Altar of Plagues hail from Ireland, not exactly the first place you think of when it comes to atmospheric black metal. But here they are with their full length debut, White Tomb, which finds the band expertly bringing together the epic sweep of groups like Wolves in the Throne Room and Asunder with that style of Isis-informed metallic post rock we all love. Throw in an awesomely guttural black metal rasp, a couple moments of Khanate styled throat abuse, spaced out ambience with cleanly strummed guitars, and an excellent balance of punishing blasts and more lumbering, slowly moving drums, and you've got one hell of an introduction to this previously unknown (to us, anyway) group.
Consisting of two very long movements, "Earth" and "Through The Collapse", made up of two songs each, Altar of Plagues' lyrical agenda, though not printed here, seems to be similar to that of WITTR's brand of spiritually informed conservation, where humankind will vanish under the indifferent and regenerative hoof of Mother Nature. The two songs in the "Earth" suite, "As A Womb" and "As A Furnace" start with a beautiful piece of slowly building depressive guitar ambience before heading into a super heavy black metal jam that does not sound too far removed from the godly Atlanta based group Withered (who, for some reason, we have never reviewed). Things slow down to a cool, spaced out Mogwai-ian moment that links the two songs, as multiple voices combine before ascending once more to a blissful post metal dirge. As this begins to sink in, we are again introduced to heavy, psychedelically informed black metal that suitably brutalizes you before fading off into the distance as layers of treated guitar ambience combine into a whirlwind of buzzing, which is soon overtaken by a sepia-tinged, slightly disquieting outro that immediately segues into the next song suite. "Watchers Restrained" is where things eventually slow to a glacial pace as disturbing, very Alan Dubin-esque vocals spit out line after line of bile while Altar of Plagues lays a foundation that manages to be both super dense and quite spacious. After being pummeled for a bit, the band pull back and the song fades into walls of crumbling decay that bring to mind the cool Cities Last Broadcast album we reviewed a few lists back. Album closer, "Gentian Truth" takes you on one last journey through a melancholy psych metal hinterland, before ending in an atmospheric soundscape quite similar to the way the album began, giving White Tomb an awesome cyclical feel that will undoubtedly bring out more truths with each listen.
Thank the always right-on Profound Lore label for unleashing this mighty beast upon the world, as White Tomb comes as a nice surprise from a group we certainly hope to hear more from in the future.
While we've always liked what we've heard from this famous musical couple from Mali, it wasn't until this outing of theirs that we fell hard for their lively approach. They craft songs that come from their West African heritage while bringing some modern influences into the mix. Welcome To Mali has an immediacy and urgency in its grooves that swept us away on our first listen. While so many others who try to inject bits of electronics into traditional 'world' music usually fail miserably, creating a sound watered down and glossy beyond recognition, somehow Amadou & Mariam understand how to do so successfully while still staying so true to the roots of their music. This is an electrifying record that makes us move a bit bolder and brighter when we have it on. Highly recommended dance music for those into the hypnotic grooves of the likes of Tinariwen, too.
Finally! After three, years, France's Amesoeurs release their debut full length. And it's pretty shocking when you think about all the fuss these guys (and gal) have stirred up, with only FOUR songs to their name. FOUR songs in THREE YEARS. And yet, people were obsessed with those four songs, ourselves included, but hell, those four songs were fantastic, magical, barely black metal to the point where we had trouble understanding why metalheads liked it at all, but that's the thing, it managed to transcend, the songwriting is amazing, the arrangements, the production, the riffs, and mood, the ambience, Amesoeurs really are something special.
And it's not like they were doing nothing for the last three years, mainman Neige, managed to release records by his other bands, Peste Noire, Alcest, Forgotten Woods, Lantlos, in fact 3 of the four members of Amesoeurs also play in Peste Noire, but don't be expecting any of that gnarled raw black weirdness, no, Amesoeurs as most folks already know is all about melody, songcraft, it's more post rocky and shoegazey than buzzy and black, at least most of the time, and never more than on this new one. Vocalist and bassist Audrey Sylvain takes center stage here, singing most of the songs, helping Amesoeurs create a gorgeous lush sound that is so far removed from black metal, even blasts of buzz or furious riffing can't take away from its pure poppiness. Some of these songs sound like a band who should be on Slumberland not on Profound Lore.
Anyway, Amesoeurs starts off with a blast, some Joy Division-y bass, some mathy angular post rocky guitar, simple stripped down drumming, very moody and tense, almost new wave sounding, distant strings swell, until the guitars explode and the whole track is infused with buzz, creating an impossible hybrid, gorgeously achingly melodic and epic, but so buzz drenched and blackened, if the whole record had played out like this nonstop, people would have been flipping their lids (even more than they already are), but then that would take away from what makes Amesoeurs baffling and brilliant.
The second track, "Les Ruches Malades", shows no signs of blackness at all, the guitar has some bite, some crunch, but the main riff is more jangle than buzz, the bass throbs, the drums are super tight, and Audrey's vocals are front and center, this is one of those tracks that make it hard to believe metalheads get into this band at all.
Then it's back to more epic emotional blackness, buzzing, thrashing, soaring, but still jam packed with melody and moodiness, suddenly shifting to some hard rocking shoegazey jangle pop, peppered with bursts of Katatonia-like groove, before slipping into more loping rainy day bliss pop. Musically, the follow up "Recueillement" is more of the same, but here Neige adds his own shrieked black metal vox, which sound really odd draped over the minor key jangle beneath, but it also sounds kind of cool, a bit jarring for sure, but in a good way. Blackened and emotional and intense.
And so it goes, most of the record loping and jangling and shoegazing, occasionally offering up a bit of black buzz, and at least one track, "Trouble (Eveils Infames)" is pure blackness, all thrashing buzzing frenzied fury, no pop to be found, but that's the only real moment of grimninty to be found, the record is much more about melody and mood, the heaviest it gets is when Neige shrieks over some woozy melancholy jangle, and then there's the title track, that is SO new wave, straight up Cure worship, right down to the bass line and the chiming guitar parts, although Amesoeurs give it a cool twist at the end adding an awesomely jagged chugging riffy outro.
The record closes with another Katatonia style chunk of melancholy doom pop, although again, Neige roughs it up a bit with his blackened vokills, and after a brief stretch of silence, the record closes with a secret track of distorted drum machined and blurred buried melody.
Of course WE love it. C'mon! It's like if Black Tambourine were actually Black METAL Tambourine, plenty of Katatonia, Lifelover, all that off kilter blackened pop too, but it's obvious Neige and company are black metal masters (Alcest, Peste Noire, Forgotten Woods, Mortifera, right?) so even the poppiest moments are infused with a bit of blackness, no matter how subtle, and when the band do kick out the jams, like on the record opener, it's heavy and emotional in a way few other bands, black metal or otherwise, are capable of.
It might take a few listens, for some folks here it still hasn't clicked, then again it might take just one, we were smitten halfway through the first song, but then that first ep is still probably one of our most listened to records of the last several years, and if you're really in need of some blasting blackness, obviously this might not be the place to look, thankfully you don't have to look far, Neige has at least one or two other bands that'll have you covered, but if you're looking for something, gorgeous and twisted and black and dreamy and poppy and heavy and mysterious, well then, this friends, is it.
The first thing that struck us about this debut release from Amocoma, a mysterious black metal horde from right here in San Francisco, was the cover art, a child-like pen and ink drawing of a pile of heads, but instead of being bloody or gory or horrific, they're sort of more cartoonish, like a whole slew of stick figures were decapitated, their heads tossed in a huge pile, beneath the scrawled band logo, wreathed in clouds of smeared ink. We were definitely intrigued. And�if anything, once inside, we were even moreso...
Amocoma traffic in an ultra lo-fi, muddy murky blackness. It's definitely black metal, there is plenty of buzz and blast and howled vocals, but at the same time it's sort of stumbling and noise rocky, it's probably a little of both, but it's all rendered nearly indistinct by the incredibly FX drenched lo-fi production.�
Beginning with dreamy swirls of soft focus harmonics and distant rumbles, it doesn't take long for the band to lurch into action, a simple hypnotic riff, looped over and�over, almost sounding more like a bass than a guitar, and not so heavy as it is trancelike. The drums are mechanical and repetitive, the vocals are howled and swathed in reverb, spread out over the proceedings like a black cloud, so much so that at times they just sound like another layer of buzz. And the more you listen, the more pretty it sounds, sure it's raw and harsh, but the melody is so hypnotic, and the swirling clouds of distortion and reverb give everything a sort of soft focus shimmer.�
We're definitely reminded of WOLD, in the sense that these little fragmented pop songs, are rendered black and buzzy by the application of super saturated distortion, tape hiss and amp buzz, reverb and delay, so even at its heaviest, it's washed out and abstract, and downright dreamy. The drone element is through the roof, and it's impossible not to hear Tim Hecker or Machinefabriek or any one of those masters of smeary dreamlike sound. At some points things get super psychedelic, like halfway through "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body" where the guitar drops out, leaving just the drums, to sort of pulse and putter in a wide open expanse of soft swirl, while drifting above are all manner of glistening guitar harmonics, spacey FX sparkles, and warm warbly melodic hum.�
Damaged and dreamy, freaked out and fucked, one of our new favorite slabs of black beauty for sure...�
We love the out-there improvs of legendary jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, and the idea of him teamed up with an equally out-there electronics maverick (Jon Appleton, natch) was enough to get us excited about this cd reissue of the duo's 1970 recording Human Music. Cherry, then a fixture on the NYC free jazz scene, was invited to be an artist-in-residence by young Dartmouth music professor Appleton -- who just happened to have a Moog-laden electronic music studio at his disposal. The resulting collaboration is an early exercise in "live" electronic-meets-acoustic music -- as the studio techniques of musique concrete, like splicing and editing tapes with razor blades, couldn't be applied to a real-time improv duet, so Appleton had to find ways for Cherry's playing (on both horns and sundry percussion) to immediately "trigger" responses from the studio's arsenal of synths. The results are VERY bleepy-blurpy-whooshy, like something from a freaky sci-fi soundtrack, and Cherry's trumpet is often obscured by the electronic effects. We can't say that Human Music is an absolutely essential Don Cherry album but it's definitely an interesting novelty in his discography and it's cool to get to hear it now!
