This Philly band captured our hearts a couple years back with one of the best shoegaze inspired records we had heard in ages, Scribble Mural Comic Journal, an album with which we fell more and more in love with every listen. So we were excited to see that they were picked to kick off this awesome new series of 7"s put out by Geographic North, called You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, which will also feature talented folks like Tarentel, Tussle, and more! These two new songs find ASDIG in perfect form, delivering more of their swirling daydream delights that remind us of brighter sunnier Cocteau Twins. Perfect for the 7" format as this is a band who creates songs that only get better with constant listens, we've been playing this over and over! Comes on cool blue vinyl and of course pretty limited as most of these sorts of things tend to be.
Holy shit, this is fucking great! And who would have ever thought that the A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins would make a record together? And who would have imagined that it would be this fucking awesome? It's all superlatives and all expletives in describing the first collaborative production from AFCGT. The A Frames had managed to raise some eyebrows here through their post-punk appropriations of early Wire and early Fall, but the vocals had always been something of a miss for them especially on the last Sub Pop album. But in working with the AQ-endorsed Climax Golden Twins who are a band accustomed to delivering exemplary instrumentals from literally every corner of the avant-rock landscape, the A Frames have the permission to shut the hell up and let the Climax Golden Twins dump the fucking kitchen sink all over A Frames rhythmic swagger. The album opens with a tumultuous blast of glue-huffing noise-rock, sort of like a fistfight between the Butthole Surfers and the Sun City Girls. Soon after, a series of bad-ass Birthday Party / Oxbow swamp rock riffs explode with spindly space-age gamelan leads; elsewhere, the No Wave ghosts of R.L. Crutchfield-era DNA emerge with of jagged chops across the guitar pick-ups, bloodied fingers and all. Fuck, it all sounds fucking great! It's a damn shame that this thing is only limited to 50 copies! That perhaps is our only complaint.
Part two of Alva Noto's Xerrox series takes up right where the last one left off, continuing on in a much more buzzy, blissy, droney vein, way more textural and melodic than many of the AN records that have come before. In the review of volume one we mentioned Pop Ambient, and if anything volume 2 is even more washed out and shimmery, right out of the gate, AN offers up a warm wash of muted buzz, and thick gristly whir, softly pulsating, layered and warm, seemingly gone are the harsh tones and glitchy clicks and pops found on most Raster-Noton releases. Could be that Xerrox is just a concept record, but we have to say, as much as we loved the clipped minimalism of other Alva Noto records, the sounds here are quite divine. But this is an Alva Noto record, so even these warm whirls of drifting ambience, are laced with bits of static and hiss, super high end sine waves, but they're woven deftly into the sound, and serve to simply add more texture. There's a brief bit of super minimal beep and rumble, but then it's right back into that gorgeous drifty haze, that could just as soon be a Tim Hecker record.
"Xerrox Meta Phaser" follows suit, at least in the beginning, a soft whirring soundscape, that quickly escalates into an almost Sunn like dirge before exploding into a squall of blown out white noise. And then we're back to the dreamy dronemusic, this time, stretched out strings, smeared into soft summery swells, laced with a patina of gritty hiss, and so it goes, the whole record is a dark swirling expanse of muted minimal melodies, warm textures, mysterious drones, and delicate hazy drifts, the usual glitch and buzz, relegated to accents and filigree, rarely interfering in the rest of the record's blissy sprawl. Any one of these tracks would be right at home on the newest, more Kranky-fied Pop Ambient comp, and thus, this might be the first Raster-Noton record that might just appeal to all the drone and dirge folks as much as the glitch and pop people.
Like all R-N stuff, gorgeously designed and packaged, an oversized diecut, 8 panel sleeve, the cd nestled within the diecuts, the art spare and minimal and striking.
Not to be confused with the -other- Ancestors, the noise drenched, blackened lo-fi, blown out raw as fuck punk metal outfit, no, this is something all together more stoned and groovy, spaced out and ROCK.
Don't know too much about these guys other than they're a 5 piece from LA, and man can they riff with the best of 'em. Two looooong songs, one nearly 17 minutes, the other almost 22, each a sprawling stoner rock psychedelic groovescape. Think Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, Earthless, Dead Meadow, Acrimony, Los Natas. The songs are less proper songs, and more epic jams, the actual verses and chorus and vocals relegated to popping up here and there, while the majority of the song is spent rocking the fuck out, unfurling majestic sun baked soundscapes of riff and groove and killer leads EVERYWHERE. Occasionally, the songs bliss out, and get all tripped out and druggy, with soft Santana-y guitar squalls, and tons of effects, but those parts inevitably build and build until suddenly the song is back in full swing, the band lurching and lumbering and grooving relentlessly. This is the sort of jam band we can get behind, epic heaviness and endless riffery.
The second track is almost Melvins-y at the beginning, howled vocals over slow churning guitar grind, before slipping back into something way more sixties and psychedelic sounding. Like the super kick ass outro of every killer space rock song all stitched into one epic mega-jam. Near the end, the track blisses out and transforms into a loping moody dirge, with reverbed guitars and haunting female vocals way off in the distance, finally kicking back into gear for the last few minutes, a whirring minor key organ making the groove seem melancholy and strangely funereal.
Killer stuff for sure. Any one into heavy heavy post rock, stoner rock, riff heavy jams, sweet leads, or ANY or any of the above mentioned bands will most definitely dig this.
Housed in a sweet digipak with awesome artwork by Arik Moonhawk Roper!
Now on deluxe double vinyl!!!
There are already plenty of reviews out there proclaiming this album to be the pop equivalent of the second coming (at least for this year, anyhow). So we'll spare our readers the extensive details of our adoration and/or disdain and just say it's heaps better than last year's not so hot Strawberry Jam, displaying a nice fusion of both Avey Tare's and Panda Bears distinct sensibilities. Not so much a big difference in sound, just better production, more accessible songwriting, and heavier on the more blissful pop side than their spazzy oft-kilter folk side. We're a bit perplexed at the absurd amount of hype this has gotten and wish we got to hear it on its own merits free from the insane hyperbole doled out by critics, and that probably clouded our expectations a bit. It's certainly a good record but doesn't break much new ground in any real way, but then not everyone was hoping for progression, although for those who perhaps have never heard an Animal Collective record before, this will be pretty eye (or ear) opening. Not sure yet if it will top our favorites, Sung Tongs and Feels, but it could, over time, come pretty darn close. And we're even hearing some Vampire Weekend in the new retooled Collective sound in the very Highlife style vocal parts!
Fans of Panda Bear's Person Pitch will definitely dig this!
Asobi Seksu pick right up from where they left off with their bright 2006 album Citrus! That means Hush is filled with gloriously shimmering dew drop pop very much inspired by female-fronted bands from the late '80s and early '90s. Perhaps a bit more focused and straightforward than its predecessor, the album is sleekly styled with a sparkling swirly pastel hued effervescence that compliments Yuki Chikudate's flittering vocals. Once again they conjure warm memories of both Cocteau Twins and Velocity Girl. 'Tis very welcome during these grey grey days! So nice!
Ultra limited new vinyl only release from UK noisemakers Astral Social Club, a perfect follow up to their recent aQ Record Of The Week, Octuplex. But unlike Octuplex, which mixed ASC's new found obsession with beats and dance music (albeit of the very twisted and alien variety) and their more classic ur-drone sound, Plug Music Ramoon, tends toward the latter, 2 sides, 4 loooong tracks, revisiting the sort of old Astral Social Club / Sunroof! / Skullflower sound we're so fond of. Drawn out notes, layered and interwoven, lots of shifting textures and mesmerizing drones, lots of upper register tones, some seriously blown out space drone meditative bliss out for sure. ASC this time around, as evidenced by the insert, are a three piece here, synths, woodwinds, guitar, and LOTS of effects.
The first track is brief and glorious, a smoldering shimmer of looped melodies and layered drones, sun dappled and dreamily fuzzy, very very lovely and warm and hypnotic. The second track, taking up most of side 1, begins as a murky fuzzed out krautjam, like later Skullflower, a simple, motorik beat, buried beneath a swirl of processed sounds and fractured effects, before the swirl explodes into full on cacophony, a wild space rock free jazz freakout, dizzying and dense, fucked up and free, the rhythm all but swallowed up by the massive blown out ball of skree and buzz and glitch, but noisy as it is, still retaining some semblance of melody.
The second side begins with another krautjam, this one much more spare and stripped down, a tribal sort of drum circle workout, very little in the way of wall of sound, more a steady propulsive beat, augmented by subtle bits of clank and clatter, extra percussive filigree, subtle effects, sounding way more like something you'd hear from Avarus or Kemialliset, muted and minimal, slightly mechanical and totally mesmerizing, and most definitely a bit tripped out. The closer is another softly smoldering dronescape, woozy loops, lots of crunch and grind smoothed into further layers of warm buzz and mysterious melody, a little carnivalesque, dizzyingly off kilter, like a symphony of warped 78s, the end result is a short stretch of washed out, soft focus, subtly rhythmic ambient drift that would do Tim Hecker of Philip Jeck proud.
LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES! We had trouble getting enough in to list, so this might be it. Please don't cry if/when we run out. Super nice thick jackets, each one hand numbered, with a thick textured paper insert.
So, do you really need another hole in the head, I mean black metal album? Well, yes you do, you just might want this one, it's a bit different and certainly on the extreme of extreme. On the other hand, Ayat could easily be too scary for some. We were intrigued with Ayat for several reasons. 1) It's on the Moribund label, and we always at least check out their releases, 2) the band hails from of all places, BEIRUT, and 3) we read an interesting interview with them recently in the venerable Metal Maniacs magazine (which, by the way, we're sad to hear is soon to cease publication, a seriously severe loss to the metal scene we grew up with).
