*Acid Mothers Temple alert*
*Acid Mothers Temple alert*
*Acid Mothers Temple alert*
Ok, so when are they gonna build a pipeline, or start a satellite radio station, or take over every page on MySpace, so they can deliver their soundz 24-7, and we can mainline AMT from the source all day every day?? Instead the psychedelic music of the Acid Mothers is doled out (ever so quite often!) in album-length chunks. Here's the latest installment from the hardest working hippies in Japan. Three tracks are offered up here, "Eleking The Clay" (14:00), "Sorcerer's Stone Of The Magi" (3:52), and "Vishnu And The Magic Elixir" (25:34). The first is a vibratory, Middle Eastern tinged trance-rocker, it's relentlessly awesome, definitely a highlight of recent AMT action. The relatively brief second track is more of an acoustic-ethnic-folky affair, quite lovely. And then the big track three is a drug-gobbling jam, full of quacking, quaking chaos, like Guru Guru gone totally mental, Kawabata's guitar soloing wildly towards the gloriously noisy everything-louder-than-everything else ending. All of three tracks here are of course liberally drenched in enough spacey FX for ten Hawkwind records. Familiar territory for AMT fans for sure, and as always a nice place to be!
The cd format is digipacked, while the limited edition lp version is resplendent on pink vinyl!
Much like when the Butthole Surfers signed to a major label, who would have thought that a band with a name like Agoraphobic Nosebleed (and a sound like theirs for that matter!), would reach the point they're at now. For the longest time, Scott Hull kept Agoraphobic Nosebleed a dirty little secret, like the deformed child you keep locked in the basement, while focusing on his 'real' band Pig Destroyer (another bad ass band name), Agoraphobic Nosebleed a much spazzier and more drum machined grind proposition, which Pig Destroyer kept drifting more and more toward a somewhat more mainstream metal sound.
As much as we love PD (see the Natasha review elsewhere on this list) our bleeding blackened hearts always belonged to Agoraphobic Nosebleed, every record packed with 30 second long tracks, amazing artwork, insane song titled, a fully fucked and warped sense of humor, killer artwork, and let's not forget that amazing 100 song 3", what wasn't to love? They were just so twisted and heavy and brutal, their sound a lightning speed burst of grinding ultraviolence, 1000 mile an hour hyperspeed fury, complex, convoluted, stuttering, blown out sonic insanity.
So we've been waiting patiently for a new AnB record, it's been almost 3 years since the PCP Torpedo / ANBRX comp / remix record 2cd, and finally, lo and behold, the band resurface, with a new member (a lady no less, and not just ANY lady, the vocalist from ultra doom outfit Salome) and a new sound. We of course expected 30 or 40 songs, but there are only 13, and the sound is not so fast, not so unhinged, definitely still grind, but more a sort of fast core / power violence variant. At first we were a little disappointed with that, but the more we listen to this, the more the songs sink in, with slower tempos and longer track lengths, comes more melodies, more hooks, it's now a bit more about the songs, and THE RIFF, than just a twisted blown out blast of tangled grind. Not that we don't love us a twisted blown out blast of tangled grind, but between all the AnB records we already own, we have about 300 tracks of that, so this new record is pretty exciting. Still a drum machine, but the programming is wicked, it sounds almost like a real drummer (there's even a sort of drum!!), the guitars are still amazing, jagged and corrosive, the riffs much more like riffs instead of shards of guitar grind, lots of chug, and super almost technical squiggles, a bit of groove too, and some definite Greg Ginn-ish worship, the whole sound is still plenty gnarled and harsh and brutal, it's just that now you have time to get into the songs. There's some bits of plodding doominess, some long stretches of churning crunch, but for the most part this is a gloriously grinding chunk of damaged metallic chaos.
And be sure to check the negative track, that's right, rewind past the beginning, and there's a whole other secret track (well not secret, it's listed on the disc and there are lyrics in the booklet), and speaking of the booklet, it's jam packed with fucked up cartoony drawings of death and cocks and naked women and sex acts and drugs and snakes and gore (it is a grind record after all) as well as the band's twisted non-PC lyrics.
And while they last, the jewel-cased cds come packaged inside old school long boxes, the amazing cover art spread out over one of those big cardboard boxes cds used to come in back when they had to fit in bins stores previously were using for vinyl, but the extra dough is not just for the box, it also comes with pins, a poster and a bad ass embroidered patch. The vinyl has none of that stuff, but does have a huge full color booklet, and is housed in a sweet deluxe jacket.
We didn't think it was possible, but with their second record, Ancestors have managed to get louder, heavier, more distorted, noisier and weirdly enough groovier. Short and not at all sweet, a bunch of songs jammed onto a 7" (or a cassette if you swing that way), a relentless blown out blast of blackened ultra distorted metallic punk. Or black metal. More likely somewhere right in between.
Not to be confused with THE Ancestors, the stoner rock outfit, Ancestors have a rich punk rock pedigree (Charles Bronson anyone?) but since the old days the sound has moved way further into the black, think Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Malveillance, Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, that sort of relentless blackened crusty metalnoise, furious and frenetic, a wall of chaotic crush infused with blast beats and buzzing riffs. Record number two is so ferocious, it's a wonder it can remain musical, but it does, BIG time, in fact, it's weirdly way more musical than the first record, more melodic, with more of a groove, more slow parts, but that only makes them sound that much more fucked up and brutal.
