We were totally knocked out by the energetic blast of tropical punk on Abe Vigoda's full length from a few months back. So this follow up ep did throw us for a bit of a loop as much of what we loved from Skeleton seemed to be missing here. Much less angular and energetic, Reviver finds the band 'maturing' maybe a bit prematurely (if that's possible). Even the recording quality seems aimed at a much different kind of sound, more akin to TV On The Radio and Interpol than No Age or Brazilian post-punk. Sadly, to our ears most of the exuberance and energy that made us love Skeleton so much seems to have disappeared. Too bad...
Getting a new album from Absu is like being handed a bunch of scrolls from ancient Sumer bearing esoteric magickal wisdom - at a raging kegger hosted by some Slayer-blasting heshers! And since this is the thrashing Texas "mythological occult metal" band's first album in about eight years, AND they're one of the acts we arranged to play the Aquarius/WMFU showcase gig at the South By Southwest music fest in Austin this year (their first show in seven years!!!), you KNOW we're really excited about this self-titled album's nearly concurrent manifestation. Of course, we were equally (and foolishly, it turns out) worried that this long-overdue new Absu would somehow be a disappointment, seeing as how Shaftiel and Equitant have left the band, leaving remaining founding member drummer/vocalist Sir Proscriptor McGovern (also of Melechesh, Equimanthorn, and his solo project Proscriptor) to assemble a completely new lineup, finding fresh blood to dust off the band's old spellbooks for this new conjuration. Of course it's a bit different than before - a tad slower maybe (though still freakin' frenzied!), adorned with more atmospheric keyboards (synths and prog fave Mellotron!). But compared to anything else, it's still ABSU. Insane and arcane. The two new members are up to their awesome responsibilities, ripping fiercely through these complex but headbanging songs, leaving shredding solos in their wake. And of course, Proscriptor is still one of extreme metal's most incredible, exacting, accomplished drummers. Not to mention black metal/magickal conceptualists. So there's still weird occultic song titles to make Bal-Sagoth weep. Gotta love "In the Name of Auebothiabathabaithobeuee"!!! The eccentrick, eldritch spirit (part Celtic, part Mesopotamian) of Absu lives. Paying tribute, a bunch of guests make cameo contributions, including members of Melechesh and Mayhem, as well as former Absu bassist Equitant (giving this his stamp of approval). So call it a comeback.
2001's Tara may still be our favorite Absu album, but this sure is a worthy follow up. Hail Absu! We can't wait to see 'em. It's gonna kill!!
(FYI we should have copies of this on vinyl too next week!)
A quick glance at this, the first release from the strangely named Aderlating, will reveal some very telling clues, the record is called The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of Repression, the cover features a terrified figure, clad only in a bit of cloth, cowering from the darkness, and on the other side some sort of ritual that involves a naked woman with burning candles inserted in her ass, laying on an altar in front of mysterious cloaked figures. The songs are titled things like "Cut Off My Penis In Praise Of Black Satan", "Rope, Pig's Blood, Dead Flesh And Two Candles", "Death Knell" and "Doodstorm", so even before we get to the caustic gritty blackened filth on the disc, we're feeling a pretty heavy Gnaw Their Tongues vibe, which makes perfect sense as Aderlating is in fact another project by Gnaw mastermind Mories.
It's a little unclear what differentiates this from a proper Gnaw Their Tongues release, there's plenty of harsh black noise, rumbling mysterious drones, buried riffage and mysterious chanting, creepy almost choral sounding voices, pounding percussion, harsh hissing feedback, crumbling distortion, buzzing black metal guitars smeared into blurred buzzscapes, howling harsh vocals buried in the mix, static, whir, glitch, all doused in effects and buried under layer after layer of distorted noise and noisy distorted. Hell, even sounds like we're describing a GTT record. Fuck it, anyone into Gnaw Their Tongues, you're gonna want this, it could essentially be the new GTT record, the only difference we can hear really, is that it's a little more harsh, a little less orchestral, where GTT employed all sort of almost cabaret like sounds, Aderlating is a much more furiously aggressive and abrasive beast, but even amidst all the white noise and grinding feedback drenched distortion, there lurks all sorts of sonic mystery, be it buried melodies, haunting disembodied voices or fucked up fragmented loops. Needless to say, we dig it. Heavy and harsh and droney and dark and just what we needed to tide us over until the next Gnaw Their Tongues record...
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! We got about a quarter of those but judging by past Gnaw Their Tongues releases, those won't be around for long...
One of two new archival reissues from Australian avant guitarist and sometime member of SUNNO))), Oren Ambarchi. Persona was originally released as an ultra limited lp (only 300 copies) in 2000, which sold out quite quickly, but is finally available again, on cd.
Ambarchi's sound is quite varied and fluid, capable of coaxing the sweetest sounds from his axe, as well as using it like some blood flecked weapon, hurling jagged shards of distorted crunch and spitting out thick swaths of viscous buzz. On Persona, the sound is minimal and delicate, droney in places, but also glitchy and spare. The opening track here, and the shortest of the three, is a warm looped low end drone, the guitar transformed into a pulse generator, the sound soothing and softly buzzy. The second track sounds like it could be on Raster-Noton, plenty of low end, but with processed clicks and whirs, clipped percussive thumps and machinelike murmurs, eventually becoming almost silent, leaving just bits of crackle and surface noise, so austere and abstract.
The final track, and the longest at almost 19 minutes, is the prettiest of the bunch, a softly skittering soundscape of Oval like underwater shimmer, lightly laced with glitches and little electronic squelches, but all warm and washed out, and allowed to swirl and drift dreamily, super gorgeous stuff.
One of two new archival reissues from Australian avant guitarist and sometime member of SUNNO))), Oren Ambarchi. Stacte.3 was originally released as an ultra limited lp (only 500 copies) in 2000, which of course went out of print relatively quickly, and remained unavailable until now, with this cd reissue.
Ambarchi's sound is quite varied and fluid, capable of coaxing the sweetest sounds from his axe, as well as using it like some blood flecked weapon, hurling jagged shards of distorted crunch and spitting out thick swaths of viscous buzz. Stacte.3 is one 37 minute track, split into two parts, A and B. A, clocking in at 14 minutes, begins with a looped bit of chiming guitar harmonics, mesmerizing and music box like, that loop soon joined by all manner of swooping bloops and bleeps, a soft barrage of strange melodic fragments and electronic shards, a bit like some malfunctioning synthesizer let loose over that steady music box pulse, eventually, the higher tones drift off, leaving just a couple low tones to shimmer and warble, their overtones creating subtle patterns and pulsating fluctuations, which are eventually joined by some of the stray sounds from earlier on.
The second longer track, begins all buzzing metallic shimmer, what sounds like a room full of bowed cymbals, all sorts of gorgeous overtones, a washed out muted bit of metallic crunch, which eventually dissipates, leaving the bloops and bleeps of part A to return for a playful bit of swooping and swirling, before again, the track slowly shifts into a more minimal phase, playing out in a drift of layered rumbles, dreamy whirs and soft melodic electronic pulses. Quite nice.
Oh man, have we been dying for this, more blown out primitive super raw black metal fury from the man who is Prurient and who also runs the kick ass Hospital Records store and label.
Like past Ash Pool releases, this is super fast, super heavy black metal informed by noise music, drawing on bands like Akitsa and Ildjarn, but filtered through a decidedly modern noise based mindset. The strange thing is, how goddamn poppy and melodic and catchy this stuff is. You would think just the opposite what with the noise pedigree and all, but fuck it if this isn't some of the heaviest, buzziest, most furious, and catchiest black metal EVER.
Two short sharp blasts, the first, begins just how we would hope, raw frantic riffing, the guitar super distorted and buzzy, the drums distorted and blown out, the vocals howled and shrieked, everything totally saturated and in-the-red, but there's plenty of midtempo chug chug chug to balance out the furious blasts, and a few seconds in, it's impossible to ignore how catchy it is, the main hook is a killer, melodic, stick in your head catchy, but somehow it doesn't take away from the blackness or the grimness at all. Poppy, yet buzzy and black.
The flip side follows suit. Raw, feral, blown out, black, but the guitars start sounding weirdly NWOBHM, unfurling weird little harmonies amidst all the buzzing and blasting, the arrangement a lurching start and stop, weird and mathy and fucked up and totally black, but those guitars sound like they were lifted out of an Iron Maiden song, and the thing is, it's a fucked up hybrid that should absolutely not work, but it does, and it's part of what makes Ash Pool so good. These two songs will only tide us over for so long, we NEED another full length.
Cool black and white covers, blue vinyl. And yeah, probably crazy limited.
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!
Odessa, the Bee Gees' fourth proper full length, from 1969, found the band returning to the lush baroque pop of 1st and Horizontal, after the more rock combo styled Idea. For those of you who only know the Bee Gees from their later incarnation as THE disco group and their iconic Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, boy are you in for a surprise. Well before any of that happened, the three brothers Gibb were masters at crafting gorgeous orchestral pop songs - think the Beach Boys, the Zombies, the Beatles, and you'll get an idea of what we're talking about.
Having three brothers in the band meant HARMONIES, and indeed, the vocal harmonies are heavenly, as is each of the brothers' voices on their own, but those angelic voices are backed up by a crack band, and some incredible orchestration. Odessa was infamous for many reasons: disputes over which single to release caused Robin to quit the band briefly, the non-Gibb guitarist Vince Melouney quite the band, the record originally came in red flocked covers that had to be discontinued because they were too expensive and workers assembling the lps complained of allergic reactions, and most importantly, the sound shifted somewhat dramatically, with the sound returning to the lush, almost overwrought, over the top sound of the first two records, and ends up being super sprawling, incorporating all sorts of psychedelic vamps, and stripped down ballads into the usual collection of perfect orchestral pop gems.
The quasi-bummer about this reissue, is that it's been expanded to a whopping 3 discs, the first two exactly the same except one is all stereo mixes, and the second is all mono mixes, while the third is called Sketches For Odessa, which is exactly that, raw takes and demos, a cool glimpse into the process of making the record, but really, only the most obsessive fans will ever listen to the 2nd or 3rd discs, cuz all you really need is the record proper, but as this is currently the only way to get Odessa, we have to say, even though it's pricey, for lovers of classic pop, it's well worth it. PLUS, the reissue has been restored to its red flocked metallic gold lettered glory!
