Not sure why we never reviewed the recent full length from A Storm Of Light, if we remember correctly, it was a pretty excellent collection of post Neurosis brooding metallic heaviness. Bu we can't review everything, so we'll try to make up for it with this one, which features ASoL teaming up with big time aQ faves Nadja for some seriously blissed out doom drone heaviness.
The A side features two tracks from A Storm Of Light, "Brother" and "Sister", the first, a sort of Neurosis / later period Swans hybrid, the verses a sprawling snare flecked rumble, the male vocals a deep croon, countered by more ethereal female vox, the verses crashing into an explosive chorus, huge soaring downtuned guitars, howled vocals, pounding drums, dirge-y but not doomy so much as epic, the guitar layered into thick swells, the whole thing getting almost orchestral near the end. "Sister" follows up with something a bit more mathy and lurching rhythmically, the vocals more raspy and rough, the guitars wreathed in effects, keyboards swirling and shimmering, the drums tribal and solid, the middle part features long stretches of softer drift, the arrangement almost sounds almost sea shanty-ish, albeit lumbering and heavy as fuck, super dramatic, and almost emo sounding when the two vocals harmonize near the end.
Nadja counter with a sidelong jam called "I Make From Your Eyes The Sun" which begins with warm muted backwards guitars, skittery barely there percussion, tinkling chimes, woozy sun baked melodies, lots of gauzy hiss and whir, even some piano, eventually, as it always does, the song blossoms in a slow motion supernova of sound, the guitars thick and viscous, the vocals a near whisper way down in the mix, the drums spare and simple, a gentle pop song buried beneath all manner of distortion and decay, woozy and washed out and dreamy and distant, although at one point, the ethereal guitar parts coalesce into some serious chugging, and for a short stretch the sound of Nadja gets all Godfleshed, a fierce industrial pound, beneath streaks of feedback, and undulating layers of buzz building and building and building to a warm, wonderfully warped climax, before the parts gradually slough off leaving just a minimal bit of warm whir.
The last two tracks are remixes, the first lets Nadja transform ASoL's "Brother" into something very Nadja-like, a slow, brooding build up, all deep swell and swirls of muted feedback, warped reverby guitars, bits of backwards swoop, gentle tinkling keyboards, until the MASSIVE breakdown, ultra heavy pounding crush, the guitars epic and crumbling and fierce as fuck, the drums distorted and pummeling, the drums eventually dropping out for the most part, leaving just the guitars to drone and buzz their way to the end. And finally, A Storm Of Light gets to tackle the Nadja track, and right out of the gate, they chop it up quite a bit, bumping the vocals up in the mix, muting most of the guitars except for a little industrial squall of grinding buzz, stretching it out into something less warm and woozy, but still dark and ominous, eventually letting the guitars tangle and wrangle over the roiling sea of murk below, all sort of atonal and off kilter, the drums more machinelike, finishing off with a weirdly dreamy stretch of crumbling chug.
Normally there would be a side 4, but here, that side is instead rendered unplayable by a beautiful super detailed etching. And both lps are pressed on super subtle blood red / black vinyl. And the packaging, holy shit is it over the top. The artwork is super eye popping photoshopped fantasy art with strange humanoids and polar bears and sweeping expanses of tundra and starlit skies and ruined castles, and birds and rams, it's almost silly it's so over the top but it's VERY striking. Gatefold, super thick, inside there's also a full color printed lyric sheet with liner notes AND a cd (not a cd-r) featuring all the music from the two records.
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!)
The term 'doom' gets bandied about quite a bit these days (by us, too, to be sure). It's gotten to the point that anything slow and low gets described as doom. There's a certain cool quotient attached to 'doom' it seems, and all sorts of music makers have been taking advantage of that by doing their best to infuse their music, be it metal or pop or drone or electronic, with some of that doomy magic.
But as we all know, doom is more that playing slow, more than tuning way down, more than plodding lugubriously, it's about evoking a mood, creating an atmosphere of dread, of DOOM, using those sounds to paint a bleak and abject picture, rendered in shades of grey and black, especially black. We're not really that uppity when it comes to people branding themselves doom, but in the case of Aun it might be a bit misleading. Not to say Motorsleep is not a killer record, it is for sure, and it is plenty dark and dreary and rumbly and droney, and heavy, okay, a little bit doomy, but really only a bit. To these ears Aun sound way more like Machinefabriek or Jasper TX, with some Nadja or Jesu mixed in. There's not much riffing, it's not all that heavy, instead, it's mysterious and murky, blurred loops laced with buzz and crumble, are woven into haunting melodies, the songs all blend into one another, like one massive organic piece split into movements, and it does get heavier and louder, but more sort of like Sunroof! heavy, a sort of sun dappled upper register ur-drone, more than any sort of crushing pummel or churning pound.
The music at its most minimal shimmers and glistens, spidery bits of crystalline sound set amidst deep rumbling tones and slow shifting textures, often building into almost orchestral swells, sometimes slipping into something murky and blurred and barely metallic, other times glimmering like and expanse of starry sky, not so much doomy as just dark and dolorous. This might well be too dreamy and drifty for troo doomlords, but for anyone into fuzzy distorted shimmer, Japer TX, Machinefabriek, Tim Hecker and that sort of washed out buzz flecked loveliness, then Aun will definitely hit the spot.
Whoa, it's been twenty years since Paul's Boutique came out!!?? 20th anniversary records are usually for bands like Chicago or Journey or Led Zeppelin, but we guess it's just another sign that we're getting older, as all of us remember buying this record the first time around, many of us on cassette, and playing the shit out of it for years and years. While the Beastie Boys were bratty, obnoxious and fun on their debut License To Ill, they didn't really show us what the were capable of until this follow up which kind of flopped commercially when it first came out, but now is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative hip-hop records and dense sampling tour de forces of all time. For so many of us who were pretty young when this came out, many of the many, many songs sampled on Paul's Boutique were unknown to us beyond the Sample. It wouldn't be 'til we grew up a bit that it became easier to place 'em all (Johnny Cash, Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, The Sweet, etc.). Of course producers The Dust brothers are due their share of the credit.
Paul's Boutique is like THE classic example of postmodernism at its most fun and creative. Taking bits and pieces of popular culture from the past and present, Paul's Boutique was jammed with so many rad obscure references in the clever lyrics as well as thick and bouncing beats and those now so recognizable MC personas. Several years before Beck was genre flipping and DJ Shadow was crate digging, this record set the blueprint for so much of the adventurous pop, hip-hop and electronica to follow. We can't help but get nostalgic when we listen to this now. So many memories... Skipping school for the first time, blasting the cassette on our brother's stereo when he was at his friend's house, forcing our folks to hear it over and over as we rode shotgun in the car. This is a record that so many of us grew up on and a disc that most definitely helped open our eyes and ears to the amazing lineage of hip-hop, funk, soul, rock etc. that the Beastie Boys were using as not just sound sources, but also for inspiration. They showed how wit and humor could be blended into music that was also smart and serious, and with a broad and complex sonic scope. While frat boys and squareheads may have ruined The Beastie Boys for some, you can never totally blame a band for their fans, and just because this record has been blasting in dorm rooms for the last 20 years doesn't mean it's not an amazing piece of music...because it is! The cd reissue features a pull out mini poster of the full artwork (much more than is on the cover), the lp folds out as a massive multiple gatefold, both versions include links to download some band commentaries.
Back in 2007, Mike Sniper started recording again, after digging out the 4-track he had back in high school that he hadn't used in about a decade. Since then, Sniper has been on a tear with his one-man darkened fuzz-pop machine Blank Dogs, earning him a whole slew of invitations for records, singles, cassettes, and whatnot. Admittedly, we didn't catch wind of Blank Dogs until his amazing album The Fields arrived on our doorstep just in time for Christmas 2008. So we've dug up the On Two Sides LP, a vinyl only edition which Blank Dogs released on Troubleman earlier in 2008; and damn, if it isn't a fantastic album as well.
On Two Sides may be more of a paisley punk pop record for Blank Dogs; but fear not, there's plenty of bouncy goth references to take us back to The Cure and Joy Division. Just think Head On The Door and Love Will Tear Us Apart as the pinnacles of conveying mopiness within a bouncy dark pop song. Sniper's spiky guitars are often coupled with springy basslines that really seem to hybridize Simon Gallup of The Cure and Peter Hook of Joy Division, as the bass often dictates the melody while the guitar lends to the atmosphere. In doing so, these songs enjoy a manic-depressive teen angst meets teen freedom vibe, but made all woozy as if buzzed from that first ever nicotine rush. Given all of the cheap electronics, tinny drum machines, trebly distortion, and overblown fuzz that are especially applied to the indecipherably garbled vocals, Blank Dogs also share plenty of that fucked-up demented pop genius that Ariel Pink and John Maus seem to have monopolized in recent years.
Really fantastic stuff!
Seems like everywhere you look these days you're bombarded with praise and press for Will Oldham. From The New York Times to Wire Magazine it's been hard to escape images of ol' Bonnie Prince Billy, but truth be told, he is one fine songwriter who deserves much of the praise and accolades coming his way. While not all of his recent outings have totally blown us away, we're very much digging the rich and sometimes dark country sounds on Beware. The instrumentation is a bit more nuanced and compelling than on his previous effort Lie Down In The Light. It kind of made perfect sense that a customer who was in the store the first time we played this asked what Lee Hazlewood record this was, and were surprised and happy to find out that it was actually Will Oldham. With appearances on the big screen, a recent artist in residency in the Marin Headlands over the Golden Gate Bridge from here, and this new set of songs, Oldham has been one busy bee and we think well worthy of all that adoration and praise.
A NEW FUCKING BRAINBOMBS RECORD!! And it rules. Heavy and droney and hypnotic and dirgey and AMAZING. Too bad it was limited to 630 copies, of which we only got 8 copies the first time around, when we tried to order 50. Somehow, it's available again, not sure if they found a bunch or pressed up some more, but this time we managed to get a whole TWENTY copies, and again, if we had our way we would have gotten at least twice that many, so needless to say, Brainbombs freaks, and we know there are more than 20 of you out there, you're gonna have to be quick on the trigger, as these might be the last copies we can get, and most likely if they're not gone already, they will be by the time you finish this sentence.
(We can only hope there will be a cd version soon...)