In their interview, Ayat make some seemingly hyperbolic statements ("Moribund couldn't refuse this; they had no choice"), but also also sound like they have intelligent reason to believe them, and express some ideas that we don't think we've ever heard a band say, such as the notion that their listeners "are the people who don't give two shits about Ayat but have a life of their own. Every now and then, we give them a gift. The musician/listener relationship should not go beyond that." They also discuss what real war is like (something they know about, that most black metal bands don't), explaining "it's getting your hands dirty, and screwing everyone around you until you convince yourself you're not such an asshole after all". Their atypical background and evident intelligence already set Ayat apart. Then you should note that the guy quoted above calls himself Filthy Fuck. And the other guy in the band is named Sadogoat. Reconciling that, taking them seriously, definitely made us want to hear their music.
And of course, what really matters IS the music. And the music here, or should we say "music", is REALLY distorted and deranged and blasting and brutal. Up there with early Anaal Nathrakh and Revenge. It almost makes you wonder, why they don't just go all the way into Merzbow or Incapacitants style total noise? But then this would lose the frantic headbanging catchiness that underpins all the blurred, buzzing, screaming chaos. Ayat's relentless raw, rawarrrrghhh sound is really kind of punk rock (like Pissed Jeans x 666!!!), but the attentive listener will also realize there's quite a bit of artistry to how these tracks are constructed. It's a complex thing cramming all this craziness and violence into what are actual, rockin' songs. Considering that the band -sounds- like they'd rather be slitting their wrists or gargling alcohol or beating you up rather than doing anything constructive.
Ayat's song titles are just lovely, like "Puking Under Radiant Moonlight (Followed By A Century Long Ejaculation)" and "Thousands Of Pissed Motherfuckers". Filthy Fuck's vocals are often barked, rasped and sputtered like a hardcore Donald Duck and it's not always possible to tell what he's singing about (which may be just as well) but we get the idea it's nihilistic, not nice.
We were -really- worried about the singer towards the climax of the first track "Ilahiya Khinzir! (All Hail Allah The Swine)", but then realized what we were hearing was a recording of pigs squealing. The album is littered with tons of weird, disturbing samples, which sometimes extend into sinister soundscapey passages... but then it's back to the blasting, soon enough. There's actually lots of surprises within these tracks. Snippets of old timey music. The occasional perfunctory guitar solo surfacing. Once in a while, there's even some clean, chantlike singing (a la Root's Big Boss), most notably on the downtempo album closer "Such A Beautiful Day! (The Exaltation Of Saint Francis)" which combines plodding, morose melody with a subtle sheen of electronic drone. Whew! Many methods to their madness here.
Be warned, as you've undoubtedly already surmised, there's religious intolerance, heck, HATRED expressed (not entirely a surprise, as they are a black metal band, usually not known as fans of organized religion, or terribly concerned about offending anyone). This band, based in Lebanon as we mentioned, is avowedly anti-Islamic. Wonder how that works out for them?
We only have a handful of these in stock, and pretty sure this is already out of print at the label. We got them ages ago, but the covers were damaged in shipping, so we had been waiting for more covers, and when we finally did get more, they somehow ended up in a box in the back, until we found them a few days ago.
So lucky day for the doomlords, as this is another crushing slab of blackened ultra doom from German heavyweights, B.Son or Black Shape Of Nexus, teamed up with the new to us Crowskin.
B.Son operate somewhere between the spare spacious plod of Fleshpress, and the blood curdling speaker torture of Bunkur. It's slow, and thick, and viscous and harsh, and downtuned and HEAVY, but there's tons of space, the guitars are weirdly clean-ish, the arrangements are abstract, minus the vocals this could be some strange doom-ed post rock, but with the hellish howls, it is transformed into an oozing sprawl of glacial crush, of lumbering Teutonic lurch, shot through with some surprisingly pretty melodies, and some subtle sonic shading. There's a new full length out now too, which this has us dying to hear...
Crowskin are also from Germany, and are also somewhat doomy, but unlike the tarpit trudge of B.Son, Crowskin, are a bit more propulsive, a little more mathy, and a little more crusty / punky, but even more outwardly brutal, with long stretches of loping prettiness, moody atmospherics, which inevitably lead into massive churning swirls of distortion doused crustdoom, but they also have these strange parts, where a super clean guitar unfurls a haunting melody, WAY up in the mix, louder than everything else, making for something really off kilter and twisted sounding. Like Neurosis via Moss, Crowskin lumber monstrously through extended sprawls of buzzy drones and roiling low end crush.
A pretty lethal one two punch for the doom freeks out there. Too bad we only have 15 copies or so, and as mentioned above, it's very likely these will be the last copies ever...
Gorgeous, slightly oversized, super striking fold over cardstock sleeves, a few have barely bent corners (compliments of the post office), but these are the last copies we'll see, so we're all gonna just have to live with it, thankfully, the bends are very minimal and thus barely noticeable to all but the most anal of record nerds...
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!
Another tasty and colorful slab of vinyl from BMSR. No one delivers warm, warped and fuzzy melodic electronic jams better then these guys. We've fallen deeply in love with their sound over the last few years and they have yet to disappoint. This picture disc offers two great new instrumental tracks that showcase their slower and more warped and warbly side. Still filled with such delicious hooks but we love that these longer tracks allow them to space out and get a little more cosmic and psychedelic. It's still unmistakably BMSR, their signature sound all oozy and melty and drippy and druggy and divine...
The picture disc comes with a coupon for a free download, but you can't beat listening to this on your turntable and watching the colored wax spin around and around as you get lost in their catchy orbit. Very limited so jump on this while you can!
Borg is a suitably anonymous project based out of Brooklyn, which has released two albums to date on Phaserprone. This is the first album, which was originally released back in 2007 and was thought to be out of print until Phaserprone uncovered a small (and we mean small!) stash of these for Aquarius. Dark, very dark techno that sounds like Chain Reaction heroin house as played through the Wolf Eyes suitcases of analog electronics and industrial stomp rhythm machines. Spooky atmospheres and really creepy samples from horror movies seem to emerge behind every bassbin crushing beat and every stalking bassline. This one is even better than Borg's 2009 I:A album, due to the shroud of darkness that envelops Borg's electronics. Just buy it. You won't regret it.
There's white metal, there's UNblack metal, and then there's unabashed Christian black metal, all of which we find endlessly fascinating, due in no small part to the fact that black metal by definition is Satanic, certainly evil and grim, so reimagining black metal as something holy, something celebrating the Lord, is tantamount to blasphemy, if you can in fact blaspheme something inherently blasphemous. The other strange thing, is that unblack metal and Christian black metal, at least in our experience, seems WAY weirder. As if that was one way to create a separate more virtuous strain of black metal, the sound, the production, the arrangements, it always seems so much more bizarre and fucked up. And heck if there was anything that might lure us over to the other side, it would be a record like this, the debut from Dutch duo Borgazur. And yeah, beyond being buzzy and heavy and black, this is one weird record. Let's start with the non-musical elements. The record is called 2P3" Alchemists Earth Of Aeon A.C. Not really even sure what that means. The two members are called Kildreth The Elder and Knight Ilithrir. Some song titles: "Preface To Our Cogent", "The Repeat Of Underestimated Allures", "Prognostication Of Victorious Travail", and how about this one: "Alchemy Of Alleviation When A Fib Is Prevaricated"!! The cover art is a crazy collage of skulls and lions and Hitler and coins and all sorts of other stuff, superimposed over some mystical forest. The lyrics are printed within, and heavily footnoted, referencing various books of the Bible, even their names are culled from the Good Book. Phew. But then there's the music, which is equally bizarre.
Fast and furious, and almost symphonic, super complex and mathy, the drums lightning fast, the riffs gnarled and buzzy, tons of lurching stop start arrangements. There are some haunting clean vocals drifting in now and again, some clean folky bits, even some blackened drones, but for the most part this is frenzied epic blackness, like Solefald or Borknagar or Dimmu Borgir but mixed with a little Deathspell, or S.V.E.S.T., a strange blend of symphonic heaviness, and grim black buzz, but even then, totally its own black beast, a sound fucked up and fractured, dizzying, confusional and seriously and awesomely OUT THERE.
We almost didn't list this, as we only managed to get 5 copies of it, and all of our distributors told us it was out of print. But just for the heck of it, we contacted the label directly, and they still had a stash that they were willing to sell us, which is a good thing, cuz it's amazing! And it's CRAZY expensive, but when you see it (and hear it) you'll realize it's pretty much well worth it.
Never heard the name Karl Bosmann before, but he seems to be sonically aligned with the doomdreamdeathdrone crowd. And that's precisely what this is, although a bit more varied than usual, this one's definitely for the SUNNO)))-set (umm� sorry), a huge old chunk of low end drone. Multiple variations on the glacial near static crawl, some glimmering and effervescent, others grinding and thick, crumbling and abrasive, at least one seems to be all processed vocals, looped and smeared into some weird Steve Reich-ian drone and coupled with a wash of minimal low end shimmer, and one is all detuned guitar strum and disembodied buzz. Easy to hear some Wolf Eyes and definitely some Vulture Club. All of side 2 is a single slow burning sidelong epic, very Fear Falls Burning sounding, beginning as a whispery shimmer, building to a massive clamorous Sunroof! style din.
And let's not forget the packaging. Holy shit, it would be worth it even if the record sucked. Embossed metallic silver on matte black jacket, inside a metallic silver on black insert, a metallic silver on black sleeve, even the record labels are reflective silver, super striking and SO worth the extra scratch.