As with the other records, Odessa is packed with the most amazing pop songs, catchy and wistful, melancholy and dreamy, lots of acoustic guitars, soaring strings, harps, subtle horns, shuffling drums, chimes bells, at it's most lush, it's almost syrupy, but then a song later, it'll be just vocals and guitar. A bunch of the songs sound SUPER Beatles-y, with the vocals more raw, the drums more propulsive, the sound pretty rocking, but even those songs are laced with strings, and are transformed into something distinctly their own. This is definitely a complicated record. Released as a double album, later as a single, lots of fantastic songs (if you loved "Holiday", off of 1st, odds are you'll find lots to love here), some strange almost variety show sounding jams, and a few far out numbers, that prove the boys never shied away from experimenting or doing their own thing. Heck, we made 1st a Record Of The Week, we probably could have / should have done the same with Idea and Horizontal, so keep that in mind when we suggest, that in some ways, Odessa might be the best / weirdest / most underappreciated of the four. So yeah, obviously recommended. Big time.
Previous Beirut records have taken the listener on a Gypsy tour of Europe, narrated by the croon of frontman/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Zach Condon. The first disc of this newest release, March of the Zapotec, takes us instead to Mexico, where Condon's instrumental proficiencies are utilized beautifully, though his vocals only really appear on one of the tracks. The first track is a thirty second field recording "of an unknown band" (so says the liner notes), which sets up the brevity and Mariachi-influence of the rest of the disc. Accompanying Condon on three of the tracks is Band Jimenez, a 19 person orchestra from Oaxaca. Needless to say, these tracks are even fuller and lusher than the fullest and lushest of any of Beirut's previous recordings. Though the cover of the record boasts of "new recordings from the state of Oaxaca," only 2.5 of the tracks were actually recorded there, our guess is because of the expense of flying all 19 members of Band Jimenez to Brooklyn.
We find ourselves more drawn to the second disc, entitled Realpeople Holland, despite the lack of horns. It's full of muted electronic percussion and strange keyboard lines, with Condon's voice turned WAY up in the mix. Sometimes his lyrics betray his youth (the corny naivete of "And I believed her then, ohhhhhh..."), but his vocal tone adds beautiful layers, so we end up not really caring what he's saying. The keyboards sound like something out of an '80s sci-fi movie soundtrack with just a hint of flange thrown in for good measure. There's a bit of variation in the instrumentation too on the fourth track "The Concubine," where an accordion and a triangle revolve around a pulsing acoustic drum beat. This track sounds more like previous Beirut records than anything else on this disc, the other songs bearing more resemblance to Walter Carlos or the Magnetic Fields on an acid trip.
Recommended.
Atlanta's kings of the garage return with their fifth long player, another disc chock full of sleaze and grit, but also emphasizing the melodies and tunefulness that have been present in Black Lips songs since day one. After their surprising ascent to semi-mainstream success since signing to Vice, the band may have mellowed a tad in their overall sound, but make no mistake, this hardly represents a more "mature" Black Lips. Obviously, this is a very good thing for anyone who has followed the band since their urine/vomit soaked early days, and the dementia and overall insanity that has always defined the Black Lips remains thankfully intact. At the same time, 200 Million Thousand contains enough sing-along catchiness that it is sure to win them some new fans as well. A pleasant murkiness shrouds the recording, lending a certain "out of time" feel that places the group in a realm many of its contemporaries would kill to inhabit.
It's pretty much Blank Dogs 24/7 in AQ-land as of late. We recently made their/his latest record,The Fields, Record Of The Week and it truly was one of those rare albums that every single one of us at the store had fallen deeply in love with. So we were more then thrilled to see this brand new 12" arrive with four more great tracks all recorded earlier this year.
Picking right up where The Fields left off, all four tracks here are super immediate and lo-fi rockers with a damaged Joy Division feel and twisting, disjointed melodies that you can't help but get stick in your head. While the slick side of a dark romantic New York might be exemplified by Interpol, Blank Dogs represents the more seedy, fucked up and authentic underbelly of the Big Apple. While its a tad less dark then past outings, these songs still kill. "Keeping All The Time" might just be our new favorite Blank Dogs song with its fuzzy synths, and live drums played by Ryan Naideau (Dustheads, Extremis). We're so excited to finally get to see Blank Dogs live! They'll be playing in San Francisco later this month, we have no idea what the set up will be but as long as we get to hear these songs and all our favorite tracks from The Fields we have a feeling we'll be pretty damn happy.
Anyone paying attention will know that in the past few years, the unlikely nation of France has been churning out some of the most progressive, intelligent, and best black metal around. There's Deathspell Omega, Peste Noire, Spektr, and of course, the mighty Blut Aus Nord, a shadowy group who seamlessly blends synthy ambience with a relentless, yet interestingly controlled black metal assault. Seasick guitar riffs, plodding, often midtempo drums, and vocalist Vindsval's vile black metal rasp (and occasional operatic chant, no shit) meet up in an unholy union of strangely structured songs that are at once hallucinatory, majestic, and beautiful.
Blut Aus Nord possess a unique, cyclical style of songwriting, and even though we have no idea what they are saying, it is evident through titles that each song fits within a well defined philosophical theme. With names like "This Formless Sphere (Beyond the Reason)", "...the Meditant (Dialogue With the Stars)", and "Elevation", it's clear that the band's interest goes beyond any sort of juvenile take on Satanism, instead seeking to make sense of an endlessly unfathomable universe. Their albums seem to exist as esoteric and surreal dream worlds, and the band's intense, psychedelic approach isn't as much furious as it is contemplative. Within this potent mixture, they are also surprisingly "rocking".
Memoria Vetusta II - Dialogue With The Stars (part I, Fathers of the Icy Age, was released waaaaay back in 1996) starts with "Acceptance (Aske)", a GORGEOUS synthscape that sets the moody atmosphere for the next hour. It was interesting to watch customers enter the store during such a beautiful and melancholy piece, only to be hit with the loping, super blackened approach that kicks off the next track, "Disciple's Libration (Lost in the Nine Worlds)", which over the course of 9 minutes, manages to perfectly encapsulate everything that is so great about this band.
The impeccable production on this album certainly adds to its greatness. Clear and spacious, the music within sounds as if it has existed forever, created by a group of immortal mystics, not, you know, a couple of guys from France. In the end, we are presented with what will undoubtedly be one of the best metal records of 2009.
Oh Bong. How we have longed for thee. Ever since we first go wind of a stonery slow motion doom sludge outfit called BONG, we knew we had to have it, even the non-bong inclined around these parts became disturbingly obsessed with tracking down the BONG. Finally it's here, so prepare to partake.
Before we get to the music, they're called Bong, two sidelong tracks, one called "Wizards Of Krull", the other called "The Starlit Grotto". The cover is gorgeous a washed out painting in all blacks and browns of some creepy alien landscape, and some strange looking flora or fauna (hard to say with). No info anywhere, except the names of the songs, the last names of the players (one of whom happens to be an aQ mailorder customer!) and the word BONG.
Deep buzzy layered drones, peppered with little bits of banjo-y (?) buzz, creepy and minimal and abstract, cymbals sizzle over the undulating black backdrop, the bass a simple single deep thrum, and then the vocals, deep and ominous and (almost overly) dramatic, which when we first heard them reminded us the Mighty Boosh. The guitars thicken, the drums begin to pound, and suddenly the shapeless miasma begins to take the shape of some seriously drugged out stoner doom sludge. Distorted and downtuned and Sabbathy and sloooooooooooow, that voice begins to chant, the banjo returns only now it's a sitar, and we're neck deep in some primal doomdrone stonersludge ritual and sinking fast!
The second side / track is more of the same, beginning with a smattering of drums before the guitar slither in and the track becomes another plodding chunk of druggy doom, the drums are brief blasts, the riffs so slow they're barely riffs at all, that reverby croon returns, but this track explodes in the second half, the guitars going wild, unfurling swirling clouds of warped and wild wah wah drenched leads, tangled and frenetic, drifting over the churning sludge below, all woven into a dense and drug addled chunk of blown out lysergic and psychedelic dooooooom.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!!
Gui Boratto's debut Chromophobia helped us fall in love with electronica all over again a couple years back. It really marked a resurgence in quality and creative electronic sounds after several stagnant years. It's a record that some of us here have probably listened to more than almost any other electronic record since we first laid ears on it. The way he so effortlessly creates shapes and colors with his sounds made Chromophobia a record that kept unfolding on repeated listens, offering more and more as we fell deeper and deeper in love. The way Boratto is able to make melodic electronica sound so warm and bursting with color is exactly what had, and has, us so smitten.
So here we are two years later and the follow up to that great debut, has finally landed, it's called Take My Breath Away, and of course our expectations were kind of crazy high. We have to say now, having listened to the record several times, Boratto has indeed created another total winner! On first listen, while it sounded pretty good, we weren't totally blown away, but then we remembered how Chromophobia took a little time to grow on us and truly sink in, but once it did, we were fully addicted and totally obsessed. The same is the case for Take My Breath Away. What makes Boratto so special is his keen sense of melody, that's probably why so many folks who aren't usually that into electronica end up asking what's playing when we have this on in the store. He's able to bring song structure and rich melody to the world of techno and minimal house. There are some moments on this outing that find him leaning towards a bit more traditional techno but luckily those moments are way outnumbered by his more imaginative explorations. Songs that find themselves as at home on the dance floor as much as on a twisty turny beautiful long road trip, the music energizing, and offering up a wide array of sonic color to help you stay alert as you soak it all in.
Not many folks are able to make music that is so pleasurable for both the body and the mind but Gui Boratto has found a way, and we're tapping our toes and thinking all sorts of deep thoughts and dreamy dreams at the same time...
Available as a cd, or on double vinyl packaged with the compact disc as well.
Nothing is more satisfying and pleasing to the ears then some totally great dub. Mind you, we aren't talking about mediocre dub or dub that "has its moments", we mean the kind of dub that you could totally listen to over and over and let its warmth and slow burn wash over you, the kind of dub you never ever grow tired of.