The new AC/DC album, Black Ice, wasn't half bad. No, not their best since Back In Black like some folks were claiming, but pretty decent. We might even have reviewed it, had they not decided to sell it only at Wal-Mart! However, we will review the next best (or maybe better!) thing, the new album from Swedish retro-metallers Bullet. We really dug their full-length debut Heading For The Top back in 200X, and when we reviewed it we mentioned how much they sounded like AC/DC (also like Accept, Judas Priest...and, in our ears, Pharaoh Overlord's #4). Raspy Brian Johnson meets Udo Dirkschneider vocals, stick-in-your-head choruses, hard rockin' riffs, sly sexual innuendo. Nothin' fancy, just kick ass rock n' roll with an '80s metal fixation. And Bite The Bullet is no different. But just as you don't go looking to an AC/DC album for something new, you get exactly what you want/expect from Bullet! These AC/DC-ish doppelganger headbangers know how to rock it, thanks we assume to the benefits of the massive secret Swedish government program that channels billions of kroner into genetic/musical scientific research devoted to ensuring Sweden's supremacy when it comes to metal, as evinced by how many freakin' cool Swedish bands we're always reviewing.
One beer-chuggin' track after another, Bullet keeping the party raging throughout all 11 songs on this disc, from "Roadking" to "Rock Us Tonight" to "Wheels Keep On Turning" (well, minus one instrumental interlude, "City Of Sins")... You can buy lots of great music from our store, this week or any, but for things that will really get you goin' when you crank the volume to the max, you can't do much better than Bullet. Do we need to tell you to bite it?
Seems pretty perfect that on one of the coldest days we've experienced here in SF in a long time, we got this new collection of odds and ends from the always so cuddly and comforting Casiotone For The Painfully Alone to keep us all snuggled up and warm. Unless you are a total fanatic who has every single rare split 7" and compilation track, then this collection will offer up lots of new sweet Casiotone pop gems. We can't help but fall for the way Owen crafts such simple, endearing songs, that while emotional and full of memories and nostalgia never become schmaltzy or sound forced. In fact Owen Ashworth (the man behind CFTPA) is really carrying the flame of those early Magnetic Fields records, creating something Stephen Merrit might create armed with only a 4-track and some rudimentary electronics. Lots of awesome tracks to be found here plus the prerequisite odds & ends covers - Missy Elliott, Bruce Springsteen (best cover of "Born In The USA" ever!), and Paul Simon. Aww such sweet sweet sounds....
It's here! Saturnus Reality is the first ever dvd release from the amazing & unclassifiable (prog? space rock? metal? psych?) Finnish band Circle. And being Circle, the dvd is unclassifiable too. It's not any sort of straightforward live concert film, or even interview-style documentary. Instead, it's more of an art film, a subverted, semi-pretend DIY documentary, with a lot of "meta" elements, ostensibly showing the band recording one of their recent albums (apparently Miljard? we didn't even figure that out) at a remote cabin in the Finnish mountains. For the pristine winter scenery alone, with snowy forests and a frozen lake, this is wonderful to watch. So lovely, it really makes us want to visit Finland!! And making the visuals even more strange and beautiful, director Esko Lonnberg has crafted this film in a visual approximation of Circle's trademark "circular" musical style, that is, with lots of repetition, certain shots recurring again later... it's all quite dreamlike, also because of his extensive use of cinematic layering, ghostly images double or triple projected over what you think is the "real" scene, which shifts in a hallucinatory fashion.
Meanwhile of course, the documentary's "subjects" themselves, Circle, also provide much weirdness. Making the seemingly mundane into something mystical and mysterious, they get up to all sorts of bizarre, ritualistic antics, that seem inspired both by religious ceremony and old silent film comedies. If we hadn't met these guys before, we might think it was a big put-on... well it is, sort of, but not really. They DO act like this, we know! Silly people, with serious purpose. Or the other way around, maybe. In any event, a lot of it is really funny. At our screening, some folks in the audience were laughing out loud. But it helped that they were some of the biggest Circle fans in the room. Others might not have been paying close enough attention to what's going on to notice the humor.
But more than being amusing, Saturnus Reality is simply gorgeous. With all the trippy visuals and Circle's hypnotic music on the soundtrack, it's quite mesmerizing. We've seen it multiple times (we helped host a pre-release screening party for it at a local bar back in February, and also watched it at home more than once), and haven't been bored. But someone who's not already a Circle fan might have trouble getting into it (unless they're big into avant-garde cinema). And even Circle fans have to realize that they're not going to see much live footage of the band in action. They do perform - but not always music! The actual rehearsal scenes are NOT the focus of the film. Instead they're busy filming the filming of this "documentary", indulgently creating their own cryptic Circle mythology in the process, playing characters that may or may not be themselves. Really, rather than thinking of this as a film "about" Circle, it's more like another Circle album, just in a different than usual medium.
It's in Finnish, but with English subtitles, thankfully. And the dvd specs are: NTSC, all region, 98 minutes in length.
Droning dirge-y sludge records are a dime a dozen at this point. It's still a sound we love, but we're rapidly reaching a saturation point. The punk rock ethos of 'anyone can start a band' combined with the fact that everybody has a cd burner, and the seeming 'ease' of making doomy drone music, just means that now, it requires a whole hell of a lot of digging and sifting thought mounds of mediocre doom and so so sludge, to discover something as fucked up and far out as Dead Peni.
We first hear Dead Peni on a compilation a year or two back and were immediately smitten. The name evoked some sort of blackened take on Rudimentary Peni, but the sound was nothing of the sort, instead Dead Peni trafficked in an expansive sprawling riff based blackened doomdrone, that was anything but static, like a slowed down tarpit space rock, an even doomier murkier Godflesh, or Wolf Eyes with some rhythmic heft. It was hard to get a feel for what DP were capable of just on the basis of the music on the comp, but it was definitely enough to know we needed more.
And -more- has arrived, in the form of this three track, 47 minute, mysteriously monickered slab of blackened crush. 2-4+1 begins all hushed shimmer and deeeeeep low end whir, a sound that could be any cd-r, until some ungodly beastlike growl emerges from the depths and the guitar explodes, super distorted, crumbling and processed, but weirdly muted and warm. A single crash, allowed to ring out, transforming into a charged electronic buzz, streaked with feedback, and underpinned by that monstrous gurgling voice. Finally the drums kick in, a slow motion drum machined doomic plod, and we're gone. Total buzzing black doom industrial noise nirvana, lumbering and druggy, minor key and surprisingly melodic. A bit of Godflesh, a little Gore, some classic old school funereal doom run through a bank of Wolf Eyesian cracked electronics and malfunctioning effects, the weirdest part is the crowd noise, what sounds like the chanting of a rally or demonstration, snippets and samples, wrapped in rippling sheets of feedback, and woven into massive churning waves of crumbling distortion, a cinematic and weirdly dreamlike doom / industrial / noise hybrid. Like the sound of some super fucked up post apocalyptic political rally, tattered flags, burning buildings, a crowd of shapes and figures clad in rags, some mysterious shadow, on a raised parapet, delivering his message in a gurgling rumbling barely audible vocals, almost like goregrind vocals, but buried so low in the mix they end up sounding like another layer of droning rumble. One guitar weaves a soaring almost majestic melody, but still woozy and washed out sounding, while the track lurches glacially onward, the crowd cheering and chanting, the whole thing like some mysterious soundtrack to the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we know it. But we can't help but willingly submit.
The following track begins with nearly 4 minutes of rain, thunder and lightning, voices, field recordings, laid over an almost imperceptible high end, which gradually grows and grows into a symphony of feedback, tones and overtones tangling and intermingling, creating all sorts of alien melodies, until finally the riff comes in, a super simple caveman dirge sort of riff, locked into a neverending loop, repeating over and over and over like some sort of proto metal mantra, while all the while, the rainfall continues, the random sounds drift in and out, the feedback swirls in little squalls and tangles, the only deviation, being some brief bits of classic doom like melody, before the riff inevitably returns to it's original looping dirge.
The final track begins with an explosion of blown out guitar and buzzing rumble, before drifting off, leaving the staticky detritus over a simple robotic pulse, and a sea of glitch and squiggles, the various elements finally locking into some sort of super abstract doom metal, but one that is hardly doom, or metal, more like some fragmented space drone, peppered with squalls of superdistorted guitar, the occasional clanging crash and crunch, all very muted and muddy, wreathed in a layer of gauzy distortion, voices, dogs barking, all manner of random sounds, and finally, a fierce howled processed demonic voice, wrapped in distorted riffage, and creating a super spare, spaced out sort of doom, where the riffs spend most of the time buzzing and drifting, only to rear up and spit out a bit of fractured melody and harsh hissy pummel, before recoiling again, and resuming its slow burning black drone. It almost sounds like Butthole Surfers ultra-doom, the same sort of effects drenched trippiness, and off kilter dementia, but way blacker, and way more fucked up and frightening.
Any of the three tracks could have been stretched out to album length, and we most certainly would have bought all three, but the three pieces here definitely work together well, as some sort of hellish, demonic, slow motion black doom drone dirge, that plays out almost like some impossible Wolf Eyes / Moss / Arvo Part mash up, if that makes any sense. Which it doesn't, but which is exactly what makes Dead Peni so amazing.
In addition to the 3 audio tracks, there's a fourth track included as a quicktime video, another blown out glacial buzz drenched dirge, this time accompanied by strange abstract visuals, black and white, giving way to green and blue, what seems to be buildings or ruins, but ultimately are so overexposed they just become shapes, the perfect visual representation of Dead Peni's abject black doom.
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The other day we happened to have a used copy of a 1972 Nektar album called A Tab In the Ocean playing on the store stereo. (Nektar being a prog rocking band of Brits who had transplanted themselves into the krautrock scene of Germany in the '70s.) There was a customer in the shop who was digging it, who then said something to the effect of, "too bad they don't make music like this anymore". Of course, we were happy to inform him otherwise, that he needn't lament, and as proof we immediately directed him to this record by Diagonal that we had just installed on our New Arrivals shelf.
These guys are from Brighton, and might as well also be from the '70s, though in fact this album is their brand new, debut album, and the members of this seven-piece band are all 20-something years old. But if we played this for you and told you it was some "hairy funk" released on the Vertigo label circa '73 you just might be fooled. Diagonal display plenty of virtuosity on their various instruments, in the service of complex, programmatic song structures. There's some nice, melodic singing heard here and there, but much more in the way of long, instrumental passages, at turns moody and dramatic. Spaced out synths and jazzy organ jamming and fluttering flute (yes!) all figure into the mix, though with two guitarists and a crack rhythm section, Diagonal don't neglect to rock out upon occasion, sometimes in a fairly heavy (and precise) fashion. And as complicated as their material gets, these are indeed *songs*, not merely technical exercises for showing off their considerable chops.