Another in Noiseville's awesome new Outer Bounds Of Sound lp series (Gary Mundy's Kleistwahr is reviewed elsewhere on this list), each release hand assembled, with custom paste on artwork, each one limited to only 300 copies!
Everyone went nuts for the most recent Burnt Hills full length, Tonite We Ride, reviewed here a while back, and rightfully so, a heavy dose of druggy improvised spaced out psych rock, recorded live in the basement of their house / jampad, as is everything they release, we think, all the product of a long running weekly jam, with an ever shifting lineup, but with a pretty consistent sound. In fact, it wouldn't be all that far fetched to posit that Burnt Hills NEVER stopped jamming, holed up in that basement wreathed in bong smoke, soaked in alcohol, playing on and on and on and on, every day, on through every night, and each release we get, is just a snapshot, a snippet of sound snatched from the frenzied endless riffing and the infinitized drone-space-kraut rocking. It does sound like that, these are not songs as much as movements, and they don't start and develop like a normal piece of music, it's the recorded equivalent of walking down the stairs, pushing the door open, and finding yourself immediately immersed mid-jam, and said jam continues until the record ends, or you get up off that ratty sofa in the corner, the one under the Christmas lights, and head to the stairway, the song only REALLY ending when you get up to the kitchen and finally slam the door.
Raw and lo-fi, chaotic and free, with brief stretches of lucidity, an extended free jam, wrapped in sheets of feedback and tangled riffing, the drums mostly locked into a simple motorik rhythm, but just as often splintering into flurries of free jazz splatter, the tracks themselves, two sidelong ones, veer from locked in distorted druggy groove, to total outsider abstract freeforall, drifting more toward Sunroof! or Skullflower than Acid Mothers Temple. It's a strange brew, equal parts heady experimental noisemaking, and classic garage rock riffing, blown out dronemusic, and tripped out space rock, those two disparate sonic sides get mashed together and the result is, well... THIS. A gloriously cacophonous effects drenched, outsider, heavy riffed, acid soaked, garage kraut space rock freakout. Which obviously means that this is WAY recommended.
Cool handmade covers, pasted on front and back, and again, LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We pretty much have a standing order for anything that PlusTapes releases. Much like Mississippi, PlusTapes has become the sort of label folks collect, which as we've mentioned before is pretty remarkable for a label so young. But so far, almost every release we've gotten from PlusTapes has flown out of here. And like Mississippi, they've also decided to dabble in more contemporary sounds, along with their ambitious reissue campaigns. Supporting their local scene, while paying homage to the past. Such is the case with these two latest releases, both limited to 100 copies, and we got less than 20 of each.
PlusTapes really couldn't get more eclectic. Indonesian pop, surf music from Singapore, dramatic cabaret folk from former industrial icons, Peruvian garage rock, and now thrash metal from Chicago. Hell yeah!
The appropriately named Chicago Thrash Ensemble are a furious thrashing four piece hell bent on wreaking utter musical havoc, blazing riffage, furious drumming, lightning speed tempos, raspy glass gargling vocals, some little bits of shred here and there. All recorded super raw and lo-fi and in-the-red like some lost eighties demo, what more do you need to know. How about it, the tape is blood splattered (okay, maybe it's red paint, but still!), the covers feature a weird hand drawn heavy metal kid binder beast, with the band's name in the mouth, and the evil eyes glowing red, thanks to an extra set of red eyes pasted on to the plastic case. Oh and they totally shred, it's hard to tell if these guys are true metalheads, or indie kids getting their thrash ya ya's out, but it hardly matters, it's heavy, thrashy, with plenty of nods to Slayer of course, with some wannabe "Raining Blood" and "Angel Of Death" moments, what's not to love? These guys probably destroy live, Chicago folks should definitely check them out. The rest of us will just have to make do with this little plasticky bit of old school thrash, and enjoy the vio-lence vicariously!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have less than 20. Cool hand drawn covers, lots of beasts and creatures, glowing red eyes pasted onto the tape case, the tapes themselves 'blood' splattered, each one hand numbered.
Get out the tinfoil, draw the blinds, turn the television to static and brace yourself for the amphetamine-fueled paranoid mind-fuck of San Francisco's industrial wastoids, Chrome!
Their three seminal albums from the late seventies/early eighties, Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, and 3rd From The Sun have thankfully been re-issued by the Noiseville label who have brought us stellar releases from Skullflower and Wicked King Wicker among others. Led by Damon Edge and Helios Creed, Chrome channeled The Stooges raw garage energy with Hawkwind's mindmelting space rock acid-psych and the electronic proto-art-punk of bands like Debris' and The Styrenes into a spazzy amalgam of sci-fi distortion, glam-punk chaos, and all manner of machine fuckery including television samples, bizarre tape manipulations and random fuzz-filled noise. Inspired by the future-shock visionary writings of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick, Chrome were cyber-punk before the term had even been popularized! In fact, they were one of those bands who became much more popular after their demise, when bands like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black and other Touch and Go bands started gaining notoriety in the mid-eighties college rock scene.
Alien Soundtracks from 1978 was Chrome's second album after the relatively straight forward rock of their debut The Visitation. But by then Helios Creed joined the band and Chrome's signature sound, centering on Creed's grinding pitch-shifting guitar attack and Edge's aggro drumming and damaged tape manipulations, were firmly in place. Supposedly recorded as a soundtrack for a live sex show, songs like, "Magnetic Dwarf Reptile" and "Slip It To The Android", display a sleazy suggestiveness with scuzzy rhythms and odd wailed crooning. While their fascination with science fiction's darker side (especially involving man-machine biologies and mind-controlling robots in a techno-industrial wasteland) manifested itself in vicious electronics and disturbing drones over the layers of buried vocals and speed-driven guitar riffage.
Get out the tinfoil, draw the blinds, turn the television to static and brace yourself for the amphetamine-fueled paranoid mind-fuck of San Francisco's industrial wastoids, Chrome!
Their three seminal albums from the late seventies/early eighties, Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, and 3rd From The Sun have thankfully been re-issued by the Noiseville label who have brought us stellar releases from Skullflower and Wicked King Wicker among others. Led by Damon Edge and Helios Creed, Chrome channeled The Stooges raw garage energy with Hawkwind's mindmelting space rock acid-psych and the electronic proto-art-punk of bands like Debris' and The Styrenes into a spazzy amalgam of sci-fi distortion, glam-punk chaos, and all manner of machine fuckery including television samples, bizarre tape manipulations and random fuzz-filled noise. Inspired by the future-shock visionary writings of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick, Chrome were cyber-punk before the term had even been popularized! In fact, they were one of those bands who became much more popular after their demise, when bands like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black and other Touch and Go bands started gaining notoriety in the mid-eighties college rock scene.
Half Machine Lips Move was the 1979 follow-up to Alien Soundtracks and it's definitely our favorite! The songwriting is completely fucked, with aggressively manic jump-cuts in and between songs. Sounding like the music analog machines would make if they just became sentient drug-taking monsters, the paranoid mind-control trip is full throttle, with nightmarish conspiratorial songs about the government and the media in cahoots with aliens to enslave the public ("TV As Eyes" "Zombie Warfare" and "You've Been Duplicated"). Rife with layers of sinister lo-fi electronic noises and television samples, over fast riff-heavy rhythm hooks and lysergic face-eating vocal effects. So awesomely damaged!! If you were to get only one Chrome album, this would be the one!
Get out the tinfoil, draw the blinds, turn the television to static and brace yourself for the amphetamine-fueled paranoid mind-fuck of San Francisco's industrial wastoids, Chrome!
Their three seminal albums from the late seventies/early eighties, Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, and 3rd From The Sun have thankfully been re-issued by the Noiseville label who have brought us stellar releases from Skullflower and Wicked King Wicker among others. Led by Damon Edge and Helios Creed, Chrome channeled The Stooges raw garage energy with Hawkwind's mindmelting space rock acid-psych and the electronic proto-art-punk of bands like Debris' and The Styrenes into a spazzy amalgam of sci-fi distortion, glam-punk chaos, and all manner of machine fuckery including television samples, bizarre tape manipulations and random fuzz-filled noise. Inspired by the future-shock visionary writings of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick, Chrome were cyber-punk before the term had even been popularized! In fact, they were one of those bands who became much more popular after their demise, when bands like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black and other Touch and Go bands started gaining notoriety in the mid-eighties college rock scene.
3rd From The Sun from 1982 was the band's final outing, after a couple years in the wilderness of label and line-up changes. More accessible songwise then the previous two records we reviewed, 3rd From The Sun still displays the sonic weirdness and alien paranoia that is classic Chrome! Dirge-y and brooding but with a new and crisper sounding rhythm section, this is heavier and more feedback laden with a greater emphasis on Creed's psych guitar than Edge's tape manipulations. They're definitely building the darker atmosphere here, rather than aggressively filling the space, on some tracks feeling like they're going in a more Zodiac Mindwarp direction (read: black leather and sunglasses) that Helios Creed would pursue more fully on his solo records. Definitely the type of sleazy sinister vibe that would fit right in at a strip club owned by David Lynch!
We've been so focused on the Paysage D'Hiver reissues lately, that we've barely had time to dig into the other releases on Cold Dimensions and Kunsthall, but there are at least two that we definitely need to highlight, the latest Trist, which we'll review soon, and this one right here. Melancholie2, from German one man band Coldworld, quite possibly, one of the best depressive black metal records we've ever heard. Although defining Melancholie2 as a depressive BM record might be a bit reductive. It will make more sense, read on...
