Zombi releases! (Including, besides the Throne Of Blood 12" and Spirit Animal, a few copies of another new 12", a split with Maserati that we weren't able to get enough of yet to list...)