They're obviously influenced by the likes of King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Yes, Van Der Graaf Generator, and many much more obscure acts of the era (Gracious, anyone? Gnidrolog?)... but just as surely they're not unaware of today's mathrock scene (cf. Battles) though these guys do seem consciously retro, looking the part in long hair, beards, and vintage shop clothing (actually, that's not such an unusual style for kids these days, is it?).
Right on, there's been more cool modern-day prog showing up at Aquarius these past couple weeks than you can shake a Chapman Stick at! Crime In Choir, last list, and now Diagonal, well that's two anyway. (And neither use the Stick, don't get the wrong idea, as sometimes that's taking the prog thing just a little too far.)
Available on cd or as an import gatefold LP.
It seems a bit weird to review this double disc demo compilation from French black metal freaks Diapsiquir before we've reviewed their record proper. All the cvlty metalheads we know loved that record, Virus STN, and it came out way back in 2005, but somehow it just never made it onto the aQ list. So we'll try to make up for that oversight by raving about this here comp, which collects the band's first two demos from 1999 and 2001, both even freakier and more raw and more fucked up than the full lengths that followed.
And this stuff is indeed bizarre, it's hard to know even where to start. They definitely sound French, a sort of frenzied buzz, mixed with hints of industrial, soaring Nordic style melodies, but all tangled up in a totally chaotic lo-fi churning chugging doom laced black blast. Sabbathy riffs are pulled apart, while the vocals grunt and howl, the drums stumble and pound, blast once in a while, the vibe is definitely punky and d-beat here and there, but the whole thing is infused with a haunted doominess, and when the band launches into hyperspeed it sounds more bizarre and fractured than fast and furious. Riffs loop, rhythms stutter, totally ridiculous keyboards surface every now and again, adding a bit of a circusy vibe, but everything is always drenched in buzz and harsh satanic atmosphere. Never goofy, just confusing and brilliantly twisted. Diapsiquir almost sounds like a less technically adept, WAY more drug addled Blut Aus Nord, blending creeped out ambience, industrial crunch, with buzzing blackness, but as with most stuff like this, it's as much about the mood and the vibe and the feel and the atmosphere as it is about the music, and the feel here is simultaneously grim and harsh and hateful, but also woozy and warped and unhinged. The band employ an insane arsenal of sound effects which thy liberally sprinkle amongst the churning riffage, the soaring buzzscapes and the crushing doomic pound, plenty of fractured keyboards, fucked up samples, the 2001 demo strangely enough is the more brittle and lo-fi and fucked sounding.
The older demo from a couple years earlier is much more traditional sounding, definitely heavier, the sound super thick and corrosive, the drums pounding, and some awesomely demented vokills. There are some weird keyboards, and the song structures are definitely complex and convoluted, a definitely Deathspell vibe for sure, but overall, the sound is heavier and blastier and blacker, and ends up being a good foil for the utterly depraved sonic sickness on the first disc...
We've been meaning to list this for a while now, but we kept selling out of it, over and over, we could barely keep it in stock, and for good reason, as far as modern mixers and DJ's go, DJ /Rupture is one of our faves, so when he offers up a mix heavy on the dubstep, you know it's gonna rule, and rule it does. Bunch of new names, some old ones too, some surprises as well, here's who we know: Scuba, Timeblind, Shackleton, Ghislain Poirier, We, Lloop, Ekkehard Ehlers, and here's who we don't: Baby Kites And Nokea, Clouds, Istari Lasterfahrer, Maga Bo, ATK12, Ekstrak, Frescoe, Iron Shirt, Jenny Jones, Stalker, Filastine, Brent Arnold, Quest, Moving Ninja, Dead Leaf and Prefessor Shehab.
But heck, it hardly matters what songs and which artists, if Rupture picks 'em you know they're good (this man must have a mindblowing record collection), and then all mixed up they're transformed into a constantly shifting dubbed out bass heavy groove that goes on and on and on. Lots of thick fuzzed out synth bass, various permutations of THAT dubstep beat, some toasting here and there, Ehlers offers up some swoonsome strings, there's some Eastern skitter, some chopped up and stuttery techno, a little ragga, some murky mumbly doom-step, a bit of dreamy downtempo drift, some slow motion old school jungle, but it's all held together by a dubstep framework, so no matter what tripped out tangent the mix takes, it always finds its way back to the dub. Killer mix as always, and as with most Rupture stuff, WAY recommended.
With all the hype and hoopla folks like Cat Power, Neko Case and Kimya Dawson have received in the last few years (deserved of course!) it's such a crime that Julie Doiron hasn't enjoyed the same sort of attention and acclaim, since as far as we're concerned, she's just as talented, if not more so. We've pretty much loved her since her early days playing bass and singing for '90s Sub Pop stalwarts Eric's Trip and her recent solo outings have had some of her most emotionally impacting songs to date. It was her voice and presence that really helped make the latest Mount Eerie record Lost Wisdom such a favorite around here. I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day picks up where her great previous album Woke Myself Up left off. Still drenched in heartbreak and filled with such honest yearning yet enough rad rocking moments to keep things interesting. For those that are kind of sad that Chan Marshall has headed towards smoother horizons, Doiron just may be the perfect person to fill that void. Smokey, beautiful vocals that can be as charming as they can be devastating. One of those records made for mix tape inspiration, and the perfect companion for anyone who knows the lasting ache of love. And we love how the record ends with "Glad To Be Alive", a strong and moving missive about being thankful for what we do have as much as we mourn and miss what we have lost. Truly a great record from one of the most underrated ladies making amazing music out there today!
In recent years, Chicago's Kevin Drumm has unleashed an impressive cacophony through a handful of recordings of gnarled distortion and tempestuous noise. Having collaborated with the black-clad noisemonger Prurient and the power electronic technician Lasse Marhaug, having released an album for Hanson Records, and having composed a kick-ass disc called Sheer Hellish Miasma should be enough to let you know what the man is capable of. But listen closely to each of those albums, you'll find hints of glinted melody and a subtle beauty just below the surface of the chainsaw buzz. Here on Imperial Distortion, Drumm focuses entirely upon the contemplative and introspective gestures in the form of the huge longform drones similarly embraced by Eliane Radigue, Andrew Chalk, BJ Nilsen, etc. Gone are the attack, the aggression, and the noise; but the dark, the doom, and the hellishness are what remains in these icy drones. His strategy is pure hypnosis through slippery layers of elongated electronic drones and bell-tone like resonance. On first listening to disc one, the subterranean gong clatter soaked in reverberation could easily tear themselves apart into digital chaos, but Drumm molds the gritty klank into an ominous dronedirge. This softening of potentially destructive sounds becomes Drumm's modus operandi throughout the first disc, with each modulation toward excess pregnant with malcontent energy reigned in for a severely dark moodscaping. On disc two, Drumm sets up soft transmissions from controlled feedback undulate with a slow moving rhythmic pulse, which gradually doubles upon itself into a topographical drone with the all of the same-but-different patterns of wind swept sand. Here, Drumm most recalls the unnerving minimalism through refined feedback manipulation that Nurse With Wound concocted on Soliloquy For Lilith. By the end of the record, the shadow and disease which could be read into some of the tracks on the first disc dissolve into a shimmering ambience that's just damn pretty.
Let it be known, Imperial Distortion will be one of the best drone records of 2008.
'Tis the season of fuzzed out greatness! We gotta say we love the recent movement of way lo-fi and blown out garage pop being pumped out by the likes of Wavves, Crystal Stilts, Blank Dogs, Vivian Girls, etc. Now we can add Dum Dum Girls to that rad list of bands, as this 12" has become permanently affixed to our turntable. With pop chops that rival the great Pains Of Being Pure At Heart but with a much more fuzzed out and dirty disposition this is totally hitting the spot! Like someone locked The Aislers Set in a garage and ruined all their equipment and thus they were forced to record on the shittiest gear possible but ended up with the most amazing results. We're also reminded of a much underrated Slumberland band of the past, Black Tambourine. With such a keen sense of melody underneath the fuzz, and a seriously in-the-red production also brings to mind some of the more raw and rocking moments of Yo La Tengo. As the musical world around us seems to get more slick and savvy it's kind of nice to be reminded that sometimes sounds that are raw and primitive and rudimentary are the ones capable of making the biggest impact.
We were all ready to hate this, not cuz we don't dig the players, we love Michael Flower (Vibracathedral, Sunroof!) and Chris Corsano is a ruling drummer, it's just that for some reason we thought this was gonna be some of that new fangled indie free jazz, which always leaves us a bit cold. Not sure why, maybe it was the 'duo' thing. But then it's on VHF, home to much of our favorite dronemusic and outrock, and the instrumentation definitely looked like anything but free jazz: Japan banjo, tanpura, organ, melodica, cello and drums. So we figured, okay, what the heck, let's give it a try, and BAM, this totally knocked out socks off and our teeth in, at once exactly what we had hoped for, but something we never would have imagined, some impossible hybrid of frenetic chaotic drumming, and strange super distorted looped melodic mantras, like some impossible sonic hybrid of Mick Barr and Dan Higgs, or Orthrelm covering Zomes, tripped out and psychedelic, wild as fuck, but weirdly hypnotic and totally mesmerizing.
The opener is a mad blowout of wild melodies super distorted and all tangled up, like some strange sped up bagpipe, wound around Corsano's non stop drum workout, the banjo here ends up sounding like the guitars on Amps For Christ records, unfurling intense abstract runs of notes and fragmented melodies, sometimes locking into little trills, other times getting all wavery and woozy, the drums somehow remaining totally free but staying locked in with Flower's wild psych freakouts. It's so inherently chaotic and raw and primal and by all rights should be difficult to listen, but after a few minutes, we find ourselves totally lost, and we never want it to end.
The follow up is more of a percussive free jam, reminding us of groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros and No Neck and Sunburned Hand, very free, but with the metallic shimmer spreading out over the warm low end whirs and the abstract gamelan like melodies. "The Drifter's Miracles" is the most obviously VHF of the batch, a long languorous slow burning ur-drone, all bowed stings and wheezing organ, very raga like, overtones shifting and beating against one another, bits or percussion clink and clank beneath the gloriously heaving sea of rich lustrous tones, this definitely could be a whole record, as it is, it's easily the most 'listenable' of the bunch.
"The Beginning Of The End" sounds like a field recording of some ritualistic musical performance, the sound muted and lo-fi, a sort of crazed dance, the drums a wild tribal patter, sometimes splatter, Flower again offering up dense tangles and billowing squiggles, there is definitely a free jazz element, but the duo manage to take the loose free drumming, and the manic looped sounding melodies and create a sort of abstract ultra free ur-drone, it's quite magical actually, the parts are so frenetic and tense and relentless, that it seems impossible that combining them would create something soothing and spiritual, but that's precisely what it does.
