Wow! Bay Area troubadour Mr. Garrett Pierce has continued to nurture and refine his songcraft in a big big way. All Masks blossoms and flourishes onwards from his previous two releases (a now out of print self-titled cdr from 2004 and the full length beauty Like A Moth which was released on Crossbill Records in 2006). Some of the songs on his latest album verge on the epic yet still maintain his intimate earthy heart. The core of his composed, yet at ease music is solidly rooted in the traditions of good ol' Americana, but this time he's incorporated some '60s pop styled gently rockin' sway (check out "Tonight"!) and gorgeous orchestral embellishments (as heard on the opening track "Your Feet In Wet Cement") to very tasteful good effect. He's fine lyricist too. From his pen flows richly evocative poetic phrases and fully realized story telling. Wonderful! Actually if you dug his fellow singer/songwriter friend Matt Bauer's last album The Island Moved In The Storm which also had a similar 'coming into one's own' feel this is very much for you (psst, Mr. Bauer makes a banjo and vocal guest appearance on one song)! Recommended!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
That's right, it's that time again, another killer blast from the past courtesy of everybody's new favorite all vinyl reissue label, Mississippi! This time it's record number two from Portland's new wave garage punk trio the Rats, maybe better known as the band of Fred and Toody Cole who would of course go on to form the much loved Dead Moon.
Intermittent Signals offers up more of the same synth laced punk rock garage rock stomp found on their s/t debut, maybe a wee bit tighter and more polished, but still heavy and snotty and snarly and swaggery, a definite old AC/DC vibe happening too, killer riffing, tons of hooks, wild drumming, Fred's drawled punk rock vox, Toody's more frenetic yelp, all crammed into short sharp blasts of hooky catchy punk rock power pop genius.
Original drummer Rod Rat guests on a couple tracks, he ended up committing suicide not long afterwards, drummer Sam Henry would go on to drum for the Wipers as well as Napalm Beach. Another essential slice of PDX punk rock history.
And as with all Mississippi releases, lovingly packaged, super thick jackets, nice heavy vinyl, and this one even includes a flyer advertising a pretty kick ass show, the Rats and The Fastbacks! Admission price: only TWO BUCKS!!!
Red Red Meat barely get a mention on the aQuarius website, mostly in reviews of post-RRM outfit Califone, but as with many bands, that has more to do with timing than anything, predating as they did our New Arrivals list. If there was time, we can think of hundreds of bands we'd love to revisit and give their due. And Red Red Meat would definitely be at the top of the list for some of us. So this deluxe expanded reissue of RRM's 3rd, and arguably best, record makes now as good a time as any to gush a bit about one of our favorite records of the nineties.
When Sub Pop began expanding its focus beyond grunge, signing all sorts of bands, from pop to country, slowcore to garage rock, they definitely lost a lot of their hardcore buy-anything-on-Sub-Pop fans. But for many of us, no matter how into the grunge years we were (and believe you me, some of us were WAY into grunge), this shift marked the beginning of Sub Pop's transition into more than a regional label focused on a single sound, and is precisely why Sub Pop continues to thrive while so many other labels fell by the wayside. Among those un-traditionally Sub Pop sounding bands were groups like Codeine, Rein Sanction, Hardship Post, Jale and Red Red Meat, all of which ended up loving as much as if not more than all the classic grunge mainstays.
But Red Red Meat, there was just really something special about these guys. They were sort of country, definitely fitting loosely into the burgeoning alt-country movement, but they were so much more, their twang was rooted in a sort of timeless rock, but at the same time it was infused with a druggy warble, wreathed in hazy swirls of whirs and drones, the guitars were murky and muddy, the slide guitar slippery slithery, frontman Tim Rutili's vocals were weary and washed out, emotional, but laid back and slurred, perfectly complimenting the band's warped warble.
Bunny Gets Paid, originally released in 1995, found the band pushing their sound even further out, the sound still recognizably Red Red Meat, but from record opener "Carpet Of Horses", the band seemed determined to create some sort of 'classic' bit of drone drenched country blues. Lazily strummed acoustic guitars draped over a whirring fuzzy pulsing drone, the vocals appropriately melancholy, rough and ragged, allowed to drift over the slow shifting drone beneath, almost no percussion, very little structure, the song a living breathing bit of spaced out dream folk, incredible (and incredibly subtle) melodies, a killer main hook, all left to just sort of shimmer and hover and sprawl, sun baked and druggy, like some sort of drugfolk raga, definitely prescient, unwittingly laying out the blueprint for new weird America or freak folk or whatever you want to call it a decade later.
But Bunny Gets Paid is not all sprawling oozing melting slow motion blues, the band do rock, "Chain Chain Chain" is some classic sounding nineties indie rock and roll, reminding us of a more classic rock sounding Grifters, but still not losing any of their wooze or warble, the record doused in effects, guitars warped, alternatingly crunchy and jagged, bluesy and ooze-y. "Buttered" is a total heartbreaker, thick steel string strum and twang, subtle strings, effects dappled ambience, thick swaths of whirring drone, the whole thing managing to sound intimate and bedroomy, but also epic and timeless.
The classic track here though has to be "Gauze", a moody minor key lope, so laid back and soporific, the guitars spidery and translucent, the vocals seemingly an afterthought, the drums a simple shuffle, lush and intimate and hushed, until the chorus, another gut wrenching heartbreaker, the vocals wrapped in almost Butthole Surfers FX, but done so deftly, that instead of sounding weird or fucked up, it just sound perfect, delivering a total break up /make up mix tape refrain to die for. And so it goes. "Idiot Son" is a the Rolling Stones filtered through nineties indie rock and busted four tracks (with more nods to the Grifters), "Bunny Gets Paid" is another meandering druggy droney drift, disembodied vocals, fragmented guitars and skittery percussion, and another killer hook buried in the murk and mire, and the record continues to unfurl, in all its hazy, lazy, dreamy, wasted, late afternoon, too many beers and broken hearts glory, finishing off with a 2 minute bit of near perfect bedroom folk, peppered with singing strings, reverbed piano, all wrapped around Rituli's gorgeously weathered croon.
Absolutely one of our all time favorite records ever. There's a whole bonus disc too, which we'll get to in a second, but the record itself is reason enough to pick this up, especially if somehow you've never heard it. Anyone into Califone, Calexico, Souled American, Giant Sand, Neko Case, Ryan Adams, should absolutely pick this up, and any one into the current crop of freak folk and drone psych who aren't adverse to actual songs, might dig this too.
The bonus disc of b-sides, alternate versions and covers, makes this essential, even for folks like us who already have it. A 4-track demo of "Chain Chain Chain", less rocking, all stripped down and appropriately lo-fi and languid, a single version of "Idiot Son" that finds the song stretched out even further. Record opener "Carpet Of Horses" gets reworked into a pounding dirge, way more rocking and heavy than the original, but still just as darkly evocative, and FOUR unreleased tracks, one a weird dub workout, the other three wonderfully weird warbly rockers (one rife with horns) that don't sound at all out of place alongside the rest of Bunny Gets Paid.
And the super iconic doll's head in the tipped over glass cover art gets a deluxe reimagining, a massive fold out multi panel digipak inside a swank slipcover, with a thick booklet, jammed with photos, original covers and artwork, as well as some newly penned liner notes from band members and Red Red Meat fans including members of the Shins, the Fruit Bats, Modest Mouse and others!
The long awaited return of Finnish black metal weirdos Ride For Revenge, and when we say weird, we do in fact mean WEIRD. We sort of forget about these guys when we're going on about the most fucked and damaged black metal ever, and maybe that's because their sound ends up being SO fucked up and freaky that it almost ceases being black metal entirely, instead, they seem to traffic in some sort of bass and drums, downtuned doom dirge, a series of hypnotic loops, locked riffs, all completely fractured and crumbling and confusional.
In the review of the last RfR record, King Of Snakes, we mentioned Amphetamine Reptile, and Halo Of Flies, Winter and diSEMBOWLEMENT, Gore and Circle. On Wisdom Of The Few, they continue on in that same baffling blackened trajectory resulting in a sound that off the top of our heads sounds a little like Om and Faxed Head. Right. Most metalheads we'd imagine will not be pleased, as this is seriously wacked, more textural and rhythmic than riffy and buzzy, it again sounds mostly like just bass and drums, but that's once you make it past the lurching, stumbling, guitar intro, streaks of feedback are all tangled up with a strangled reverb drenched guitar, playing out some sort of fractured atonal riff, the entire thing peppered with bits of hiss and glitch, before finally exploding into the lo-fi dirgery of the title track. A super murky muddy looped riff, pounding drums, rumbling low end, and some croaked demonic gurgles, the sound is super in the red, the drum fills peg the needles, but it still manages to sound muddy and subterranean. The drums and bass (or extremely downtuned guitar) locked into a mantra-like loop, the cymbals super hot, a relentless crash and sizzle, again reminding us of a blackened super minimal Gore. But things get even weirder. The clouds of hiss and glitch from the opening track return, and suddenly the sound is not metal so much as some sort of abstract doomy drone. A bass riff pounded out over and over and over, while around it, static crumbles and buzzes, sheets of feedback drift off in the distance, the 'groove' is peppered with little squalls of scrape and crunch, all underpinning a creepy spoken vocal.