- MPEG stream: BOA
- MPEG stream: OBA
A good metal record can do a lot of things. But it really takes only one thing to make a great metal record. That it tears your face off. (Or melts your ears, or wrecks your neck, or whatever metaphor for the physical response to loud, violent, headbanging riffage you choose to use.) And by that metric, this latest from Norway's Aura Noir is a pretty great piece of work. Total mid-paced blackened thrash mastery!
Featuring former members of black metal legends Ved Buens Ende, Dodheimsgard, Ulver, Satyricon, and Mayhem (among others), this band originated during what might be considered the first thrash metal revival, in the mid/late '90s. Now we're in the midst of another wave of nostalgia for good old '80s thrash, and thus these guys cannot be accused of being trendy or jumping on the bandwagon! The rasping death grunts, chainsaw guitaring, and blazing drum kit devastation found here is all authentically old school, at least older than the new school of old school... raw n' ugly and hella catchy too. For fans of speedy '80s slayers like Destruction and early, Frost-ier Coroner, with maybe more of a rock n' roll Venom/Motorhead vibe mixed in. The dissonant guitar licks twisted into tracks like "Iron Night/Torment Storm" give this a bit of left-field Voivod-y weirdness as well. More modern reference points could be fellow Norwegian retro-thrashers Audiopain, and the more recent, metal/punk Darkthrone output (one song here is called "South American Death", shades of DT's "Canadian Metal"). We should mention that one track features a guest guitar solo from Danny Coralles, but even those of you not so metal-obsessed enough to know or care about who that is (he's from the band Autopsy, duh), might well still enjoy the heck out of Hades Awaits for the basic, brutal pleasures it provides. We dare you not to headbang. Impossible.
We're not all that sure who Banks Bailey or Ian Holloway are, but Darren Tate has long proved to be a reliable source for long-form dronemusik thanks to his previous collaboration with Andrew Chalk as Ora and his ongoing work with Colin Potter in Monos. Not to mention the multitude of self-released cd-rs under his own name. Tate's aesthetic for sculpted drones through field recordings, pedal manipulation, and occluded processing is central to Summerland, as it has been noted that Tate proved the treated guitar drones with Bailey contributing some of the field recordings and Holloway reconfiguring everything at the end. Thick shadowy tones hover ominously alongside fluctuations of tactile crackle, sounding more like some of the earlier Ora recordings than anything that Tate has produced recently. Elsewhere, tinstrung guitars splutter with atonal resonance, which stretch, elongate, and blur into drifting dark ambience.
Summerland is a limited production. There are only 150 copies of these in existence, and Summerland is already out of print at the two labels who released this.
Originally released as a cd-r in 2002, so limited we never managed to get ANY. So for lots of Baker fans, this will probably be your first chance to wrap your ears around Letters.
Really hard to know what to say about Baker anymore. He definitely has a sound, unlike his dirgier more metallic blissed out doom duo Nadja, his solo stuff tends toward the super minimal, the dark and droney and drifty, the hushed and shimmery, and Letters is no different. But within that somewhat well defined sound, there is in fact much variation, subtle as it may be.
On Letters, Baker offers up soft billows of sound, which are wrapped around a hushed vocals, more of a murmur actually, but instead of a drone record, it transforms the sound into some super minimal slowcore, the pop element sublimated to almost non existence, the vocal melody being the only thing keeping the track from sprawling out into abstract smears and blurs (not that we mind that either mind you). The instrumentation is simple, just guitars and cymbals, but deftly processed into something deep and sonorous, and surprisingly melodic. Streaks of high end drift in and out (guitar or falsetto vocal, it's hard to say), as the record drifts dreamily. The sound does change dramatically here and there, deep overlapping low end tones, soft squalls of spaced out effects, glimmering streaks of washed out doomic blur, stretches of almost symphonic shimmer, the guitars transformed into hushed string sections, but it all resolves in an extended outro of soft deep swells. As always, absolutely lovely.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!!!
Devendra Banhart -- who appears to be living his life as an indie-rock gipsy touring with whomever and squatting wherever, including a stint wowing locals here in SF -- crafts his neo-folk songs with the primitive instrumentation of voice and acoustic guitar, spanning a vast spectrum of fragmented emotions through a manic-depressive persona that can be as beautifully charming as it can be terrifyingly devastating. Michael Gira, who released this album through his Young God label, accurately described Banhart's voice with its skewed vibrato and unnerving warble as somewhere in between the magical voices of Marc Bolan, Karen Dalton, Syd Barrett, Tiny Tim, Daniel Johnston, and Nick Drake; and fortunately, Banhart uses that voice to tell a wholly unique set of stories that hold a succinct poetry. Hastily stitched from bizarre stream of consciousness associations and absurdist conditional clauses, Banhart's lyrics expand the realm of possibility into psychosexual surrealism. On occasion, Banhart's tales are anthropomorphic love songs, wistfully dreaming of archaic steam ships and the state of Michigan (yes, he pines for Michigan) with all of sexual cravings and romantic nuances of a young boy first pierced by Cupid's arrow; yet on other occasion, Banhart gnashes his teeth with such existential confusion that the targets of his epithets are blurred by his bilious rage. Within Banhart's language, reality has been realized as a swollen mass of malformed emotions compounded by the urgency that resonates within his voice.
Upon listening to this album, I've had the recurring, sinking feeling either that Banhart is destined to star in an upcoming Harmony Korine film or that he will be dead in a few years as victim of an unspecified gruesome tragedy. As I've tried and failed to assign such distinctly odd critical-doomspeak within various arguments and generalized thesis about the perception of the separation between art and life, I mention it because Banhart -- unlike any artist whom I've come across -- has been able to provoke such controversial thoughts. Far from me to wish Banhart or anybody ill-will, but true manifestations of horror defy logic and are very rare indeed. And this, gentle reader, is the real deal.
If you recall, Andee began his review of Woven Hand's album with the bold statement: "I hate to gush, but gush I must, this is my record of the year. Done deal." As for me (Jim, along with Marcy and Windy), the debut from Devendra Banhart needs to be given serious consideration as a contender for record of the year 2002.
We love Man Is The Bastard. Always have. So we wanted to love Bastard Noise as well. And we did, once in a while, but we might as well fess up, the thing that kept us from truly embracing Bastard Noise, was in fact, the NOISE. Allan may be into his speaker shredding Japanoise, and Jim definitely loves his minimal grind and glitch, but for the most part, noise music has generally left us a bit cold. That's not to say there haven't been exceptions, there most definitely have, and those exceptions tend to be when the noise is less 'noisy' and more drone-y or textural or dynamic or all three. Our favorite Merzbow records tend to be the ones where Masami Akita isn't just spewing a face full of hot white noise. Our favorite noise records to tend toward the dronier more ambient side of the noise spectrum. So there have definitely been some Bastard Noise jams that have totally hit the spot, Descent To Mimas was one, released on Ground Fault, and Rogue Astronaut is definitely another, just out on Gravity. Rogue Astronaut seems to be sonically and thematically a sort of continuation of Descent To Mimas. Another noise opera of sorts, a tale of post apocalyptic space travel, of dead satellites and a withered Earth, of floating alone through space, of the endless expanse and the soul shearing loneliness of the Rogue Astronaut.
Much like Mimas, and our favorite noise records, the sounds on Rogue Astronaut are less harsh and heavy, and more atmospheric and textural, the ten minute opener, even features haunting falsetto vocals set amidst an expansive drift of analog buzz and electronic squelch, layered drone, and a symphony of upper register tones, the sounds are noticeably Bastard like, raw and corrosive and analog and lo-fi, but deftly arranged into epic sweeping dronescapes and noisescapes, slipping from minimal buzz and glitch to full on fuzzed out malfunctioning electronic roar.
Track two, "Ryobi Party" sounds a bit like another post Bastard project, Geronimo, only with the drums stripped away, and the addition of gurgling demonic vokills. The twenty minute title track is gorgeous and space-y, the tones and sounds and textures allowed to sprawl and spread out, set amidst a lush backdrop of reverbed black shimmer, and deep ominous drones, the squelches and glitches like lost radio broadcasts, drifting aimlessly through the inky blackness of space. Sheets of feedback are muted into layered high end whirs, the 'noise' is allowed to hover and float and change shapes and transform, the track is almost like some strange beast made out of sound, captured so we can observe it in captivity, watching as it morphs before our very eyes, a sonic representation of what lies beyond. The track is less about noise, and more about ambience, and mood, and it does create an intense and ominous and super evocative cinematic soundworld.