A dizzying mix of lilting melancholia, furious blackened blasts, epic morose arrangements, awesome drumming (a definite shortcoming in most bands), kick ass and ridiculously catchy riffing, and most importantly, incredibly evocative atmosphere and ambience, even when a song is buzzing along frantically, beneath the surface there is always some sort of drifting crystalline melody, or whirring drone, or chant like vocal line, it sounds a bit confusing, but the mix is magical.
The sound on Melancholie2 is so dynamic, so majestic and heavy, no lo-fi boom box recording here, the guitars are massive, thick and crunchy and buzzy, the vocals raw and primal, the keyboards and synths lush and shimmery, the drums somehow perfectly audible amidst all the buzz. And as with most black metal records, buzz is a key component, and here that buzz is all encompassing, warm and expansive, coating everything in its warm embrace.
The slower tracks are definitely Burzumic, the lumbering riff, the plodding rhythm, underpinned by a gorgeous keyboard melody, the midtempo tracks are like a less weird Lifelover, the music hooky, and weirdly poppy, but still grim and black, slipping from melodic lilt to intense speaker shredding blowout, rare that a band, or man as the case may be is equally adept and crafting doomy dismal blackness AND intense blasting black metal. The ambient tracks are surprisingly effective, moving and lovely, most black metal bands use cheesy synth sounds, but here, those parts sound like antique music boxes, or the soundtrack to a soft snowfall in some forgotten forest, dark, and haunting, but definitely beautiful and breathtaking, only moreso when they lead directly into another intense burst of blackness.
Some of the tracks are dangerously poppy, but the band manages to pull it off, channelling the sweeping sound of Katatonia, but adds some truly bizarre, almost robotic sounding vocals, which definitely sounds goofy, but in fact, the effect is anything but. It's more some sort of abstract alien doom, that is truly creepy and otherworldly. A few of the tracks are gorgeous sprawls of washed out sorrowful doom, but at least one shifts part way through into a strange pounding bit of minor key midtempo black metal, before slipping back into that depressive plod.
It's really hard to do this music justice. It's at once so familiar, embodying so much of what we already love about this sort of music, at the same time, it manages to sound unlike anything we've heard before, every song manages to be both heavy and wistful, depressive, but weirdly rocking, as a whole it's an incredible, expansive song suite, culminating in the final track, a skittery glitched out ambient landscape, bits of static and hiss drift between simpler percussion, and a shuffling rhythm, moody minimal guitar, slightly twangy, all draped over a swoonsome bit of minor key drone, with a crunchy metallic middle, before slipping back into more skittery melancholic drift. So goddamn good.
Quite possibly one of our new favorite records, black metal or otherwise!
We pretty much have a standing order for anything that PlusTapes releases. Much like Mississippi, PlusTapes has become the sort of label folks collect, which as we've mentioned before is pretty remarkable for a label so young. But so far, almost every release we've gotten from PlusTapes has flown out of here. And like Mississippi, they've also decided to dabble in more contemporary sounds, along with their ambitious reissue campaigns. Supporting their local scene, while paying homage to the past. Such is the case with these two latest releases, both limited to 100 copies, and we got less than 20 of each.
We immediately recognized the name Chris Connelly, and you probably should too - Revolting Cocks, Ministry, remember? But we figured it couldn't be the same Chris Connelly, it just didn't make any sense, but the more we thought about it, PlusTapes is in Chicago, Chicago is where Connelly lives, well it did sort of make sense which is good cuz it is in fact the very same Chris Connelly, but this is a whole different sound altogether.
Connelly recently released a full length album called The Episodes, that was a mysterious and haunting solo effort, owing much to folks like Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker, and other dark bards, very intimate and personal and dramatic, a few of the tracks were even recorded live in a Wisconsin forest. So this tape acts as sort of an addendum to that release, but even if like us you were unfamiliar with The Episodes, this is till a pretty intense and satisfying listen. Three unreleased versions, also recorded in the woods, aggressively strummed acoustic guitars, Connelly's plaintive croon, in the background you can hear birds chirping, other folks talking, very evocative, the lyrics personal and abstract, the voice weary and weathered, sometimes almost cracking, not at all what we expected from Connelly, but then all we had to go on was his industrial past.
Also included are two live tracks, with more lush instrumentation, even vibes, and the result is even more Scott Walker-y with a hint of Morrissey, the songs definitely sound more fleshed out, but beyond the songs themselves the various players get sort of trance-y and the songs get a bit abstract, droney, hypnotic, with the players sort of going off. Features some younger Chicago indie folks as back up, and the result is something that's not hard to picture on Thrill Jockey.
We weren't sure what to expect, but ended up digging this a lot, and will now probably have to track down a copy of The Episodes too.
LIMITED TOO 100 COPIES. We have less than 20, packaged with a black and white fold out cover, each one hand stamped and hand numbered.
NOW ON VINYL, AGAIN! "Litanies of damnation, death, and the darkly erotic" from Britain's biggest (and best?) black metal act, the notorious Cradle of Filth. Andee was already a fan of their previous discs, but this is the one that convinced Allan that CoF were pretty darn great. Totally over the top, storming black metal mixed with Hammer Horror theatrics. It's fast, complex, and brutal. Definitely extreme despite their "sell-out" reputation. The CoF disc to get, to start with, we all agree.
Now available on vinyl!!
Folks had been bugging us to track down this record for ages, Black Magic Recordings by none other than the "wickedest man in the world" (at least when he was still OF this world), but we hadn't been able to figure out where to get them. We assumed it must have been released on some tiny obscure microlabel, or maybe it was a bootleg or something, but lo and behold, it was right under or noses, released on good old Cleopatra Records. Home to much modern goth and industrial. And while we can definitely see how this stuff might appeal to the industrial goth kids, it is evil after all, and black magic, but it seems to us the folks that would be way more into this, are aQ customers, fans of the obscure and mysterious, found sounds and field recordings, this would fit perfectly between your Conet Project and your Ghost Orchid disc of EVP recordings (depending, we guess, on what strange alien alphabetization you use).
These recordings have been available before in various quasi bootleg editions, probably most notably as 1910-1914 Wax Cylinder Recordings released on the Transparency label. But they are the same recordings, since these are the only recordings of Crowley in existence.
It's been a while since we listened to the Transparency disc, but these tracks definitely sound a little cleaned up, which is almost too bad, but fear not, there's still plenty of hiss and crackle and warble and buzz and fuzz, it's taken from wax cylinders after all. Basically, this is a collection of Crowley recording various stories, poems, writings, incantations and magical spells. His delivery very songlike, chantlike at times, fans of the Doomsday Cult recordings will also probably love this. The highlight probably being the Call Of The Aethyr tracks, each delivered both in English, but also in Enochian, a magical language supposedly discovered and used by John Dee, magician to the court of Queen Elizabeth. It may sound like speaking in tongues, but it is in fact a real language, with grammar and syntax, rumored to be a degenerate form of the language spoken in the lost city of Atlantis.
Includes extensive liner notes, nothing about the recordings, but a fairly comprehensive history of Crowley's life. And while they last, it also comes with an Aleister Crowley patch AND pin!
Hopefully you already know Darsombra, seeing as we made their last Public Guilt release, Eternal Jewel, a Record Of The Week not too many moons ago. Atmospheric dark doom-drone experimentation not unlike a more sinister Expo '70 or a proggier Nadja. If you don't know 'em, get this and you'll get to know at least one of their songs really really well, in a way.
Track one here, "Nymphaea", is a head-nodding exercise in bass heavy, slow-building psychedelic instrumental throb. It starts out with plenty of distortion, and only gets heavier and more blown-out as it plods forth, adding a snakily melodic guitar line to further entrance the listener. It originally appeared as Darsombra's contribution to the "untitled" 3cd comp PG help put out last year, and now it has spawned this collection of remixes, a dozen of them, tracks 2-13!
It's pretty fascinating to hear this single song morph from track to track, 'cause they're all very different, the each remixer definitely making it their own, from blissed out vocal pop (Max Bondi & Bleeding Heart Narrative's "Hyena Amp mix") to big-beat crash-boom electro (Pulsoc's "True Love Never Dies remix") to creepy drone-noise ambience (Guilty Connector's "Dotonburi Neonnights") and that's just the first three mixes on here! Elsewhere, Ala Muerte adds eerie female voice doing Latin chant, Destructo Swarmbots strip the track down to a minimal low-end hum, The Heirs Of Rockefeller crank up the fuzz, focussing on the song's incessant hypnotic plod... all these and the rest of the remixers generally fucking with this track in many compelling and often unexpected ways. Darsombra have every reason to proudly approve what's been done with, or done to, their "Nymphaea" here. Remixers not already mentioned above also include Perfekt Teeth, Magicicada, Strotter Inst., Decimation Blvd. & Darla Hood, Blood Fountains, and le knell.
LIMITED EDITION! 250 COPIES ONLY! We only got 20! On a black cd-r in a slim, screen printed sleeve with vellum obi.
A member of Myrmyr and Date Palms, Marielle V. Jakobsons has been a busy bee lately. Since graduating from the prestigious Mills College where she was involved in various sound art installations (including building a self-oscillating violin!!) she's been recording constantly, and honestly we can't get enough of what we've heard so far. Steel Hums is her debut tape release on Digitalis Ltd. under the name Dawrwinsbitch, and it's a mystical venture to unknown crossroads where Indian classical music meets modern composition. Combining the ever-growing possibilities of tape manipulation with long tone violin composition, Steel Hums is dark, dim, and somehow lush and beautiful. Kinda sounds like a lost recording of some ancient violinist, dug up in midst of some industrial ruins, or if Henry Flynt went gothic. Really awesome stuff!! AND Darwinsbitch has also just released a debut cd on Digitalis, much more on that once we get a hold of it. But for now, feast your ears on this little slab of gorgeously dark ambient beauty. And as usual for stuff on Digitalis Ltd., this shit is super super limited. Like, so limited we only have four. So if ya got your heart set on this little gem, we suggest you act fast. Oh and also, this tape ain't cheap, but trust us, the music on here is totally worth it!! Don't miss out this limited release from one of Oakland's finest female artists!!