The next track is even weirder (or perhaps just as weird), the drums wrapped in weird warped FX, pounding out a simple propulsive beat, wrapped in flanger and phaser, sounding super space-y while all around it, the gurgling demonic vocalist grunts and gurgles, over another totally mesmerizing black groove. Let's not describe the next track as weirder than the one before, cuz it's gonna seem ridiculous after a while, needless to say, it's weird in a different, equally twisted way. A deep whirring rumbling low end, a skittery almost funky krautrock beat, a heavily accented voice speaking ominously and dramatically, the voice switching from speaker to speaker, the drums shifting and subtly speeding up and slowing down, the rumbling drone-y buzz, occasionally revving up, then revving back down. Fucked up for sure, but so creepy and cool.
"Morning Won't Bring A Twinkling Star" is the longest track here, and manages to merge many of RfR's disparate elements into one epic sprawling blackened rhythmscape, a loping drum beat, a woozy seasick bassline, the drums distorted and motorik, the vocals reverbed and haunting, before slipping into a long stretch of warped low end warble and high end sine wave shimmer, before lurching back into blackened action. The record finishes off with a brief soundscape, equal parts distorted crunch, moaning feedback, downtuned flutter, minimal whirring synth, thick doomy buzz and FX drenched warble.
Woah. It's like dipping your head into a garbage disposal grinding up muddy murky chunks of Darkthrone, Aluk Todolo, Gore, Faxed Head, Circle, Urfaust, Geronimo and Lightning Bolt at 16rpm, a utterly demented and genius mix of freaked out, lobotomized black sound, a total mind melting, speaker shredding, ear punishing, minimal post black metal mind fuck. SO FUCKING AWESOME!
Something new from the Dynamophone label, those SF based purveyors of the shimmering-est, hazily atmospheric-est and loveliest sounds from around the globe. Whereas many of their recent releases have been of the drifting soundscape ilk (Fjordne, Abbasi brothers, etc), Rigil's Concertina Heart is an angora soft, dream pop debut. It delivers much more in the way of song structure, but still offers the enveloping warmth and intricate crystalline textural details typical of most releases on the label. The ten tracks are a nicely balanced mix of vocal songs and instrumentals. On the former, hushed lullaby melody vocals are intimately sung by 20 year old British lad Robert Slade as feathery wisps of Ovalesque electronic glitchiness flit about like fireflies dancing with candle flames. Very nice indeed!
For the latest PlusTapes release, the mysteriously monikered Shadow Drifter (aka James Probiega, aka Little Howlin' Wolf) offers three versions of this long form slomo folk-blues epic , "Ol White" recorded at various times between 1968 and 2002. The longest version clocks in at 17 minutes while the shortest hovers around 12. Recorded with just guitar and harmonica and the Drifter's deep slow free associating drawl, he draws upon Greek myths, life on the fringes and other odd bits of tall tale and surreal wordplay. Also included are two versions of "Wooly of The Wild" recorded at different times and one other beautifully haunting track titled "Rose of Silence". Weirdo Americana indeed!
LIMITED AS ALWAYS TO 100 COPIES!!
The first full length from this young SF band is given an admirable launch on the highly regarded Quarterstick label (home to Calexico, Mekons, Shipping News, Rachel's among many other wonderful music makers), and they've really taken flight! Though the band is certainly not new to us, their sound on this debut sure is. Caught us a bit by surprise, in fact! This is a far different from the by-the-books shufflin' slouchy indie rock Sholi of 2006. Indeed, the band has honed their chops and their songcraft quite a bit since their first (also self-titled) three song cd-r that they brought into our shop a mere three years ago almost to the day!
The 43-minute long album's eight songs feature lots of lush, expressive dynamics and post-rock complexities both in melody and rhythm. Solid from start to finish, but definitely check out the opening track "All The We Can See" and "Out Of Orbit". An impressive warm and beautiful 'official' debut!
This is a hard one for us. On one hand we want to gush endlessly and write long paragraphs on how great this cd-r is, but on the other hand, this is a late discovery for us and we're not sure the band will be making any more copies of this. We got the last ten!!!!!! We don't really know too much about this band except they were local and recently relocated to Austin, and they revel in a sound that can be best described as shoegazey stoner country-rock. Thick, warm and gauzy with lots of reverbed slide guitar and heavy psych amp fuzz underscoring the female singer's pretty heavy-lidded and drawling vocals, the songs on Forces remind us of smoky perfumed parlors from a forgotten age. Reminiscent of a fuzzier Mazzy Star or a more heavier slow-rocking Beach House, Silver Pines has taken us all quite by surprise by their majestic grace and atmospheric beauty. So good!! Hopefully this won't be the last we hear from this band. Each cd-r hand silkscreened and colored. We only have ten! and we're not sure we can get more! You have been warned!
We'd been dying to hear more Skin Horse ever since their self released 3 song ep from last year, a killer mix of lurching black doom, mathy post rock, and epic dark ambience.
So here we have one new track (it's a long one though, nearly 14 minutes), and it definitely takes off right where the ep left off. Beginning with a dark brooding slowcore skitter, although it's laced with some super strange warbly downtuned tones, that make the whole thing sound a bit twisted and off kilter. The heaviness builds, as heaviness so often does, but here it just wraps itself around that initial post rocky guitar part instead of obliterating it completely, making for some seriously moody heaviness. Once things get going, the guitars are slathered on thick, and allowed to bow and bend the otherwise straight ahead jams into yet another warped groove, there do seem to be vocals, but they're buried way down in the murk.
About halfway through, Skin Horse shift gears and get super intense and aggro, going all mathy, offering up bursts of ultra tight rock, before splintering into some plodding ultra doom, the vocals a caustic wail, the guitars an oozing black buzz, the drums a massive plod, and just as you're getting into that slow motion groove, they shift gears again and bliss out, the guitars becoming nearly translucent, drifting over a sea of sizzling cymbals, weird bits of sampled preaching, dense grinding effects laden buzz, building to another mathy metallic frenzy, before almost dubbing out into a long, sprawling outro. Killer stuff, definitely need to see these guys pull this off live.
Skin Horse share this two song half hour split with a band called Nanda Devi, who we'd never heard before now, but who definitely seem like a good match for Skin Horse. Their 18 minute epic begins with layered sheets of noise, buried bits of melody and softly strummed guitars, which give way to some surprisingly melodic post rocking, the drums massive and LOUD, the guitars simple and stripped down, swirling and building into some metallic Godspeed territory, in come the howled Neurosisy vocals, but the cool thing is, the guitars are still not heavy or distorted, instead jangling and shimmering and singing and soaring, a good contrast with the raw gruff vocals and the wildly chaotic drumming. They too shift gears part way through, the drums getting all tribal, the guitars getting more angular, and beginning another slow build, until a second guitar swoops in adding all sorts of spaciness to the proceedings. Another bout of howled vocals, and the song unwinds in a flurry of tripped out spaced out swirling whirling epic heaviness. Bad ass. And BOTH bands here come WAY recommended.
Swedish post everything weirdos the Skull Defekts continue to mutate into practically unrecognizable shapes, once we think we have them pegged, they go and change things up drastically and dramatically. Drone Drug was the last Defekts record we reviewed, and as the title might suggest, that record was made up almost entirely of thick snarling buzzy dronemusic, while before that, they veered from rhythmic experimentalism to abstract soundscapery, never making one song long enough to really pin them down.
Yet we were still unprepared for this latest incarnation. The record opens with a weird post punk jam, a looped riff, some pounding tribal drums, streaks of feedback, and some actual singing. At first we were feeling some Black Dice action, mixed with a little Six Finger Satellite, but then in true Defekts fashion they locked into a groove and then hammered away at it, a single part, a killer part, but repeated over and over and over. A sort of post post post rock new wave or something. The second track is more of the same, a buzzy distorted main riff, super tight heavy hitting rhythm, and more singing, reminding us in this instance of Swiss sampling rockers the Young Gods. And that we've come to discover is the Skull Defekts new sound, their current incarnation, is some freaked out druggy and damaged, swaggering new wave garage stomping groove machine, that remains just a little too tweaked, their sound just a little too repetitive and left of center to allow them to fit in, and so they remain freaky fractured underground groove rock alchemists. There are some moments that hint at past incarnations, the chaotic and dense all drum marching band free-for-all of "Unholy Drums For Psychedelic Africa", but especially "Urban Ritual", that unfurls like some fucked up downtempo slowcore Bohren, laced with hiss and glitch, the drums a distant patter, tons of low end, bits of skitter, deeeeeeeeep rumbles, really ominous and creepy, a cool way to finish off, especially after the mesmerizingly hypnotic looped new wave garage stomp that came before. Weird, for sure, but we're still digging it pretty hard... Think Black Dice, Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, that sort of groovy druggy rhythmic trancemusic, but a bit more fucked up and freaked out.