The last three tracks cycle through the various shades of noise and space, highlighted by the darkly delicate "Moonpool Team", which begins as a hushed ultra minimal drift, before it transforms into a groovy, moody, reverby almost Eastern sounding bit of abstract soundtrack music, like it could have come from some crazy lost sixties space epic, gorgeous soaring vocals, the grinding electronics muted and smeared into almost melodies, peppered with the occasional violent squall, but for the most part, a gorgeous languid landscape of deep bell like tones and swirling space-y noise flecked shimmer.
Gorgeous packaging too. Metal foil stamped booklet that folds out into a poster, with full color inserts/cards as well as a sticker.
Brooklyn's Black Dice are back in action with another serving of their signature sampled and collagey, beat driven electro-noise. Repo turns and pulses like colors in a kaleidoscope, the sounds of cosmic tin cans colliding while clumsy break beats thud and pound. And while Black Dice fans won't be too surprised by anything on Repo, probably the coolest thing about this release is the 20 page booklet that comes overflowing with outrageous collaged black and white artwork by the band! Can you dig it??
One of two new seven inches from Irish label Trensmat, who most recently brought us those bad ass Hawkwind tribute 7"s. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the brand new Expo 70 "Sunglasses" 7", and this here's a new two tracker from German experimental dronelords Black To Comm, two mesmerizing loopscapes, strangely titled "The Soba Noodle Shop Incident" and "The Convenience Store Incident", both seemingly linked sonically and thematically, each crafter from a dense flurry of looped and repeated Reich / Riley style dronescapes.
The A side is like Riley doing Sunroof!, a high end symphony of overlapping tones, locked and looped, mesmerizingly repetitive, all underpinned by strange percussive bloops and blurred streaks of creak and squeak, eventually, the sound of whirring machinery surfaces and transforms the track into an almost Boards Of Canada bit of squelch and skitter.
The B side begins as another stretch of looped stuttering tones, faster and more frenetic this time, and within those looped tones, another series of strange sounds lurks, a fragmented melody, an off kilter counterpoint, playing out beneath, also chopped and looped, but strangely vocal sounding, as if it was some weirdly processed alien voice, the result is equally hypnotic and mesmerizing.
Cool stuff for sure, a dizzying hybrid of Sunroof!, Boards Of Canada and Terry Riley, meditative and space-y, but dense and very very layered and kinetic.
Packaged in cool full color sleeves, super LIMITED of course, already sold out at the label, so these are likely the last copies we'll see.
We've been loving everything we've heard from this fairly new Bay Area female trio but we were too slow to snag enough copies of their first 7" to list, but luckily we've got this great new single with two new brand new songs that are sure to show the world that these gals belong in the new league of great garage popsters like the Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Thee Oh Sees, etc. There is a really cool early '80s minimalist garage pop aesthetic to Brilliant Colors that reminds us a bit of Young Marble Giants, The Raincoats, the heyday of Flying Nun records or some song by an obscure band on a Messthetics compilation that you would want to play over and over. It's much smarter then run of the mill garage rock, but it's also smart enough not to let their brains get in the way of their simple stripped down songs that sound better and better each time we lay the needle in the groove.
Yeah, when we heard this band's name, we were all "WTF?! What's Matador dishing up now?!" But then we took a closer look at the album's title (hmmm, Fuckbook sounds a lot like... Fakebook!) and the band photos on the back (hmmm, they look a wee bit familiar!), and we knew we were in the presence of our beloved old faves Ira, James and Georgia! Yup, Condo Fucks are a very thinly disguised Yo La Tengo tearing and tumbling though a raucous garagey setlist packed with messy covers of Beach Boys, Electric Eels, Flaming Groovies, Richard Hell, Slade, The Small Faces, and Troggs songs. Very very silly, sloppy and fun fun fun!
So much changes in a year. Around this time last year we didn't even know who Crystal Stilts were and now they've become one of our favorite bands, whose ep and full length we've played over and over and have truly become all time AQ favorites. So of course we were thrilled to see Slumberland release this slab of wax with two brand new tracks to obsess over. These two songs find the band at their poppiest yet, truly embracing the '60s girl group sound and production that they seamlessly incorporate into their own sound as they've created this amazing universe that's sort of like Phil Spector's wall of sound invading Tony Wilson's Factory empire. Two more nuggets to tide us over until the next full length...
Finally this all-time AQ favorite is back in print!
Dawn Of The Dead is pretty much the greatest zombie movie ever made. It definitely set the standard, and EVERY walking dead movie since has basically just been a riff off the original. And of course the Goblin score was amazing, proggy, scary and occasionally silly, but always perfect in some unlikely way. But most of the REALLY scary parts weren't scored by Goblin but instead were one of over 2000 musical cues used in the film. This comp collects some of the longer cues (many were mere seconds long, that in the context of the film were perfect, but wouldn't make for good listening here) and some of the most memorable songs that weren't included in the Goblin score. Most of this stuff is creepy and scary and totally brings back all the spine tingly feelings you had the first time you saw the movie. But there are also some super dorky bits that were as much a part of the film and its subtle (or not so subtle) humor. There's the opening track "The Gonk", a goofy, bouncy ragtime / cartoon music workout, the hippy country folk ditty "Cause I'm A Man" played by the Electric Banana (which just happened to feature members of the Pretty Things!!). And who can forget the scene in the mall, and the weird medley of marching band / ragtime / progressive rock organ workout that accompanied it? But outside of those whimsical moments, the rest of this collection is really really intense and spooky. From creepy, slithering orchestral drones, shimmering gongs and tinkling chimes to Bernard Hermann-ish suspenseful minor key soundtrack stuff, all tense strings and foreboding DUH DUH's to scary outerspace synth sounds, reverbed and super affected to good ol' classic Halloween / Friday The Thirteenth style horror movie suspense music. So awesome!
The bulk of John Duncan's exceptional catalogue of sonic provocation and sublime post-minimalism has been collaborations. CM Von Hausswolff, Francisco Lopez, Bernhard Gunter, Asmus Tietchens, Peter Fleur, Max Springer, Giuliana Stefani, and Elliott Sharp have all worked with Duncan in recent years; yet at the same time, each of those collaborations exhibits the inescapable gravitational pull of Duncan's conceptual and aesthetic agendas. This collaboration with Edvard Graham Lewis is no exception. Lewis, of course, is the legendary bassist / vocalist from Wire and has often ventured into the netherworlds of the avant-garde with fellow Wireman Bruce Gilbert in various guises. Like Duncan, Lewis is quite comfortable with the role of collaborator.
The human voice has been the springboard for a number of Duncan's records including the recent collaborations with Tietchens and Sharp. Not surprising, the most obvious contributions that Lewis makes on Presence are a few choice spoken word bits highlighting his elegantly sinister baritone voice (which in my opinion is more interesting than Colin Newman's). Broken into variable streams of timestretched anxiety during the album's introduction, Lewis' voice slips away beyond recognizablility, falling into an abyss of shortwave hum and crackle that have long been the divining rod for Duncan's epistomological inquistions. The centerpiece of the album is a 30 minute piece fusing those same gray timbers of shortwave with monochromatic vocal compositions, presumably birthed from Lewis' lips and later manipulated by Duncan. Even if Lewis did have a greater hand in the mix, Presence sounds much like Duncan's masterpieces Phantom Broadcast and Palace of Mind, which is not a bad thing at all. The album ends with Lewis' unmistakable voice offering a naked piece of advice:"Take a step forward and tell the truth." As narcotizing as the album becomes, this whispered text booms out of the speakers as a startling conclusion to this excellent album.
Something happened to Eat Skull on the way to making Wild And Inside. It seems like only yesterday we were extolling their ramshackle fucked up-ness, their last record Sick To Death, a serious bid to rule the burgeoning 'shit-gaze' scene, populated by folks like Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit, and similarly fucked up noisepop deconstructionists. So we were sort of expecting Wild And Inside to be even MORE damaged and fractured, fucked up and noisy, but instead, it's jam packed with perfect pop gems, lo-fi for sure, and definitely still ramshackle, but jangly and catchy and dripping with irresistible hooks.
Similar to how Further worshipped unabashedly at the altar of the Beach Boys on their Golden Grimes record, on Wild And Inside, Eat Skull seem to be flitting from pop group to pop group, whether it's Guided By Voices, the Lemonheads, Strapping Fieldhands, dour eighties new wave or those Nuggets psych pop collections, it seems like the band spent all the time between records just absorbing all sorts of nineties indie rock, old school jangle pop, classic power pop, and whatever else they could lay their ears on, and now they're just letting it all sort of ooze out, and in the process they've most definitely made it their own.
In interviews, Eat Skull frontman Rob Enbom claims, this is what they were shooting for all along, that the first record sounded the way it did because they were broke and were stuck with super shitty equipment, and while that may be true to a certain extent, there's some seriously superior pop smithery happening on Wild And Inside, it's not hard to imagine what this record might have sounded like with all the grit and grime cleared away, and if they had recorded in a real studio, but who the hell would want to hear that? Eat Skull sound fine just the way they are, noisy and poppy and sloppy and lo-fi, every song a gorgeously hook filled sunshine-y effects laden fractured and fuzzy noise pop gem.
Folks who were into the sheer mayhem and caustic crumbling noise damage of the first record might be a bit disappointed, but so what, there's plenty of that to be found elsewhere these days, for the rest of us, it's kind of refreshing to get a glimpse of the pop magic so often obscured.