Due to a little thing called the inter-webs (we've never heard of it), the tracks for Deerhunter's long-awaited follow-up to last years much loved Cryptograms were prematurely leaked. So to give us cd buyers more bang for their buck, they recorded an EXTRA full length, called Weird Era Continued, and released the two discs together for a single disc price. Very nice of them! This time around they fused their pop sensibilities and their more experimental hazy dronescape leanings together into songs that recall the best of classic 4AD shimmer with sixties wall of sound pop. There isn't too much difference between the two records, but the song-writing is strong enough and the production nuanced enough to keep our attention through both. While we might have liked some more spacier instrumental moments like the ones found on Cryptograms, it seems Bradford Cox has begun to channel his more experimental side into his other project, Atlas Sound, where it is actually better suited. Still this is pretty damn solid!
We first heard from Ata Abtekar under his pseudonym Sote, with a flurry of releases for Warp, then Dielectric, and a sound that definitely hit the spot, a deft amalgamation of fractured jungle, old school rave music, downtempo beatscapes, and shimmery dronemusic. More recently he helped compile a double disc compilation called Persian Electronic Music: Yesterday And Today (1966-2006), still to be reviewed, which collected the work of legendary Iranian new music composer Alireza Mashayekhi on one disc, and Ebtekar's more modern compositions on the other, drawing a sort of sonic timeline between Persian new music past and present, which leads directly to this double lp.
A long in the works 'collaboration' between Ebtekar and Mashayekhi. For these extended sonic explorations, Ebtekar took pieces composed by Mashayekhi, and performed by the Iranian Orchestra For New Music, and then applied various techniques to the sounds, taking live recordings, studio tracks, and then processing them, rearranging them, adding effects and samples, synthesizers, adding original sounds, harmonies and melodies, for a unique sort of modern classical Persian musiq concrete.
The original sounds are definitely present, this is most certainly not a case of the sample being rendered unrecognizable, those original sounds are as important to these pieces as anything Ebtekar had to add. Flurries of piano, moaning cellos, pizzicato plucks, soaring strings, subtle percussion, all surface here and there, and often, they are wreathed in fuzzy drones, or chopped into strangely percussive loops, or jumbled up into something much more chaotic, but just as often, Ebtekar's machinations are much more subtle, playing along as if he were not a remixer per se, but another player in the orchestra, only armed with a computer and effects instead of a flute or violin.
The sounds are varied and wondrous, from fantastical flurries of wild freaked out electronic flecked free form soft noise, to delicate tinklings and hushed moonlit drift, spacey metallic shimmers to haunting alien music box like lullabyes, Eastern sounding folk fragments drifting in soft swirls of rumble and hiss, long stretches of barely there melody and wispy streaks of distant rumble. Really quite mysterious and beautiful, whether you're into modern classical, electronic music, abstract dronemusic, or all of the above. ESPECIALLY all of the above.
Beautiful screened sleeves, with a printed insert, detailing the project, as well as the various performers and composers.
Second of two releases this week from the mighty Aesthetic Death label, who we owe big time, for not only releasing records by Wijlen Wj, Stumm, Wreck Of The Hesperus, but for being the long standing and likely long suffering home of ultradoomlords Esoteric. Check out the Murkrat elsewhere on this list for a whole different take on doom, but this here, the first full length from French sludge four piece Eibon, is classic doom drenched sludge, or sludgey doom, or whatever you want to call it. Massive downtuned guitars chugging and grinding away, pounding pummeling caveman drumming, gurgled beast-from-below bellows, plenty of feedback, but this isn't really ultra slow, we're not talking Monarch or anything like that, this is sludge-y more like Eyehategod or Grief or Bongzilla, midtempo, the guitars almost groovy, lurching and lumbering, the sound incredibly heavy and blown out, thick and dense, the distortion so thick that when a note is held for more than a second or two it seems to crumble before your ears. The band locked into a killer groove that barring a short stretch of feedback drenched ambience, never wavers, and occasionally explodes into dense bursts of furious tribal drumming and some seriously druggy downerpsychdoom guitar freakouts.
The second track begins oddly enough with acoustic guitar, but the riff is soon swallowed up by the same riff, albeit soaked in fuzz and buzz and distortion, even slower and doomier that the opener, the main riff is a killer, the guitars tuned sooooooo loooow, they seem to warp and warble, occasionally fading out, leaving a sort of space rock minimal jam rife with weird effects and even some super simple melodic leads draped over the top. Could be vintage Monster Magnet actually during those parts, but the band soon launches back into the lurching dirge that opened the track, eventually finishing off in a noise drenched feedback smothered squall of blown out psychedelic high end ur-drone.
In their brief career beginning in 2006, the Ohio based trio Emeralds has associated themselves with the grit and rust-stained noise that has erupted in the mid-western underground, often sharing the stage with Aaron Dilloway, C Spencer Yeh, and Hive Mind. Their two major releases have come by way of Dilloway's Hanson Records and No Fun Productions, which typically rank as releasing some of the most aggressive and brutal pieces of noise of the contemporary era. While live performances have reportedly embraced the noise community's full-force fury of maximum volume, Emeralds instead favors a sound that harkens back to the era of Cluster, Manuel Gottsching, Fripp & Eno, and Klaus Schulze.
Last year's Solar Bridge was a spectacular lazer blast of cosmic droning and inner-space meditation; but with that album clocking in less than 30 minutes, we were left wanting more. Fortunately, more is what Emeralds bring on What Happened. Collected from their seemingly non-stop sessions of improvisations for guitar, Moog, and Korg plus ample effects boxes, these 5 tracks spiral and snake around the same deep-space psychedelia found on Solar Bridge, pushing their sound beyond the two extended crescendos which populated that album. Monochord guitars pulse hypnotically against the overlapping tapestries of the sawtooth hum and modulating tones from the analogue synths. Throughout What Happened, Emeralds shift in mood from alien percolations of '60s sci-fi sound design to graceful swells of tonefloat majesty to purely physical vibrations which rip through the nervous system and strike numbly at the bone. There is beauty to be found here, but also a sublime unease that haunts these recordings. Yup, this one comes highly recommended!
Now on deluxe thick double vinyl with bonus tracks!!!
Mixing elements of world, funk, dub, and electronic music has for the most part turned out to be a recipe for disaster. All too many have attempted this mix with a glossy shine and a clumsy hand and without fail have produced pretty tepid attempts at cross cultural imagination. From 1979-1980 Brian Eno and David Byrne recorded -their- take on this fusion years before it became chic and of course with just the right kind of careful and talented hands, and were actually able to make those elements come together and create a brand new language. What's so nice about hearing this reissue is how it's both ahead of its time but also so OF it's time as well. With moments that bring you back to the bits on early Talking Heads records that you could listen to over and over, and with a recording quality so refreshingly raw and primitive. This record was recorded by a large ensemble cast including Bill Laswell who was just then starting his band Material with lots of the same ideas and elements. While not totally related in exact sound we can totally see how many of today's cross cultural sonic explorers were influenced by this record. There's no doubt these were sounds soaked up by the best hip-hop & electronic producers of the '80s and '90s as well as folks like Animal Collective, Excepter and even Glissandro 70, whose record we review elsewhere on this list. This reissue adds a handful of bonus tracks not on the original version and unlike most extras these are in fact all essential.
Fully remastered on 180 gram vinyl with 7 previously unreleased tracks as well as selections from the multi-tracks (drum track, vocal track and ambient track) of "Help Me Somebody" and "A Secret Life" !!!!
The Art Of Being comes courtesy of Minimal Wave, the label that has been digging deep, very deep into the realms of post-punk and new wave to uncover many a release that might have been lost otherwise. For those who have procured plenty of terminal obscurities from such blogspots as Mutant Sounds, No Longer Forgotten Music, or Systems of Romance, some of the vinyl-only reissues on Minimal Wave may be familiar. But these are no grey area reissues. Minimal Wave has assured us that they have taken great care to procure the rights for each of these recordings!
Ensemble Pittoresque was an obscure Dutch electro-punk band, who managed to release a couple of LPs in the mid '80s. Having been averse to performing live, they didn't garner that much of a following beyond the small distribution they had managed throughout the Netherlands and a few neighboring countries. The Art Of Being is a collection of lost recordings, none of which had been released until this edition for Minimal Wave. Ensemble Pittoresque submitted some of this material as a demo to Polydor in 1982, only to fail to move beyond opening negotiations. The recordings are very synth heavy, drawing in equal parts from John Carpenter's soundtracks, Fripp and Eno's Evening Star, and the early albums by the Human League. Amidst the icy bellowing from the synth melodies and sci-fi eerieness, Ensemble Pittoresque dotted their songs with acoustic guitars and vocals buried deep in the mix. Really great stuff, we must say!