Plus in the liner notes someone gets credit for "shoe styling"... wow!
For a band that's proudly "always on tour" (and have been for the better part of the past 15 years!), the band of Philadelphians known as Stinking Lizaveta don't make it out here to San Francisco nearly often enough, in our opinion! (And when they do, we always request they play an instore here at AQ, just so we get to see 'em twice.) So, not having had the pleasure of attending a Stinking Liz show for far too long, getting in this brand new album is, well, the next best thing. It also might be the best Stinking Liz recording yet. Steve Albini (no slouch) was behind the board for the first five of their albums, but this time 'round they've switched things up production-wise and recorded with heaviness guru du jour Sanford Parker (Pelican, Indian, Buried At Sea, Samothrace, Minsk, Bible Of The Devil, etc.). With more overdubs and a thicker sound, or something, this just immediately impressed sonically. While it's by now commonplace to remark that any studio album from this all-instrumental, more and more metallic "doom-jazz" trio can't quite capture the sweaty, gleeful intensity and exuberance of their live performances (how could they?), this one still certainly excels as an at-home, loud listening experience, revealing subtle nuance of light and shade while also pulverizing massively when they tilt towards the heavier side of that so-called doom-jazz thing. (Really, what are they? They've been rightly welcomed into the metal realm, specifically the stoner/doom scene, but the upright electric bass points to jazz, and they display signifiers of mathrock, postrock, prog, fusion, and crustyhippiepunk as well... let's just say Stinking Lizaveta ROCK and be done with it.)
And even though it's their sixth album, they have no problems conjuring the usual Stinking Liz magic in the songwriting dep't. The feel and finesse of SL's style of tightly wound jams is in full effect, these ten tracks packed with all the power and prettiness we expect: Menacing, calm-before-the-storm moodiness. Surging grooves. Eruptions of exotic, trebly guitar god soloing. Ripping riffage. Dynamic stops and starts. Sheer beauty and sudden complexities.... You get plenty of what we might (confusingly?) term 'Earthless-condensed-and-gone-classical' geetar wailin', wired through the choppy chunky chuggery of song structures that sound like Confessor on SST.
Fans of the band will be seriously chuffed, and if you haven't heard 'em before this would be a fine introduction as any (short of seeing 'em live of course - but heck WE got into them in the first place from hearing their debut cd, not at a show). Sacrifice And Bliss currently stands as the authoritative album from this band about whom we've waxed rhapsodic so much before, that all we can say is if you haven't gotten into 'em yet, please do so now. Of course, we don't expect EVERYONE to like 'em, though we do feel sorry for you if you don't...
For whatever reason, the recordings of Akio Suzuki are not easy to come by. Most of the output from this visionary Japanese instrument builder and improviser have quietly emerged and quickly disappeared. So this very subtle and very delicate 2003 improvisation with David Toop from the good folks at Sound 323 in London certainly caught our attention. One of Suzuki's most well known instruments is his collection of stone flutes, and the sounds from these instruments feature prominently in this set with David Toop. These curious objects product an eerie and ancient sound whose rasping whistles and watery trills embody an earthiness that predates the nomenclature from the history of music. Suzuki matches these sounds with delicate scrapes and textures from a couple of cymbals and a handful of small rocks. Toop does his best to articulate similar gestures within the purely acoustic improv strategies of the New London Silence school which developed in parallel Bernhard Gunter / Lowercase aesthetic of very quite electro-acoustic music and out of the late period works from AMM. For better or for worse, some of Toop's elements speak of a particular time and of a particular place (e.g. London, 2003) whereas Suzuki's offerings are beautifully non-specific in their cultural references. At other times, the two spiral metallic textures and softened drones of feedback with whirring flute glissandos, which all quietly float out of periodic silences. We've been told that during one of the quieter moments in the session, a woman next door can be heard singing in the bath. But like Suzuki's previous Kogezan Koukiji of temple improvisations recorded against a backdrop of a dramatic rainstorm, we've been thwarted in hearing these sounds by the patter of a springtime rainstorm and the constant blur of traffic sounds on Valencia Street. We're pretty sure Suzuki would be okay with those interruptions.
A wonderful new release by Oakland, CA electro-acoustic experimental artist Agnes Szelag! Despite this 24-minute EP's title and the fact that it was recorded during the summer and winter months of 2005 through 2007, the latter season definitely seems to have left its mark on her music. The four soundscapes do evoke frosty, overcast atmospheres - looming shadows of skeletal tree branches, moaning winds that chill to the bone, the slow flutter of snowflakes and the delicate bite of ice crystals on your cheek. Szelag's darkly dreamy compositions will surely appeal to fans of Nurse With Wound's creaky ghost ship of an album Salt Marie Celeste or the icy shimmering ambience of many releases on the SF based Dynamophone label (such as Fjordne, Balustade Ensemble, Curium). Recommended.
Get to second base with these ladies if you dare, you might find yourself an appendage short!
After a killer split with UK based Leopard Leg, Second Base marks the full length debut of these local San Francisco spitfires. Huge mean walls of cavey no-wave pummel and monolithic molten guitar swells steep these doom-laden garage rock stompers in layers of simmering and pulsating sonics. While the vocals sung in group chant style highlight the buried melodies deep within. It's a bit easy to describe the vocals and overall sound of an all-girl experimental band, especially one that dwells toward the extreme side of the sonic spectrum, as "witchy", but there's no real other way to describe the vocals here. Although they're not shrieked or sung in a detuned arty sort of way, the flat but clear group-intoned vocal delivery heightens the spell-binding doomy power of the songs, reminding us of the modern-day women in George Romero's Season of the Witch, rather than the nature-worshiping fairytale kind.
We're still not sure what T.I.T.S. stands for. Their MySpace page suggests Technicolor Inner Troll Syndrome(?!). We've got a better one: This Is The Shit!!!!
Taake is back (baake? no, that would sound like "Bach", and Taake is not Bach... though this IS classically grim, as it were... er, on with the review...). Norwegian black metal mastery on display here, as always from the Taake camp. This, their debut for big ol' Century Media, is their fourth full album, and upholds the fuzzy frosty folky foresty feel of majestic, malefic riffage and rasping we'd always loved about this band. Old school and cvlt for sure, with spiralling, deathgrunt thrash on offer during the likes of "Doedsjarl" and "Umenneske" (the latter of which, however, takes a droning, hissing turn into weird moodiness before its eight-plus minutes are up) and as well as a making dynamic dives into melodically catchy breakdowns of downtempo dying gasp rockin', like a wretched Katatonia...
Total pros, Taake manage to mix primitive necro Darkthrone essence with more epic fare, as on the album ending 10:37 "Velg Borg Livet". Buzzing beauty and the battering bombast of Celtic Frost style "ungh!" action coexist here, with craft and conviction. Century Media should certainly be proud to have the "Anti-Human Anti-Life True Norwegian Black Metal" of these guys on the roster.
And we've got to mention the cd art. A black disc, with what look like cookie cutter Christmas tree shapes in white, five of 'em, pointing out from the center in a sort of pentagram arrangement. It's kind of cute.
This disc also includes an Quicktime 'musikkvideo' for the track "Umenneske", but it's one of those live on stage videos that kinda takes away some of the mystery, we were hoping instead for an animated one with those evil Christmas trees or something.
Forgot to list this previous issue of Terrorizer, which of course has got their Grindcore Special Part 1 in case you were wondering where that was! Kevin Sharp of Brutal Truth introduces the genre, we hear from Rich Walker of Sore Throat and Seth Putnam of Anal Cunt, there's stuff about Grind Politics and Japanese Grind, and more. And of course, who's on the cover? Napalm Death!
Also this ish: Wino, Sepultura, Fen, Primordial and Finntroll on tour, a 'Hard of Hearing' session with Apocalyptica, a Prosthetic records label profile, bits on Fauna, Birdflesh, Kowloon Walled City and tons more... including a behind the music feature about the making of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. And all the usual trimmings: reviews, cd sampler, etc.
Latest issue of this metal must read magazine. Cannibal Corpse on the cover, and inside, making this a really 'gotta get it' issue for some sick folks, is Terrorizer's Grindcore Special Part 2, with features on Goregrind, U.S. Grind, Crustgrind, Electrogrind, and Gore Art... Awesome.
Also there's interviews with Absu, Samael, Tombs, 16, Psyopus, Cobalt, Enslaved, and others. Brief bits on the Wicked King Wicker, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Ironsword, Iron Fire, and tons more. Pages and pages of reviews. And the bonus cover-mount cd sampler.
This is all about dirty, sassy, and sweaty fun! This duo from Toronto excels in banging club jammers that exist in the same charged booty shakin' atmosphere as folks like Peaches, CSS, L' Trim, Bonde De Role, Yo Majesty, etc. But there is something about front-woman Isis's commanding presence and sizzling charisma that really makes this one stick out amongst the electro club pack. It's exactly the kind of record you would want blasting from a dance club's stereo, and it would sound just as good coming on after Justice as it would Missy Elliott. With summer around the corner we are searching for our summer party jams to fill the void that records from folks like Yelle provided last year, and after several listens we're pretty convinced that Thunderheist is going to be our soundtrack to shakin' it, for quite a while!