The closer, the nearly 18 minute "The Main Ingredient" is like a more jubilant, ebullient version of the record opener, the drums muter and minimal, still skittery and feral, but Flower's banjo weaving magical crystalline shapes in the air, melodies, notes, tones, harmonies, overtones, all shimmering and hovering and looping and stuttering and glistening, total Amps For Christ / Higgs / Orthrelm sun baked lysergic spiritual ur-drone free jazz out rock blowout. So completely heavy, and epic, and dreamlike, and tripped out, and intense and so so beautiful.
This has to be one of the most anticipated black metal releases of the year, especially around here considering how much we LOVED the last Funeral Mist, Salvation, which managed to be blazing fast and technical but at the same time super heavy and well produced, none of the heft sacrificed for speed or buzz. Most definitely giving Deathspell Omega and Katharsis some serious competition. But Funeral Mist sort of dropped off the map, with mainman Arioch dedicating all his time to his other band, Marduk.
The with very little warning, word got out that there was a new Funeral Mist, and almost as quickly people started weighing in, most proclaiming Marantha to be shit, many bandying about words like 'nu-metal' to describe their sound, comparing them to Dimmu Borgir and Cradle Of Filth. Which more than anything had us dying to hear it.
We're happy to report, that while there's definitely a serious sea change in FM's sound, and they're definitely experimenting A LOT, they still destroy, and anyone who loved Salvation will most likely find much to dig here. Take record opener "Sword Of Faith": after some strange field recordings, a man screaming "It's the plague, it's the blood of Jesus!", tolling bells, strange beastly grunts, the band explodes into a burst of frenzied buzzing that to these ears sounds as good as anything on Salvation. Plenty of warped Deathspell style riffage, furious lightning fast drumming, some soaring Nordic style melody, the vocals seems to be the main difference, much louder in the mix, much gruntier and howly, less black metal shriek more guttural and almost hardcore sounding, the music around it sways and swells, slipping from doomy plod to insane lightspeed riffing, the band locked into intense mathmetal workouts, the whole sound dizzying and nearly overwhelming, the vocals getting a bit pirate-y here and there, but that just adds to the madness, if the whole record sounded like this, no one would be complaining, or at the very least they'd complain that the band hadn't progressed, but then comes "White Stone" and all bets are off.
Hard to even explain, the track begins with some tinny distorted riff, which gives way to a lurching dramatic doom, that sounds more Birthday Party or Swans than black metal, but then the guitars and the kick drum lock into a strange muted pulse, chugging away over near constant amp buzz, the vocals are WAY present, loud in the mix, backed up by weird chanting, the overall feel is gothic, almost industrial, but it's weird and twisted and black enough that it pretty much seals the deal for us. This record rules. Any black metal record that has the true grim hordes in an uproar must be doing something right.
But that bit of weirdness only lasts 4 minutes, and we're immediately thrust back into some seriously swirling sonic chaos called "Jesus Saves!", everything frantic and on the verge of total collapse, the vocals bizarre, almost Popeye-esque at times, growling over brief stretches of tranquility, sometimes slipping into hysterical howls, at one point the guitars actually get LOUDER, as in the sound of the whole record is suddenly bumped up making for some really strange dynamics, before the band slip back into some sort of brittle riffing, doomy drumming distant chanting and those monstrous growly vocals, and then inexplicably, the metal fades out, letting the last 3 minutes of the song play out as some strange almost looped sounding folk.
Minus that one track, it's really hard to see what people have been complaining about. This is some seriously twisted and heavy shit, the arrangements much more varied for sure, the vocals most definitely bizarre, but the music is just mindblowing, the riffs killer, with some awesomely fucked production, like during "A New Light" when the tape seems to melt leaving just the vocals, doused in some weird effects, making them sound like some sort of processed synth, before the song explodes again, only to slip into a weird plodding midtempo a few moments later, the drums beneath an angelic sounding choir while the vocals grunt and groan. Then there's "Blessed Curse", at nearly 12 minutes, all midtempo pound, and soaring minor key guitars, and trombone or trumpet part way through, making the band sound a bit like a blackened Beyond Dawn, the effect is awesome, haunting, ghostly, makes it seem less weird that Arioch's other band Marduk does a pretty killer Woven Hand cover. We can only imagine it sounds a little like this.
The last three songs offer up more of the same, that freaked out furious tangled blackness, rife with all sorts of what-the-fuck parts, some really bizarre almost Eastern pop sounding vocals dropped right into a swirl of black riffing, long stretches of gloomy almost new wave sounding trudge, Swans like riffing, tortured vocals, lots of creepy atmospherics, all culminating in a strange orchestral outro, timpani's and horns, dramatic and mysterious like some strange Bernard Hermann score.
Fuck the haters. The more we listen to this, the better it gets, and the weirder it gets, not just the riffs, but some of the fucked up parts and the weird effects have gotten stuck in out heads, this is some awesomely progressive, damaged and demented blackened genius, once we got into it, and sort of let it all sink in, we found ourselves practically unable to listen to anything else, so we're hereby declaring this as a contender for black metal record of the year. You have been warned.
The last couple years have been pretty great when it comes to outsider, DIY pop delights. John Maus, Ariel Pink and Night Control have made brilliant records as fucked up as they are catchy and hooky. You can add Gary War to the list of those twisted popsmiths and eccentric songwriters. This lp is filled with haunting and mysterious pop songs that are as melty and tripped out and fucked up as they are catchy and hummable. There's some serious Syd Barrett worship going on too all over New Raytheonport, but wow is it channeled so totally right on. Pop songs drenched in cough syrup that take you on a blurry and hallucinogenic voyage, the fractured sound become the perfect soundtrack for warped daydreams and drifting off into a million different dimensions. But while others groups that are influenced by folks like Syd Barret and Roky Erickson end up sounding like nostalgia acts wishing they were born decades earlier, Gary War's sound is quite timeless, and weirdly futuristic sometimes. Ariel Pink actually gets a mastering credit on the record and for sure much of the sonic scope of the album would sound right at home on any of the Haunted Graffiti albums, but there is also something so rainbow hued and prismatic and kaleidoscopically damaged about these songs that gives Gary War a unique and far out sound of his own. And it was just a matter of time before someone gave the Alan Parsons Project track "Eye In The Sky" a good outsider facelift!
We heard that Gary War is going to collaborate with Blank Dogs on a new project called Roman Soldiers and we're pretty much already signed up to join the Roman Soldiers fanclub, without even hearing a note! And we might as well proclaim ourselves charter members of the Gary War fanclub too now, can't wait to see the band rock our SXSW showcase next week! Highly recommended!
We've been hearing all sorts of great things about the mysterious Gary War. We always hear him mentioned in the same breath as Ariel Pink and John Maus, who just so happened to produce the Gary War full length. And for sure those brilliant outsiders are a good reference point for the kind of warped bedroom pop that Gary War conjures up. Lo-fi and warbly, these songs almost sound like several great bizarre pop songs playing at once. If you've been digging folks like the aforementioned Ariel Pink, John Maus and Night Control then we're pretty sure Gary War will be your next favorite. This 7" is the perfect taster for the also kick ass full length reviewed elsewhere on this list. You definitely need BOTH!
By all accounts, this double LP of pure brutality finds the Canadian noise outfit The Rita remixing source sounds from Brooklyn noise king Carlos Giffoni and vice versa. In the press release for this album, The Rita's Sam McKinlay offers a cogent argument about the aesthetic differences which stem from The Rita's 'dirty' methods of overdriving sound through daisy-chains of pedals contrasted against Carlos Giffoni's pulsing synths which cruise beneath the turbulent noise surfaces. While there are some notable differences on both of these pieces of vinyl, they are secondary to the overwhelmingly harsh noise which persists throughout. This is all about the noise, and this noise is an abject, blackened sound which has the feeling of particulate soot from a very dirty coal power plant given to the force of a sandblaster used not on a brickwall, but your eardrums to penetrate as a viral agent. On occasion, thicker chunks enter this jet-powered stream of sound, smashing against each other like massive sheets of shattering glass. The first of the two LPs uses these sounds within a series of erratic compositions that gradually build to cut-the-power conclusions. The second LP unleashes the flood gates from beginning to end with very little variation to the punishment. In both cases, it's still all about the quality of that noise, as an extremely aggressive tool of harsh, ugly, vile blackness. Limited to 300 copies!
The music from Ginnungagap's long out of print Return To Nothing cd is available again, however briefly, on vinyl, super swank swirled yellow vinyl in fact, and limited to 500 copies...
Ginnungagap is a term from Norse mythology that means something like "seeming emptiness" and that's a great name for this project, which sounds like it emanates from some abyssal void or abandoned cave or something. Ambient sinister drone improv, reminding us a little bit of House of Low Culture or even Thuja, if they were more creepy and liquid-sounding. Ginnungagap is a trio consisting of Khanate / SUNNO))) dude Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Khanate's Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, and Gerritt Wittmer (who runs the Misanthropic Agenda label, and records solo as Gerritt) on computer. Packaged in a gold-printed, flat oversized cardstock sleeve, this disc consists of two tracks: "Return To Nothing" being a live recording about a half-hour in length, followed by Gerritt's remix "Nothing To Return" for about 20 minutes more. Like so much Khanate / SUNNO))) related stuff, it's of course a limited edition release...
We originally said that about the cd, but in fact, by the time you read this, the lp too will probably already be out of print. So...act fast if you want one.
Prog fiends! We happen to have just a few copies of this import cd reissue in stock, an instrumental French prog artifact from 1977, so we thought we'd list it for those of you who might be into the moody mixture of romantic piano with grandiose synth drones and occasional bursts of musique concret style "sampling" that is distinctively demonstrated here... While there are several other musicians involved, it'll give you some idea of what this is all about if we tell you (in French) what instruments chief performer and composer Phillipe Grancher is credited with on the sleeve: "piano acoustique et electrique, synthetiseurs, mellotron, orgue, strings ensemble, effets speciaux". This is, apparently, Grancher's only solo album, but it was produced by Philip Bescombes, whose name may be better known to you prog fiendy types, having made several interesting albums of his own, some in collaboration with synthesizer player Jean-Louis Rizet, who also appears here as well.
It's really quite lovely, but with sudden surprises throughout. Lush, pretty piano melodies often trip delicately into the blip-bleep of sci-fi electronics, or even strange giggling voices. And on side two, the album "rocks out" just a bit more, adding electric guitar, bass and drums for extra bombastic effect. As an example, the 10 minute "Flip Flop" begins quite dramatically with the sounds of an explosion, accompanied by ominous synth flourishes and martial drumming, before mellowing out into mesmeric passages for piano and gentle guitar.