Hailing from the same Cascadian forest that Wolves In The Throne Room call home, come the mysteriously monickered Fauna, with their 2006 demo, Rain, available on cd for the first time. Much like WITTR, these guys traffic in a sort of naturalistic black metal, focusing on rain, the earth, the forest, the spirits, nature in general, creating a sound that is meant to evoke massive forests looming overhead, of flora and of course fauna, snow glowing blow beneath the moonlight, branches glistening and glimmering in the falling rain, the record begins with what could very well be the sound of the forest, a field recording of wind, and insects, leaves and footsteps, running water... until finally a lone guitar begins its funereal fugue, minor key, loping and lugubrious, a bit mournful and melancholy. Eventually the guitars grow more intense, strummed instead of picked, a deep voice emerges, a rich, mournful croon, and so it goes, a dark brooding forest folk, lush with reverb and delay, the guitars intense and dramatic, very reminiscent of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, when suddenly, the track explodes and the band is blowing out a frenzied blast of furious black metal buzz, mesmerizing, trancelike, repetitive, the riffs totally blown out and drenched in distortion, the drums a relentless blast, which goes on for minutes, before the track shifts again, and the band lurch into a sort of lumbering blackened doom, super dynamic with lots of space, weirdly hypnotic and circular sounding, just a dark tangle of distorted guitar, until the drums join in again. But instead of blasting, the track slips into more of a woozy dirge, thick and warm and dense, for just a two piece, these guys can create a seriously expansive sound, after a few minutes, they explode back into frenzied motion, the blast even faster than before, so distorted and blown out it's almost like a blackened blur, the vocals a harsh bellow, the blast gradually breaking down again, until the duo are back to that hauntingly melodic doom-ic lurch, before finishing off in a blast of staticky buzz, leaving just a smear of warm soft chords, which slowly and dreamily drift into the darkness beyond.
One of the two members of Fauna also plays in pagan doom folk outfit Alethes, which makes perfect sense in the context of Rain, and the influence of their WITTR neighbors can definitely be heard throughout, but Fauna definitely make that sound their own, mixing long stretches of doomy folkiness with intensive blasts of blackened fury, and peppering the proceedings with bits of sprawling doom, and shimmery ambience, to create their own sonic representation of the forest they call home.
Gorgeous packaging too, black on black origami style fold over cardstock sleeve, with a simple booklet featuring just the lyrics and no other info. Cool.
First proper full length from these UK black metallers, who we once described as a black metal Polvo! There are definitely still hints of that here, but the metal this time around is also more furious. With the ep, we stressed that maybe troo grim metalheads might not find a lot to like, as much of that record sounded more like Pelican or Isis than Darkthrone or Deathspell, and even here, the first track begins with some post rocky clean guitar, but almost immediately launches into a seriously blown out squall of blasting buzz. But then a few seconds later, the band slip back into that loping post rock, only to again, explode into epic blackness. The track flits back and forth, and part way through there's even some Katatonia like clean vocals, which adds a definite pop element, and hints at what's to come. So, it's at once heavier and more black than the ep, but still manages to incorporate plenty of post rock rhythms and math rock arrangements, which basically makes this a massive favorite around here, but also means this is probably not black or brootal enough for some metalheads.
And since the opening track might just be the heaviest of the bunch, barring brief bursts here and there, this is the perfect record for the aQ metalhead, who when not enjoying true grimness, likes their black metal fucked up or freaked out or all shoegazey or all post rocky, which means odds are you'll dig this like crazy.
Much of the record follows the same pattern as the opener, long loping instrumental passages with simple drumming and clean crystalline guitars, peppered with bursts of frenetic riffing and wild blasting beats, but there's also plenty of strange haunting folkiness, bits of rainy day sad boy indie jangle, subtly complex math rock rhythms, all perfectly blended with chunks of intense riffery and buzzing black metal fury. And the thing is, the metal this time around IS way more furious, if you stripped out all the clean guitars and croony vocals, this would be some seriously paint peeling blackness, but those parts sound even MORE aggressive and heavy when butted up to some shimmery drift, or some jangly poppiness.
The closer is the other heavyweight here, nearly 12 minutes of roiling ultra heavy black metal, intense and frenzied, but still with plenty of loping midtempo grooves, occasional doom-ed out interludes, a brief flutteryfolky break, and a minor key string-ed outro, that manages to be super dramatic, and the perfect way for this strangely varied and super kick ass record to wind down.
Packaged in a super striking 8 panel digipak, and damn if Fen don't have one of the coolest logos...
A brand new record from Mr. Justin Broadrick, formerly of Godflesh, presently of Jesu, as well the sole member of this, his long running project Final. Originally an experimental solo guitar project, and actually maybe STILL an experimental solo guitar project, Final has definitely changed over the years, lately sharing more in common with Jesu than anything, the same sort of blissy drift, washed out drone drenched shimmer, but in Final, those elements are blurred into something more ambient and less propulsive, more soundscape-y and less post metal.
Four long tracks, each slow building and slow burning, the first all soft ethereal melodies over a grinding crunching minimal drone, those two elements all tangled up, with the melodies eventually blossoming into epic atonal harmonies, sheets of sound like a symphony of car horns, smoothed into something much more listenable but no less clamorous and chaotic, definitely reminds us of Sunroof! near the end.
The second track starts out all SUNN-y, a crumbling distorted downtuned dirge, although within that dirge lurks some surprising melody, and this track too builds to a blissed out high end shimmer, overlapping tones, washes of synthy warmth, bits of buzz and glitch, lovely, but still softly abrasive.
The flipside begins with some sort of abstract doom, thick, jagged chords, ringing out, and allowed to nearly fade out completely, before the next one comes crashing down, lots and lots of space, in the background a strangely active swirl of skree, streaks of feedback, shards of feedback, sine waves and upper register whir, roiling and churning beneath the lumbering riffage.
And finally, the record finishes off with something altogether different. Something pretty and strummy and yes, shoegaze-y, but weirdly looped and hypnotic sounding, as if they took a chunk from a Jesu track, a pretty undistorted bit, then doused it in effects and set it on repeat, allowing it to slowly shift, but to lock into a mantra like loop, so gorgeous, could have used a whole 'nother side of this stuff for sure.
VINYL ONLY (At least for now, cd coming someday)! LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES!!!
Ok, this is a black metal band, but non-metallers into the improv-drone sounds of the Jewelled Antler collective, Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith and the like should keep reading!
Not to be confused with the other Forest we've raved about (the psychedelic British folk band from thirty years ago), *this* Forest is a Russian black metal outfit, and a pretty good one belonging to the raw, primitive, corpse-painted end of the genre. The first four tracks on here consist of blasting, frozen Darkthrone worship, keeping alive the cult spirit that so few bands today still possess -- maybe because those tracks were actually recorded in 1996. Malevolent, majestic pagan metal full of Burzumic mayhem. Fans of this vein of true, trancey black metal darkness will be pleased. And if that was all that was on this disc we'd think it was cool. But then comes the fifth and final track, a surprise twenty-minute opus called "Winter Howl" taken from a 1994 rehearsal tape. Suddenly Forest isn't so obviously black metal at all, they've entered a psych-drone realm that's more akin to the aforementioned Jewelled Antler stuff (Thuja, The Birdtree, etc) or Taj Mahal Travellers or Reynols or Amon Duul's krautrock jams, still as forest-y and primitive as the preceding metal songs though. A wavering whispy wordless vocal winds over a bed of lost, primal percussion and haunting washes of mild feedback. Simple melody lines on guitar wander through the increasing haze, with deeper vocals providing additional layers of drone. If you really heard this in a forest you'd be mesmerized and scared, but it's really nice and pretty (in a damaged way) when heard at home...pretty to us anyway, dunno if Kaldrad and Dagorath meant it to be so! The vocals, until they get a little more metal-ly, totally remind us of the bliss-out singing by British folk experimentalist Richard Youngs or Jewelled Antler's pop soul Jason Honea. If Finnish avant-forest-folk folks like Avarus and Kemialliset Ystavat or the Jewelled Antler collective decided to make black metal, this is what's we'd imagine it would sound like! (Actually, there IS an upcoming black metal-inspired release from Jewelled Antler, a 3" cd-r by a group they call Tomes, but Tomes takes an even more subtle approach than "Winter Howl"...look for that here at AQ soon!) Meanwhile, on the black metal side, fans of Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Potentiam, and other weird ones should dig this track, along with Forest's other more typical black metal sounds. Recommended.
Martin Franklin and Michael Northam began communicating in the early '90s, both engrossed with the realm of possibilities extant in the laboratory that was the experimental cassette culture. At the time, Northam was beginning a career of sound-art globetrotting by way of festivals, residencies, and the generosity of others, having emerged from the Austin, Texas sound community that spawned the likes of John Grzinich, Olivia Block, Rick Reed, and Seth Nehil. Martin Franklin had gone on to form the British ambient ensemble Tuu, with releases through Beyond, Hic Sunt Leones, and Amplexus. It seems that Franklin and Martin enjoyed a single three hour session back in 1991, and out of that session came the original set of recordings which made their way on to a cassette, released by Sounds For Consciousness Rape, and later onto cd by SDV Tontrager. As both the cd and the tape have been long out of print, we can't comment on the differences between the original recording and this 'recovered' remix of the original source material.
Franklin and Northam settle organic textures from metal, dirt, and wood clattering against each other and building softened drones amidst the aggregated sounds. It makes perfect sense that Northam would later work with Darren Tate in one of the final Ora recordings, as these sodden ambient passages and quietly gritty noises share plenty of similarities. Northam had also brought to the session a cassette deck rewired to generate feedback systems, and Franklin had a handheld dictaphone with static and white noise broadcasting through the hypercompressed speakers. These elements give the recordings a rough hewn edge which counterpoint Franklin's sinewy ambience and ghostly half-melodies which are evidence of the contemporary remix work. Altogether, this redux has a darkly ritualized feel of isolationist drones divining something tactile out of the void, much like one would expect from the occluded sounds of the recent Drone Records catalogue.