It never ceases to amaze us how we continue to get turned on to all kinds of lost musical gems. Records we can't believe we'd gone our whole lives without hearing before. Kim Tolliver should have been one of soul's diva superstars in the 1970's but as it sometimes happens, many of the great ones are often overlooked the first time around.
This 1973 album which originally came out on Chess and flopped commercially is such a forceful set of soulful songs with Kim's commanding and sweeping vocals on top of a rich, lush and full orchestration, a sound that was ubiquitous in the great soul sounds of the day. Come And Get Me, I'm Ready feels very ahead of its time in that there are many moments that demonstrate an insight into the more uptempo, dancefloor disco vibe that much of the soul world would be heading toward in the years to follow. But it also stays grounded in a truly deep soul sound that's reminiscent of some of the amazing stuff that came out of the Philly scene of that era, as well as being a perfect in between blend of Candi Staton's early '70s sad and stunning sounds and her later '70s more full on disco moments. We're so happy Reel Music is digging into the vaults to find some total gems, as Kim Tolliver is now a name to add to our favorite soul singers list. So great!
Even if this wasn't some terminally obscure project out of Japan circa 1988 (we're guessing on the date and PSF isn't telling), we would still be freaking out over this mind blowing drone-plus-noise album. But as it stands, Toukaseibunshi is a project that's about as mysterious as they come, and that intrigues us all the more. Toukaseibunshi was the pseudonym for one Hironari Iwata, who used to run a cassette label in the late '80s called Angakok. Through that imprint he curated a compilation that featured HNAS, Asmus Tietchens, Merzbow, Conrad Schnitzler, SBOTHI, Human Flesh, and a bunch of other artists we're not all that familiar with. As Toukaseibunshi, Iwata fluctuates between all of these aesthetic poles, pulling a blistering (if more restrained) use of squalid noise from Merzbow, the sustained electronic clusters from Tietchens and Schnitzler, and an unsettled weirdness from HNAS. Yet the same time, Iwata's distorted drone pieces foreshadow the same types of digital overblown pieces from Fennesz or Belong some 20 years later.
The album begins with a sprawling twenty minute piece "Glace" whose arches of softened feedback take on the hue of a post-MBV glide guitar grafted onto a static field of electricity and billowing ambient swathes that sort of have a Stars Of The Lid vibe, but with a lot more teeth in the mix. Mesmerizingly beautiful stuff. The rest of the album is split between five other tracks of variable length but are considerably nastier than the opening number. Iwata's crunched tape loops, actionist metal bashing thrust into the background, and squawking electronics have the feeling of the sounds of a construction site being tossed around the high rises of Tokyo. The reverb dislocated the sound amidst the din of the city; and despite the turmoil, Iwata seems intent on making these industrialized sounds meditative. That doesn't imply a lack of noise, cuz these tracks got plenty of bloodcurdling white noise buzzing about.
This album has been released in PSF's Japanese Avant-Garde Cassette Reissue Series. So, we can only assume this came out on cassette sometime in the late '80s and early '90s when Iwata was active; however, there's no information whatsoever. It's great to have this available, even as it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Not to be confused with the much more prolific Czech depressive doom-ed black metal Trist, German one man band Trist is the ambient drone side project of Benjamin Konig, who is also the frontman for Lunar Aurora, an amazing black metal band we love, but have yet to list here (which will be remedied as soon as possible, we promise).
Initiation comes via the same label that has been gradually re-releasing all the Paysage D'Hiver demos over the last couple years, and is a collection of various long out of print and even at the time barely available demos, recorded between 2000-2003. Nothing black metal here, but plenty blackness nonetheless, Trist explores slow, hazy, otherworldly ambience, black drones and delicate Lustmordian soundscapery, a sound that falls somewhere between the gauzy digitized smear of folks like Tim Hecker and Aidan Baker, and the abject electronics and post apocalyptic sonic sprawl of groups like Wolf Eyes and Emeralds, infusing it with that distinctive 'black metal intro' vibe. Not obviously synthy, and definitely not overly guitar based, the sound on Initiation is blurred and washed out, melodies exist but are only glimpsed fleetingly, the longform drones and extended drifts are heavily textured with, warm whooshing whir, distorted crumble, ethereal fields of hiss and click and pop and rough sandpaper like buzz, definitely very dreamy and moonlit, but also ominous and grim, very cinematic, evoking some alien wasteland, burnt and ruined beneath a smoke filled sky, something lurking in the shadows, the ground littered with death and destruction.
Folks who loved that Cities Last Broadcast from last list, will definitely dig this too, as it mines the same sort of wasted unpopulated barren planet vibe, and take the more abstract dronescaping of folks like Machinefabriek and Jasper TX and Xela and Aun and Svarte Greiner somewhere much more cinematic. Bits of new age seep in here and there, chunks of slow motion doomdrone now and again, mysterious loops and bits of glitch surface throughout, giving many of the tracks an avant turntablist vibe, like Strotter Inst or Jeck, this is certainly not what you might expect from a grim black metaller, instead Initiation plays out more as a dense and varied and layered work of tense instrumental minimalism, of gorgeous and harrowing experimental dronemusic, and of course bleak black ambience, maybe too abstract for metalheads, but folks into drone and doom and drift and all that cd-r floorcore rumble and shimmer would do well to grab one of these right quick.
Scott Tuma is easily one of our favorite guitarists, from his stint creating warped and warbly underwater twangscapes in legendary downer country legends Souled American, to his gorgeous solo records of warm hazy Appalachia, so it's nice that Tuma seems to be back on track, after a seemingly long stretch of inactivity. The recent Not For Nobody, which was of course an aQ Record of The Week, and now this, a brand new collaboration with Zelienople's Mike Weis, which manages to take that Tuma sound we love and transform it into something new and different.
Weis is the drummer in Zelienople, and since Zelienople never had much cause for a proper drummer, Weis manages to be super creative behind the kit, or maybe more accurately, with an arsenal of cymbals and gongs and chimes, creating textures and layers more than rhythms. Which is precisely what he brings to this collaboration. Tuma is of course doing what he does best, weaving lush landscapes of sound, his guitar keening and moaning, drifting and twanging, sounding underwater one minute, weightless and spacey the next, those sounds are given a whole new context when paired with Weis's unique percussion. The drums here seem to consist mostly of a sort of soft cacophony, manic skitter, clouds of tinkling chimes, bowed cymbals, the deep tones of BIG cymbals or gongs, plenty of clatter and clang, but all sort of smeared into a living backdrop, reacting and interacting with Tuma's guitar, the result is often like a strange Souled American free jazz mashup, which might not sound good, but actually is, although elsewhere the results are a bit more subtle than that.
The guitars slip from hazy and underwater sounding, to gently shimmering, acoustic guitars unfurl woozy Appalachia, bits of twang, soft strums, all gently laid over a sea of skitter and thump, the deep shimmer of reverberating metals, the result is gorgeously murky and indistinct, less like two players playing off of each other, and more like two people contributing to the same sprawling sound. The first side plays out like the two getting acquainted, a delicate dance, their unique sounds quickly finding common ground and melting seamlessly into each other, culminating in a gorgeous track of hushed minimalism, introducing piano, Weis's percussion kept to a whispered thrum, everything wreathed in lush reverb and delay, so lovely.
The second side, features several longish tracks, where Tuma gets to try something a little more distorted and aggressive, the duo creating extended bouts of deep ominous dronemusic and thick caustic buzz, each player's contributions still distinct, at least with close listening, but step back, and the various parts take on surprising shapes, long stretches of heaving, droning, mesmerizingly meditative and surprisingly fluid drones, that manage to be warm and melodic as well as darkly mysterious.
Packaged in beautiful fold out silk screened sleeves, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! ALREADY SOLD OUT!! THESE ARE THE ONLY COPIES WE'LL HAVE, EVER.
We love how in the last several years the walls between the punk rockers and DJ culture have come crashing down. So many of us grew up on punk rock but have grown to love the sounds of DJ'd dance floor delights. JD Twitch exemplifies this evolution so perfectly. He is someone with a deep love of punk rock, and whose roots are definitely in punk, but who has gone on to create some of the most smart and satisfying dance floor jams with his project Optimo.
With 10 Inches Of Fear, he revisits the raw punk sounds that were so influential in his musical development. This 10" features re-edits of Flux Of Pink Indians, Honey Bane, Zounds, and The Mob. Smartly he does very little to the tracks and lets their raw and urgent sounds rise to the surface. As a spectacular bonus the 10 inch comes with a cd comp packed with some of his favorite punk tracks of all time, in their original form. It truly is like being given the ultimate punk mix by a friend in 1986 or tuning in to the best college punk rock radio show ever. Classic songs by the Butthole Surfers, Sun City Girls (back when they were more of a bratty punk band), Big Black, Husker Du, Savage Republic, Crass, The Screamers, The Pop Group, etc. This has been making many of us so nostalgic for our early punk filled years that no matter how many different kinds of music in which we now revel, punk will always be such a strong part of our musical spirit. For those about to punk out we salute you!