First issue of a new local San Francisco based zine that covers the underground music scenes of various locales around the country and beyond. Features articles and interviews with Sun Araw, Wet Hair, Thurston Moore, Henry Rollins, Emeralds and Nomen Dubium, with columns and scene reports from Cleveland and Iowa. Photocopied with hand-drawn borders and artwork on old school folded newsprint. Rad!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Seems foolish to write that much about this even though it's AWESOME. It's limited to only 90 copies, it's already out of print, so all you need to know is it's Jon from Barn Owl solo, guitars, Fender Rhodes, harmonica, trumpet, harmonium and flute, all woven into a beautifully creepy expanse of slow burning twang flecked drone. Not all that far removed from more modern Earth, but much murkier and way more ominous.
Elm manages to be sweetly sinister, darkly brooding, and HEAVY without being heavy. It's all about the drone, and Elm manage to explore all sorts of dronemusick here, from soaring high end ragas, to glistening glimmering sun dappled shimmer, to crumbling downtuned buzz to spare spidery drift. This stuff is awesome. And beautiful. Seems like such a shame to make it so limited. So for now, at least a handful of you will get lucky enough to snag one of these. If you want to be one of those lucky ones, best act fast....
Gorgeous packaging, cool skeleton forest drawing, the cd and sleeve, in a silver paper outer pouch, each one hand stamped with Elm written beneath the stamp in cursive. So nice!
Holy shit is this Killer Pimp label kicking our ass. First the recent Dead Letters cd that we made Record Of The Week, then the gorgeous Aidan Baker / Thisquietarmy collaboration, before that there was the A Place To Bury Strangers record, and now this new Envenomist disc! (There are a few others on deck too, to be reviewed soon we hope).
Pretty bad ass for a first batch of releases we think. We'd been dying to hear more from Envenomist, who we haven't heard from since we reviewed the Black Bile tape way back in 2007. Sonically very little has changed, extended soundscapes of shimmery metallic buzz over deep low end thrum, layered into softly undulating sonic swells, ominous and haunting and so cinematic. As we most certainly have mentioned before, movie makers should be looking to the underground music scene for truly original, and in the case of Envenomist, truly frightening music for their films.
The sounds of Envenomist are noisy, but the noise is blurred and smeared, muted and dulled, a soft noise that is so evocative, of ashen skies, burning wastelands, cold barren landscapes, mysterious otherworlds, lost planets, underground caverns, these sounds are so subtly harrowing and haunting, conjuring a sense of doom, of loneliness, of death and destruction, of sadness and sorrow, the long tones build tension, creating a sense of an impending end, to life, to everything, but while creating this palpable sense of dread, Envenomist manages to create a sound that is also beautiful, perhaps blackly beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless, hypnotic and mesmerizing, mysterious and truly creepy, but again, soothing and meditative, a sort of doom-ic new age perhaps, whatever you call it, it's pretty fantastic, and has been a constant late night listen since we first got it in. And another winner from Killer Pimp...
A massive, throbbing, pulsing, heaving, slab of buzzing, filthy, crusty, abject lo-fi drone bliss courtesy of the one man band known as Evenings. Besides running the kick ass Tapeworm label, Mr. Evenings creates epic sprawls of brutal low end soft sludge, layered expanses of crumbling bass drones, of buried crunch and clatter, everything muted and muddy and murky and ominous and creepy as fuck.
It's no surprise John Olson (of the mighty Wolf Eyes among other equally kick ass noise making entities) penned the confusional rambling liner notes, this definitely speaks to the same Wolf Eyes-ian aesthetic, the sort of crumbled sonic ruins, the wasted scorched Earth soundscape, whatever melodies there are, you have to dig for, up to your elbows in a viscous black ooooooooze. Surprisingly, amidst all this grit and grime, the sound of Growing Isolation (fairly apt title we think) does occasionally seem to smooth out into something almost pretty, but even then, their are soul sucking spirits lurking just below that misleadingly lovely top layer, a glimmering glistening crust over a constantly roiling cauldron of bottomless blackness, of grinding, slow motion industrial sprawl, everything smeared and blurred into a lurching, lumbering crawl so slow, it sounds like a field recording of mighty black icebergs, drifting in a pitch black sea, beneath a black hole sky, two sidelong tracks, each a slow burning, slow melting, black crust dirge drone epic. Like Lustmord and Tomas Koner collaborating on a soundscape cobbled together with field recordings made of hell. Awesome!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Pressed on thick maroon colored vinyl, with cool, super striking one color silk screened sleeves.
Normally we would spread out multiple releases by the same band over several lists and several weeks, but since these are so limited and folks are always so excited about new Expo 70 stuff, we figured fuck it, let's just do it, THREE new Expo 70 releases, all different formats, and surprisingly different sound.
This tape is limited to 70 copies. We got exactly HALF, it's already sold out at the label, so these are THE last copies anywhere. And it's awesome. Less heavy than some of the other Expo's, Awakening, features some super stripped down drumming (or drum machine, hard to tell), locked into an endless groove, pulsing over a swirling spacescape of smeared riffs and fragmented melodies, it sounds a bit like Goblin, very soundtracky and otherworldly, space-y and mysterious, and not at all cheesy, more sort of classic new age / krautrock, think Klaus Schultze, scoring some super abstract French sci-fi flick from the sixties, and you'll sort of get the vibe.
Like all Expo 70 stuff, dark and dreamy, warm and warbly, drone-y and hypnotic, but the addition of drums really adds a new dimension, and the soundscapes swirling around the groove seem to be endlessly shifting and transforming. Awesome stuff as always. Total blissed out new age spacey krautiness, as only Expo 70 can do it. WAY recommended. And it's also recommended that if you want one of these you don't dawdle, as we mentioned before, this is LIMITED TO ONLY 70 COPIES! AND WE GOT HALF!! Already sold out and out of print, so you get one shot at these. Nicely packaged in a hand colored psychedelic fold out sleeve.
Second of two new releases from Fedora Corpse, and one of THREE new jams from Expo 70, but we're sure as shit not complaining, we can't get enough of Expo's blissed out space rock kraut drone dreaminess.
Lately, it seems like Expo 70 has been leaning toward a heavier, darker sound, dabbling in SUNN-like walls of sound, letting guitars unwind in thick churning blackened swells, but for Night Flights (can't help but think of that bad ass late night video show of the almost same name), the sound is much more blissy and drifty and ambient, at least at first. The two looooong songs that make up side one, are hushed and delicate and crystalline, definitely evoking the sound of outer space, it's not hard to imagine drifting aimlessly and weightlessly through a black expanse of starless sky, the deep black turning almost blue, suffused with the burnished and nearly buried glow of eons old starlight. Tranquil, and contemplative, hypnotic, definitely new age-y, in the best possible sense, a soundtrack for astral projection.
But then the flipside is something completely different, introducing some drum machines, and crafting a swirling chaos of high end glitch and squelch, clouds of bloops and bleeps and swoops, looped and skittery, over spidery minor key guitars and soft warm melodic swells, sounding almost like a Sunroof! jam being slowly drifting into it's constituent parts, some sort of sonic super nova in slow motion. The second track on the B side finds Expo touching once again on the dark and the heavy, the blackened buzz of distorted guitars and thick looped dronescapes, slow burning, slow building, the guitars grow in intensity, until they're locked into a woozy mesmerizing loop, over which, strange atonal guitars tangle and drift, a sort of obtuse bit of lugubrious shredding, before those strangled leads drop out leaving just the initial buzzing swells, now laced with burning hot streaks of high end distorted shimmer. Gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Pressed on thick blue/grey colored vinyl, with cool, super striking one color silk screened sleeves.
The only real downside to an Expo 70 single, is that it's ultimately frustrating in its brevity, as the music of Justin Wright, aka Expo 70 (or Expo '70, they seem to have lost the apostrophe on recent releases) is far better served by longer formats, lps, cds, and while both of these songs are indeed fantastic, it's almost criminal to cut them off after only 4 or 5 minutes, these are the sorts of sounds meant to sprawl and ooze and spread and extend for ages and ages. But as far as complaints got, it's a minor (and not entirely negative one), you'll just have to stick close by the turntable so you can lift the needle and set it right back at the beginning again.
No great surprises or strange sonic twists, just more of that thick dark gloriously heavy space kraut drone we've come to expect. The A side is some seriously deep and drone-y outer space exploration, warm languorous tones over a softly grinding and pulsing buzz, sweeping and epic and darkly mysterious, glistening melodies shifting from speaker to speaker, very new age-y for sure, but a sort of dense and blackened new age.
The B side begins all growling buzzing low end thickness, laced with space-y squiggles, long high end streaks and glimmering tones, beneath the blissy drift is a warm whirring and a softly corrosive crumble, all wound up into epic slow building swells of deeeeep deeeeep buzz. So nice.
Gorgeous full color covers, and of course LIMITED, it's already sold out from the label, so these will be the last copies we can get.
Besides being such a cultural icon, Marianne Faithful has some pretty amazing music in her back catalog. Her last album, 2005's Before The Poison was one of the most potent and emotionally stunning records of her career. It's an album some of us still listen to a lot, her voice with all its life experience shines through with so much truth, pain, and beauty. Her latest record, Easy Come Easy Go finds her tackling twelve cover songs and while we do think there should be a moratorium on covers albums, heck Marianne Faithful can do whatever she wants, and has made a career of turning other people's songs into her own.
If you are a musician and got a call that Marianne Faithful wanted to cover your song you would likely be pretty thrilled and honored, so we can't even imagine what folks like the Espers or the Decemberists thought when they got word that Marianne was going to cover their songs (those covers are two of the big standout tracks on this record!). Along the same lines, getting the call to be a part of Marianne's back up band would be pretty much mind blowing as well, so it's no surprise that the musicians on this album are some of the biggest heavy hitters around: Jim White (Dirty Three, Smog, Cat Power, etc.) on drums. Marc Ribot on guitar, Greg Cohen on bass and the list goes on and on. She also called upon some pretty recognizable voices to join her on some of the tracks like Antony, Cat Power, Rufus Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker and Nick Cave!