Originally released on the great Wackie's imprint, Hardwax in 1979, we're so excited this is finally getting its well deserved reissue, as this is truly one of the finest dub albums to grace our stereo.
Black World does have a few songs with subtle and tasteful vocals, but is for the most part instrumental, and is exactly the kind of record that will not only hit the spot for reggae obsessives, but even those who aren't usually so dub or reggae inclined. Not a bad track in the bunch, and some seriously cool magical moments that Bullwackies All Stars from the hordes of similar minded outfits. The track "Tribute To Studio One" sounds like it could have been the blueprint for modern day dub-loving bands like Tussle. For those that like a little (or a lot) of ganja this will soooooo hit the spot, but even if the weed is not your thing, Black World will for sure leave you feeling seriously content, laid back and feeling just the right vibes. So good!
This English instrumental act (NOT the lo-fi Casiotone-pop duo of the same name, from the Bay Area a while back) return at last with another heavy, atmospheric onslaught of their undefinable metallic post-rock/math-rock riffage. Their previous album, 2005's Ruder Forms Survive was quite interesting (and rockin'), full of cryptic historical allusions (in the song titles), stretches of soundtrack-y ambience a la Zombi, and a one-song-only vocal performance from Oxbow's inimitable Eugene Robinson. Coming from ex-members of various stoner/sludge/doom/punk combos, it was suitably heavy but also surprisingly strange. River, Bear Your Bones continues that tradition, once more a dark and moody affair, though without any vocal cameo this time. The instruments do all the talking, speaking a language that's both proggy and stonery... much of the time Capricorns' riffs come quick and jagged, these tracks sometimes soaring melodically, or viciously spiralling with sharp-edged aggressive energy. Elsewhere, an eerie not-so-calm pervades. The album's closing track, and longest at 10:55, "Drinking Water From The Skull Of A Hanged Man", starts off as an unusually relaxed, lo-fi psychedelic jam, with spacey guitars, looser and more laidback than most of the rest of the disc... but heavies up quite a bit before it's through! And once more there's more going on here concept-wise than you might immediately discern, as apparently all the tracks are "about" the River Thames (Capricorns being from London).
One of a couple releases reviewed this week proving the vitality of the instrumental, guitar-oriented heavy rock genre (the other being Serpent Throne). Again, for fans of the likes of 5ive, Zebulon Pike, Pelican, Hey Colossus... and good ol' AmRep noise rock, which a lot of this also reminds us of.
What can we say about Neko Case that we haven't already? And what else can we add to the crazy amount of press and publicity surrounding the release of here latest record Middle Cyclone? Maybe nothing. But what the heck, we love Neko Case, we have for years. From The Virginian to Furnace Room Lullaby to Blacklisted to Canadian Amp, and of course we were early champions of the New Pornographers, especially the Neko fronted Mass Romantic. Hell, way back in the day, she even played in the band Cub with our very own Cup!!
But by now, you've probably been inundated by images of Ms. Case, interviews, magazine covers, there was even a mini documentary on the front page of Amazon, this record is getting one heck of a push, the weird thing is it doesn't really need it. On its own, minus the publicity and all the various other efforts to promote the woman and her album, the music itself speaks for itself. Lush but obviously hand crafted, the lyrics as ever are smart and wry and funny and bittersweet, the songs are fantastic, varied, played by a crack back up band, and then there's Case's voice, which as many others have stated before us is truly a force of nature. One of those once in an era voices. Dark and sultry and sonorous, but so strong and powerful, the old adage about singing the phone book, can now be applied to anything, programming code, microwave instructions, with Case, whatever it is becomes a gorgeous sweetly sour heartbreaker.
Plenty has been written about the making of Middle Cyclone too, but for those who don't have TV or radio or internet, we'll tell you much of this record was recorded using a handful of pianos Case got for free on Craig's List, set up in her drafty old barn, on the Vermont farm she now calls home. And that 'piano orchestra' is a wonder, each piano's inconsistencies blending with the other pianos, all blending together into a sound impossibly lush and totally unique. The various parts recorded in the barn also peppered with the sound of crickets and frogs outside, wind whipping through the eaves, all adding to the personal and intimate vibe that the record already had in spades.
From brooding ballad, to country rocker, to epic slow burner, every song here is a gem. After a few listens we're liking it way more than Fox Confessor Brings The Flood. There's even a Sparks cover! And a Nilssen cover! Both easily and fully transformed into what are essentially Case originals.
And if it wasn't already a stone cold classic, the 31 minute bonus track pushes Middle Cyclone into utter aQ obsession territory, with what is essentially a half hour long field recording of crickets! So great!
Housed in a cryptic and totally beautiful oversized booklet, the sounds within the dolefully monickered Cities Last Broadcast's likewise doleful The Cancelled Earth conjure an atmosphere of post-industrial hopelessness where you, the engaged listener, are the only human being left amidst seepia-toned urban decay. Empty, dilapidated buildings with broken windows sprawled out across a dusky horizon of condensed nothingness stand without any distinction as the city takes in its final gasps. Strange, creaking sounds, and washes of gauzy atmosphere creep out like a fog, cloaking everything in a thick, inescapable grime.
The work of Swede Par Bostrom, who also makes music in a project called Kammarheit, The Cancelled Earth is a collection of pieces recorded between 1999 and 2008. Though quite bleak, the songs move as if they are alive, albeit dying, like some sort of creature sticking its head out of the rubble to emotionlessly assess the end of a society. Hey, we'll be there soon enough. The swaying soundscapes may appeal to those who familiar with Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic, while they also bring to mind the murky ambiance of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, without any sort of rhythmic propulsion, the movement of the pieces instead resembling a once mighty machine simply shutting down from old age and neglect. Though desolate as all hell, The Cancelled Earth is also quite beautiful and perfect listening for long, lonely nights...
The first Clouds record, the project of Cave In guitarist Adam McGrath, was a freaked out hodgepodge of stoner rock, hardcore, prog rock and seventies boogie rock with definite nods to Beefheart, Zappa, Comets On Fire, the Cave In mothership, it all worked, the result a heavy slab of FX laden riff heavy RAWK with lots of twisted detours.
If anything, this newest Clouds disc takes all that same stuff a little further, with a bigger focus on the riffrock aspect, and a huge infusion of POP. Not always obviously so, but some of these hooks slay. Think the beefy lumbering almost grunge of Scissorfight, melded to the pounding retro metallic pound of Karp or Big Business, some of that Cave-In magic and voila!
The second track, "Feed The Horse" sounds like it was yanked off a late era Cave-in disc and given a serious metal makeover, while the opener "Empires In Basements" gives Torche a run for their sludge pop money.
And then the band go all strange and angular and off kilter with "The Bad Seat", sounding almost like Randy Newman if he was 20 years old and signed to Hydra Head, and we know that sounds weird, but it's actually quite cool.
The record is all over the map for sure, exploding into frenzied punk rock as often as sprawling out into huge lumbering sludgey doom, offering up soaring metallic pop gems, or stripping it down to chugging classic rock grooves, but no matter what these guys do, or what sound they're tackling and making their own, the songs rule, and the band kick out the jams big time. And like we've said before, in a perfect world, instead of Green Day and the Foo Fighters, you'd be hearing Torche and Clouds all over the radio. Ahhh, maybe some day...
In listening to the few releases from Cold Cave (to date, just this 12" and the "Painted Nails" 7" on Hospital), we can easily see Cold Cave becoming huge. Maybe not as megalomaniacally huge as Coldplay or U2; but maybe there's a Wire or XLR8R cover for Cold Cave to grace sometime in the future. The Trees Grew Emotions And Died predated the heavily acclaimed Painted Nails single; and like that single, this gem of crunched noise mingling with retro-garde synth pop has gone in and out of print several times. It's still a limited pressing of 500 copies, so be forewarned!
Cold Cave is the work of one Wes Eisold, who fronted a couple of East Coast hardcore bands before starting a collection of thrift store samplers and synthesizers. In wiring all of these half-functioning devices through various effects and distortion pedals, he's arrived at an abrasive minimal wave sound that has two feet firmly planted in the worlds of New Order and Wolf Eyes. Had Eisold added a guitar into the mix, Cold Cave might have ended up not all that far from those brilliant bliss pop mutations from Woodsist (i.e. Crystal Stilts, Blank Dogs, Wavves, etc.), but he's admitted that part of his frustration with hardcore was over his two-decade losing battle in learning the guitar. So, the synthesizer is the instrument of choice for Cold Cave. This three track EP showcases his pop genius with minor key melodies bobbing along insistent drum machines and sinister atmospheres. "Heaven's Gate" and "Our Tears Help The Flowers Grow" start with the minor-key synth melodies which buttress Depeche Mode's Violator and The Cure's Faith, with megaphone distortion crackling the detached male / female vocals. The title track is considerably up-tempo and up-beat with a bouncy melody that WILL get stuck in your head in all the right ways, like those incredible singles which made their way onto the first Adult. album. Very highly recommended!
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.
Nothing excites us more then discovering a new talent at the beginning of what we know will be a long run of brilliant and inspiring releases. Such is the case with this cassette-only release from Mira Cook. While dancing is her main mode of creative expression she began playing with tape loops, recording her beautiful voice and the various instruments in her bedroom, and started to construct these wonderfully simple yet elegant songs. Eventually, those sounds and songs demanded to move beyond the confines of her four walls and into the ears of music lovers everywhere. And hopefully that will begin to happen more and more, as she's started playing shows around town and is slowly becoming more comfortable with recording herself as well.
Many of us got to see Mira play live for the first time just a few weeks ago when she played a set at Irwin aQ's film screening over at ATA. You couldn't help but be won over by her glowing presence and her lovely songs, created by building harmonies from her looped voice and her subtle instrumentation (organ, marimba, dulcimer, etc.) with totally electrifying results.
While most of the current crop of loop-based musicians seem more interested in getting lost in muddy drones (which we like lots for sure) it's so nice to hear someone who sounds so assured and you can actually hear what is being sung and feel the meaning of the songs through their ghostly repetition. We're reminded a bit of Samara Lubelski, Bjork, or what it might sound like if you could match a voice to the delicate and intimate sounds Colleen creates with her dreamy instrumentals. There is something so pure and sincere that comes across in these songs, Mira Cook is not trying to be a part of any kind of scene or sound, instead she is following a very instinctual and unique vision and we have a feeling this is going to be one of those cassettes that you will be able to brag about owning in a few years. Highly recommended!