We were only able to get a small handful of these so act fast, once they are gone that may be all she wrote.
If you're a fan of Funkadelic, you've for sure had some hardcore jollies of late. First, a few weeks ago, there was that collection of unreleased Funkadelic jams entitled Toys, and now, Westbound has gone back for another dig through the vaults, unearthing this 1972 recording by a group from New Jersey called United Soul, aka US Music with Funkadelic, so called 'cause they were produced by P-Funk ringleader George Clinton (he was their homie, hailing from the same town in NJ), and featured various Funkadelics like Bernie Worrell and Fuzzy Haskins backing 'em up on these sessions recorded in Detroit and Toronto. Funkadelic also drafted some of the members of United Soul into their ranks, including vocalist Gary Shider. So basically this IS Funkadelic, make no mistake.
This material was originally meant for a United Soul album that was never released, though some of it found its way to the ears of Funkadelic fans in different forms. Two of the tracks, the mellow R&B number "I Miss My Baby" and the more uptempo, gospel-tinged "Baby I Owe You Something Good" were issued on a 7" single (and appeared on the Funkadelic 45's collection Music For My Mother). The latter was also reworked and rerecorded for inclusion on Let's Take It To The Stage three years later. And "This Broken Heart", a doo-wop tearjerker, preceded the version found on Cosmic Slop in '73.
But then there's a couple more rocked-out, psychedelic cuts here too, that any self-respecting Funkadelic fan is gonna freak over, both full of wild guitar: "Be What You Is", and (especially) "Rat Kiss The Cat On The Naval" [sic]. That one's a truly killer slab of funkariffic badassitude nearly 8 minutes long. It's got yr typical P-Funk drugged out nursery rhyme lyrics, over a fuzzed-out groove and the manic, looped cry of "Haa!!" which is soon overrun by some serious, searing, acid-drenched electric guitar soloing. And it just gets more and more intense as it goes along. Damn. Sometimes I (Allan) get to DJ sets of obscure early '70s heaviness, and you know that this is gonna get played next time I have the chance... It would fit right in with Doc Dail's "Aere Perennius", ferinstance. Or even the recently discovered Death's "Politicians In My Eyes".
Not sure if this disc really qualifies as an unreleased album, it's only five songs after all (seven tracks on the cd, but the extra two are merely the mono single versions of the two "Baby" numbers from the aforementioned 7"). But it sure does qualify as a way cool Funkadelic artifact indeed, and those don't appear every day even though right now it might seem like they do.
Ultra limited split between these two experimental black metal entities. Sadness Saturn is one of the guys behind aQ faves Servile Sect, whose most recent release just got re-issued on vinyl via Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, and Utarm is a one man band from Norway; the two square off on this split cassette tape.
Utarm are up first, and the sound is more doom than black, the programmed drums a monstrous pound, the music a soaring epic swell of synths, not guitars, or maybe they're super processed guitars, either way, the sound is really unique, reminds us a bit of Gnaw Their Tongues, a sort of cinematic depressive blackness, less about blasting buzz, than dramatic lurching mystery, plenty of strangled tortured heaviness, abstract ambience, everything rife with glitch and skree, the vocals a tortured wail, all wreathed in a blackened haze, raw and in the red and super intense and harrowing.
Sadness Saturn traffic in something much more raw and grim, unlike the glistening alien drone drenched blackness of Servile Sect, the sound here is a pounding black murk, the vocals and guitars nearly indistinguishable, all wound around each other like a single cloud of muted black buzz, the drums relentless and machinelike, but buried within SS's cavernous lo-fi crush, are haunting melodies, soaring and epic, the riffs, after repeated listens seem to crystallize, become much more intense and emotional, transforming simple black metal into something strangely melodic and abstract, but still plenty black and grim.
Incredible packaging, printed black and white fold out covers with the band logos printed in extra glossy black ink, the tape case housed in a hand assembled slipcover, hand screened with a super striking, and super evil sigil.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have about 15, probably the last ones we'll ever get...
Another winner from Sublime Frequencies. And while we made sure to stress that past "vinyl-only" were indeed vinyl only, lately, those vinyl releases have been slowly making it to cd. BUT, for the vinyl folks out there, these do disappear fast, and fetch big bucks on eBay once they're gone, so you're not gonna want to snooze on this one. Listening to this again, now, for maybe the 20th time in 2 days, it's becoming clear we'll probably have to make this a Record Of The Week as soon as it comes out on cd, but for now, even though it's only a highlight, it really couldn't be more of a MUST OWN.
And like many of the Sublime Frequencies before it, we find it hard to not think that maybe folks don't need to be making so much music, releasing so many records, when so much amazing outrageously creative music is already being and has been made all over the world, for so long, much of it never heard outside of a very few people. Maybe we should have some sort of national policy, where bands can turn in their instruments, and in exchange get a recorder, a plane ticket, and an expense account, with which they can roam the world bringing back some of that unheard and lost music. Heck, sign us up right now!
Anyway, this new release is a collection of Rai music from the early seventies, from Algeria, and these particular cuts are samples of some of the sort of "outlaw" Rai performers, a modern strain that has been neglected and ignored, and takes this classic Algerian music form, and adds electric guitar, trumpets, wah wah pedal, and whips it all up into an infectious brew equal parts Ethiopiques, Bollywood and garage rock. Or something close to that. This stuff is truly hard to describe, and the liner notes, while informative, are printed on an eye popping blue on red old school 3-D colored background which makes the text swim and sway before your eyes. And offer more on the history and the players than what Rai music actually is (there's a good description on Wikipedia). But for the purpose of this review, as it should be, we'll just focus on the sound. And what a sound!
Warm whirring organ drones, trumpets EVERYWHERE, really the defining sound, wild chaotic tribal drumming, crooned dramatic vocals, groovy, soulful, funky, raw and lo-fi, like a garage rock Ethiopiques, but with a strangely raw Bollywood vibe, the trumpets peppering the murky grooves with strange fanfares and jazzy melodies, here and there distorted guitars surface, wrapped in wah wah, reverb and echo all over the place, some songs super frenzied, others laid back and dreamy, Indian melodies draped over almost surfy grooves, really pretty fantastic. Hard to imagine that folks who have been digging all the Sublime Frequencies releases, or the Yaala Yaala reissues won't go crazy for this stuff.
Group Doueh, Group Inerane, and now this, a pretty mind blowing, near perfect, far out world music three-fer, and that's not even counting the 30+ release that came before. ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED.
LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES, 180 gram vinyl, super thick gatefold sleeve, full color, with tons of photos and liner notes inside.
Here's a cool comp of rare vintage '60s garage psych gems, that itself is a reissue of a long lost album, Acid Dreams having first been released back in 1979 on vinyl in an edition of just 77 copies, we're told. Apparently that record was compiled by the owner of a record store in Berlin, who thought that the then-current crop of new wave punk rock fans needed a lesson about the original wave of snotty, freaky, DIY "punk" from the previous decade... And indeed the nameless compiler picked some killer cuts from his collection of U.S. '60s psych singles for inclusion here, full of distortion and attitude ready to go toe-to-toe with the class of '77. Loads of fuzzed out guitars, urgent drumming and trippy lyrics burst forth across the 18 tracks here, most of 'em energetic yet moody 2-3 minute blasts, including songs from Zakary Thaks, Faine Jade, Music Machine, Mystic Tide, Painted Faces, Balloon Farm, Outcasts, Beautiful Daze, Caretakers Of Deception, Teddy & His Patches, Minds Eye, White Light, Remaining Few, Stereo Shoestrings, Unrelated Segments, Velvet Illusions (who get not one but two tracks on here, both awesome), and Vejtables (who were from San Francisco - hmm, could the spelling of their name maybe have been an inspiration to Wooden Shjips?). As you can see, all acts for the most part pretty obscure outside the collectors' realm, really. Poppy stuff, but probably too freaky for the masses, though it's not all hard acid wah wah guitar frenzies here - when not stormin' and stompin', Acid Dreams provides plenty of pleasant psychedelic swirling jangle as well.
Reissued now on cd by the same label that brought us the Electric Asylum comp listed last time, the no frills design of the original private press LP has been augmented with photos and brief liner notes on each and every track in the cd booklet.
Are you one of the many aQ customers just waiting for the perfect compilation of psych folk goodness from around the world? Well, illustrator Jake Blanchard and the Blackest Rainbow label have answered your call. They've complied 10 tracks from the most prominent psych-folk gurus around including MV & EE, the Skygreen Leopards, and Ben Nash! There's also a few tracks from some not-so-well-know folkies who are fresh to the scene and ready to impress, like Cam Deas (young solo guitarist from Manchester), Winter Drones (a member of Hush Arbor's live band) and Jerusalem and the Starbaskets. Also included are two live tracks from the hallowed Hush Arbors and Beequeen. Housed in super beautiful silk screened covers with illustrations by Jake Blanchard himself, Menagerie was pressed in a limited edition of 500 on cd and should NOT be missed!