3000 Miles Away is definitely a pretty cool prog obscurity, one that we'd perhaps suggest to fans of Goblin, for instance. We can certainly imagine this being used as a soundtrack to some strange and beautiful cult film.
Killer reissue of two long out of print full lengths from this long running New Zealand free noise duo, consisting of Bruce Campbell, he of the mighty Dead C, and longtime aQ fave Alastair Galbraith, shedding his usual songsmithery for something a lot more abstract and noisy.
The two have been performing on and off together since the early nineties, these two discs collect The Philosophick Mercury from 1994, and Now Gods, Stand Up For Bastards, from 1995. Both recorded live, utilizing guitars, violin, electronics and voice, with the occasional bit of drumming from yet another NZ noise luminary, Peter Stapleton, who's played in pretty much every NZ band of note, from Dadamah to Pin Group to Flies Inside The Sun to The Terminals.
The template for A Handful Of Dust seems to be long drawn out tones, plenty of space, loads of feedback, letting the amp and the body of the guitar and the room shape the sounds as much as the player. Later groups like Sunroof! would harness this same sort of free music energy, this primal ur-drone, but there's something about A Handful Of Dust, that makes the sounds seem more alive, more feral, dangerous and dense. There's plenty of scrape and skree, mostly high end, layers upon layers, overtones shifting and drifting and billowing up in huge clouds of static buzz and shimmering squiggles of violin. The pace is glacial, but this music is not about movement or momentum so much as space and time, when there are drums, they don't really propel the song, instead they offer up a sort of loose framework, a crumbling skeleton around which the various buzzing strings and howling amps hang their shimmering sheets of sound. It's hard not to hear some Dead C in the be-drummed tunes (there are only two), but the drums here are WAY more loose, almost free jazz in feel, lending a psychedelic vibe to a music already pretty fucking psychedelic.
A few of the tracks offer up some low end rumbles and deep drone, but those sounds are soon infused with streaks of jagged shriek and sharp hissy high end, the two sides not so much battling as swirling warily around each other eventually becoming one, and on rare occasions, melding into something almost rifflike. The closing track on No Gods begins as a total guitar destroying free for all, before transforming into some super tripped out buzz drenched psychedelic warped krautdrone, but only briefly, before it slips back into fractured deconstructed free noise once again.
No Gods is definitely the more refined of the two (but only just barely). Philosophick is way more brittle and bizarre, two 30 minute jams, the first features lots of amp buzz, and stuttery shards of feedback, plenty of Derek Bailey like scrabbling, strange processed vocals, some sort-of-chanting, very minimal and textureal considering how noisy it is. The second track is total chaos, a band going all out in a huge room, all the instruments rendered blurs and smears by the distorted amps and the room reverb, the long stretches of feedback and the low low low fidelity recording only add more hiss and blur and texture. The guitars sounding alternately like accordions or bagpipes, sometimes like lowing cattle, the pound of the drums a buried muffled pulse, the cymbals glazing the cacophony with another sizzly layer of sibilance.
Beautiful oversized Japanese style mini lp gatefold style packaging with new liner notes from Marc Masters.
Proudly following in the tradition of druggy punk blooz derelicts like the Birthday Party and the Gun Club, San Francisco's the Holy Kiss (featuring the tallest aQ staffer and all around good guy Nick Ott pounding the skins) is sure to satisfy your demented lust for bluesy, gothic tinged post-punk on their third album, which is also sadly their swansong. Bittersweet indeed, as the sounds within come off like the work of a quartet of sooty-faced Victorian street urchins, frantic and generally teetering on the edge of total madness, with enough restraint to make you feel nice and nervous before completely losing yourself to some sort of absinthe-induced mental breakdown where you gleefully tear your hair out, rip off all your scabs, and burn down the orphanage where you grew up. Under Noon Of Night possesses a sexy swagger that makes you want to dance wildly AND writhe around in your own cold sweat. The band's darkly sardonic humor and lyrical approach will definitely appeal to fans of groups like Jonathan Fire*Eater and Pleasure Forever, with singer Matty Rue Morgue spitting out deranged tales of love, lust, and death over a frenzied hurricane of shakers, bluesy guitar squall and basslines that would make Tracey Pew proud if he weren't, you know, dead. There are even two delightfully melancholy piano ballads. Things flow at a steady pace, with a wry, underlying wit and general sense of red-eyed insomnia keeping it all together. There's also a bit of swampy apocalyptic folk in the mix, adding to the end of the world / end of the night vibe, and making them the perfect band to open for Woven Hand, which these guys (and gal) did recently.
Limited to 500 copies, this vinyl platter comes housed in a cool hand silkscreened cover and also conveniently includes a cd for the non-turntable inclined. So choose your format, throw on a pot of coffee, break out the whiskey, kick up your boots, turn down the lights, and let yourself get lost under noon of night...
It's been a while since we've heard from either Woburn House or Klabautamann, two German post rock / metal combos we dig big time, who both share various members, and count themselves as part of a loose musical collective. Some of those shared members also do time in another group called Island, who while hewing much closer to the sound of Klabautamann, mix in enough meandery post rock and minimal shimmer and skitter, that it's easy to make the Woburn House connection as well.
We've been meaning to list this for a while, as it came out last year, and is a collection of the band's first two demos, originally released in 2004 and 2005.
Island's sound is a bit tough to describe. Folks familiar with the two above mentioned bands might be able to suss it out generally, but Island are indeed a strange beast. Slipping from Opethy folk flecked epic metal, to dense convoluted math rock, to soft shimmery ambience, to lurching classic metal, to almost doom, each song here tends to stray into two or more of those sounds, but each definitely has a distinct mood.
Album opener "Journey Through The Jewel" sounds like classic melodic black metal, Opeth, Dissection, that sort of thing, with descending arpeggiated melodies, dense chugging riffs, and some fluttery folky breakdowns, where as the follow up "River Source", could almost be Polvo or Pitchblende if it weren't for the blackened vokills, the arrangement very nineties mathrock, with indie sounding melodies melded to cool arrangements and crunchy metallic riffing.
The record shifts fluidly from mathy to metal throughout, from hooky and almost poppy to convoluted and progressive, the vocals too, shift from clean croon to harsh howl, often pairing the harsh vocals with the more indie sounds and vice versa, the result is something that should definitely please fans of Woburn House and Klabautamann, as well as folks into the current crop of less grim, more poppy blackness, a la Amesoeurs, Alcest and the like.
Oh Grace, we've missed you so! The world is a much more fun, wild and thrilling place to be when you step into the spotlight. It's been almost twenty years since her last album, and this new incarnation of Grace Jones is sounding pretty great! With folks like Tricky and Brian Eno on board for production on a few tracks we were happily surprised at how this doesn't sound like too much of a forced comeback. In fact its a much better record than anything she released since the early to mid '80s. While she's never been one for total consistency, when she's on she is on fire! There are some totally slow burning and powerful tracks on Hurricane that rank right up there with some of her most classic songs. With disco revival in full swing and folks like Glass Candy/Chromatics practically aping her persona and sensual delivery it's so nice to hear from one of the most iconic, influential and enigmatic voices in the musical world of the last quarter century. While she is more often appreciated for her amazing fashion, outlandish antics and incredible body, which is like a piece of art onto itself, she has made some truly amazing music over the years as well. If you haven't explored her back catalog we think everything from '77-'82 is totally worth checking out (Nightclubbing will always be an all time favorite) and those records from the late '70s with Tom Moulton display a much more airy and full on disco sound than the dark and smoky diva we've come to know over the years. Besides having a handful of super good songs, this has to be some of our favorite album art in ages. Grace Jones in a chocolate factory mass producing chocolate faces of herself! Hurricane is not without a few misses but overall it's a really welcome return from one of the strongest forces of musical nature to ever grace this planet!
"Recorded by the band in an old attic with creaky floor boards, rusty pipes, stained rugs, a hot water heater, and a borrowed 8-track reel-to-reel."
So state the liner notes to the PlusTapes re-release of this excellent Chicago band's recorded debut. And after one listen, such a description certainly makes sense, as the music exhibits a sort or urban rusticity, a sound that is as pleasantly detached as it is connected to life in a big city.
Comprised of players from Chicago's experimental and metal scenes (and featuring Przemyslaw K. Drazek of longtime Aquarius favorites Rope), Mako Sica exists as its own island within a city generally known for post rock and heavier sounds. A dreamy haze of gently strummed melodies floats above free form percussion with chantlike vocals that aren't as much sung as they are summoned, occasional bursts of trumpet punctuating the atmosphere. At every moment, a beautiful and softly sustained drone permeates the recording like an additional member of the band. And then, right when you've happily fallen into Mako Sica's trancelike psychedelia, the band snaps into a rhythmic groove that is focused but never forced. The beautifully textured songs walk along the border of experimentation while never losing themselves to mindless abstraction. And when the tape finally runs out, your first impulse will be flip it over, walk into Mako Sica's world once again, and stay there.
As we mentioned above, this gem comes to us from the good people at the ever reliable PlusTapes, which also means it's ultra limited. 100 copies... we received 20, so you know those won't last long
Robert Millis is a man of many talents: a Climax Golden Twin, a collector '78s resulting in the impeccable Victrola Favorites book & compilation, purveyor of searing avant-scum-noise-rock in AFCGT, a world traveller in search of esoterica for Sublime Frequencies, a field recordist of frogs, birds, blue jeans salesmen, etc. etc. etc. Despite his many activities, Millis' recorded output has almost entirely been by way of collaboration, making this self-released gem of a solo album all the more special. This is closer related to the collage work that Millis has contributed to the Climax Golden Twins, bridging all of those aforementioned interests in a polyglot of psychedelic drone smear pocked with snippets of conversation, poetic extracts from his collection of '78s, and a judicious amount of vinyl crackling. An album such as this would easily be confused for the hermetic revelations that Philip Jeck extracts from his rough shod vinyl and turntables; but Millis seems to counterpoint the crackle and the clean with more drama than Jeck, almost positing the crackle like a punchline in a joke that breaks through one of Millis' blissed out shimmers constructed from loops and drones from guitar, bells, and glass harmonica, where haunted melodies from times long gone whisper through the mix. But at another instance, Millis leaps geographically from a field recording of loosely played Thai temple music into a shortwave burst of noise seamlessly mixed through a cloud of insects and back into one of his sleepy drones. The logic of the album may seem absurd from afar; but the internal logic is peculiarly sensible, as if Millis were tapping into some stream of consciousness that subcutaneously connects all of these intermingling sounds. Limited to something like 50 copies, but maybe we'll be able to get more... maybe not. Very highly recommended no matter how you slice it.