But make no mistake, this record is still totally all about Marianne Faithful and the way her weathered but brilliant voice is able to truly wrap itself around your ears. Whether tackling tracks by Dolly Parton, Brian Eno, Merle Haggard, Smokey Robinson, Morrissey or Judee Sill, she brings such emotional weight and such a volatile punch to these songs. Produced by Hal Willner, whom she last worked with on Strange Weather, you can feel his influence a bit too much on a few of the tracks, which go for a more old timey/cabaret feel, but luckily there are only a few of those, the rest of the album is much more driving, powerful and present sounding.
While The Rolling Stones may have ushered her into the spotlight all those decades ago, it's clear that as time has gone on Marianne Faithful sounds a million times more relevant and full of integrity than the Stones do now. A true living legend!
We were gonna try, but we just can't do it... we can't... First release from this local band, and it's a doozy, heavy as fuck, chaotic and unhinged with a wild maniacal frontwoman, but, and it's a big BUT (pun most certainly intended)... Farticus? Maybe the worst band name ever. And that's coming from a store who has always championed Cream Abdul Babar!! Come on guys, you're dooming yourself to a life of local band-dom, of being perpetually a joke band, no matter how kick ass you are. And trust us, we know, we have spent time in bands with terrible names, embarrassing names, even scatological names, but somehow none quite as bad as Farticus. Plus, embracing the name, by having your logo be a shitting woman, all your song titles puerile and scatological and goofy, it definitely makes it hard to get to the music, but once you do, holy shit, these four songs are intense and brutal, tons of low end, the guitars chugging and churning, occasionally getting all twisted and warped, evoking prime era Butthole Surfers, the drums pounding and chaotic, and the vocals, shit, a wild banshee screech, sounding like a Riot Grrl all grown up ready to kick your ass. Reminds us a bit of classic SF weirdo rockers, Tragic Mulatto, in fact, if you can imagine the Buttholes, Tragic Mulatto, but with Unsane guitars, that's what this is all about.
Apparently the live shows are insane, the vocalist mobbed by men AND woman, all grinding their faces into her pelvis, the band obviously are totally capable of destroying, so it's definitely worth it to try and make it past all the non musical stuff, the name, the song titles, the artwork on the cd, cuz once you strap on the headphones and close your eyes, this stuff will pummel you gloriously and utterly. At least in your iTunes you can change the band name and song titles and just enjoy the music. Reservedly recommended. If these guys revamped their aesthetic, and of course changed their name, they would be unstoppable.
Fever Ray is the solo project for one Karin Dreijer Andersson, better known as half of the Swedish oddball electro-pop duo The Knife. Her voice, with all of the helium-tinged falsettos and pitch-shifted growlings, had always been one the most compelling aspects of The Knife. In that schizophrenia of multi-tracked voices and personalities, she sang duets with herself, adopting masculine roles in the downpitched vocals and her naturally pixie voice taking the feminine perspective, which she often affects in unnatural ways through harmonic phaseshifts and chorus effects. With the bouncing lurch of The Knife's rhythms, her tales took on seductively nightmarish proportions, with a grotesque witchiness and atypical Goth blackness which had much more Wolfgang Press to it than Siouxsie. So for her solo project, her voice with its inscrutable yet pansexual personalities finds itself even more central to the music.
This is certainly due to the more downbeat electronic arrangements that she produces on her debut album, which is wholly devoid of those awkward yet sleek big beat techno numbers which punctured The Knife's Silent Shout. Musically, she creates a plastic exoticism, which relates to no particular indigenous music but instead has been filtered from Martin Denny through Chris & Cosey to arrive here with fake bird sounds, canned congo drums and faux marimba vibes flitting amidst sweeps of digital synthesis and softened drum machine beats. It may be more low-key than The Knife, but Karin's still an oddly brilliant tweaker. There had been some rumors (you know, from the Internet) which raised questions as to if The Knife would be 'breaking up.' If that were indeed rooted in fact, Fever Ray should stand as a pretty great phoenix rising from those ashes.
We fell so hard for the latest Flying Lotus release, Los Angeles, that we knew we had to go back and give the proper attention to his debut. We'd heard bits and pieces of it before but never really got to spend any quality time with. Until now.
Proving that his latest great record was not just some fluke, 1983 offers up for display lots of the roots and promise that would blossom into the powerful cosmic instrumental hip-hop/electronica that made the latest Flying Lotus release one of our favorites of the year. This disc, from a few years back, barely pales in comparison. While not quite as explosive and engaging as FL's newest record, it's still a skillfully crafted and delightful to listen to chunk of crunchy yet smooth flowing beats and melodies with equal nods to downtempo, hiphop, and electronica. Definitely the kind of record that should appeal to anyone into Madlib, Boards Of Canada, Prefuse 73 or even prime era Morr Music outings. Glad we took a moment to look back, as this is proving to be a record that deserves a home here at AQ and we hope on your shelves as well!
Another bad ass chunk of pounding post punk math rock heaviness from Virginia. We raved about Tigershark a while back, some seriously chugging riffery, then The Catalyst more recently, who knocked us on our asses with their weird post hardcore stoner grunge screamo (we still have a few of those left, check elsewhere on the aQ site), not sure if Food are related, but they might as well be, they're heavy as fuck, and offer up a similarly supercharged post punk, but while The Catalyst and Tigershark both channeled AmRep (The Catalyst mixing in plenty of Sub Pop), Food take that sound even farther, with their super thick distorted fuzzed out guitars, pounding caveman drums and thick ropy bass, they weave a pretty thick, almost dirgey at times, post punky metallic garage rock stomp, but it's the vocals that seal the deal, a wild feral howl, falling right between Rick Froberg of Drive Like Jehu / Hot Snakes and Mudhoney's Mark Arm, plenty of vitriol and swagger, and a paint peeling yowl that perfectly compliments Food, chug and churn.
Dense loping grooves give way to stripped down tribal workouts, give way to complex mathy jams, which give way to seriously murky, dirge-y, almost Brainbombs-ish sludge, slathered with plenty of squealing Eyehategod style feedback, and all locked into pounding metallic repetition. Some seriously killer garage-y metallic post punk for sure.
Incredible packaging, eye popping cover art, all recycled materials, heavy printed insert, and pressed on INSANELY thick vinyl. And probably pretty limited too.
There is something so self assured about the Fresh & Onlys sound, that really makes them seem like wise old sages in a garage rock scene full of impressionable younguns and wannabe hipsters. Luckily these guys aren't burnt out folks at all, as the sounds they crank out are pretty damn fresh sounding, with enough muscle to hammer those pop chops home, with confidence and enough melody to keep things so entertaining and super rocking. While there are some similarities to label mates Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, there is also an almost old school punk aesthetic a la Mission Of Burma at play in these songs as well as psychedelic undertones that help make the Fresh & Onlys the perfect soundtrack for a nice and drunk and slightly stoned sunny afternoon barbecue.
With a lineup that includes members of Skygreen Leopards, Black Fiction, and 3 Leafs you can hear the excitement in these short blasts of songs, as they are so much different in sound and scope than what most of these folks usually crank out.
Sometimes you can just look at a record and you know it's gonna be good. And oh it's so nice when that gut feeling turns out to be so right on. Such is the case with this record by the unknown to us until now Gala Drop. Something about its tribal psychedelic cover that caught our eye so we rushed to play it and ever since we've been totally hooked. Deep and hazy electronics and dubbed out percussion creating a sound like Four Tet and Tussle jamming at a seance for King Tubby. So subtly psychedelic and trippy with sounds that melt, linger and pulsate with such sizzling perfection. At times we're even hearing a sound like Heldon doing dub. Wow.
The first half of the record is all instrumental and then the last few tracks have really nice, icy cool vocals that play out more like an extra instrument then an actual voice. We even hear hints of the spaciest sides of Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Experimental Audio Research) as well as a possible Magma / Christian Vander influence. This Portuguese trio has found a way to make dubbed out sounds that reveal themselves in such swirling patterns and compelling color. So good!
As much as some of us love grind, we definitely don't get enough grind on the list. This split cd, released we think to coincide with a Japanese tour, features unknown to us until now Japanese grinders Gesewa, and SF grindlords Utter Bastard, who since have broken up, but who happen to feature aQ pal Roberto behind the kit.
Gesewa definitely hit the spot, the songs mostly clocking in at less than 30 seconds, aren't so much blazing fast, although there are bursts of extreme grind, instead, Gesewa are of the weirdo, pounding metallic what-the-fuck school of grind, sharing more in common with say Bathtub Shitter than Unholy Grave. Lurching start stop arrangements, plenty of D-beat pound, wild hysterical dueling vocals, one grunty and low, the other shrieky and high, the guitars downtuned and chuggy, plenty of buzz and chaotic noise drenched thrashing, pretty awesome stuff.
Utter Bastard are much more technical and heavy than their twisted and bizarre Japanese compatriots, and tend toward a more classical grind sound, pounding and relentless, the guitars frenzied and furious, the drums pounding and blasting, with mathy complex arrangements, but UB too offer up some bizarre dueling vocals, only here and there, but for the most part, they chug and churn, spewing out some seriously crusty classic American grind. Rad stuff for sure. Too bad they're no more.
Beautifully designed cd as well, super striking layout, with liner notes and lyrics inside.