This double disc compilation is a music geek time machine. For a handful of you, these collected singles will immediately tranport you right back to your bedroom, where you'll find yourself laying on your bed, headphones on, a messy pile of 7"s spread out on the bed in front of you, as you meticulously assemble the perfect mixtape. And for those of you who somehow missed out on this stuff, holy shit are you in for a treat!
Some of the best singles ever released on the super cool No. 6 label, run by legendary A&R man Terry Tolkin.
Highlights include the two Ornament tracks, which was a short lived group featuring the Afghan Whigs and Marcy Mays of Scrawl, doing a killer cover of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow", appearing here on cd for the first time, the very first Dwarves single, a filthy, heavy drug fueled racket, the first two post Galaxie 500 songs from Dean Wareham, the very frist US Tindersticks release, two killer versions of Unrest's "Winona Ryder", the Cagney And Lacee single, which was Dean Wareham and his wife, some brooding noisy creep fron King Carcass, and Bewitched, Bob Bert of Sonic Youth's sort of solo project band thingie. All that and some lesser knowns who still kicked ass: Vegetarian Meat, Pork and Glue! This stuff is so good, and has definitely stood the test of time. Hate to sound like old fogies, but they sure don't make indie pop like this anymore...
Killer quadruple cassette tape box, featuring a handful of amazing sound and noise makers, some definite aQ faves, as well as a whole bunch of names ne to us, each band was instructed to compose a single sidelong piece, representing either light or darkness, and as the Earjerk website mentions, it's really no surprise that most bands chose darkness (either that or they have a weirdly skewed idea of what constitutes 'light').
Up first, long time aQ fave Sorc'Henn, who in the past has dabbled in buzzy black metal, shimmery deep ambience, here it something else entirely, a thick caustic fog of hiss and buzz and grit and grime, buried melodies swirl beneath a constantly shifting layered soft blackened noise. Grim and haunting for sure.
Teeth Collection are a name we know, but we'd never heard their (his?) music until now. A strangely haunting soundscape of reverbed clatter, truncated melodies, distant hiss, muted rumble, all slowly building to a cathartic swirl of blown out heaviness.
We had a Drunjus cassette ages ago, and had always wanted to hear more. Here, the sound is a crystalline web of haunting synths, of keening long tones, of muted melodies, bowed gongs (courtesy of one of the guys from Pelt), this is some mysterious otherworldly cinematic drift for sure. Like a way more minimal abstract Goblin almost. Then comes Crystal Dragon, awesome name, and even more awesome sound, a super raw and primitive chunk of outer space sci-fi weirdness, grinding synths, wound into whirring dronescapes, thick and undulating, warm and luxuriously textured.
Then we have Burial Hex, aka Clay Ruby, who also does time in Jex Thoth and Wormsblood, but Burial Hex is his ritualistic black ambient project, and that's precisely what you get here, a super raw recording, distorted and effected, the tape seeming to crumble, plenty of low end warble, clang and clatter and crunch, doused in effects, like a madman locked in a dungeon, dragging chains, and assembling some unholy machine, super creepy and pretty hard to describe. Black Sparrow are another group we'd never heard of, but they fit pretty well amongst this esteemed brotherhood of sound, an ethereal ephemeral shimmer, made from crumbling effected guitars and processed synths (we think), woven into a soft almost serene bit of buzzy drift, peppered with bits of glitch and squelch, but smoothed out into a blurred bit of mesmer.
Then some Finnish weirdness from Taikuri Tali, definitely a band we're gonna have to hear more from, some random bits of conversation, before the trio launch into a gorgeously tweaked bit of mad scientists soundscaping, squeaks and rattles and scrapes and whirs that get more and more abstract as the track progresses, eventually transforming into some sort of alien shortwave broadcast.
Finally, Pan To Scratch, another new to us outfit, they finish things off with a super old school bit of layered dronemusic, letting the overtones crate strange and subtle rhythms, intertwined with what sounds like birdsong, tape manipulation, lots of tape hiss, and random bumps and thumps, weird and pretty wonderful.
Which is a pretty good way of describing this whole collection, weird and wonderful, as well as abstract and haunting and dark and buzzy and raw. The usual suspects should freak for this, SUPER LIMITED of course, handsomely packaged as well in one of those oversized molded plastic booklike folders, the kind of case instructional language tapes usually come in. Cool!
We've mentioned these doomy Virginia retro rockers on our list once before, not long ago on account of their quite appropriate split 7" with Bible Of The Devil (featuring the Valkyrie track "False Dreams", also found here), and now we're happy to have their new, sophomore album Man Of Two Visions in stock to list. The band now includes one of the dudes from AQ faves Baroness on guitar, by the way. And Baroness fans might dig like this, though it ain't remotely metalcore or postrock. You gotta be into the old school, melodic heavy metal side of Baroness to ride with Valkyrie! Obvious influences on 'em assuredly include both Witchfinder General and Thin Lizzy, plus the closer to home inspiration of Pentagram and that whole, ol' Maryland doom scene. We're also hearing some Southern stoner rock a la Down and Corrosion Of Conformity (circa Blind or Deliverance). The mood's mainly slow and somber, though they manage to also rock out and let loose with the guitars n' gallop, NWOBHM style. So it's doomy, but not necessarily depressing, with nice harmonies and all.
Pretty darn decent effort overall, even if we're not so sure about the mellow instrumental (with keyboards?) "The Green Highlander". Maybe just one instrumental would have sufficed, and we'd pick the album's other one, "The Gorge", a gentle piece for acoustic guitar. And the cover art isn't entirely impressive either. But heck that hardly effects our enjoyment of the (mostly) heavy grooves from this classy, serious band!
The cover of this latest Jozef Van Wissem release is one of our favorite photographs of him, showing the mighty lute player wearing a studded leather wrist cuff, head low with hair hanging down, wielding his instrument like a heavy metal guitar. And while he doesn't necessarily "shred" the same way a metal axeman would, there's definitely a connecting thread between Van Wissem's hermetically spiritual lute extrapolations and the doom-laden esotericism of today's drone metal practitioners.
Thematically based on the first chapter of Genesis, the seven pieces here are at first played forward then reversed in an attempt to create the feeling that the pieces have no beginning or end. Van Wissem often uses mirror imaging and palindromic takes on classical lute music to create these compositions, but more and more, he's using plenty of space and restraint placing a greater emphasis on the concentrated listening experience, instead of musically filling the space. Thus the pieces are becoming ever more glacial and dramatic, highlighting the dark beauty of creation but never denying the slow decay of death in all its infinite and ever spiraling momentum. Transcendent!
When we were first told about this Violet record, it was described to us as a noise record, and we just sort of assumed Violet was the woman making the noise, when in fact, Violet Ray Gas And The Playback Singers is way more of an experimental drone record, and Violet is the name of the group, which in fact is the work of one fella, not sure what he's called, but none of that really matters, what does, is that this record is amazing. Dark and mysterious, mixing in bits of Jeck and Tim Hecker, Wolf Eyes, blending them into Violet's ominous world of sound.
There's feedback all over the place, but it's far from harsh or jagged, instead it's used like color, to paint greyed out landscapes burnished reds, and melted oranges, thick tones, reverberating chimes, bits of buzz and crunch, disembodied voices, intercepted broadcasts, clouds of hiss, chugging machinery, industrial sonic detritus, warped strings, woozy synths, all wound up into dense walls of sound one second, blurred into delicate crystalline lattices the next.
"Plague Numbers" is total Jeck, a skipping scratched record smeared into a gauzy washed out living portrait of sound, indistinct figures, flitting shadows, mysterious shapes, all moving as if through a thick field of static, not even four minutes, but we found ourselves wishing it would never end.
Elsewhere the sound of lapping water is swallowed up by a crackling crumbling fog of burnt melodies, and slowed down riffs, a sort of sun dappled lysergic sonic swirl. The title track is a tuning up orchestra stretched out into a softly chaotic symphony of angular tones and fractured melodies, of sine waves and groaning creaking low end rumbles, augmented by curious crackles and strands of distortion arranged in patterns resembling speech, but rendered in impressionistic shards, finishing off with a gorgeous high end ur-drone, a softer Sunroof!, a field of static bagpipes, their overtones creating otherworldly patterns in the ether. Gorgeous.
Carl-Michael Eide, aka Czral, of the illustrious Ved Buens Ende is back, with a 2nd Virus album, the band which continues the eccentric, eerily dissonant, darkly psychedelic sound once unique to VBE. And being back is pretty big deal, 'cause Carl-Michael very nearly died three years ago from a 4-story fall! Thankfully, he's recovered enough to mastermind this excellent Virus disc and also participate (under his guise of Aggressor) in the making of a new Aura Noir album too (also reviewed this list).