San Francisco's own Grayceon follow up their self-titled 2007 debut with This Grand Show, a moody and majestic work that seamlessly merges gothy cello (yes, cello) dirges with more metallic riffage, resulting in a highly textured album, further augmented by the cleanly sung female/male vocals that bring to mind a sort of British folk/doom metal hybrid. Think Amber Asylum (of which cellist Jackie Perez Gratz is also a member) meets a less overtly crushing ASVA, with a bit of Pentangle thrown in. The complex, multifaceted songs take you on a dreamlike journey full of serpentine guitar riffs, plodding drumbeats and gloomy atmosphere. All the while, the cello keeps things nice and mournful, and just when you've serenely slipped into Grayceon's beautiful world of despair, the band effortlessly shows their METAL pedigree with hyperspeed blastbeats and an almost black metal heaviness. The result is hypnotic, beautiful, and intense. Recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited split single from aQ beloved Grouper, and the new-to-us City Center.
Grouper continues in her slow drift away from the lo-fi murk of early recordings into something distinctly more folky, with softly strummed acoustic guitars, and a gorgeous swirl of voices, overlapping harmonies, ethereal and almost choral sounding, the result, while still psychedelic and lo-fi, just might be the best sounding, and strangely enough, poppiest, track we've heard yet from Grouper!
City Center fares just as well, offering up a hazy lo-fi murk-pop gem that leaves us definitely wanting more. Beach Boys style harmonies doused in effects and buried in buzz and girt, laced over woozy guitars and a mechanical looped rhythm, delay and reverb everywhere and all over everything, warped and underwater sounding, with some incredible hooks barely audible through the hazy fug wrapped around the whole track. Think John Maus, Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, that same sort of otherworldly seventies radio station vibe, but even more psychedelic and pretty.
AWESOME!
There are very few bands who truly baffle. Who confuse and confound, both musically and conceptually. Sure, plenty of bands are weird, or strange, or hard to describe, some might even be described as fucked up or damaged, but very very few truly baffle.
Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet is most definitely one of those bafflingly confusional elite. Supposedly featuring members of another baffling SF troupe, Caroliner Rainbow, Hans Grusel, and his Krankenkabinet create a bizarre cacophony of sound, theatrical, dramatic, noisy for sure, but weirdly melodic and playful and more than anything, confounding.
How to explain the peculiar world Herr Grusel inhabits? Hmmmm, abstract, obtuse, experimental, avant? All of those things for sure. The music of HGK is more sound than song, each 'piece' a slowly unfolding exploration of space, both inner and outer, rendered in synthesizers and effects, strange percussive thumps and grinding low end drones, all spread out across an expanse of scrapes and squeaks, and occasional squalls of buzz and glitch. Landscapes of twisted sound, tweaked and transformed, slipping from bloops and bleeps to abrasive crunch, what sounds like tables becomes fingers skittering across a fretboard, voices are processed and smeared into jagged streaks, bits of synth and electronics are chopped and looped into loping rhythms, faux horns unfurl minor key melodies, long stretches of minimal shimmer give way to a burbling concoction of malfunctioning keyboards and abstract clatter and thump, whirring alien machinery, the high end skitter of electronic crickets, warped tapes crumbling into warbly whirring flutters, bits of trumpet fanfare surface, and then get sucked under, bits of field recordings all tangled up with blurred buzz and thick sheets of reverberating low end.
This might be a collection of sorts, a few of the tracks are a soundtrack to Alice In Wonderland, which must add a whole 'nother harrowing aspect to the film, but even so, the whole thing plays like a proper album, all the tracks sort of melting into one another, like one massive sprawling musical bad trip.
Concept albums usually end up too overblown for their own good, or at least those that brand themselves as concept albums. All those secret messages and subtle hints at depth usually come down to nothing more than pretension and bong-ripping late-nights in the studio. Happiness, Gerard Patawaran's one man band, stages its self-titled LP as a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, with the ensuing songs passing through quite a few relationship-stages, most of which many of us have been through. The hesitancy of a crush to the passion of (what must be) true love; the pleasure of fucking in every room of the house to the Joy Division refrain of "love will tear us apart again."
There are no song titles on the jacket or the insert, so what we'll refer to as the "first song" sounds like a cross between The Psychedelic Furs and an elecrified Mountain Goats. The second song has a definite Magnetic Fields flavor and not just because of the "love" theme. With simple instrumentation, Gerard's melodic crooning creates an atmosphere that is larger than the simple drumbeat and jangly guitar. Sometimes there's little fuck-ups that endear the listener rather than seeming like fuck-ups, reminding us that no one is perfect and that even true love has the occasional hiccup. The whole album clocks in at around 22 minutes or so, weaving its way through the Psychedelic-Magnetic-Goats themes effectively.
There's something really sweet about this record that's hard to describe. The songs are short and diversely written, both happy and sad at the same time. It's a little late for Valentine's Day, but this is a perfect record for telling that certain special someone "I love you".
Review courtesy of Justin Foley, long time aQ customer, and member of fellow Hydra Headers The Austerity Program!
Long time readers of the AQ mailing list may remember Northwest sasquatch-metallers Harkonen, whose two EPs and full-length or two charted out a wooly mass of distortion-laden virility. Harkonen's pummel stumbled across the line between Cavity's fierce crust/metal and Schlitz-dripping barn burners. At the head of this obviously unshaven trio was Ben Verellen, pumping out distorted bass lines and howling a great rock yell that is probably a family heirloom. �
Harkonen broke up a few years back and after a while word got around that Ben was in a new band - Helms Alee. Putting on their first full length - Night Terror - those who know some or all of the history above won't be too surprised at first. Ben's driving, fuzzed-up bass starts things off with an off kilter riff that spins into the instrumental intro "Lefty Man Handle", sounding a bit like Harkonen dipped in the soundtrack to a Sergio Leone movie. At the beginning of the second track, the same voice that bellowed over Harkonen's amps builds up from a measured sing to a top-of-the-mountain whoop - I'm telling you he's got a set of pipes on him. And by the time the song really opens up, the drummer is slamming on the cymbals, the bass and guitar are locked in a hypnotic two note riff and that guy's just roaring at you.
Then something truly wonderful happens.
And this is why the Helms Alee is surely my favorite record from 2008. Because while I love the ripping stomp that the song had purposefully built into, the band suddenly drops out the bottom and the drums, takes a breath and shifts into a guitar shimmering break. A two part female harmony picks up the song and carries it to what you later realize was the only place that it could have gone. It's like coming out of a tunnel into early daylight. And for the next 35 minutes or so, they deftly weave the pounding, yelling sweat-rock of the best Harkonen stuff with the equally strong and bittersweet beauty of an unexpected melody and harmony. Some times this happens at the same time, at others they switch back and forth. But it's done nearly perfectly over the course of the whole record, resulting in a sound that's equally poignant and heavy. �
Make no mistake - it's still a loud rock record that probably eviscerates live. But the thing that's really special about this band is the unexpected space they've found in a type of music that often seems like it runs out of new room. Special mention should be made of two things. First, the recording work on this is great - clear, physical and very unobtrusive. Second, those who buy it and sit for a full listen will really be rewarded by "Shmnna" - a record closer (almost, there's actually a nice coda song) that's obviously the climax of what the whole thing's building toward. The song's final guitar bit absolutely brings down the house. So good!
I've noticed that AQ likes to give reference points, so I'd suggest anyone who craves the male/female juxtaposition of X or Barbaro, the aging prizefighter nobility of Tar, or even some of the more rock parts of My Bloody Valentine must buy this record now. There's probably whole other groups who I should target as well - anyone who's into other stuff on the label, anyone who likes loud rock music at all, anyone who is signed up for the AQ mailing list, anyone who's not my sister - because this thing is a real, unexpected treat.
Silence... thunder... shudder... shadow... those are some of the things evoked even by the first minute or so of this isolationist dark ambient piece crafted by the multi-talented Scott Hull, best known as the guitarist of grind heroes Pig Destroyer, also of Agoraphobic Nosebleed fame. The whole thing, which mostly just gets darker and more disturbing as it flows on, is about 12:36 in length, one track fitting neatly on a 3" cd (not cd-r, cd). We love it when we get actual 3" cds! Though we really like it when they come in those tiny little jewel cases (like tUMULt's Bathtub Shitter and Professor 3" releases). Whereas this is packaged in a cardboard sleeve. Looks good though, with appropriately atmospheric graphics by Seldon Hunt.
Titled Audiofilm 1, this is presumably the first in a series of limited edition 3" cds on Crucial Blast. Hull's "audiofilm" is a scary one. Dramatic, sudden percussive clashings. Dronological whoosh. Nightmare heartbeat pulsations. The hiss and gurgle of some malevolent monster. Waves of whispery electronic terror... Don't worry, it's just a little 3" cd. It can't really hurt you. And some of it is actually lullingly beautiful, as with the gentle bell sounds tinkling about 7-8 minutes in.
LIMITED EDITION. 1000 copies only (which seems like a lot, but Pig Destroyer are pretty popular). We only got a few, and don't know if we'll be able to get more. (But we also have a Scott Hull solo full-length on Relapse, another imaginary soundtrack styled ambient effort, to be reviewed in future.)
So as soon as we dove into the extensive liner notes of this seriously awesome reissue of New Zealand's heaviest (and only??) psych band Human Instinct, we realized that despite their failed commercial success, these dudes were really way ahead of their time. After relocating to the UK in the late sixties and undergoing a handful of line-up changes, Human Instinct hit the local bar circuit with an original formula of heavy ripping psych played at blistering, amp melting volumes. Inspired by Hendrix and other dudes pushing the limits of the newly evolved electric guitar, Human Instinct developed a sound that was completely unique and possibly influential on the heavy bands that followed. While we wouldn't exactly call this stuff proto-metal, more like heavy psych, it definitely was a major step in reaching the heavy blackened riffage that bands like Sabbath and Pentagram would later perfect. That said, the album definitely has songs worth listening to over and over and over, buuuuuut there are a few tracks ya might just want to skip over. Oh and did we mention these dudes were known for having a lead singer who ALSO plays drums standing up!!?? Yes its true, Maurice Greer not only has a wicked sweet voice, but his drumming style is truly unique!!