Gorgeous new album of sprawling abstract ambience from this mysterious trio, featuring one member of Pan American and also Necks drummer Tony Buck, and it's on Flingco which in the past has brought us lps by outsider black metal horde Wrnlrd and buzz heavy dronesters Cristal (plus the guy who runs Flingco used to run Kranky!). Phew, pretty bad ass and we haven't even gotten to the music yet!
And the music here is truly strange, delicate, spacious, spare, minimal, but lush and expansive, The Necks is not a bad jumping off point, there is a sort of cyclical feel to the dronemusic here, Bucks drumming is similarly restrained and abstract, offering up a steady stream of snare skitter, or softly billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, using percussion to create more layers of drone, while the rest of the band coax warm, soft focus swells from their instruments, the players creating a moody ebb and flow, chiming notes and bits of melody drift along the slow moving sonic currents, the whole side unfurling in gorgeous hazy slow motion.
The flip side is even more dark and minimal, again, the focus is on deep bell like tones, the subtle interactions of the notes, the incidental melodies, a warm bleary eyed murk, that grows deeper and deeper, until it's more felt than heard, which is when the percussion becomes the focal point again, a muted cacophony of thumps, a flurry of chimes, the click and clatter of wood on wood, eventually fading out, leaving just a smear of ultra low drift. So nice.
And while they last, we have the SUPER LIMITED version, only 100 copies made, that come with a dvd-r, featuring a live video mix recorded at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in 2007, a cool video that accompanied the band, sourced from manipulated found footage with a live analog VHS loop mix.
Oh yeah, each lp comes with a download card, so you can get a digital version for your computer!
Musical missive number two (or three if you count the sidelong Fear Falls Burning remix from a few years back) from Harvestman, the cosmic folk space raga alter ego of Neurosis' Steve Von Till.
The first Harvestman record, A Grave Is A Grim Horse, was a dizzying confluence of delicate seventies British style folk, shimmery spaced out drift, and glacial doomdrone sprawl, a constantly evolving, organic song suite that seemed to exist in some glorious blissed out otherworld. On In A Dark Tongue, the glimmering strands of traditional folk music that tethered the first record become even more tenuous. Before, even at its spaciest, Harvestman seemed grounded and earthbound, certainly with an eye to the stars, but the sounds evoking frosty mountainsides, deep forests, blackened skies, as much as strange shapes in the heavens and mysterious galaxies, the soundtrack to a strange terrestrial world, lit by the contrails of mysterious bodies streaking across the heavens.
Like A Grave Is A Grim Horse, In A Dark Tongue is also a weathered megalithic sonic artifact of an unknowable culture, its symbols obscure yet magnetic, calling you into communion with its ancient spirit. Enduring, unnerving, moving. Evoking arcane rites, cold hazy sunrises, a god/dess visible only in the massive wheeling patterns of nature and sound. But Dark Tongue moves beyond its predecessor, creating a linked, yet wholly other sonic landscape, at once more abstract and ethereal, but also heavier and more dense, with a black hole intensity woven into the otherwise kaleidoscopic drift, the sound constantly shifting from woozy, bleary eyed psychedelia to loosely propulsive spacekraut groove, fluttery delicate thrum to wild metallic squall, all doused in effects, a warm fuzzy patina of gauzy blur and muted buzz.
It's almost as if the songs here are not so much songs as transmissions, broadcast from a lost land, messages from the original Harvestman, sprawling lysergic druidic rituals, wreathed in the sonic detritus of the sound's endless journey, a message home - or a message lost and drifting endlessly through the black expanses of time.
Recorded in the woods of Idaho, Harvestman draws from the surrounding landscape, unfurling softly buzzing spidery barely there melodies that hover in druggy expanses of Tangerine Dream warped guitar blur, druggy, woozy, hazy, delicate yet dark, an alien psych folk rendered in shades of space rock.
Soft whispery steel string strum gives way to ultra distorted ur-drone ragas, the guitars super saturated and crumbling, leads that sound more like bagpipes than guitars, the sound warped and blown out, but still warm and tranquil.
Fluttering mellotronic flutes flit dreamily around slow shifting sheets of soft swelling chords, smeared with streaks of glitch and whir. Slowly sprawling grooves underpinned by squalls of outer space FX and upper register feedback, all draped over brittle layers of jagged crunch, throbbing motorik beats wrapped in thick swaths of delay, decay and rumble, everything locked into hypnotic lurching loops.
The vocals are sparse, in fact on Dark Tongue the vocals creep to the surface on only one track, the brooding expansive "By Wind And Sun." Von Till's raspy croon, equal parts weathered Tom Waits-ian bellow and Neurosis style metallic howl, rough and raw, but still soulful and dramatic, a haunting ritualistic chant, although as the song progresses, Von Till's voice begins to transform and splinter into strange fragmented shapes, the various shards sent spinning into the ether, gradually evolving into another washed out and heavily effected layer of sound, that seems to melt into the swirling and whirling sounds all around it.
There's even one track with what sounds like a Koto, super spare and abstract, channeling Eastern classical music, but layered with slivers of minor key guitar growl, the whole thing eventually erupting into a malfunctioning electronic freakout. The whole record a constantly shifting sprawl of electric guitars and synthesizers, dulcimers and ring modulators, loops and vocals, delay and distortion. Members of the Grails and Om contribute, but here they play acolytes to Von Till's high priest, together invoking the spirit of German Oak, Amps For Christ, Can, Six Organs Of Admittance, SUNN))), Faust, Growing, Amon Duul, their sonic shadows dancing on the looming stones assembled in the flickering firelight, beneath a sky of diamond and obsidian.
In A Dark Tongue is a gorgeous slow burning psychedelic song cycle, smoldering minor key epics, the sounds lustrous and organic, the guitars viscous and virulent, the atmosphere murky and mysterious, all the while strangely sun dappled and dreamlike. Strings soar and sing, melodic fragments are hurled into the abyss, monolithic guitar drones flow into fields of ephemeral stasis, a sound not heavy so much as darkly effulgent.
The two longest tracks appear to be the space rock centerpieces, channeling the extended heart-of-the-sun outros of Hawkwind and the smoked out stomp of old Monster Magnet into classic krautrock heaviness, each a mesmerizing soundtrack to some seemingly and perhaps ultimately doomed mission into the unknown, both rife with relentless rhythms, roiling psych drone tumult and thick warbly synths, underpinning moody meandering melodies and frictive soft focus textures.
While Harvestman most definitely exists within an esteemed sonic brotherhood, the sound here most definitely transcends, Von Till proving a master of more than massive pummeling heaviness, displaying a flair for the delicate, the tenebrous, the contemplative and the hallucinatory, having created with In A Dark Tongue a sound both portentous and elegiac, an arcane and esoteric bit of beauty, of dark hued mystery, of folk flecked abstraction and churning leviathan heft. A breathtaking and expansive glimpse beyond the firmament, into the soul of a sound, where the already blurred lines between drone and doom and drift and psych and kraut and space cease to exist at all.
Other RIYL: Expo '70, La Otracina, Acid Mothers Temple, and the myriad of underground cd-r drone / drift / psych combos�
It almost doesn't seem right to review a PJ Harvey record so soon after it has been released. She makes such rich and emotionally layered albums, which often require repeated listening to truly fall in love with, but then you know you'll spend a lifetime with them.
Her last outing, White Chalk, found her ditching the guitar and using piano as her main instrument, singing in a higher register and creating her most challenging album yet, filled with a haunting sense of devastation and beauty. It's a record that brings tears and stops us in our tracks everytime we hear it.
Pairing up with longtime collaborator John Parish for their second full on co-written album together, A Woman A Man Walked By really works as an album displaying the full spectrum of PJ Harvey's abilities. There are the full on enraged rockers, the delicate eerie serenades, the darkly romantic and sinister ballads, all the sounds Harvey has explored manage to be present at different times during the album, while still working as a complete and linked songsuite, a truly coherent journey from start to finish. Parish's playing is immaculate, laying down an intricate insturmental backdrop that allows Harvey's voice to soar with emotion yet also giving enough nuance so that the songs are able to open up and breathe. While the record has only been out a couple weeks, some of us have managed to already get in practically a lifetime of listens, as it's not left our stereo since it came out. PJ Harvey's work demands that you as a listener invest some time and energy and emotion and goddamn you are paid back tenfold when you do. Totally stunning!
Also now reissued on vinyl.
Funkadelic guitarist (of "Maggot Brain" fame) steps out solo, 1977. Includes funkadelicized covers of "California Dreamin'" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"!
Some of us who hadn't heard The Hospitals before always assumed they were just some ordinary garage rock band, at least based on the context of how we had heard about them or flyers we had seen, but when we finally got to hear Hairdryer Peace we quickly discovered that something much more fucked up and unique was at play!
This ain't no garage rock, in fact we think most folks into your ordinary punky garage rock wouldn't know what to do with this record and that's a very good thing. Dense with layers of fuzz, junk and some serious noise, The Hospitals have created an album that is always just on the verge of self-destruction and which often erupts into something brilliant just when you thought the ship was about to go down.
This is some full on weirdo-rock, we hear hints of the most extreme lo-fi wonder of the New Zealand scene as well as the freakout psychedelics of the Japanese underground. Jandek on meth playing High Rise covers?! A pumped up Pumice joining forces with The Shining Path, Black Dice and Excepter!? The Skaters covering the first Comets On Fire album?! If you can start to imagine any of those scenarios then you start getting an idea of the charged and bizarre world in which Hospitals are operating. We slept on this album when it came out last year and you may have seen it listed as the number 3 record of the year picked by the Bible of the avant underground, The Wire. While a cd release of the album is in the works, this is your last chance to snag a copy of the vinyl as the band is down to it's last batch. Get it while you can!