Oddly enough we've never reviewed a Cranes record, a band who have steadily released really good records since the early '90s. They are one of those groups that most people thought vanished in the mid '90s not realizing they've been around this whole time, and their last album 2004's Particle & Waves was actually one of their finest moments. Long before Mum and Pluramon were crafting their shoegazey and delicately dreamy offerings, Cranes really helped lay the groundwork for what could be done with ethereal young-girl sounding vocals mixed with lush and woozy instrumentation. Cranes continue to brilliantly bring together elements of innocence, yearning and sadness with such satisfying results. Recommended!
Ah, sadly this new disc from San Francisco's Crime In Choir is also their swansong. Please say it ain't so, guys. 'Cause what other band around here is going to provide our fix of dazzling, groovy instrumental prog inspired by cult foreign film soundtracks?? But at least we've got this final recording. It's with the same lineup (right?) that produced their previous album Trumpery Metier highlighted here two years ago, meaning this features Tim Soete, formerly of the Fucking Champs, doing percussive math on the drumkit, joined by plenty of vintage synth sizzle, glorious guitar wail, and jazzy sax. Crime In Choir's usual '70s prog derived bombast is in full effect here, with some nods and winks to the discotheques of the high-gloss, coke-dusted '80s. The 7 tracks here range from the cop show / suspense movie chase music funk of the disc's opener and title track to more melancholic, moody stuff like the mellow yet majestic "Pedal Nervous Sensation" and the cosmic synth pulsations of the album's lovely finale, "Fool's Guild" (which builds to something of a maniacal conclusion).
Both Goblin (definitely) and Italo-disco (probably) seem like possible reference points, and if you liked Zombi's "Sapphire" you might be on the same wavelength as Crime In Choir is here, not that this gets quite so electronic-dancey. Same goes if you like the likes of Maserati, Tangerine Dream, and the dancefloor filling live shows by CiC keyboardist Jesse's new unit Jonas Reinhardt.
Gift Givers comes packaged in a brightly colored "eco-wallet" recycled cardboard sleeve thing, and was released by the same label, Kill Shaman, who brought us Animism by Expo '70, and that recent Night Control disc, fyi.
Maybe you've heard the hype on this Detroit punk rock reissue already. And it's almost too good to be believed. Back in 1974, this trio of brothers, who are also all "brothers" in the African-American sense of the word, and who were fans of the likes of Black Sabbath and The Stooges and Alice Cooper and the MC5, started a band called DEATH, recording an album that was never released (apparently they refused to change their name to get a major label deal). Flash forward to the present. One of these dudes plays in a reggae band now, but his son is in a punk rock band. Dad's like, "hey son, did y'know I had a band like that when I was your age." And then pulls these dusty, 30-some year old master tapes out of the closet. Holy shit, dad!! The long lost Death album. And it IS killer. Not just proto-punk, but practically proto-hardcore. Hear for yourself. The suggestion that HR and the Bad Brains - or Black Flag for that matter - heard this stuff back in the day and were inspired by it (Death did release a 7" single in 1976) doesn't seem entirely implausible. Not sure how Death stayed unknown for so long. Apparently the brothers, finding that Death's brand of uncompromising, politically radical, high energy rock action wasn't getting them anywhere, moved in a more gospel (!) direction... so that was it for Death. Until now, with Drag City's at-long-last release of Death's 1975 album (well, mini-album, it's seven songs, just over 26 minutes).
Opener "Keep On Knocking" is a decent enough rocker, hinting at the MC5, the Rolling Stones and maybe early badass KISS but it's tame compared to the hyperactive glam slam of what follows - when track two "Rock-N-Roll Victim" comes on and kicks you in the nuts, repeatedly, you'll really realize how freaking punk Death were. Frantic guitars locked in with frenzied drumming, crazed vocals, handclaps (yeah!)... it's pretty darn smokin'. Smoking somethin' all right. They mellow things about a bit for "Let The World Turn", though just a bit. "You're A Prisoner" is another heavy rocker, and "Freakin Out" doesn't let up, its title no lie.
"Where Do We Go From Here???" and "Politicians In My Eyes" are the two remaining tracks on this disc, and the latter in particular is a fierce blend of soulful vocal expression and raging, distorted rockin' with a little bit of a funky vibe. Wow. Definitely in the vein of something like Crushed Butler, but from Detroit a few years later... or in the vein of the Damned, but from Detroit a few years earlier! So, yeah, believe the hype. And by the way, this destroys all that Black Rock Coalition stuff from the early '90s...
Drag City must have been *stoked* to get to put this out. We're sorta surprised there's no liner notes, though they do include handwritten lyrics. Also, fyi, this is available on vinyl but we could barely get any, maybe we'll get some more eventually since the couple copies we have at the moment will be gone in a wink...
Latest issue of one of our favorite metal mags. One that somehow manages to mix humor and metal without ever taking the piss, instead it just makes for a damn fine read.
On the cover, Brutal Truth, all in white, posing with polar bears! Inside: dude from Helms Alee talks about his rad job, monthly tour story from Genghis Tron, Shrinebuilder in the studio, The Devil's Blood, Wolves In The Throne Room, Luna Mortis, Root, Skepticism, 16, North, Cobalt, Cancer Bats, Satyricon, Cattle Decapitation, Pestilence, Kreator, touring in the current economy, Decibal Hall Of Fame: Autopsy's Mental Funeral, a huge Brutal Truth story, new record soon!!!, tons and tons of reviews and of course the back page South Pole Dispatch courtasey of the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle!
Many of you will recall that a few years back, we had the pleasure of reviewing six (6) different limited edition cd-r releases by this murky and mysterious improvised instrumental free rock ensemble from Finland, which features members (we eventually determined for sure) of mega AQ faves Circle! In those reviews, which taxed our powers of description, we said things like:
"A Finnish drug thing you wouldn't understand."
"Lo-fi, low-key freakout."
"Imagine a cross between Circle and Thuja."
"Imagine Hawkwind or Acid Mothers Temple locked in a cave with broken instruments."
"Installments from some massive on-going jam still happening right now... outdoors under the ever-dark winter sky."
"Slow, meandering, very stoned ambient psych jamming to the max."
"Imagine if you had neighbors who lived below you in a WWII bunker and all they did all day was listen to certain Fushitsusha albums, this is what you might hear through the floor."
Now, all six of those cd-r's have been out of print for some time now. But Doktor Kettu's spacey jamming is indeed on-going, and now they're back with a brand new disc, Soft Delirium, and ALL our lines quoted above could easily apply, again. This time it's a real cd, not a cd-r, from Super-Metsa, a division of our friend Jussi's Ektro label that brings us so much stuff by his band Circle and other strange treats. In the typical Doktor Kettu tradition, there's but three long tracks on this disc, each of them an extended, wandering journey through darkness and light. The twelve minute, 44 second "Wulff" which opens the disc, billows forth, amplifier hum and droning chords riding abstract waves of percussive tinkerings to eventually unleash some seriously dense, distorted muzz. Someone's having a Tokyo Flashback, even though these guys are from Finland! Track two, "Triggeri" (9:56) is a bit gentler. Rather pretty, reminding us a bit of Circle's exquisite Miljard. Quiet music you'll want to play loud. And then the disc's third and final track "Kosmonaut", provides even more brooding ambience, exhibiting the ominous, twilight moodiness of another AQ fave, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. It's over seventeen minutes long, but for us that's barely long enough. These pale rumblings, with surges of percussive texture and slow, slow hints of melody, could flow on endlessly and we'd be forever entranced...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is one of those releases that we would normally get maybe 100 copies of, maybe more, but this baby was strictly limited to 200, of which we got about a quarter of the pressing, but hell this is Expo '70, one of, if not our very favorite purveyor of heavy blissed out droney space kraut doom drift, AND this particular release, cassette only, is a sort of addendum to the Black Ohms cd (featuring outtakes from the Black Ohms sessions) which we made Record Of The Week a while back. And of which we sold crazy amounts. So apologies for the folks who don't manage to snag one of these. We always try to get as many copies of things as we can, but it seems that no matter how many we get, it's never enough, and often labels don't want to give so much of the pressing to just one place. But we do try, every time, to get enough for everybody, so again apologies for the fact that these will probably be gone in a heartbeat.
BUT, for the 25 of you who do managed to snag one of these, you will be in total kraut drone space out bliss rock heaven. From rumbling sludgey doom drift, to looped psych shimmer, to pulsing slow burning swells, to smoldering slabs of white hot buzz, more of what we freaked out about on the Black Ohms disc. Dark, dolorous, heavy, hypnotic, even the outtakes are mindblowing.
Beautifully packaged too, full color printed sleeves, the tape and sleeve wrapped in a printed vellum obi INSIDE the case, each one hand numbered. And LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! We have 25.
Sorry.
Another gorgeous chunk of spacey tripped out downtuned space kraut doom from aQ faves Expo '70. This time they're sharing a 7" with another favorite of ours, the droney, drifty I Am Seamonster.
Expo '70's track begins super minimal and SUNNO))) like, a slow motion riff, the guitar thick and heavy and distorted, riding a single chord, while all around effects whirl and swirl and streak, very mantra like and hypnotic, spaced out and druggy, part way through a second guitar offers some melodic counterpoint, some woozy spidery lysergic minor key leads that sound sun baked even as they drift through the inky blackness, the sound managing to somehow sound both desert and space-y simultaneously.
We hadn't heard anything from I Am Seamonster since their (sadly) now out of print Nebulum cd-r. The track here seems to expand on the IAS sound on Nebulum, crafting a gorgeous landscape of deep guitar swells, each one wreathed in different effects, crumbly and buzzy, blown out and blurred, the sound at its peak is white hot, but occasionally drift back to something cooler and washed out. Layers of high end settle atop the undulating rumbles and whirs, deep percussive guitars chime and ring out, everything bathed in a blurry shoegazey haze, the guitars slipping and shimmering, the result almost orchestral. So so nice.
Beautiful packaging too, silk screened, metallic blue and silver on black, the back side die cut to reveal the record and sleeve.