While so many of his big name '80s peers have either vanished or started churning out sub-par sounds in recent years (The Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order, etc.) Morrissey has kept great quality control and has been aging so so gracefully. Years of Refusal might be his most punchy, rocking and self assured solo outing to date. With his golden voice still so warm and rich and powerful and his brutish band offering some muscular back up, this is a set of songs that rely not only on Morrissey's always clever and dramatic word play but the rockin' music backing it up as well!
His last album Ringleaders Of The Tormentors, though filled with some great songs, tripped up a bit on its over-ambition and pretension. Years Of Refusal gets it all right, with a sound palette very similar to one of his great recent outings You Are The Quarry. These songs bristle with such natural force and those magical melodies that Morrissey has been creating for over twenty-five years now are in full effect. Even folks here at AQ who are far from being devoted Morrissey fanatics have been digging this big time! And those of us who do have that special place in our hearts for Morrissey are finding this to be such an infectious album that only reaffirms that despite what one might think of his persona or mystique, this is truly one of the greatest songwriters and singers of our generation!
It's probably no surprise that we were intrigued when we first heard about this disc, after all the press release claims that it "researches the dark associations of post-black metal". And they go on to recommend it to fans of Burzum's masterpiece Filosofem! However, it must be the ambient aspects of Filosofem they're referencing, as you'll find no true frosty guitar buzz here, instead this is a purely digital, all-electronic album released by the UK's ever reliable, experimental Touch label, home to the likes of Fennesz, Philip Jeck, B.J. Nilsen, Chris Watson, and others. Intriguing, eh?
Of course, if we hadn't read that press release, we might never have related this to anything black metal at all, but we'd still like it. It's a very pleasant and varied dronological document, suggestive of field recordings, even though all these sounds are abstract ones, mostly realized inside a computer. There's passages that seem like buzzing insect swarms ("Process Philosophy"), or lashings of wind and rain ("Space-Time Continuum"), or Tibetan temple bells ("Semantic Shift"), or the gentle swaying of leaves and branches in a breeze ("Sun Wind Darkness Eye"). That particular track goes on to generate a mysterious low, soft hum, eventually accompanied by a beating electronic pulse, like much of the minimal techno we enjoy...
It's all quite evocative and lovely, although now that we think about it, some of these sounds could also be, like, cold winds blowing across frozen fjords, or sinister rumblings heard inside a subterranean crypt... And who knows, perhaps Nana April Jun (aka Christofer Lamgren), who hails from Sweden, wears corpsepaint whilst working with his digital tools. Probably not, though, since the majority of the text we read pertaining to this release was on the academic side of things. And although discussions of subjects like "the ontology of noise" and other psuedointellectual concepts can be a mite pretentious, regardless of that, all the whooshing, hissing, droning here is very good listening indeed.
It's finally here, the latest issue of one of the best magazines going, Oaken Throne, specializing in the grim black metal underground, but gradually expanding their scope to cover all things dark and heavy and droney, definitely our kind of rag, and yours too judging from how many we sell, and how many emails we've been getting asking about this new issue.
The latest issue has indeed arrived, and is mindblowing as always, bigger than ever, now a perfect bound 7" x 7" book style mag, the covers printed silver metallic ink on black cardstock, as always, a gorgeous tUMULt ad on the back cover (designed by OT designer Ben West) and inside tons of aQ faves and then some.
Canadian black metallers Akitsa, French metallic post rockers Aluk Todolo (featuring members of Gunslingers and Diamatregon), Swedish black metal duo Avsky, long time aQ favorite, Dialing In, weird black doomscapers Gnaw Their Tongues, Polish black metal folk freak Dead Raven Choir, legendary death metallers Immolation, Swedish black metal supergroup IXXI (featuring members of Ondskapt, Lifelover, Dimhymn and Zavorash), Dutch brown metal weirdos Lugubrum, Nordvargr's black metal incarnation Vargr, legendary Polish black metallers Throneum, German blackened death metallers Necros Christos and Swedish death metallers Necrovation. The layout and design is fantastic, with illustrations by Justin Bartlett, Ben West, Adam Watson, Scott Langlais, Chris Parry, as well as tons of striking photography, plenty of reviews, and loads of ads for stuff you need. Pretty much ace all the way through. And as if the magazine on its own wasn't enough, it also comes with a cd featuring a track by every single band covered in this issue, two of 'em (for now at least) exclusive to this comp.
The price of OT has gone up slightly, but holy shit is it ever worth it. This is the kind of magazine you'll save forever, that will sit on your bookshelf with the BOOKS, not in a pile with the rest of the magazines, OT is something you'll read over and over, and odds are, eventually you'll need to at least check out all the artists covered. So totally recommended. We're already looking forward to the next issue!
They may be called Obscure, but these Norwegians are far from obscure, featuring a former member of Enslaved and offering up this, their debut long player, which is not black metal, or Nordic metal, or Viking metal, instead it's actually pretty kick ass, super catchy power metal, but not like cheesy Hammerfall sort of modern power metal, which we do like, but more old school classic '70s metal a la Thin Lizzy, heck they even open the record with a Thin Lizzy cover ("Massacre", mislabeled as "Coversensation", which perhaps appears later on the album where the tracklist says "Massacre"... whoops!) which slays, and had us super excited until we realized it was in fact a cover. But the originals here are pretty badass as well. A sort of epic doom flecked power metal with awesome guitar playing, classic riffing mixed with weird tangly leads and awesome guitarmonies, the vocals aren't super amazing but they definitely do the job, at it's weirdest, Obscure remind us a bit of Snowy Shaw's (Mercyful Fate) Notre Dame from a few years back, at it's least weird, there are some Kyuss-y moments, some serious Sabbath moments, a bit of Manowar screaming, and no small amount of NWOBHM worship, specifically Iron Maiden, even some Angel Witch.
The sound is epic, heavy, a bit doomy, a little psychedelic, the songs are super catchy, without ever slipping into cliche, or if they do, the embrace it and make it their own, managing to take tried and true metalisms and supercharging them, and twisting em up a bit into something awesomely headbangable, but still pretty weird nonetheless. Apparently they call it "doomgie" (boogie + doom?), but it pains us to even type that word, so let's stick with this mouthful: heavy groovy psychedelic doom-ed power metal!
Oneohtrix Point Never is the work of Brooklyn's Daniel Lopatin who also records as Infinity Window with Taylor Richardson, operating in that curious resuscitation of progressive electronics which so far hasn't strayed into the dodgy waters of vapid ambient-lite found in so so many New Age records from the late '70s and '80s. Yet that's exactly the time period which Lopatin seems intent on mining. Fortunately for all of us, Lopatin enjoys the benefit of being born well past the New Age nadir, and he can selective mine the past through a darkening lens of noise culture and with a skepticism that selects against dopey (even if earnestly penned) philosophies and woefully lackluster music. Nope, Oneohtrix Point Never is none of these, despite a conscious nostaglic trip into the cosmic drones of Klaus Schulze and the lazer-ping melodies of John Carpenter. The label tag of No Fun Productions should also be an indication of where this may lie on the musical spectrum.
Both sides of Betrayed In The Octagon open with two sprawling pieces of densely layered electronic swoosh and sweep, with more of a sci-fi sound design feel than anything else. It's not entirely ominous in these emanations of analog synths, but a gloominess persists just beneath these tumbling oscillations of electric drone. The other pieces bubble and percolate with clunky, geometric arppegiations and major chord melodies which have all of the charm of an '80s John Carpenter filmscore, or for that matter a Zombi album of today (although admittedly not as well produced). This is great stuff that won't last for long. No Fun only printed up 300 of these!
Where to even start? Within seconds of first hearing these guys, they pretty much became our favorite local band, fuck it, favorite band period (sez Andee). Shredding hook jammed pop blasts, most less than a minute long, many of those 30 seconds and under, but each one packed with some of the catchiest most timeless sounding pop you've ever heard. Weezer meets the Beatles meets the Beach Boys meets old Bee Gees meets Guided By Voices meets the Fucking Champs, super rocking, punky here and there, metal once in a while, but always total pure pop genius, with lyrics about doing drugs, getting fired, falling down the stairs, getting hurt, how much they suck and how their songs all sound the same, doing more drugs, all delivered by a vocalist that sounds uncannily like the skinny John from They Might Be Giants! Acoustic guitars, wild shredding leads, buzzing distorted chug, warm wheezing keyboards, fluttery flutes, incredible harmonies, and HOOKS like you wouldn't believe. These guys accomplish more in 30 seconds than most pop bands can pull off over the course of a full album. And they accomplish more in these 44 songs than most bands manage in their whole careers.
Check out the first sound sample, the ultimate one-two-three-four-five power pop punch, pretty much the absolutely perfect opening salvo, five songs in less than five minutes, we've listened to that 5 song chunk about a million times. It destroys. Check it out. We'll wait.....
But don't stop there, the rest of the record is pretty much just as kick ass. Some songs are hushed and dreamy, others are pounding and super rocking, some soar majestically, others are wildly metallic freakouts, Iron Maiden-y guitar harmonies wrap around weird Melvins like falsetto vocals, summery folky strums drift over calliope like keyboards, crunchy guitars unfurl jangly jams, while the vocals drawl lazily over the top. So many different sounds and styles but all totally perfectly fused into the Ovens' weirdly perfect pop world.
The band have been recording for years, full length after full length, and minus a super short run release a few years back, the songs just sat there, until the band had a backlog of 5 full albums. Former aQ-er Matt from Wildildlife was always talking them up and when we finally managed to get some music from those guys, well shit, we were bowled over. And Andee especially, knew the world needed to hear this stuff. So this debut cd features 3 of the 5 albums jammed onto one disc. 44 Songs, every one a total hook filled gem. Live the band are as likely to kick out a cover of the Bee Gee's "Holiday" as they are some old Melvins jam. They manage to sound heavy and crunchy, but also delicate and folky, often those two sides colliding in a burst of total freaking mad genius popsmithery. If there was any justice in the world these guys would be HUGE. Every song here is as good if not better than any Weezer song, and they pull it off in half the time. The lyrics are hilarious, deadpan, self deprecating, clever and snarky, the musicianship is totally stellar, especially the guitars, the arrangements are unique, sometimes super unexpected but somehow they never take way from the song or the hook, and every curveball they throw manages to sound more catchy than off kilter. We could gush and gush, and go on and on about how pop bands like this are such a rarity, but man, how these guys went so long without blowing up, still boggles the mind. So now's the time. These guys rule. They have a new record. They're going on tour. And we're so psyched to see these guys kick out the jams at our SXSW showcase this year. They're loud and fun, and funny and catchy and heavy and super rocking, and these are some of the catchiest most kick ass songs you will ever hear. EVER!