The late great VBE actually only made one proper album (1995's Written In Waters, sadly again out of print) plus a demos disc. At the time, we compared 'em to Slint, Don Caballero and Voivod - but somehow also black metal. Taking up where VBE left off, Virus in 2003 released the even quirkier Carheart album, that added extra electronic elements and a more prominent role for the bass, leading some to cite Talking Heads (!) and The Birthday Party as further-from-black-metal influences on their sound. And there's no denying that this ISN'T your usual black metal, or maybe black metal at all. With 'jazzy' bits, deep voiced vocal speak-singing, no wave grooves, and some vaguely techno-ish drum beats. But we'd say this one sounds more like old VBE than Carheart did, maybe 'cause some of these songs were originally written for an abortive VBE reunion attempt, heavier and less "pop", the guitars "smeary-er".
Regardless, even if VBE means nothing to you (yet), this new Virus is highly recommended for adventurous metal and non-metal listeners both, who'll appreciate its sonic similarities to Ulver and Arcturus, This Heat and the Swans... can you imagine a mathrock Amesoeurs perhaps, with Garm or Gira on vocals? It's dark metallic art rock with weird atmospheres, redolent of claustophobia and vertigo. Twisting, seasick and sinuous - not for everyone at all - but utterly compelling if you've caught the Virus.
Voice Of Eye is a dark ambient duo which began in Texas some twenty years ago, focusing on ritualist drones and hypnotic ambience using voice, various traditional instruments (guitars, trombone, flutes, Tibetan bowls, etc.), and hand-built inventions, with all of these sounds cast through the heavy fog of reverb and delay. Back in the early '90s, the duo had produced a handful of records which promised great things for Voice Of Eye, as a deep mystery permeated their echoing pools of sound. And then they just stopped. Only recently has Voice Of Eye begun recording again, and it makes perfect sense that Drone Records would once again be their label of choice. While Drone did release an early single of Voice Of Eye back in 1995, Voice Of Eye's recordings were some of the obvious parallels to what Maeror Tri had been doing at the same time. And even now, Voice Of Eye continues down the same dark path of reverberant, melancholy sounds whose comparisons can be found in Troum (whose members were once in Maeror Tri). Angelic female voices and spectral guitars wash together in an ethereal chorus that sounds like Cocteau Twins played 16 RPM with Robin Guthrie playing more the part of Aidan Baker in terms of crafting those darkened clouds flecked with radiant beams of sunlight around the enveloping greys and blacks. One of the better titles to emerge from Drone's 10" series!
Droooooooooooooone... Yep, it's another amazing archival release in the Yoshi Wada reissue campaign from Japan's wonderful EM label, in conjunction with their colleagues at avant-electronics specialists Omega Point. This one's from earlier in his career than the other Wada pieces previously documented in the series, but is no less droney! Recorded in 1974, and unreleased until now, Earth Horns With Electronic Drone is just that. Four players blowing into Wada-built "earth horns" (absurdly long alpenhorn style instruments, "constructed from ordinary plumbing materials and steam fittings"), resonating in an acoustic environment wherein the horns interact with an electronic feedback/looping system designed by Liz Phillips and Yoshi Wada that responds to and reinforces subtle alterations in the volume and pitch of the pipehorns. It's explained in the liner notes, but still a little difficult to understand. Somehow the pipehorn tones are recycled, extended, modulated and mixed, essentially enhanced by the electronics for extra droning effect, that much is obvious! The results are lovely, mesmeric... though, it's hard to come up with much of a description besides, do you like foghorns? Being in San Francisco, we know we do! This is like endless foghorns, mixed with answering whale calls. Or imagine the Himalayan horns of hyperventilating Tibetan monks, high on cough syrup, slowed down and stretched out. Screwed but not chopped.
Occasionally punctuated by what must be the coughs and echoing rustle of the close-to-dozing audience members in the gallery of the art museum where this took place, the pipehorns blow (and the electronics further generate) low, ever so slightly wavering tones that weave together forever... well, if not forever, for about three hours at the original performance!! Of which 77 minutes are presented here on the cd format. There's also the fancy, much more expensive triple vinyl version, which runs to 2 hours and 42 minutes! In metal parlance, that would be the "diehard" edition. But we only have three copies of that, and aren't too sure about whether we can ever get more. Still, even only 77 minutes of Earth Horns With Electronic Drone is a decent dose, with no flipping of sides also.
For those just now tuning in to the ritualistic, minimalistic, ultra-droned-out works of Wada, we'll refer you to our reviews of his three previous discs on EM for more info on this Fluxus-associated composer and sculptor. But you can certainly see from the vintage b&w photos on the sleeve, including one of Wada's ensemble accompanying a Merce Cunningham dance performance in Nassau Coliseum, that his pipehorns have an impressive physical dimension and shape suitable for display and demonstration in art galleries, or other public spaces. And on this recording you can certainly HEAR their impressive physical dimension and sound-shapes they make as well!
You may or may not have noticed that everytime we review anything by Peter Walker, it's always sort of in the tone of yeah, we like the new stuff, but come on, really, please reissue the old stuff!!! And while his two amazing records on Vanguard in the sixties remain bafflingly un-reissued, we can finally give you a taste of what we've been jonesing for. These recently unearthed recordings from 1970 were Walker's last recorded effort before facing "years of obscurity". Gathering a group of session players in Woodstock, NY at the home of Levon Helm (while Helm was away), Walker recorded these loose raga jams with tablas, flute, clarinet, bells, bass, and trap drums. These long-form meditative grooves are probably the best recorded insight into the sounds of Timothy Leary's Celebration gatherings at Harvard of which Walker was the musical director. Spiraling and trance-inducing, built on Eastern modal progressions, with flute and clarinet weaving throughout. Really beautiful! We're very thankful that the label head of Tompkins Square, Josh Rosenthal, managed to convince Walker to dig through his storage vaults and unearth this lost session. We want more!
Another record that barely needs a description at all. Essential listening for all psych nerds, space rock freaks, and anyone into shredding, spaced out, druggy, dreamy heaviness, which we would imagine would be most of you!
Two sidelong tracks, one each from aQ faves White Hills, and another aQ fave, UK space rockers The Heads. Both exclusive tracks, both kick ass, gorgeously packaged, super limited, you know the drill, if you haven't already thrown one of these into your shopping cart already, well then heck, here's a quick rundown of each track:
White Hills launch right into it, almost as if someone just randomly pushed the record button mid epic jam, there's nothing, then suddenly the band is crushing! Buzzy and blown out, the drums better than ever now that Kid Millions of Oneida has joined the Hills, tons of guitar shredding, wild wah wah, crumbling distortion, tearing up a storm a la Monster Magnet or Acid Mothers Temple, stoned and wasted and wild, until about halfway through, the song shifts, and the group stagger wildly through a lurching start stop freakout, very off kilter, tons of space, the band definitely getting a bit freaky, until finally, the track coalesces again and we're back in full on hear-of-the-sun ur-jam mode. Awesome.
The flipside finds the Heads, in a contemplative mood, or if not contemplative, super drugged out and lysergic, their sound less blasting and wildly shredding and more sort of drifting, a Spacemen 3 vibe runs throughout, woozy, meandering, loping rhythms wreathed in a druggy haze, the guitars all tangled up in swirling clouds of distorted buzz, super effected vocals, drawled and washed out, the whole track tripped out and Loop-ish, baked and sooooo psychedelic, this track definitely had us drifting off into some other WAY more outer space. So good.
Incredible packaging, the records pressed on swirled milky orange / gold vinyl, housed in a super psychedelic full color die cut sleeve, the record label visible through the hole, and inside a full color 12" by 12" printed insert. Needless to say (but as is our style, we'll say it anyway), ESSENTIAL. Oh, and very very limited...
While Erlend Oye is best known for his band Kings Of Convenience, there is something truly special that happens when he records under the Whitest Boy Alive moniker, cranking out some of the most infectious, breezy and immaculate sounding pop songs we've heard. His second album as The Whitest Boy Alive is just as potent as the debut we fell in love with a couple years back.
Breezing along somewhere between The Sea & Cake and The Junior Boys but somehow pretty much blowing both of those bands away in the way he creates songs that float with such ease yet have such solid impact, rife with sentiments that ring with such subtle truth. While it's not a surprise to have pop songs that deal with the nuance of human relationships and heartbreak, it is remarkable when those messages and simple vocal phrases are able to so simply and insightfully speak to universal truths. Oye truly has a way with words, but what makes Rules such a special record is that nothing ever feels forced or out of place, it all flows with such seamless perfection and allows you to skip and dance as your memory spins wildy off in a million different directions. There are so many songs here that have gotten totally stuck in our heads, but they are more than catchy, they are that rare kind of pop song that you actually WANT stuck there in your subconscious, perhaps never to escape. They're just that damn good!
We love how there are songs that take riffs from groups like Daft Punk and make them their own, while at the same time employing a subtle jazz aesthetic in some of the instrumentation that would fail so miserably in other hands but works so perfectly here. We could go on and on, but we'll stop by saying that this is for sure a major contender for pop record of the year!