Those of you into obscure '70s heavy rock - or cult '80s metal for that matter - ought to be interested in this new album from the power trio Falcon. It's their second record, following a self titled debut in 2004. That one featured a cover of Bang's "Redman", and also a cameo vocal performance by Bobby Liebling of Pentagram, on a song dedicated to the memory of Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott... and that should give you an idea of where Falcon is coming from, in terms of influences/atmosphere. Capturing the spirit of the '70s proto-metal that we dig so much here at AQ too. Bang! Pentagram! 'Lizzy! c'mon!! Some other obvious selling points in Falcon's favor has to do with who's who in the band. They've got Greg Lindstrom from '80s epic doomsters Cirith Ungol on bass and Darin McCloskey of stoner metal act Pale Divine on drums. The third, crucial part of the trio is vocalist/guitarist Perry Grayson, who used to play in a much more technical power metal band called Destiny's End but gave that up to concentrate on his true love (well, next to the weird pulp fiction of H.P. Lovecraft), full on '70s-sounding downer rock. He's one of those guys with the crazy record collection full of vintage vinyl proto-metal platters, trying to bring it all back to life a la Magnus from Witchcraft. And being a badass guitar player with heavy friends makes it look easy, with Falcon now on to their second album, this one, so let's tell y'all some more about it...
Die Wontcha - love the title, love the cover art, which we can only guess was probably lifted from an old issue of Weird Tales or something like that - features ten tracks of groovy, rockin', bellbottomed '70s heaviness worship. Nine are Falcon originals, the tenth a killer cover of "Leader" by Aussie proto-metallers Buffalo (you'll find the original on their 1972 album Dead Forever, the reissue of which is reviewed elsewhere on our site). Since Perry recently relocated from LA to Australia, it's even more appropriate they do a Buffalo song. And boy howdy does it fit in with their own material.
The disc starts off with Lindstrom's lament for Scottish Formula 1 race car driver Jimmy Clark, who died in a tragic crash back in '68. It's totally the sort of thing a band like this back in the '70s would have written... almost a modern-day folk song. Definitely very Thin Lizzyish, with Perry's slightly gruff, deep voiced vocals, melodic minor key guitar leads, and classic, loping, hummable riffage. For those more into fantasy subjects, a couple tracks later Falcon's got "The King Of Elfland's Daughter", inspired by a poem by Irish fantasist Lord Dunsany. It too has a lot of Lizzyish licks...
Everywhere, Falcon's fuzzed out guitar and fat riffs scream '70s, as do the lyrics, Perry dropping lines like "back in the days of yore/hippie to the core" and "hit the stage with heavy rockin' band/tour the world kickin' out the jams/turn the amps up loud/stun the crowd". Yep, that's rock n' roll like they used to do, and Falcon bring it. But maybe the best expression of Falcon's mission is found in the lyrics to the disc's final track, penned by Lindstrom, entitled "Show You All" - which is all about going to a big show by some currently popular so-called rock band and unavoidably thinking they could do much, much better, Perry singing: "I want to jump on stage/and show you how all to play". That's kinda cocky, but we're sure some of you will share Falcon's sentiments, folks we'd recommend this to who also enjoy such quality, ripping n' riffy bands with retro-rawk '70s influences as Witchcraft, Burning Saviours, Bible Of The Devil, Slough Feg, Danava, Drunk Horse, etc...
By the way, although we never listed it before, we do have a just a few copies of Falcon's equally rad s/t album in stock as well, the one with the Bobby L. cameo. We figured since we were highlighting this, some folks might want to pick that one up too, so we got some from the band. They're a little cheaper, 'cause the copies we have of that are pro duped cd-rs, not actual cds, FYI. They still have the same cool metallic foil stamped covers of the original cd version, though. And *this* disc is indeed a real cd, not a cd-r.
The return of these Aussie low end heavies. Two basses, drums, NO guitar, recorded on the tail end of their recent Japanese tour, more of what we love from these guys, mathy, doomy low end heaviness.
The A side is all one track, and it's a beaut. The basses loooow slung, thick and syrupy, streaks of feedback everywhere, the drums scattered, the whole thing gorgeously abstract, the bass lines sound woozy and warped, it almost sounds like one of the basses is being played with a slide, part way through it erupts into a full on free for all, drums going nuts, basses buzzing and roaring, the band managed to sound super tight, but also loose and improvised, slipping from droney to super complex to mathy to space-y to sparse and plodding to freaked out and frenzied.
The flipside begins heavy and downtuned and mathy, sounding like a more metal ruins, super tight, locked into impossible grooves, before slipping into another stretch of drifting abstract free jam, before finishing off with a super rocking jam that is total early nineties Homestead worship. Awesome!
Beautifully hand screened covers, black and metallic silver on white (peep the inside of the cover, they're all printed on recycled Oxes / Arab On Radar sleeves, haha), each one hand numbered and signed, LIMITED TO 355 COPIES! Includes a photocopied insert too.
Holy cow!!! A whole second collection of radio dramas from the amazing Judson Fountain and his faithful sidekick and loyal announcer Sandor Weisberger. The aQ faithful will no doubt remember Completely In The Dark, a mind blowing compilation of funny, goofy, clever, way over the top dramas, performed by the two men, each taking on various characters, voicing men and women, even monsters, stealing the various incidental sounds and background noises from old sound effects records. Totally lo-fi and DIY and so so so genius. Not sure we could describe Judson and his oeuvre any better than we did in that first review, so for those who missed that first Judson Fountain collection (if you did, you NEED that one too!) or just need a refresher, here it is:
Judson Fountain was born in 1952 and was obsessed with radio dramas since he was old enough to talk. In fact as soon as he was able to talk he began doing impressions of cackling hags, wicked witches and all sorts of animals. All of which would come to play a big part in these radio dramas right here. Recorded between the ages of 17 and 22, these dramas are only a drop in the bucket of the hundreds of radio plays Judson wrote and performed. All of them primitive and simple, but amazingly creative and entertaining, and all featuring Judson's unique vocalizations along with his partner/foil Sandor Weisberger. But there's no way to describe them, you just have to hear them. Judson has a crazy East Coast accent, and he talks like a hyper schoolboy who thinks faster than he can get the words out. Using crude sound effects and sometimes painfully deliberate plot exposition, these dramas all rely on Judson and Sandor's crazy array of voices, from Irish Brogue, to old 'foreign' man, to various witches and demonic women, all with distinctly hysterical and completely bizarre cackles. The plots are all very simple, good vs. Evil, haunted houses and witches and demons and stuff. But they are all done so sort-of-professionally and so earnestly that they're just completely irresistible. Judson is just so cute. And so is Sandor who introduces each drama (which he pronounces drahmmer) and also reads the credits afterwards.
Sold yet, you should be, as every single one of these drahmmers, as well as the ones collected on the first compilation are a total hoot. The scary ones are only barely frightening, instead, they're fun and funny and kitschy, there's always a moral, the bad guys usually get their comeuppance, the good guys prevail, or if they don't it's because they foolishly failed to heed repeated warnings and sage advice. All of these radio plays are from the early seventies, and are GENIUS!!! But there is a bonus track as well, a radio play called "The Nasty Roomer!" written in the style of Judson Fountain, by one of Judson's biggest fans, and performed by Judson and Sandor, reunited in 1995 and broadcast live on WFMU! The crazy thing is, the two of them sound exactly the same, and sound like they're having a blast, often slipping into giggles, performing the play after only having seen it for the first time a few minutes earlier. So fantastic and fun and joyous and still so goofy and silly and practically perfect.
Unlike the first collection, this one is an actual cd (not a cd-r) and comes with a huge booklet packed with photos, and the transcript of an interview that took place at the same time as the performance of "The Nasty Roomer!", and there's even a mention of a possible volume THREE! Bring it on!!!
Well it's about time!!!!!! After years of wallowing in the hazy convoluted mists of legend, hearsay, and hipster influence, only to be obtained through ultra expensive imports, rare bootlegs, or ripped vinyl blogs, this long unavailable but hugely influential work by Serge Gainsbourg finally sees its first domestic reissue almost forty years after its scandalous release.
You won't need a translator to understand the sublime perversity at the heart of this concept record, arguably Gainsbourg's most accomplished full studio album. Released in 1971, Histoire De Melody Nelson is a seven song suite about an underage English nymphet (the titular Melody Nelson) and the wealthy lecherous older Frenchman who, after nearly running over her in his Rolls Royce, takes her in, falls in love and eventually deflowers her. And of course, like most love stories, there is a tragic climax. While the story is largely lifted from Kubrick's cinematic version of Lolita, the concept was undertaken in actuality as a symphonic love letter to Jane Birken, the British actress and singer (she sings the part of Melody). Though, not underage when they began their affair, she was twenty years younger than Serge, and their relationship became controversial with the release of their 1969 duet "Je t'aime....mon non plus" (originally recorded with Brigitte Bardot) with its sounds of a simulated female orgasm.
But Melody Nelson is not only Gainsbourg's finest moment, its musical reputation would be nothing without the orchestral arrangements and progressive grooves of Jean-Claude Vannier (see our review of L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches, to get some highly praised background). The underlying score is less obviously song-oriented and more atmospheric than previous Gainsbourg outings, yet deceptively simple. The opening and closing tracks each at nearly eight minutes mirror each other with a sinewy descending bass groove and classic drum breaks (sampled heavily by De La Soul, David Holmes and Dan The Automator), which set the stage for acid-y guitar fills, swooning strings and Serge's own seductive speak-singing. The closing track ("Cargo Culte") ups the transcendent quality of the climax by adding a mass choir and full orchestra to the swirling tower of sound. In between these two tracks are shorter but artfully arranged pieces of folk-groove, French chanson, acid rock, and cinematic sonic bliss that move the story forward. It's one of those records that slowly grabs you, lures you into its spell, and eventually hooks you, so you'll want to keep listening to it over and over.
Though it was a flop on its initial release - Gainsbourg was largely a singles artist before this point, and the leap from that to concept album, especially one of this perverse nature, was perhaps too wide for French audiences - Histoire De Melody Nelson has gained a significant cult following over the years, perhaps reaching its greatest influence in the nineties with bands like Portishead (Dummy), Pulp (This is Hardcore), Massive Attack (Protection), Radiohead (The Bends), Air (Moon Safari), Blonde Redhead (Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons) and Beck (Sea Change), nearly lifting the basic sonic template of this album wholesale.