Rockadrome's Vintage label has been on a roll of late, delving into the misty, musty, mystic proto-metal past to find some heavy holy grails - first and foremost, our recent Record Of The Week, 1972's self-titled album by Jerusalem! Also a reissue from New Zealand heavies Human Instinct, and now this, the eagerly awaited yet ultra obscure collection of previously unreleased tracks from a '70s Scottish band called Iron Claw. Well, previously unreleased except for bootlegs, which accounts for the anticipation with which we looked forward to this fully authorized, carefully compiled disc. Iron Claw never managed to put out an album in their lifetime, but they did record quite a few studio demos circa 1970-1974, which is what you'll hear here. And yes the Claw is HEAVY.
We've heard plenty of bands over the years who have tried to sound like Black Sabbath in various ways. A lot of our favorites in fact, being as into doom metal as we are. But before Witchfinder General and Saint Vitus and Trouble, before Candlemass and Cathedral, before Sleep and Sheavy and Electric Wizard and Witchcraft... there was Iron Claw. They didn't grow up listening to Black Sabbath albums. No, this is a band who fell under Black Sabbath's spell after seeing 'em play... in 1969! That was *before* the first Sabbath album came out, please note. (Which brings up another interesting story - apparently Iron Claw's bassist had actually recorded that Sabbath gig - and not long ago made a pretty penny selling the tapes to Ozzy and Sharon, it being the earliest known live Sabbath material extant.)
Pretty soon after this "revelation" of seeing Sabbath, the mostly teenaged blues rock combo Iron Claw became what must have been the world's first Black Sabbath tribute band, doing Sabbath covers, while simultaneously working on original material for the first time. So the influence of Sabbath over Iron Claw's own songs is pretty strong, especially in the guitar dep't, less so with the vocals. But for heaviness and a general doomy vibe, Iron Claw are clearly indebted to Iommi & Co., while also reminding us of such bands as T2, May Blitz, Nazareth, and Budgie. Maybe some Grand Funk Railroad too. This was heavy stuff, especially for the era. Heck you've got to admit that the band name (which comes from the lyrics to King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man") is pretty darn metal. IRON CLAW!!! Plus, good grief, they did a song called "Skullcrusher" in 1970 when everybody else (except for Sabbath) was all peace and love and flowers and beads. Inspired by Sabbath they sure were, but they get credit for being one of the first, taking it (down?) to the next level of underground downer rock worship and metallic menace. Later on when bands like Judas Priest and then the whole NWOBHM thing took over, these guys must have known they'd been ahead of the curve.
The sixteen tracks here span several years and several slightly differing Iron Claw lineups, and we were impressed by all of 'em, from their earliest, rawest recordings like the lumbering, blown-out "Clawstrophobia" (about the mental breakdown of someone stuck in an elevator!) to the riffy blitz of "Crossrocker" to their occasional attempts at something more 'pop' (but still heavy, even with horns, as on "Loving You").... all the way to the proggier final phase of Iron Claw's existence, on tracks like "Winter", with flute, yay! There's also a bit o' harmonica on "Strait Jacket" (a la "The Wizard"). But mostly, the Claw is all crunching guitar distortion, pounding drums and wailing vocals. Plus, psychedelic freakiness abounds in interludes (like the backwards Mellotron at the start of "Pavement Artist" and the spooky tripped out FX going into "Devils" - a song inspired by the band seeing the premiere of the Ken Russell movie of the same name at the Edinburgh Film Festival).
It's all pretty badass early doom action. Seriously we think folks into Sabbath (of course), Witchcraft and suchlike are gonna be blown away by a lot of this. And it's a really nicely done disc, the cd booklet featuring photos and several pages of band history, along with lyrics and notes on each track written by one of the surviving Iron Claw dudes (sadly, a couple of the members have passed away already). Sound-wise, it varies, generally lo-fi but pretty decent for demos, and not nearly so rough as that Bedemon disc ferinstance. No complaints there. Way to go Rockadrome, again! Now that they've unearthed the Claw, perhaps we can look forward to a sequel second cd of archival live material - we'd love to hear Iron Claw's cover of "War Pigs" with complete with their use of Ozzy's original, alternate lyrics....
This just might be our favorite new 'noise' record. The key to that statement being those little marks around the word noise. This is most definitely noisy. But it's not pure noise. It's textural. It's droney. Somehow it's weirdly melodic too. Hard to explain, it's a big ol' massive slab of grinding guitar drone, laced with shards of static, and streaks of high end skree, the low end undulates and pulses, creating a distinct, but super subtle melody, a dense rumbling support for all the high end weirdness happening o'er the top.�
Josh Lay for those who may not know, is in fact the drummer for fucked up avant noise doom combo Cadaver In Drag, and this here is what happens when you let THAT kind of drummer make his own record. Not sure what he's using, guitar, synth, 4-track, shortwave radio, effects. We like to think the cover of the cd is an actual photo of the recording taking place, a beat up old console turntable, two old blown speakers, a cow skull, a half drunk bottle of booze, and an upside down cross. Cuz, c'mon, put al that stuff together, it would have to sound a little something like this, At least we'd hope so.�
Two tracks, the first, the title track is the above mentioned 'noise', a gloriously heavy blown out crumbling damaged stretch of coruscating sound, weird that something so obviously harsh could be so listenable, but it really is. At one point some creepy horn comes in, maybe it's a synth, but it sounds like a horn, it blats for a second, then just lays down and forms another layer of buzz, tones warble and wail, almost like some radio shack built siren, and gets all tangled up in that thick viscous buzz. We literally can't stop listening to it. So much so, that it's only right now, that we actually made it to the second track, which is kick ass also, but much more subdued, a weird stuttery loop, locked into an endless rhythm, while beneath, the same deep ominous low end from the opening track buzzed and reverberates, as the track progresses, more and more sounds enter the mix, a microscopic symphony of beeps and buzzes, squeaks and squiggles, all just adding to the general dreamy noise drenched din. AWESOME!
And unfortunately LIMITED TO ONLY 80 COPIES! And we got all they had left so act fast...
While Bradford Cox is Deerhunter's front man and charismatic focal point, there is no denying that his bandmate Locket Pundt plays a major roll in Deerhunter as well, with his blissful guitar playing and daydream vocals helping define the band's sound. Now the rest of the world will get a chance to see what a talent he is with the release of his solo project, Lotus Plaza.
Much like the way Bradford Cox was able to explore more of the ambient textures of Deerhunter with his Atlas Sound record, Pundt seems to be using Lotus Plaza to really concentrate on exploring a swirling blissed out orbit that Deerhunter songs only rarely enter, although when they do, we so often wish they would stay there and luxuriate in those far out sounds. Taking cues from classic shoegaze records like Slowdive's Pygmalion and of course My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, as well as some of Kranky's early records by bands like Labradford, Amp, Windy & Carl, etc., Floodlight Collective is a washed out and blissful affair incorporating melody and song structure but ultimately more concerned with creating mood and ambience. A bit like some of the newer M83 stuff, if it was perhaps a bit less produced and instead was created as a soundtrack for bleary eyed late nights staring at the stars...
So nice!
The Dark Places Of The Earth is a collection of re-compositions using some of the source material that went into Lustmord's 2008 album [Other]. Where that album featured the guitar work of Aaron Turner and King Buzzo set amidst a signature dark ambience, The Dark Places Of The Earth is a magnificent piece of black-clad minimalism without any hint of those guitars in the mix, which weirdly seems to make the sounds that much more abject and haunting. And even for an artist known for bleak sustained tones and psychologically charged stillness, this album is particularly sparse. In the gaping silences which linger around the slow-burning arcs of tectonic rumblings, Lustmord seems to be tapping more into the highly spatialized minimalism of late period Morton Feldman. Seriously. As hard as it may seem to imagine Feldman adorning a black leather trenchcoat and paratrooper jump boots, that's pretty much where this album ends up. Much of the sonic palette has been reduced to a few recurring sounds originating from [Other] and quite possibly from previous albums like The Place Where The Black Stars Hang and The Monstrous Soul. Billowing reverberations appear as distant vapor trails that streak against blackened skies, with those huge growling notes that have appeared in every single Lustmord album since Heresy to lend a suitably Lovecraftian air of horror. Lustmord cycles through these varying elements with strategies of repetition and difference, articulating these chromatic variations of in degrees of blackness. Very subtle drones and nervous vibrations occasionally surpass the event horizon of Lustmord's emptiness, and on a few tracks, the air-lock compression clanks reprise from [Other] alongside the crackling of frozen tundra with cold silences spilling out everywhere else. Easily the best work Lustmord has produced since The Place Where The Black Stars Hang.
Known as the Lion of Zimbabwe, Thomas Mapfuno is one of the most popular African musicians and next to Fela Kuti, one of the most politically outspoken. Leading a string of bands from the sixties to the eighties, Mapfumo is probably best known for creating and popularizing a form of African music called "Chimurenga" (meaning "struggle") that took its roots from the traditional rural Shona music of his upbringing but fusing it to Western rock instrumentation and styles. This mainly involved transcribing the sounds of the mbira to the electric guitar and singing in the Shona language instead of English. This also helped to disguise the inflammatory anti-government sentiments of his songs, but not for long. Wrongly imprisoned and his music banned from state controlled radio, the government couldn't stop his music being played in the discos and there was enough protest to warrant his eventual release. Having helped oust the government with the installation of free elections, Mapfumo helped Mugabe come to power only to later sing out against him and be forced to flee to America where he currently lives.