THE FIRST 50 COPIES COME WITH A BONUS TAPE, ONLY AVAILABLE FROM AQ, featuring Ovens mainman Tony's solo stuff, not all that far removed from the Ovens, if anything, the songs are even shorter, more esoteric, sometimes heavier, a couple of the jams are full on metal or grind, but last all of 20 or 30 seconds, lots of covers, just as impossibly catchy and hooky and irresistible. 12 songs in just under 13 minutes, including cover versions of tunes by Roy Wood, Dead Milkmen, Camper Van Beethoven and Telly Savalas (!!). Comes with a cool printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Fired From The Vogue Pt. 1 / Fired From The Vogue Pt. 2 / Same Shit Different Day / PCP Song / Everything's The Same" [/audio/ovensmedley.m3u]
Killer live record from this Northwestern trio who play bicycles. Not play ON bicycles mind you. But actually play bikes, as musical instruments. Plucking spokes, bowing rims, striking frames, scraping seat posts, every part is played, the result a gloriously cacophonous symphony of clatter and clang. Imagine a stage, with punk rockers seated on stools behind upturned bikes, positioned like harps or cellos, the players poised with sticks and bows, or bare handed, ready to coax all manner of sounds from those bicycles. It's a pretty amazing sight, and the sound is pretty kick ass as well.
Captured live in Japan, this set features all sort of re-CYCLE-d sounds, buzzes, clicks, scrapes, whirs, hisses, grinding crunches, singing steel, bits of rhythm, sometimes it sounds like a pipefight, other times like some super abstract music concrete, and still other times, something magical happens and the metal seems to sing, high clear bell like tones, growling groaning low end, woven into the otherwise clattery clangy softly abrasive soundscapes. Pretty fantastic, like a reimagining of old school industrial music, transformed into something more akin to clattery free folk or weird free noise. Super cool stuff.
Beautiful paste on sleeves, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Last year we made Kongmanivong by Power Pill Fist a Record Of The Week, a dizzying blast of crunchy 8-bit tripped out fuzz drenched madness that became an immediate aQ fave, created of course by Ken Fec, one of the guys in Black Moth Super Rainbow, another group we love who plunder the past, taking all sorts of retro sounds and whipping them up into something wild and new. We knew there was another Power Pill Fist record, but couldn't seem to track down enough copies to list, until now. And actually, we barely have enough to list, 10 to be exact, but not everyone who loved that one will dig this one, since unlike Kongmanivong, Extra Life is a bit less playful, a little harder, more muscular, and WAY more noisy.
The core sounds are still the crunch of 8-bit video game music and super lo-fi crumbling distortion, chopped up and arranged into strange rhythms and abstract textures, but where Kongmanivong was a pop record flecked with noisy bits, Extra Life plays out more like a noise record flecked with bits of pop. Dense and thick and a little bit caustic, sounds layered into repeating loops, fractured rhythms, often left to just drone or buzz, it definitely sounds a lot like a room full of arcade games gone haywire, little bits of playful bloop and bleep surface here and there, but they tend to be surrounded by thick sheets of wild corrosive blown out psych noise freakouts and pulsing lo-fi buzz. So fair warning to all the folks into the playful almost hip hopitty vibe and bubbly retro pop feel of Kongmanivong, this one might be on the difficult listening side, and will probably appeal more to drone folks and noiseniks, it's definitely a lot heavier, and darker, and way crunchier, although even adventurous pop nerds might give this a try, strap on some headphones, and Extra Life sucks you right in, burying you in a glorious soft cacophony of crunch and crumble and stutter and glitch and buzz.
Another grim slab of nightmarish dooooom drone from LA's prolific Robedoor! Initially put out on cd last year by Release the Bats (which is now out of print, and we're sorry we neglected to review it before that happened, considering how much we like it!), this heavy wax offering of skull crushing invocation is some of the most intense and noisy stuff we've heard from these dudes. Rancor Keeper, now thankfully reissued on vinyl by Seacave, builds with layers of crushing overdrive underneath blankets of wretched vocals and blistering feedback, reaching points of Skullflower-like aural annihilation only to retreat to the solemn hallways of abandoned cathedrals. Kind of reminds us of a much more droney and less brutal WOLD, only more doomy and more mysterious. Blackened to the crisp and placed at the foot of the amplifier altar, the record moves from all-out destruction to moments of somber reflection, pools of shimmering organ/synth drones hovering in solace before the devastation returns. "Wendigo Psychosis" is quite the 15 minute finale, hellish hypnosis and pummeling, lo-fi drums kick in toward the end only to leave a heap of smoldering carnage in its wake. Dark and cataclysmic, there's an underlying beauty that lurks deep beneath the surface of the mind-melting sonic destruction. Housed in a super grim black lp sleeve with some appropriately bleak artwork, definitely and completely recommended for all worshipers of the weird, noisy and blackened drooooone!
We were gonna try to review this record without mentioning what this sometimes reminds us of, but hell, we just can't, and if it keeps you from buying it then it's YOUR LOSS. Scale The Summit are some young shredding guitar instrumentalists, who weave epic, soaring jubilant tech metal jams, that drift and shimmer and shred, laced with tons of swirling harmonies, tinkling harmonics, plenty of chug, all surprisingly major key, like the soundtrack to a videogame, or the climax of some action movie, or yeah, a little like Joe Satriani's Surfing With The Alien...there we said it. But take that Satriani sound, tangle it all up with some Fucking Champs shred-ery, get it all mathy here and there, let it sprawl majestically like some sort of Explosions In The Sky album closer, and you've pretty much got Carving Desert Canyons. This is the sound that accompanies a camera dangling from the bottom of a helicopter soaring along the desert floor, the soundtrack to a hipper emo-metal version of Planet Earth, expansive and epic, but plenty metallic and post rocky. We've been listening to this like crazy, it definitely pushes some buttons we never knew we had (or at least hadn't had pushed in a while), but fuck it, everything can't be dour and depressive and buzzy and black, sometimes you need something like StS, all emotionally metallic and triumphant, post rockisms spreading out into wild churning chugfests that in turn eventually explode into mathmetal blowouts, or super melodic shredfests. Definitely for fans of the Fucking Champs, Pegataur, Electro Quarterstaff, Explosions In The Sky, Zebulon Pike, Pelican, and all things postmetal, mathmetal and instru-metal.
Another issue of the UK's Shindig, kind of the slicker, skinnier British cousin to Ugly Things, delving into similar territory (but not quite to the same obscure extent). Vintage '60s and '70s garage rock, psychedelia, folk and soul stuff, plus sometimes contemporary bands with retro leanings. This issue's got The Pretty Things on the cover, plus pieces on Alice Cooper, Kevin Ayers, Tim Rose, The Count Five, Funkadelic, and more.
Pay attention, this may be confusing. First, look at the garish/ridiculous cover of this. A photoshopped (?) picture of a big, half-naked, long haired screaming man being tortured with a circular saw by a woman (?) in a spiky black wig. Spandex, leather, bullet belts, a toilet (with a foot sticking out?) are also part of the scene. Then take into account that this was released by Jussi of Circle's Ektro label, home of the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal, which isn't really heavy metal, not exactly - bands like Steel Mammoth, Krypt Axeripper and sometimes Pharaoh Overlord). So, is this yet another slice of NWOFHM weirdness? You might think so.
Nope, it's an ACTUAL Finnish heavy metal band. Nobody from Circle is in this group. And it's not even their first album (Jussi told us about these guys a while ago, and Andee and Allan even tracked down copies of one their previous albums, Invasion Metropolis, for themselves on his recommendation). They're the real deal, they've been around since 1995! But they're still somehow in the same tongue in cheek, awesomely absurd vein as the NWOFMH, just more "pro" sounding, nothing but metal, and maybe not a joke. And it's on Ektro, so of course we've got it. And we'd want it anyway, 'cause Solitaire play utter '80s sounding speed metal, sounding like Swedish retro metallions Wolf gone way over the top, with less taste but more of a sense of humor. Or even thrashier (and trashier) version of Judas Priest's OTT classic Painkiller.
It's all a bit chaotic and exhausting, a dense overdose of adrenaline and pure metal madness. Their frantic songs are packed with peals of guitar shred, hyperactive headbangin' riffs, Iron Maidenesque gallop, and screamin', screechin' vocals. Our favorite song titles here: "Rat Studded Maniac", "Leather Scream", and "I'm A Schizo (And So Am I)".
It's obvious why Jussi likes 'em. Us too.
Brand new vinyl only full length from these Humbolt county noise makers, totally deluxe and ultra limited, the record comes in an elaborate hand silk screened jacket, hand numbered, LIMITED TO ONLY 470 COPIES, with a heavy cardstock sleeve affixed to the inside, and with a decidedly different sound.
In the past the Weirdos, once a duo, now a trio, had dabbled in all sorts of abstract soundscaping, usually ending up droning and shimmering and creating dark expanses of murk and murmur. The A side of Blue Herons finds the band kicking out a clattery noise jam, very industrial, with tons of clatter and creak, metal on metal, squeaking and groaning, as if they were performing inside some huge antiquated steam powered machine. The trio offer up stretches of grinding whir, streaks of feedback, bleating horns, lending a bit of a twisted free jazz feel to the proceedings, the whole thing unfurling like some nightmarish industrial-noir soundtrack.
The flipside is something else entirely, a soft cacophony of metallic clang and clatter, like the recording of a giant spindly robot, stumbling through a jungle made entirely of metal. There's the clinking of glass mixed in as well, and bits of woodwind, the robotic forest mashing gives way to something much more tranquil and dreamy, some Eastern ritual, lots of space, tones ringing out, melodic fragments drifting across wide open expanses, darkly delicate and subtly haunting.
As always, really nice sounds from the Starving Weirdos camp, and some kick ass packaging to match. And once again, LIMITED TO 470 COPIES!!!
In addition to crafting utterly gorgeous breathtaking minimal pop ambience as Gas, Wolfgang Voigt was also responsible for some of the most influential minimal techno of the last twenty years, as Mike Ink, M:I:5 and a handful of other monickers. It's hard for us sometimes to describe techno music, and to define just what it is that makes us love one techno record and hate another, but this comp is wall to wall genius. Out of print since 2000, this comp is finally available again, collecting some of the best 12"s Voigt released in the nineties, as well as tacking on a handful of bonus tracks, every one a spare skeletal dubbed out groovescape of simple bubbly beats, minimal percussive thumps and beeps, everything tight and clipped, hypnotic and mesmerizing, futuristic dancefloor perfection, managing to swing, within fairly rigid arrangements. Pretty much every band on Kompakt, whether they know it or not, owe everything to this man, and these tracks right here.