This awesome, nicely packaged reissue comes with a beautiful booklet of drawings, essays and interviews, outlining not only the full extent of the making of this amazing work, but charting its larger cultural impact as well.
Reissue of the year!
On Adult Life, Brooklyn's noise king Carlos Giffoni has made a purposeful shift away from the clobbering sound assaults and sustained concrete block explosions. This is his pure analog synth record; and despite the shift in source material, Adult Life cannot and should not be taken lightly. Giffoni has cited Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Eno as his inspiration for this album; but these references are not really close to how this album ends up. The kosmische electronics of those pioneering composers has been injected with steroids or blasted with high doses of x-rays or anything really that would give these sounds diabolical super powers. In actuality, Giffoni's industrial-grade lazer blasts and heavily compressed LFO sweeps aren't too far from where Whitehouse started out, but without the blessing and curse of William Bennett. Adult Life begins with a terse police siren which noxiously ping-pongs against mercurial electronic tones and metallic flanges, setting the stage for a head-pounding excursion into the hypnotic and relentless. Throughout the album, Giffoni rotates sawtooth LFO patterns of blistering electricity, rudimentary structuralist patterns adrift on a magnetic sea, and buzzing squigglings from brain-frying modulations.
Thee extreme/experimental/industrial metal scene has a potential new ruler here, with the doomic and disturbing debut of Gnaw. If you put this disc in your computer's iTunes, you'll see some joker has categorized their genre as "children's music". Ha, don't think so! Unless you want your kids to grow up to be like Alan Dubin, of OLD/Khanate infamy, who provides the blood curdling vokills here, ranging from throat-shredding yowls to creepy stage whispers. He's joined by former members of doomlords Burning Witch, psychfolk weirdos Enos Slaughter and cold, early '80s NYC post-punk Factory Records band Ike Yard (!) for this new project, which seems to take up where Dubin's previous bands left off, but in a direction much more deviant & eccentric.
The claustrophobic chaos of track one, "Haven Vault", ought to determine pretty quick if this is for you or not. Imagine a sped-up Khanate struggling through a windstorm, Dubin bawling wretchedly amidst the buzzing murk and the splatter of improv percussion... then distant, pretty piano notes fade in eerily, one by one... it's like Khanate meets Hazard meets Supersilent, in a nightmare. Extreme indeed, and all right with us! That leads to the next track, one that's calmer and more song-like, yet perhaps even more sinister-sounding, with Dubin's negative vibe lyrics more intelligible, everything backed by a springy-sprongy electronic rhythm. More of a tribal drumming pattern is exhibited on the deep rumble of the third song.
Each track seems to delve further and further into weirdness and woe, with drone and distortion and feedback given free range of the album. The jittery percussion effects a trance-like vibe at times, perhaps allowing Dubin's words deeper, subliminal access to your subconscious (uh oh). But as big fans of both OLD and Khanate, we're all for it, glad to now have Gnaw to push those same buttons, along with other ones we hadn't expected, like the way the singing on "Watcher" sounds almost like Eugene from Oxbow. Or how it sounds like maybe Dubin & Co. have been into some dubstep lately. Or how Gnaw's crunching head nodding heaviness is cracked like Humpty D. Yep, if you like some strange surprises in your grim glitchtronic avant-metal music, and moreover enjoy the varied vokill stylings of Mr. Dubin, you'll want Gnaw's Your Face at your place.
The Conspiracy label has released this on cd (digipack) and of course LIMITED EDITION gatefold vinyl of various colors (we've got any color you want, as long as it's black). They had to leave 2 tracks off the vinyl version, but it does come with a free mp3 download card so you can get the entire album on your computer.
NEW ON tUMULt!!!!
It's starting to get seriously tUMULtuous around here. One killer disc just out and still fresh, The Memories Attack, (one of ,if not THE pop record of last year, this year and any year, in Andee's humble opinion), THREE new releases about to drop (Diamatregon, Amocoma and the Ovens) and this, the first full length record from French ultra-mega-abstract-doom trio Habsyll, which just so happens to feature one member of the mighty Fantastikol Hole, as well as the former drummer of faerical punk blasters Nuit Noire!
But nothing, and we mean nothing will prepare you for Habsyll's particularly virulent strain of ultradoom. Heavy and slow, yeah obviously, but it's HOW heavy (very) and HOW slow (ummm, so slow the songs seem to have almost zero forward momentum) that makes Habsyll something much more than a metal band or a doom band, it's almost like twentieth century classical played with downtuned guitars and massive drums. So much space, the notes and drum beats miles apart, the drums not so much beats and rhythms (although those do pop up occasionally) as brief explosions or percussive squalls, more for dynamics and texture, or if they are actually engaged in some sort of actual beat, it's mind bendingly abstract and extended and slow to the point of hovering around 2 or 3 bpm. Think Khanate, Monarch, Moss, Bunkur, Fleshpress? You're already thinking too fast, too structured, too riffy. This is some excessive extremist radical dooooooooom, the sort of chug and plod and buzz and bombinate that makes the rest of those bands sound like speed metal.
But in this slow sprawl, and these long stretches of decay, these sudden flurries of drum splatter and downtuned chug, there is a buried beauty, occasionally, these disparate parts mesh into a brief flicker of melody, or a single epic majestic hook filled swell, before slipping back into blackness. And once or twice the band ramps it up, and locks into some serious pounding crushing black hole sludge, but even then, it's a crawl, a glacial black ooze tempo, and before too long, the band abandon any sense of rhythm or tempo, opting instead to drift through some wide open stretch of outerspace ultra doom emptiness.
The guitars go from grinding and sharp, to muddy and massive, the chugs flung into the ether and carried along on streaks of whirring hiss and blackened buzz, spitting out huge jagged shards of feedback, and long smears of blurred anti-riffage, the bass is a massive cloud of low end, throbbing and pulsing, exploding like a brick wall to the side of the head before slipping back into a shadowy rumble, the vocals a caustic demonic shriek, raspy and hellish, slipping into an almost hysterical falsetto, and just as often offering up some alien ululations, and the drums, oh the drums, any drummer can tell you how hard it is to play slow, but they're talking slowcore slow, or even regular doom slow, this is something else entirely, this is doom drumming gone free jazz, pound and skitter in equal measure, meting out beats one at a time, like some sleek black submarine releasing depth charges.
Two lengthy epics, 17 minutes and nearly 29 minutes, neither very traditionally doomlike, but both most definitely doom, maybe more 'doom', than most actual doom we've heard. Like staring into the abyss, or looking up at a black moonless night sky, these sounds are the sounds of emptiness, of bottomless depths, of never ending expanses of space and time, the end of the world, the birth of new universes, the sound of black holes, of exploding stars, the soundtrack to the end of the world, to the end of everything. Slow and heavy and low and spaced out and damaged and fucked up and strangely beautiful and mysterious and abstract and far out and completely kick ass while remaining very very very difficult listening indeed!
This is a split label release, tUMULt of course, along with 5 other kick ass labels: At War With False Noise, Obscure Sombre, PsycheDOOMelic, Skyr and Odio Sonoro.
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Health, the band, are an entirely unHEALTHY, and thus utterly appealing concoction of manic rhythms, jagged guitars, yowled vocals, all wound into exploding bursts of freaked out noise drenched new wave tribalism. Chaotic, spastic, freaked out, manic, mathy, grindy. It's like the musical version of a diet rich in Pixie Sticks, Lik-M-Aid, licorice whips and Mountain Dew, and it's that imaginary diet that seemingly fuels Health's sound. What else could explain the boundless energy, the intense spazziness, the fractured heaviness, the blown out total rock action?
But as we mentioned in our review of their self-titled debut, as much as we love pretty much everything they do, we like them best when they're drone-y and synthy and drifty and hypnotic, and that is the side that seems to shine through on Disco, a collection of remixes and reinterpretations from a bunch of artists, none of which we recognize except for Crystal Castles, who shared a split with Health a while back.
At first we thought the title Disco was ironic, a pisstake, especially considering the first track. The opener, remixed by Acid Girls, doesn't do much to the original, except loop certain parts, add some noise, some bursts of electronics, none of which would have been that out of place in the original. There is definitely much more of a dance-y groove, but it's almost more New Wave-y than dance-y, and again, if you told us this was a non-remixed Health track and we hadn't heard the original, we wouldn't even blink. The second track, had us maybe reconsidering, while not disco by any stretch, it begins with tribal drums and reverbed vocals, which soon gives way to a dance-y groove, some noodly synths, but again, not all that far removed from the original, at least in our admittedly fuzzy memory. But then the next track drops, another Acid Girls remix, and everything changes. The Disco title makes way more sense. Suddenly the record is in full on modern electro disco, fuzzy synth, groovy Ed Banger style jam mode. From gloomy new wave skittery disco pop, to full on ultra distorted synth heavy Justice style dancefloor destroying jams, to skittery After Dark new wave, to minimal housey style Kompakt-ed grooves, to eighties Japanese video game style 8-bit worship, to Fischerspooner-esque Theme From Beverly Hills Cop retro, and pretty much every awesomely cheesy groovy stop in between. Pretty schizophrenic and all over the place, but somehow, all the various versions remain sort of true to the original sound. Anyone who dug the Health debut, and are not afraid to explore the dancefloor, will dig this big time. And folks who have never heard Health, but love shit like Crystal Castles, MGMT, Justice, Daft Punk, Alter Ego, Digitalism, Cut Copy and the like, this might just be your gateway drug, to things more noisy and punk rock.
The return of Heatdeath, record number two, and once again, just as hard to describe as the first one. A sprawling soft cacophony of buzz and whir and drone, laced with bits of glitch and hiss all woven into a multi part abstract freenoise epic, that plays out like some futuristic symphony gone haywire.