Hokoyo! (Watch Out!) from 1979, recorded with the Acid Band for this one time release, was Mapfumo's first outing musically and introduced the Chimurenga style after recording music for years influenced by Western pop music. It's also what made the government censor his music and throw him into the prison camps without charge. The Chimurenga vibe is definitely laid back, having more in common with Jamaican reggae than Kuti's Afro-funk extrapolations. Not as forceful as much political music can be, but like Brazil's Tropicalia movement, the power is in its popularity and giving the people their own voice!
Known as the Lion of Zimbabwe, Thomas Mapfuno is one of the most popular African musicians and next to Fela Kuti, one of the most politically outspoken. Leading a string of bands from the sixties to the eighties, Mapfumo is probably best known for creating and popularizing a form of African music called "Chimurenga" (meaning "struggle") that took its roots from the traditional rural Shona music of his upbringing but fusing it to Western rock instrumentation and styles. This mainly involved transcribing the sounds of the mbira to the electric guitar and singing in the Shona language instead of English. This also helped to disguise the inflammatory anti-government sentiments of his songs, but not for long. Wrongly imprisoned and his music banned from state controlled radio, the government couldn't stop his music being played in the discos and there was enough protest to warrant his eventual release. Having helped oust the government with the installation of free elections, Mapfumo helped Mugabe come to power only to later sing out against him and be forced to flee to America where he currently lives.
Gwindingwi Rine Shumba ("Lion In The Bush") from 1980 was released the same year that Free Elections took place and it's with the band that Mapfumo has remained with the longest. The first song "Shumba" is the stunner with a melancholy amplified mbira sound. The Chimurenga feel is definitely laid back, having more in common with Jamaican reggae than Kuti's Afro-funk extrapolations. Not as forceful as much political music can be, but like Brazil's Tropicalia movement, the power is in its popularity and giving the people their own voice!
The Modular Set's second ep Spots & Notches travels a considerably more linear path than 2006's Beached On The Half Landing. It takes the listener from gentle droniness crafted from sample loops, keyboards and a smattering of saxophone and minimal drum strikes into progressively more kinetic and angular territory in which guitar, bass and drums weigh in more prominently. The ep's opening track "Ossicone" starts in the soothingly hazy shadows, but by the fifth and final "Flehmen Response" it has grown sharp jazzy angles, flourishing flashes of cymbals and post-rock percussive rhythms. Released on the always solid Mission District indie label Howell's Transmitter (also home to Charles Atlas, Black Fiction, and Ray's Vast Basement)!
The classic proto-punk record made by these weirdo American GI's in Germany circa '66, now reissued on vinyl. Not too many in stock...
Here's the second pressing cd-r of a tour ep that these two New England noise+drone artists self-produced during their 2008 East Coast into Midwest tour. Nope, we never got any of that first edition; and perhaps if you didn't catch them tearing it up in Columbus, Ohio, this one might be new to you as well. We've been longtime fans of Brendan Murray's work, which has steadily developed into a very confident brand of minimalism thanks to such work as Wonders Never Cease and Commonwealth. Shiflet's numerous contributions to the American noise community have been splattered on cd-rs from every nook and cranny you could imagine, including his own imprint Gameboy.
For Sentimental Gentlemen, the two weld together each others aesthetics with remarkable panache. The first track is pretty much what you might expect, as Murray's arching compositional strategies couple with Shiflet's seering tactility, which is somewhat softened from such couplings with 16 Bitch Pile-Up and Carlos Giffoni that nonetheless is graced with an electrocutionist's touch. Shortwave radio static and cracked ether highly charged with electricity hang amidst harmonically unsettled sustained tones that slowly build over 15 minutes with phase pattern flutter. The second piece glibby entitled "How's Your Late 90's?" snaps into an abraded electro-acoustic chunk of clipped signals above a bed of low end sawtooth waves and motorized oscillations, that's much more on par with some of the hand built circuits that Joe Colley has managed to abuse over the years. Great stuff all around, and limited edition to 150 copies to boot.
It's been four years since we last heard any new material from Russia's mighty Old Wainds, and while our ravenous hunger was slightly satiated by the recent domestic reissues of their Religion of Spiritual Violence and Scalding Coldness albums, we were going crazy wondering what the band was up to. Now, as spring rolls in, the Wainds prolong winter a bit longer by unleashing their furious fourth record, Death Nord Kult. In accordance with the band's reputation, the album mirrors the frozen climate of their homeland in a way that only the truest of the true could produce. It is cold, harsh, and completely relentless. Pretty much all the ingredients you want in a black metal record.
This band captivated us from day one, based on an ability to bring to mind many of black metal's greats while still managing to sound unlike anything else. They possess a sound that is not "weird" or "avant garde", but one that remains striking nonetheless, and while their earliest material sounds totally bizarre and not of this world, due in large part to the atrocious/awesome lo-fi recording quality, Scalding Coldness was an absolute black metal masterpiece, merging super thick guitars and titanic low tuned drums with a keen attention to structure that seemed to link the songs together as one gigantic movement. Death Nord Kult is the logical progression, finding the band now a duo, along with "permanent session drummer" Izbor of the similarly asskicking NAV, and the overall sound is thrashier and more immediate than before. Sonically, it is the band's thickest and most polished (not Cradle of Filth polished, don't worry) album to date. The fairly straightforward production pretty much gives you the feeling of being in a room with the band as they lay waste. With a more substantial presence in the mix than on past releases, the drums pound ferociously, while strained, guttural vocals croak over dense walls of seasick riffs. Saving a few brief moments of murky ambience, the album continues with this manic intensity right to the end. The riffs are hypnotic and full of melancholy, and the throat shredding Russian vocals provide a strange, uncomfortable feeling that could as easily come from another planet as Hyperborean Russia. Indeed, this band's foreignness is definitely one of the coolest things about them, and while many black metal bands go to cartoonish extremes to prove how evil they are, Old Wainds lyrical themes, here thankfully translated, focus on what they know: bleak, unforgiving wilderness. Like the lone figure crossing the frozen terrain on the cover, Old Wainds are able to masterfully convey a sense of isolation and hopelessness under the crushing power of nature. In a world of petty scene politics and half-assed posers, they are as real as it gets.
Establishing the mood of the album with opener "Storm-Whip", Old Wainds launch into a lightspeed assault that quickly switches to a midtempo gallop with crunchy, muted riffing and queasy thrashing moments. "Cruel Black Dead" features classic thrash riffs that are played with such speed and fury that they unlock strange harmonic tones as occasional dual vocals create the awesome chantlike effect (which, call us crazy, at times sounds almost like Tuvan throat singing) utilized heavily on Scalding Coldness. "Bloodstained" is a bit like being forced to endure the most unpleasant rollercoaster ride of your life, throwing you around like a ragdoll over the band's punishing attack, stopping for a few seconds before heading into one of the best metal moments of the year, a midtempo breakdown that gradually builds in intensity with insect riffing, noticeable clean bass (whoa, actual bass presence on a black metal record!), HUGE drumming and tortured demon howls. It's moments like this where you realize how absolutely unstoppable this band is, a notion that is carried on in "Born on the Freezing Dark", an impossibly fast trip through the desolate Russian wilderness with Old Wainds as your nefarious guides, churning out thick layers of puke-sounding guitar riffs (think Craft) over unbelievable drumming.
Once again, these Russians have effortlessly showed us how things are done. Though the staunchly underground Old Wainds may not be the first band to come to mind for many metalheads, they should be. They're one of the best, something that is only further reinforced by the unqualified triumph that is Death Nord Kult. Those lucky enough to hear Old Wainds will no doubt realize that when you write songs this devastating, your status is secure: you're ETERNAL.
Oh how we've fallen in love with this band from New York. Not only are they one of the cutest bands around, but they have beautiful pop chops as well, making them not just nice to look at but so totally fun and engaging to listen to.
Their full length has become one of those records we've listened to more then almost anything else this year and is sure to find its way on to many of our year end favorite lists. Their take on the Smiths / Creation Records dreamy jangle pop with a punch is not only endearing, but also addictive, as we've grown to love their songs more and more with repeated listens. So if you already have the full length, you already have one of these two songs, the great, infectious stand out track "Young Adult Friction" but luckily the 'b' side which is a non album track called "Romana" makes this slab of wax well worth it anyway, especially for those of us utterly smitten by these Pure At Heart Pains. That track displays the more midtempo, daydreamy and lingering side of the band. The 7" comes pressed on cool reddish colored vinyl.
David Parsons is not as well known outside of New Age circles as say Deuter or Kitaro, but in the case of this New Zealand artist who's been releasing music since the early eighties, obscurity in that particular genre is an asset rather than a liability. Parsons makes the kind of New Age music we really dig a lot around here, the kind that exceeds the boundaries of the genre into areas of experimental drone, pastoral Kosmiche music and 20th century composition. Like Eberhard Schoener (another krauty 'New Ager' we love), Parsons is known mostly for a cross-cultural fusion of Eastern and Western musical forms that feature lots of ethnic instruments and field recordings, on Earthlight, Parsons only uses synthesizers, where he programmed in his own sounds built completely from scratch. Deep bottom-heavy Ur-drones, and soft phased in high tones converge on fields of repetitive gamelan-ish arppegiations and filtered washes of bell tones. Really Nice!