It's about time that stoner rock guitar god Scott Weinrich, better known by his nickname Wino, former vocalist for Saint Vitus, just up and called his band "Wino". After all, The Obsessed, Shine, Spirit Caravan, Hidden Hand, they were all Wino projects with drawing card, Wino. So, at last, here's the man's "solo" album. Unlike at this year's Southern Lord SXSW showcase, where he did indeed play an entirely solo (and acoustic!) set, Wino is in fact a band on Punctuated Equilibrium, a power trio that also features the talents of Jean Paul Gaster (of Clutch) on drums and Jon Blank on bass.
And guess what? Wino sounds pretty much like Wino's other bands! Which is exactly what we hoped for. A mix of '70s style heavy rock, aggro punkishness, and technically badass instrumental interplay, with of course political-mystical-conspiracy lyrics delivered in Wino's trademark gravelly croon. Wino's other trademark, his distinctive fat guitar tone, is also present and accounted for.
Loping, bellbottomed opener "Release Me" sounds a bit like Captain Beyond, born too late. Then things get a bit frashter for the next tune, the title track. And the album rolls on, an eclectic, electric trip through, well, what Wino is all about. Making music that's part Mountain, part Mahavishnu... doomy, psychedelic, often esoteric and instrumental (among the latter, there's a song called "The Women In The Orange Pants" that almost could be Stinking Lizaveta...and considering the title, it's probably just as well there's no lyrics).
Speaking of track titles, who else but Wino would call a song "Gods, Frauds, Neo-Cons and Demagogues"?
Latest from these Midwestern noiseniks, this time with a full complement of assistant noisemakers, including Rich Hoak (Brutal Truth, Total Fucking Destruction) as well as folks from Fuck The Facts, The Endless Blockade and 7000 Dying Rats! Sounds like a seriously noisy nasty party indeed.
The last Winters In Osaka we reviewed was Orchids, and unlike a lot of noise music, it was way more rhythmic and textural, offering up a series of sort of fractured skitters and looped grooves, all liberally doused with plenty of noisiNESS.
But we knew these guys were capable of kicking up a serious din and they do just that on Molded To Crawl. Opening with a 17 minute epic, that begins with muted percussion, samples, buzzing electronics, which quickly builds to a full on face melting skree, but within that skree, synths squiggle, vocals howl, guitars feedback, sirens wail, the chaotic blowout does seem to occasionally almost slip into something drone-y or almost riff like, but for the most part, it's a thick dense wall of sound that is not for the faint of ear.
The other three tracks are shorter, and tend toward the darker and the dronier, again rooted around plodding percussion, and layered buzz, the sound veers from lurching machine like industrial lumber, to Godfleshy stomp, to haunting Eastern music box over roiling blacknoise, to thick whirring buzzscape, to wildly careening and crumbling wave of low end crush, to skittery crunch and glitch, to thick windblown wasteland sountrack, to chopped up plunderphonia, to haunting hushed drift.
Cool stuff, but definitely be warned, this is some seriously noisy shit!
Wooden Shjips are the kind of band that inspire rabid devotion, and not without good reason. They are, in their own distinct way, a perfect band, stripping psychedelia of all its unnecessary flourishes and focusing, REALLY focusing on the fundamental elements that make your favorite songs your favorite songs. No verses, no choruses, no frills, and no bullshit. Just an endless, hypnotic groove that allows the listener to tune out everything else and let the music take them where they need to be. This simplicity is also the band's greatest source of power. While other groups will work desperately to cultivate an image as a "psychedelic" band, Wooden Shjips bypass all that and instead let their music speak for itself. The results are always mesmerizing, not to mention somewhat strange and mysterious, the only logical outcome from four guys who must know exactly what they are doing and understand the importance of working together as a unit instead of showing off their individual musical chops, save the abundance of perfectly timed, ripping fuzz guitar solos. The songs on the band's self-titled debut and their collection of early singles are at once classic and modern, seeming as if they had existed forever and simply needed to be unlocked and revealed by the right musicians. In that respect, we should consider ourselves very lucky that Wooden Shjips exist NOW.
When news of a new Shjips record hit the streets, we aQuarians were foaming at the mouth wondering what might lie ahead. Then one day, without warning, Dos was here, the four disembodied heads on the cover staring forward like totem poles floating in silver space. While the first album featured a hazy image of the band sitting on a stairwell, their faces are the focal point here, almost as if Wooden Shjips are gradually revealing more to the mystery that is their existence. But what does it sound like? Well, hopefully our review can convince you of this album's absolute majesty... but since words could never properly explain how much this has struck some of us, you should probably check out the sound samples, and above all, trust us.
The album opens perfectly with "Motorbike", possibly the most joyous Wooden Shjips song to date. Swirling guitar chords and oscillating swooshes give one the feeling of traveling at high speeds through some glorious psychedelic vortex, throttling you about in the best way imaginable. It's the sort of song that makes you feel great to be alive, with catchy keyboard melodies recalling a more frantic version of the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" as the UNSTOPPABLE rhythm section lays down a steady rhythmic framework that doesn't let up for the next 38 minutes. Next up is "For So Long", maybe our favorite song on the record. Driven by a bass line that is both spooky and relentlessly catchy, sparse, percussive guitar and organ creep about, as singer Ripley's deep croon wavers in the atmosphere. The somewhat ambivalent vibe of this song makes it the ideal soundtrack to pretty much any moment in your day, whether strolling down the street without a care in the world OR walking home late at night in some paranoid daze. "Down By The Sea" utilizes an appropriate underwater effect on the organ as the bass and drums give you the impression of, well, walking down by the sea. About three minutes in, a classic Wooden Shjips guitar solo enters and eventually morphs into squalls of heavenly white noise. This wonderful psych excursion is followed by the more down tempo "Aquarian Time", featuring a cool tremeloed organ (or maybe it's a piano?) and a devastating fuzz guitar groove that locks in with the bass before another rad guitar solo takes you way up into the clouds. The closing number, "Fallin'", kicks off with a simple two note groove, accented by a reedy organ accompanying the bass and a glistening, cleanly strummed guitar while a simple snare hit keeps the percussive flow going, the work of a man who must surely be in a trance - seriously, how the hell does this guy play so steady for so long?!?! It puts you deep under the band's spell, and then, at the 4 minute mark, you are introduced to the CATCHIEST BASS LINE OF THE YEAR!!! It will stick in your head for ages. After 11 minutes, the song ends with an organ chord and amp hum, reminding you that, yes, Wooden Shjips are human beings and not just a psychedelic rock machine. It's like the band is stopping to breathe for a moment before the next adventure, which hopefully will come very soon. You are left wondering what just happened, and if you're like us, you'll immediately put Dos on for another spin (or, if you're like a certain AQ staffer, 9 or 10 more spins!).
The overall sound on Dos is more upfront and less murky than on past releases. This slightly higher fidelity suits Wooden Shjips splendidly, as these five songs are generally tighter and more snappingly rhythmic than anything they have produced before. Each instrument is represented perfectly in the mix, with nothing taking precedence. The nonstop propulsion of this group is undoubtedly the result of four people operating on another level of psychedelic comprehension, a level many other bands simply don't understand. At the same time, their music is highly enjoyable and not difficult to "get". We certainly get it...
To call Dos "essential" wouldn't be enough. We can tell you that this album exceeded any expectations we may have had. We can tell you how if anyone interrupts you while listening to this, you will be pretty pissed and will most likely ignore them and crank up the volume even more. We can tell you that it will remain one of our favorite records for 2009. But you probably just need to close your eyes and experience it for yourself.
Just in case you haven't quite got your fix for lackadaisical, lo-fi pop, here's a folky dose of strummy daydreaming from East Coasters Woods. Songs of Shame, their fourth full-length, basks in the same sunny day euphoria that radiates from other Woods records, complete with falsetto vocals, clumsy percussion and reverb on -everything-. Dense layers of woozy vocals and weird Casio sounds busy the songs as small details and hidden instruments reveal themselves in a sea of psychedelic clatter. Super warped and drugged out, Songs of Shame sulks in pools of hazy acoustic guitars, ultra catchy 'ooohs and aahs', and soaringly damaged fuzzzzzzz guitar, all loosely compiled into some analog relic found on the shore of Coney Island in the blaring summer heat. Housed in a sharp lookin sleeve with a grainy mountainous landscape on the front and what looks like a drawing by a kindergardener on acid on the back, very nice and very typical of the Woodsist fellows. Not sure how limited this puppy is, but take our advice and don't miss out.
Hmm, not finding too much to say about the latest from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. There is much more of an emphasis on synthesizers and less on guitars, though we think it would have come out cooler had they pushed that even further. Some tracks do demonstrate the best possibilities of this very Blondie meets Italians Do It Better sound, like "Dragon Queen", but lots of the songs here just don't commit to being here or there and sort of just are. Not bad really, but not as exciting as we were hoping it would be....