Fuzzy staticky whirs drift above warm shimmers, mechanical crunch is smoothed into blurred anti-rhythms, thick layers of distortion ripple over roiling depths of hiss and buzz, occasionally a metronomic sonar like beep keeps the time, waves of pink noise crash over shard of keening feedback, occasionally coalescing into thick roiling shoegazey sort-of-doom, all abstract and dreamy, but still rough and raw and doused with crumbling distortion, wild drum freakouts muted and muffled until they become skittery landscapes of thump and shuffle, long stretches of washed out Tim Hecker like ambience, and a long stretch of warped haunted house creep, peppered with soft chimes and deep cavernous drones. All over the place sonically, but the various parts blend perfectly, drifting into one another, taking the form of one single epic abstract chunk of noisy drone-y buzzy doomy mystery.
Gorgeous packaging, thick jackets in super thick PVC sleeves, black inner sleeves and heavy vinyl. Each record comes with a download coupon as well! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
It's been almost two years since the last proper full length from Canadian soundscaper Tim Hecker, and while tons of other artists have spewed out cd-r after cd-r after limited cassette in that same time, one listen to An Imaginary Country is all it takes to illustrate the difference. Why it took so long, why it was worth the wait, how the 'noise' and 'drones' and 'sounds' Hecker produces are so much more then just the words that describe them, it's all evident in every single second of this record, in fact, 10 seconds in, it's already obvious that this is indeed something special.
As demonstrated on numerous past recordings, Hecker is a master sonic alchemist, who with a handful of effects, a computer and a guitar and who knows what else, is able to construct this, a time machine of sound, a set of recordings that while simply pleasing to the ear, are also transcendent, they soothe, they entrance, they mesmerize, but more importantly, and more magically, they transport. Hecker and headphones is pretty much a ticket to some otherworld, not of sights but sounds, and not just sounds, but streaks and blurs and buzzes, soft layers and blinding crystalline shimmers, thick whirring textures and barely there delicate melodies, a sound that slips from breathless whisper to caustic roar, but each end of that spectrum fully infused with elements of the other, at its heaviest, the sound still manages to be darkly delicate, dreamy and ghostly, and at its most minimal and abstract, the sound is still imbued with some weight, a sense of import, of sounds and perhaps worlds hidden behind and within the actual music.
If anything, the sound of An Imaginary Country is heavier, and thicker, more lush, and with more heft, altogether more powerful, the sort of sound that performed live, through a massive P.A., could summon angels, or perhaps demons. But for all this added sonic weight, nothing is lost, the sounds are not just loud, they are multihued, every note, every chord, every bit of sound is alive with energy, it's as if Hecker has created a living breathing sound sculpture, made of transparent spheres, from afar, it's a gorgeous assemblage, the spheres shifting and dancing, playing out some elaborate composition, but pick one sphere, get up close and look inside, and there is a whole 'nother constellation of smaller glass spheres, engaged in a similarly beautiful and elaborate dance, and so on and so on. The magic is that every single set of movements, whether consciously or not, is visible and audible even with the slightest glance, which is what makes Hecker's sound so dense and deep and emotional and lush and utterly breathtaking.
A closer examination of each song reveals the presence of thick warm whirring organs, or some instruments and sounds transformed into organs, thus much of the record sound choral, the music of some crumbling empty church, left to play on into eternity, long long tones, blurred into slow motion epics, other tracks play out like watching some old filmstrip come to life, the newly living things still surrounded by grit and hiss and buzz, but that distorted haze that surrounds them seem to have come alive as well, moving like some organic living thing, the lives and actions of the newly living things inexorably tangled up with the movements of this other newly living things, a blurry ballet of soft sound and of mysterious sonic events. There are a few moments of relative tranquility, where the sounds are tamped down, wrangled into manageable shapes, allowed to shimmer and rippled and billow, held in check by an atmosphere of reverb and delay, but even then, off in the distance, a storm seems to be coming, and the closer it gets, the more our ears want it, and as the next song swallows the song before it, we can't help but close our eyes, open our ears, and let ourselves drift off into some other place, like walking into a warm waterfall and emerging on the other side, in a world made up entirely of warm waterfalls, our whole existence there, wreathed in torrents of sweet buzz and washed out soft focus sound, the headphone cord a tether, the only way home, if we ever felt the need to return home at all.
A new lp from long beloved noisemakers Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Well, not entirely new, as one side was previously released as a super limited 3"cd-r, but considering how limited that was, most of you will be hearing all of this stuff for the first time.
The A side, previously released on Small Doses, is a tripped out burst of mysterious musical abstraction. Two tracks, clocking in at about 18 minutes total, an abstract and spacious drift through some lost alien soundscape. The first track is all tinkling melodies, glistening high end, strange rumbling fluctuations way off in the distance, bits of creak and scrape, everything bathed in foggy reverb and warm wet swirls of tape hiss and atmospheric whir. Melodies creep in and out, as do bits of field recordings, it all feels like some cinematic bleary eyed wander through a hazy druggy flashback, a washed out world of lost memories and fragmented dreams. Here and there guitars grind and reverberate, and strange percussive sonic events drift into earshot, like an even more abstract Wolf Eyes maybe. Quite gorgeous and dreamlike.
The second track starts out the same, a smear of high end shimmer, but instead of spreading out into languid pools of blurry sound, things get decidedly more abrasive, the high end becomes sharper, the percussion is more clattery and jarring, a disembodied voice intones some creepy monologue over the top, effects swirl and swoop, deconstructed riffs chug and churn, everything dizzying and disorienting, like the nightmare analogue to the opening track's dream.
The flipside also offers up two tracks, the first begins with a swirl of creaking metal, sizzling cymbals, clattery percussion, until suddenly the clang and crunch are transformed into a strangely rhythmic crunch, the metal sounding much deeper, more of a resonant bellow, all very chaotic and cacophonous, underpinned by deep distant rumbles. Which leads right into track number two, all birdsong and tinkling chimes, whispered voices, random sonic detritus, sharp slivers of momentary buzz, soft smears of static, very haunting and ominous and like the first side, quite cinematic.
Beautifully packaged as always, pressed on thick vinyl, housed in full color sleeves with super striking artwork from HPK mainman Anthony Mangicapra. We know it's LIMITED too, just not sure to how many.
Been a good long while since we've heard from House of Low Culture, the droney side project of Isis / Hydra Head main man Aaron Turner, and we only managed to get 10 of these so we won't go into too much detail, since odds are they'll be gone in a flash.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered, hand assembled, each one with a unique cover, made from random pages from a magazine, each with a printed obi, and wrapped in a plastic bag sealed with a sticker.
Two extended tracks, recorded live at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles in 2007, mastered by James Plotkin, guitars, loops and tapes, woven into sprawling buzzing droning soundscapes, the first all long tones, slow shifting layers, melodic fragments drifting beneath warm low end swells, peppered with the zing of a zither like metallic shimmer. Tones like sirens wail in the distance, the pitches gradually increasing, the tension building, like the scariest part of some Italian horror movie. The second a snarling mass of blown out distortion and crumbling heaviness, thick sheets of effected guitars, processed low end, all roiling and churning and pulsing and throbbing, buried beneath it, what sounds like howled voices, seriously intense and caustic, noisy and thick and dense, but still textured and droney and weirdly soothing.
Again we only got TEN COPIES out of FIFTY, so if you want one gotta be quick on the trigger.
It's been four years since we first encountered this drone-doom-doom-drone band from West Virginia's debut album The Light Carriers. And its heavy vibrations made such an impression on us, we'd been wondering when we'd heard from them again... of course, for these guys, whose music is sooooo sloooow and seemingly transmitted from the deeps of space, four years probably isn't a long time, not on the grand galactic scale. So we waited, and we're glad they've now at last resurfaced, with, uh, They Will Surface. Considering all the droney, dooooooomy music we sell, having more Hyatari here at AQ is a good thing. Really, it seems these guys should be just as popular as bands like Ufomammut, Atavist, Nadja... certainly if you like the likes of those, you should check out Hyatari!
This new disc picks up where the last one left off, pretty much. A musical 2001: The Space Odyssey monolith of epic, moody, synth sludge DIRGE, built from slabs of Earth/SUNNO)))/Skullflower style distortion and lumbering, crushingly heavy riffs, which seem to explode out of the near-stillness of their more ambient, drifty, spaced-out passages. And it's (mostly? all?) instrumental, so nothing so insignificant and small as a pesky human voice enters into the majestic, black-void-encompassing soundfield. But instead of the Godflesh-y programmed drum beats of the debut, this time around it sounds more like there's a physical being behind the drumkit, pounding away with the pulse of the cosmos. Although, no drummer is credited, so it's probably a machine. Heck, all of Hyatari might just be a machine. We imagine the depressed robot from Hitchhiker's Guide, but serious and scary and for some reason intent on playing ultra-heavy post rockish drone-doom!
The death of his older brother J Dilla, had a huge impact on Illa J. In fact it was what made him grab a mic and become a hip-hop artist. After J Dilla's sad passing, his little brother dropped out of college and began a mission to continue his brother's musical legacy. While J Dilla was all about production and beats, Illa J was attracted to the microphone and had his heart set on becoming an MC. Smartly he went right to the source and used some of his brother's unused early productions as the musical bed over which he raps and sings. At its best this is some melty smooth and satisfying hip-hop, but there are some serious misfires as well. While we still think Illa J has yet to totally find his voice there is still plenty of promise to be found here.
Hot on the heels of the recent Black As Pitch record, one man band Jabaldav returns with a much more abstract outing... Whereas BaP, and the previous release Dead As Duck, were both homages of a sort to SF black metal legends Weakling, albeit filtered through some Black Flag damage and some fucked up black studio magic, 3K Hum sounds basically like what the title would lead you to imagine. Longform drones, drawn out expansive low end soundscapes, still black and haunting, brutal in their own way, but more hypnotic, more trancelike, owing more to SUNNO))) and Niblock than Immortal and Ildjarn.�
The opening track is nearly 15 minutes of digital burble, tape hiss and amp buzz, woven into a slow simmering stretch of glitch-pocked shimmer, like strange malfunctioning machinery, floating�along a slow flowing black river, sputtering and struggling to make more than buzzes and bzzzt's, immersed in a deep resonant sonic flow. Eventually, a riff enters the fray, but it's soooo slow, and weirdly digitized, it's more like a dense cloud of overdrive tone, thick and roiling, keening and white hot, before drifting off again, leaving nothing but a strange Morse code sort of Raster-Noton click and buzz ambience...