Each track is named for a color, although it's unclear how those tracks reflect the colors they're named for, or if it's just a simple way of codifying the various grooves, either way, it does reflect the simple spare and minimal vibe of the sounds, the layout, the whole concept. It's hard to imagine people dancing to this, although we know they do, for us though, this is perfect chill out music, the beats bouncy but muted, the basslines barely there, usually just a streak or a brief thrum, the tracks hardly shift over the course of their 7-10 minutes, the timbre subtly changing, maybe another little skitter gets tossed into the mix, it hardly matters, as these songs start out pretty much perfect, and only get more perfect as they go on. Every track here could get locked into an endless loop, and we'd happily nod off, drift off, forever, letting the beats and austere ambience just wash over us.
Some of these tracks are almost 20 years old and still sound totally fresh, and even a bit futuristic, and the perfect soundtrack for some space age dinner party or some late night chill out sesh in a bad ass satellite bachelor pad slowly orbiting the Earth.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
What does Japanese underground psych-folk, limited to 300 copies, we only got a dozen mean to you? That we don't have to write a lengthy review of this? Thanks, we thought so.
It's criminal that they made this so limited, 'cause some fans of this band are going to be disappointed (the ones that don't get a copy, of course, not those that do). This disc is another bleak trip into the "mystic atmosphere" of Suishou No Fune's lo-fi soundworld, the six long tracks here wandering a metaphorical, musical labyrinth golden with the glow of a setting sun. Some tracks generate a droning din, others more languidly flow with fragile vibrations, the band almost nodding off, but *nervously* never quite achieving that sad bliss. It's a hazy and gauzy interplay of (mostly) subdued electric guitar, clattering drums, and morose, wailing vocals that sound like the singer is singing *to himself*, trying to stave off existential loneliness and despair in the depths of the labyrinth. The guitar will sometimes build up, threatening full-on psych storms, but only really reaches max volume on the disc's final track, "Exit From The Labyrinth".
We'd recommended this to fans of LSD-march, Fushitsusha, etc. but it's not necessary. Firstly those folks probably already know about Suishou No Fune and secondly, we only have enough of these for Suishou No Fune fans first and foremost.
These two aQ faves spent several months touring together, and would finish off each show with a collaborative jam, one of which is captured here, in two parts. The first is all deep blackened shimmer, soft swells of feedback, dark rumbling pulsations, bleak and austere, laced with shards of high end melody, and softly grinding whirs. The second part is much more delicate, breathless and hushed, distant hums and keening fragmented melodies. Both sides are dark and beautiful, abstract and droney, and definitely remind us of Jasper TX and Machinefabriek. Nice stuff.
Housed in a plain black sleeve, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
We had never heard This Will Destroy You until recently, but we were pretty into it, they do that sort of brooding, post rock epic majesty sort of thing, but they definitely have their own take on that sound. Seems like folks into Explosions In The Sky and that sort of stuff would go nuts for these guys.
The two TWDY tracks here, definitely still hew to that Explosions / Godspeed template, but they do some really cool stuff here. The 11 minute "Brutalism & The Worship Of The Machine" begins all shoegazey and blissed out, sort of Nadja / Jesu territory, big heavy drums, and ethereal guitar shimmer, the melodies lilting and minor key, buried beneath the sheets of guitars and what could be buried vocals, plenty of effects and weird bits of grind and crunch, the sound continually growing more and more dense, until the drums disappear, leaving just a slow drift of muted thrum and bits of record crackle, and a barely there melody, which gives way to some super hushed post rocky slowcore, the drums delicate, the rest of the instruments chiming and softly swelling, building there way back up, but this time, they're joined by what sounds like horns, and don't explode in climax, instead just sort of moan and drift wearily, very rainy day sounding, not quite funereal, but definitely wistful, before slipping back into soft effected shimmer.
The follow up track, a brief melodic addendum, is a whole different beast, muted melodies, warm rumbles, distant streaks of smeared sound, all laced with some electronic skitter, and more crackle and glitch, giving it a sort of Boards Of Canada vibe. Nice.
This Will Destroy You share the split with another band we've heard before but just never gotten around to reviewing, Lymbyc System, whose sound is more of an electronic / post rock hybrid, falling somewhere between Fridge and Four Tet, but with a bit more heft, loping drums, warm organs, glitchy skitter, tinkling chimes, give way to some soaring heavy guitars, majestic melodies, laced with samples and plenty of effects, exploding into a kick ass frenzied mathrock workout for the last minute or two, but never losing any of the melody or dreaminess. The other two tracks explore similar sounds, great production, the sounds clear, the arrangements slipping from hushed and intimate to majestic in a matter of minutes, lots of crunch and glitch and buzz, but also lots of skittery drums, warm riffs, moody drift, some Tortoise-y almost-jazz, a pretty heady concoction that is easy to get lost in.
Of the two, we probably lean toward the more muscular and epic This Will Destroy You, but both bands work together well sonically, and thus this split actually almost plays out like more of a proper record than two bands teamed up.
This doesn't actually come out for a while, but we lucked out and managed to get a bunch early, so all you folks into post rock and math rock and big guitars and slow building epic post metal drift and skittery slowcore and everything in between, this comes highly recommended.
It was pretty amazing to watch Aretha Franklin perform at Obama's inauguration and that moment had us thinking about the things that actually make America great. Democracy, sure, but also all the fantastic soul singers this country has produced over the last half century. Something to be proud of indeed!
While she has never enjoyed the same kind of fame or celebrity as folks like Aretha, Dionne Warwick, Otis Redding, Al Green or Etta James, there is no doubt that Irma Thomas is the cream of the crop when it comes to amazing soulful voices and should most definitely be considered a national treasure. Still alive and well, she just played a few shows in San Francisco that we are so sad we missed, as she apparently sounded amazing and played many of her hits , a bunch of which can be found on this great collection.
With spot on arrangements, broken hearted laments, catchy melodies and such warm and full hearted delivery, these songs are true gems not to be missed by anyone with a love of classic soul. Mixing the best of girl group sass, the melody of doo-wop and the deep emotive core of classic Southern soul, Irma Thomas sings songs that make it feel good to feel bad. While so many of the songs are about suffering a broken heart, and the era in which these songs were created in which she is always singing how much she needs a man to survive could have fit in perfectly as the soundtrack to those subversive Kenneth Anger films that were made near this time period and before.
One of the golden treasures of New Orleans soul (we say it's a tie for Soul Queen of New Orleans between Irma and the great Betty Harris). Anyone who has love of the great soul that has come out of New Orleans knows that all the great stuff has Allen Toussaint's musical hands on them, and much of Irma's best work was indeed produced and arranged by Toussaint. But clearly it's Irma's voice that has made her so incredibly special and moving as these are songs that could melt even the coldest of hearts!
Not to be confused with the Canadian Tomhet, this Tomhet hails from Italy and features members of two of our favorite depressive black metal hordes, Leaden and Anwech. Leaden's awesomely titled Monotonous Foghorns of Molesting Department is still one of our all time favorite chunks of blackened stumbling doom-ed weirdo depressive blackness. And Leaden, well, their sound was even weirder, some sort of droney doomy black metal gloom pop insanity. Needless to say, ever since, we have been on the lookout for ANYTHING from those guys. So we discovered this cd-r, not at all new, in fact, it's from way back in 2001, it's their only demo, they're apparently still a band, but these three songs are all they've released. But fuck it, we'll take what we can get.
Not as weird or as gloomy or dementedly depressive as Leaden Or Anwech, this is feral and raw, more black and buzzy, furious and fast, totally relentless, the sound super saturated and in the red. The guitars are thick and distorted, crumbling and massive, the vocals harsh and drenched in reverb, the drums chaotic and furious, some seriously killer riffing, the songs occasionally slipping into something slightly slower and groovier, but even then the sound is corrosive and blistering, and eventually those grooves splinter as the song explodes back into more blown out buzzing black fury. Frenzied and intense, brutal and black, heavy as fuck and most definitely grim and raw. Well worth your six bucks...
Why oh why does it seem when a new issue of this this fantastic, biannual magazine finally shows up, it's always, like, the day before we're doing a list? (Though that's better than the day after, of course.) 'Cause all we want to do is sit and read it for hours and hours, but instead we've got to write reviews instead. But, since we need a review of it too, at least there's an excuse to spend *some* time flipping through it today rather than doing other work... Ugly Things #28 is again a monster-sized (208 pages!!) installment, everything within its colorful glossy covers fully devoted to "wild sounds from past dimensions", i.e. garage, punk, psych, power pop, freakbeat, and even some prog and proto-metal, circa the '60s and '70s for the most part. There's some not-so-obscure acts covered here (with big features on The Move and The Dave Clark Five this issue, for instance) but also some bands that absolutely couldn't be any more obscure, who barely released a single 7". Some (just some) of the other bands covered in depth this ish include: The New Dawn, Roky Erickson's The Spades, The Good Feelins, Daughters Of Eve, and The Dandy Girls (an all-girl group from Norway who toured South East Asia in the late '60s!). Like we said, we haven't had time to read the whole thing yet - but we will!
So far, a few of the pieces that have caught our attention include an article about Stooges-worshipping French psychedelic punks Angel Face, an interview with shoulda been huge (or at least properly reissued) NYC one album wonders Hackamore Brick (who are back together!), a feature on "50 Reasons Not To Hate The Synthesizer" (citing everything from the Silver Apples to the Normal to, much to the writer's surprise, Uriah Heep), and a special section all about the seminal DIY fanzines of the past, including interviews with V. Vale (Search & Destroy 'zine) and Claude Bessy (Slash 'zine). Plus all the usual stuff, of course - TONS of super-knowledgable reviews, entertaining rants, intriguing ads, and few eulogies for folks (like Ron Asheton and Pretty Things manager Bryan Morrison) who've sadly passed away since the last issue went to press.
In Mike Stax's editorial, he waxes rhapsodic about some of the old school fanzines he grew up with, such as Kicks, Who Put The Bomp, Gorilla Beat, and Bam Balam, writing about how much they stoked his enthusiasm for old and underground music with information he couldn't get anywhere else, clueing him in to the existence of so many amazing, obscure records and bands, and subsequently inspired him to do Ugly Things. Well, we hope Mr. Stax really realizes that his Ugly Things itself is now just as inspirational and important of a 'zine, as far as we're concerned!