Track number one kicks things off with an awesome version of Dennis Wilson's "Black Sally". Definitely a track you can headbang to, it's easy to hear how their slow grooving heaviness could one day become the essence of doom. Needless to say, these guys were way ahead of their time, I mean according to the liner notes, they starting playing together in '58!! Crazy! "The Jugg-A-Jugg Song", our second favorite track on Stoned Guitar, starts off with a wall of psychedelic fury, blaring, amp frying guitar, rampant drum chaos, destroying eardrums and anything else that stands in the way! So good!! "Midnight Sun" follows with stoney (obviously), repetitive riffs layered with atmospheric fuzz solos that seem to launch into the sky, really kraut-like and hypnotic, not unlike Parson Sound or Wooden Shjips, sorta.
So this is basically the complete package, four bonus tracks, killer liner notes with photos and basically the entire history of this underappreciated heavy psych gem! Stoned Guitar is fried out, in-the-red type blues perfection for fans of the recently reviewed Jerusalem, Bedemon, or even Flower Travelin' Band. We even hear some similarities to new psychedelic jammers Magic Lantern or Eternal Tapestry too. Take our advice and don't miss out on this super influential piece of psych glory!! And maybe Rockadrome/Vintage will follow up with reissues of the other two Human Instinct albums, we used to have all three as imports but they've been AWOL lately.
Latest disc from long time aQ fave Jasper TX (after 10 releases in 3 years, and those are just the ones we reviewed!), another lil' one, a 3" cd (not cd-r), six songs in just over 20 minutes, the first of which begins with a bang, almost knocked us out of our chairs, a super loud bit of metallic cacophony, which thankfully quickly gives way to something much more contemplative, but only a little less buzzy, a warm shimmering whir, that manages to be warm and meditative, but still a bit prickly and abrasive. The second track is much more song-y, a beautiful lilting arrangement for guitar, dark and folky, a bit Appalachian, before slipping into the third track, a gorgeous understated bit on ultra minimal drone, a subtle pulsing thrum, softly overlapping layers of low end, that seem to melt into one another.
A bit of ultra high end shimmer, a whispery barely there upper register ur-drone, gives way to a spare bit of piano laced minimal ambience. The notes wreathed in reverb- and floating through dusty sun dappled expanses of hushed near-silence, which slips quietly into the closer, a beautifully bleary bit of spidery guitar, unfurling through soft clouds of reverb, a super spare slow core sprawl, that manages to be both lovely and hauntingly ominous.
Another fantastic bit of abstract minimalism, and as some other reviewer opined, a pretty great way to spend 20 minutes. We of course concur, and thus say: RECOMMENDED!
Legendary UK noise merchant Gary Mundy (Ramleh, Skullflower, Broken Flag collective) returns with Kleistwahr, a project that fits nicely within the legacy of a man known for harsh electronic noise. While we struggled to find any detailed information on Kleistwahr, we can say that anyone digging Skullflower's more recent forays into blown out guitar skree (and we know there are plenty of you out there) will find much to love here. The four songs making up The Return contain all the air raid siren guitars and eardrum pulverizing feedback we have come to love, but things take a surprisingly beautiful turn on side two, with warm droney keyboards weaving a haunting melody that perfectly compliments the album cover, a stark photocopied image of a building foundation sitting exposed in the snow surrounded by dead trees. Though the songs are instrumental, Mundy is able to perfectly convey a feeling of despondency and sadness, genuine emotions that definitely set Kleistwahr apart from the multitudes of floorcore outfits, all hunkered over effects pedals making lots of noise, but very little of it as compelling and emotionally charged as this.
Part of Noiseville's awesome Outer Bounds Of Sound series, with each lp limited to a one time pressing of 300. We received 20, so you know what that means...
Occasionally working in the past as Spiracle, Hitoshi Kojo presents this thoroughly amazing piece of ancient-sounding drone music. No doubt, Kojo's work will be compared to that of the classic Organum sound; but considering that very few have even come close to replicating the power and mystery of such classic Organum recordings as Ikon or Horii, such parallels should be taken as the highest praise. Kojo claims that all of the sounds originated from various found objects. He doesn't specify beyond that, but all of the objects must be metal in origin, probably large pieces of sheet metal, or flexible rods of steel, or long pieces of wire, or something equally resonant and with a dynamic timbral quality. Each of these objects is bowed in order to coax a controlled dissonance of metallic screeches, protracted tonal bellows, and various acoustic drones. The two compositions are simple in their moderate pacing of the ebb and flow between all of these sounds, not too slow... but certainly not too fast. Through these recordings, Kojo offers very little in the way of digital treatments or effects of any nature. Just a terse edit of one layer here, or a reversing of a metallic gong decay there. The results are a timeless set of interlocking metallic rasps and gasping drones that rivals what Harry Bertoia, Taj Mahal Travellers, LaMonte Young, and of course Organum had done so impeccably in the past. Beautiful, mysterious, and very highly recommended!
Out of the major Takoma triumvirate of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Leo Kottke, it is the latter who probably had the most mainstream appeal, but definitely the least hipster cred. Probably due to his early and sudden career switch from an amazing virtuoso instrumentalist to a rather mediocre singer/songwriter. But it's this debut recording of solo guitar work from 1969 of which listeners should take notice. Arguably, the most successful record on the Takoma label (it has sold over 500,000 copies), it is also one of the best. Definitely a student of Fahey school of tongue in cheek liner notes and eccentric song titles like "Vaseline Machine Gun" and "The Brain of The Purple Mountain", Kottke displays a knowing range of blues, pop, classical and folk styles. Though probably not as insistently ornery as Fahey's style could be, there is a pensive resonance that keeps Kottke's pastoralism from getting sappy. For sure, one of the best solo guitar records that actually helped create and popularize the genre originally! Nice to have it again on vinyl.
This is a bonus deluxe reissue of Lindstrom's debut full length, which comes with an extra disc of re-edits of all the tracks from Lindstrom's beardo-disco partner in crime, Prins Thomas. We don't think this is entirely worth re-purchasing if you have already bought it once, but for those of you haven't already, you get an extra treat!
Here is what we said about the original:
It would be difficult to say that Lindstrom has finally come into his own, but it's really not his fault. Given the retro-modern angle of his entire project, it's not really even a good or bad thing. The sounds, the composition, the melodic structures, they're all questionably '80s. Not '80s like Giorgio Moroder or Daniele Baldelli - as most commonly referenced, but more like a blend of Jan Hammer, Rick Astley, and, like, Paul Lekakis? Sure, a little John Carpenter even. If you can overlook all the kitsch, the bizarre nostalgia for music that may or may not have really been necessary, then Lindstrom is your guy. This particular release shows him both more minimal and more maximal, restrained and indulgent. Each of the three tracks unfold slowly, releasing one arpeggiation after another, deftly resting upon various analog drum sounds and sampled percussive devices. The production is great as usual, and no doubt the guy must have an impressive collection of vintage synths, etc. So far as songwriting, it's suspiciously absent. As with the majority of his releases, the focus is on process, development, and a definite amount of abandon as a listener. Just sitting back and seeing where he wants to take you, which is more often than not just some '80s soundtrack. Sure, "I Feel Space" was a great track, and undoubtedly helped to spark the fairly recent explosion of space disco and gave people a strange justification to somehow openly talk about Todd Rundgren as a musical hero, or something. However, the promise of that single has largely fallen flat. Truth be told, this release is a better than his usual fare, but not really essential for anyone other than completists or huge fans.
This gem appears thanks to the folks at Minimal Wave, the label that has been digging deep, very deep into the realms of post-punk and new wave to uncover many a release that might have been lost. For those who have procured plenty of terminal obscurities from such blogspots as Mutant Sounds, No Longer Forgotten Music, or Systems of Romance, some of the reissues on Minimal Wave may be familiar. But these are no grey area reissues. Minimal Wave has assured us that they have taken great care to procure the rights for each of these recordings!
Linear Movement was a short-lived project by Peter Bonne that ran from 1982 and 1984, paralleling his work in the bands Autumn and Twilight Ritual. While neither of these projects mean much to us, his later project A Split Second was one we are quite familiar with, as one of the seminal Electronic Body Music projects alongside Front 242, Neon Judgement, and everything on Antler-Subway circa 1988. But given the earlier time frame, Linear Movement is a much more primitive affair, melding electro-pop to bits of post-punk disco grooves, amidst punchy synth stabs and occasional detours towards darker, somber arppegiations. Altogether, Linear Movement falls somewhere near the Bippp compilation that Ed Banger resurrected, Vince Clarke era Depeche Mode, and yes, early Front 242. Lieve Van Steerteghem is the female vocalist who pops up on perhaps the best tracks on the album.
No, the name is not Lonely, Dear!!! Can't tell you how many times we've seen this one-man band's moniker spelled incorrectly. It irks us, and we imagine it must drive him nuts too! Anyhoo, all that business aside, we've been diggin this Swedish gent's new album plenty. It starts out far more driving and far less sweet than 2007's Loney, Noir. Last time he drew easy vocal comparisons to Arcade Fire, but his fifth album Dear John finds him slipping gracefully in line with the elaborate high tech bedroom recordings of Postal Service. Hmmm, haven't heard from them in quite a while, so it's a fine time for Loney Dear's dreamily wistful electronic pop to fill the void. Lovely, dear!