The second track is much more smoothed out, a gorgeous languorous sun baked crawl, long distorted notes stretched way out, flecked with sharp bits of overdriven buzz, a lazy metallic minor key threnody, burning hot but slowly, smoldering and intense, very alien, but warm and hauntingly emotional. This is followed by a brief series of Close Encounters like tones, that occasionally overheat and become super distorted swells, before reverting again to gentle drifting harmonics, before the 'bonus track' (which is NOT on the cassette), a massive 44 minute epic, a gorgeous washed out drift, shades of Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, and other masters of soft focus blur, like the soundtrack for some weightless drift through space, distant glimmers, barely there melodies, soft warm melodic swells, little shards of FX, like lost transmissions from some dying satellite, slipping effortlessly from ominous and dark, to dreamy and hopeful, this track all on its own is like an entire record in and of itself, but of course manages to be the final part in 3K Hum's multi part epic... So lovely...
And also on the cd (and not on the tape), is a brief coda, a weird robotic blur of buzzing tones and crumbling distortion, haunting and speaker shredding, but again in its own black buzzing way quite pretty...
The cd is packaged in a DVD case, with full color cover, and two full color inserts.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!!! Each one hand numbered.
One of San Francisco's more popular artists in the Mission School scene along with Barry McGee and Chris Johanson is Jason Jagel, whose colorful sprawling paintings of disassociative word fragments and energetic stream-of-conscious drawings of copulation and urban detritus get a full monograph treatment here, a big beautiful oversized tome that perfectly suits Jagel's eye popping work. Having done many record covers for Madlib in his many sonic guises and collaborations such as Madvillian, MF Doom, and The Beat Konducta, this handsome, beautifully reproduced full color collection comes with an exclusive Madlib 10", featuring as of now, all unreleased tracks. The thing is HUGE, and heavy, so if you order just this, it'll have to ship at the three item rate, but it's worth it, this is the kind of book you can totally get lost in, and the record is pretty bad ass to boot!
NEW ON MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!
Yep, along with the full length lp collection also just released on Mississippi, there's this here 7", which features two versions of one of our favorite, and perhaps one of Jay's most popular tunes "I'm So Depressed". A slightly different version is also on the lp collection, and like that one, this version too is gorgeous, sad, and heartbreaking, but still wistful and amusing, the lyrics clever and heartfelt, Jay's voice silky and beautiful, the instrumentation spare and stripped down, but still impossibly lush.
The flipside, features a different full band version of the same song, retitled "Depression", and credited to Koko Joe and The Jobhunters, and is way more raw and garage-y, sort of old school R+B, heavy on the reverb and the room sound, the rest of the band ramping it up a bit, there's even horns, but Jay is still the star of the show his voice and playing unmistakable!
Packaged in a simple old school juke box style, hand silkscreened black and white sleeve.
NEW ON MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!!!!
That's just for the folks who will buy anything and everything on Mississippi, and there are lots of them, and heck, pretty much everyone who works here is one too! But for those of you who need to know more, let's dig in a little shall we?
We recently reviewed a compilation of Abner Jay tracks on Swedish reissue label Subliminal Sounds, so we might as well, revisit that review just for those of you who are new to the musical world of Abner Jay and his unique sound.
Black minstrel showman Abner Jay hailed from south Georgia, and was one of the last of the travelling minstrel musicians. Presumably he's dead now, though his habit of laying on his belly to drink water from the Swaunee River helped him to persevere for more than fifty years in a career as a one man band, banging out tunes on his electric six-string banjo, bass drum, harmonica and little else. On the evidence of the music, Abner Jay was quite the entertainer. He tells some off-color groaners 'tween songs, but the humor in his show doesn't stop his most affecting songs from being truly morose and sad, and beautiful. He's got the blues all right (the "Cocaine Blues" to be precise). Indeed, one of his most moving songs is entitled "I'm So Depressed". Stick that alongside his risque jokes and more lighthearted fare, and you've got a manic-depressive masterpiece, not to mention a piece of close to forgotten history.
For this Mississippi collection, much of the between song banter and the wild stories and jokes, have been excised, leaving the record mostly music, and allowing the music to truly shine, and shine it does, bluesy and folky and so so soulful. A deep angelic voice, a gorgeous croon, no matter how bizarre the lyrics, coming from the mouth of Abner Jay they sound like a lullaby.
This collects a bunch of various tracks, most of them one man band numbers, but a few fleshed out with a full band, those numbers are surprisingly lush, total fifties style balladry, flecked with blues and folk, his electric banjo, sounding more like a subtly effected guitar, the guitar playing slipping from gentle and languid, to wild and tangly, the vocals from sing / speak story telling and lush crooning, the bass drum and highhat a steady beat, the harmonica rich and textured, but it's all about the voice, and the songs, some dark and haunting and mysterious, others melancholy and wistful, and still others wild and rambunctious.
There is some overlap with the Subliminal Sounds cd, but there's enough stuff here you haven't heard that it's totally worth it, PLUS, it's on vinyl, AND, it's just about the most deluxe Mississippi Records release yet. It comes with a ton of inserts, a photo of Abner Jay, a reproduction of Jay's biography, written and signed by the man himself, a flyer / advert announcing a string of gigs in Florida, with plenty of info about the man and his recordings, and a transcript of all the various stories and jokes and intros that were cut from the actual record. WOW. As always, great job Mississippi, and if you haven't heard the music of Abner Jay, boy are you in for a treat!
Yay, more Kampfar(rrrrrr)! This Nordic horde, whose first ep came out back in 1995, was missing in action for seven long years, returning in 2006 with the frosty Kvass, and now they're back again with another icy blast of their Norwegian black metal mastery. If anything, this one's full of even folkier riffs, but stays super grim and heavy too, making for some sort of pagan ritual trudge, rolling and rasping and rollicking on and on majestically. There's something quite "classic" about the folky metal lope of tracks like "Vansinn" that's for sure. And as frozen cold as Kampar's collective heart must be, much emotion is still conveyed by the likes of "Vettekult". So, recommended obviously to any/all Kampfar fans, but also to anyone if you just like picking up a new Nordic black metal album this week - this one is the real deal like back in the '90s!
Something must also be said about vocalist and founding member Dolk (that's his name), who, in a recent band photo we've seen, displays a remarkable Kampfar logo tattoo across his stomach, gangsta-style! It looks pretty funny we must stay, but on the other hand, it's an excuse for him to show off his sixpack abs. As well as demonstrating he's serious about his band, it's no fly by night flavor of the month outfit. Indeed, though he somehow finds time for working out and getting tattooed and all that, Dolk's main priority remains channelling the wintry spirits of his Viking ancestors into metal music so powerful that even a non-band-member might consider getting the logo of inked on their body.
As we've mentioned in a few other black metal reviews, at first glance, it's easy to be knocked out by these incredible scenes in places like Russia and the Ukraine, but upon closer inspection, it becomes obvious, that it's the same 5 or 6 guys in each scene making up all of those different bands. Sometimes it's even the exact same members, with just a new name and a different sound. Still pretty impressive for sure, just in a different way.
So here we have Ukrainian black metallers Khors, who among their ranks, include various members of other Ukrainian groups you most likely recognize, like Nokturnal Mortum, Astrofaes and Hate Forest.
And while Khors' sound invariably shares some similarities with the various members' other outfits, as well as fellow Ukrainian black metal horde Drudkh, the sound here is definitely unique, taking midtempo black buzz, and mixing it with some seriously melodic more straight forward rock, lots of space-y atmosphere, and super tripped out almost Pink Floyd-like keyboards. It's that melodic aspect, and the keyboards, that give Khors a definitely whatthefuck vibe.
The record begins with a two minute intro, all shimmery keyboards, and super tight, almost jazzy drumming, even when the guitars come in, the sound is weirdly poppy, with some almost bluesy leads, before slipping into the first track, a lurching black metal pound, with churning riffs, and howled vokills, wild guitar trills, but also sparkling sheets of tinkling keyboards, rife with folky melodies, the whole thing epic and majestic, especially when the band lock into the instrumental jam parts, guitar leads evoke some eighties movie montage, before slipping back into something more black or in the case of the next track something even more, um, cheesy? But not in a bad way. Skittery drums beneath soft synths, whispered vox, and some almost Chariots Of Fire sounding piano. Seconds later, the band is blasting through a frosty field of buzzing guitars wrapped around furious blast beats, and we're back in serious black metal territory, but hold up, Khors shift gears again, and slip into something a bit more Journey. Or Europe even. Super slick sounding studio hard rock from the eighties, which on its own might sound unappealing, but then drape some super distorted buzzy guitars and growled hellish vocals over the top and we're into something definitely bizarre and WAY unexpected.
The PURE metal parts here will definitely appeal to folks into the Ukrainian sound (Nokturnal Mortum, Hate Forest, Drudkh), but it's pretty twisted, and weird mix, and least for the grim and troo, and at times, not even remotely metal, which might make this more appropriate for the aQ metalheads who tend to be up for the stranger stuff. Although to be fair, there's nothing truly fucked up and weird here, it's just the combination of black buzz and smooth jam that makes this so strange, and thus, so awesome!
Metal Archives, the go to site for metal info, a sort of metal Wikipedia, lists 348 metal bands from Turkey, none of which we'd heard, or even really heard of, until now. Malefic Order, who besides being from Turkey, have one of the coolest metal logos ever, their name rendered in the shape of a helmeted horned demon, with a pentagram on its forehead and an impaled skull atop its helmet.
Recorded to praise Euronymous and Dead of Mayhem, Raging Evil Desekration could not be more appropriately titled, everything about these songs is raging and evil, raw and buzzy, obviously heavily indebted to the Nordic elite, these songs merge epic and majestic with raw and primitive, the result a relentless buzz drenched thrash flecked slab of frosty black mayhem, nothing overtly weird or fucked up, although there are some cool arrangements and weird creepy melodies here and there, this is more about the sound and the vibe and the spirit, every single note and drum beat, every blasting buzz oozes evil, the vokills some of the rawest and most intense we've heard, the riffing frenetic often slipping into dangerously catchy territory before exploding again into a blazing blur, the drums super heavy and powerful, the whole sound just ultra raw, super intense, pitch black and very very evil.