Hissing white hot distorted fury, the riffs crumble and melt, the drums pound and thrash struggling not to get swallowed up by the churning blackness, and then the vocals, holy fuck, they are SICK, ultra distorted, processed, some sort of inhuman howl / shriek / gurgle, like Abruptum meets Popeye meets Merzbow, but sometimes so warped it almost sounds like it's not in fact a voice, but some sort of malfunctioning synth. Amidst all this blown out noise drenched damage, the guitars occasionally explode into awesome blasts of super technical and angular post punk squiggle, but all blackened up. There are also hooks and catchy melodies, and the songs slow down to offer up a CHUG, or a fragmented groove, before bursting back into action, overall, the whole record manages to sound way more polished and refined, without losing an ounce of vitriol.
The record even finishes off with a weirdly gorgeous bout of midtempo moodiness, but the band manage even with that, to make it sound abrasive and caustic and catchy as fuck.
Beautiful packaging, the 7" comes in a super abstract full color sleeve and insert, printed inner sleeve, very little in the way of information, pressed on thick white vinyl, LIMITED TO 333 COPIES!!! The tape is also limited, and features the same abstract full color artwork, and the same dearth of info...
While we had the fantastic Another World ep to tide us over last year while we waited patiently, the time has finally come and we now get a brand new full length from Antony and it DOES NOT disappoint, not one bit!
I Am A Bird Now is a really touch act to follow, but The Crying Light glows in its own unique beauty. Filled with lush arrangements and gorgeous orchestration, and of course Antony's one of a kind magical voice that is absolutely heavenly. Exploring similarly emotional and stunning stratospheres as folks like Rene Joly, Nina Simone, Bryan Ferry, Arthur Russell and Boy George, while employing a remarkable group of musicians (Nico Mushily, Greg Cohen, Doug Wieselman, etc.), but ultimately it's Antony's incredible songwriting and delivery that elevate his work to that highest level of musical achievement.
While not a dramatic departure from the haunting and emotionally charged sounds of I Am A Bird Now, this record still finds its own voice. Focusing on nature, and our relationship to nature in the smallest and most grandiose ways, Antony ponders our lives, births and deaths, as these songs make you stop in your tracks and soak up the wind and air and spirits that surround us. This is the kind of record that keeps revealing itself on repeated listens. Of course, highly recommended!
We love Art Brut. Their first record, Bang Bang Rock & Roll was an awesome slab of Fall worship, complete with angular guitars, caffeinated grooves, and the singer's snarky ironic sung/spoken vocalizing, sounding like the hipster bastard child of Mark E. Smith. Their first hit from that record, "Formed A Band", took the piss out of plenty of bands, but was pretty self deprecating at the same time. The line "And yes, this is my singing voice, it's not irony, it's not rock & roll, we're just talking to the kids" pretty much says it all.
The second record was a bit of a let down, seemed a little milquetoast, a bit watered down, there were definitely some killer moments, but not nearly enough. Vs. Satan however finds the band kicking ass once again, the music is as always, total bouncy new wave pop, the guitars jagged and crunchy, the drums propulsive and frenetic, a sound that definitely falls in line with sonic compatriots like the Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park and the like, but it's the vocals that really set this apart. Imagine The Fall (there's no way around mentioning the Fall with Art Brut) if they were in their twenties or very early thirties right now, and were raised on, well, The Fall among other groups, and sang about comic books and milkshakes and being accused of never growing up and girls and other bands and public transportation and not having a driver's license and other mundanities of modern life. Sounds stupid, and maybe it is, but it's also goofy and good fun, often clever, cheeky, snide, but just as often tossed off, but fuck it, these guys aren't trying to change the world, they're having a good time, making an awesome racket, and we're having a great time listening to it. Plus these songs are wicked catchy, just listen to the opening one two punch of "Alcoholics Unanimous" and "DC Comics And Chocolate Milkshakes" and see if you're not totally sold. Two of our favorite new wave pop jams of the year for sure.
Another spaced out and droned out musical missive from Neil Campbell and his Astral Social Club. This vinyl only release is yet another leap into the unknown, as we follow along with Campbell's continuous exploration of ur-drone and fractured alien techno. Psychic Smog finds Campbell revisiting a more classic ASC sound, with only two tracks exhibiting his newfound love for fractured rhythms and alien dancefloor beatmaking.
Distant soaring painterly melodies swirl over crunchy grinding high end electronics, while below seas of muted cyclical whir roil and churn, overlapped loops become jagged and splinter apart before more layers take their place. The sound goes from tranquil to dense and overdriven and chaotic. The beats, when they do surface, are mechanical and robotic, and are doused in burbly squelching buzz, groovy for sure, but those beats quickly give way to some of the most divine and otherworldy drift Campbell has ever cooked up. Swirly, shimmery and oh so dreamlike, the A side finishing off with a wall of fractured beats, caustic buzz, pulsing crunch, but all infused with plenty of muted bleep and bloop.
The B side is two long tracks, the first, is all delicately druggy ambience, almost post rocky in its slow build to a thick swirly soft cacophony. While the second track is another loping programmed beatscape, the groove galloping through a glimmering field of chopped synth stutter, warped electronic glitchery and sparkling streaks of soft focus shimmer. Not groovy or dance-y so much as rhythmic and almost krautrocky. Awesome!
Pressed on gorgeous swirled pink and red and black and white vinyl, and housed in a full color sleeve.
Peri is a companion of sorts to the earlier Bardo Pond release Batholith, which itself was a compilation of rare and unreleased tracks. The wealth of material compiled for Batholith resulted in this, a second volume of rarities, culled from the last almost 15 years. It includes some old fan favorites, and we have to say this is the sort of Bardo Pond we love, so sludgey and murky and psychedelic and raw, the band seriously HEAVY, their psychedelia dark and drone-y and intense, the guitars thick and gnarled, the vocals ghostlike and buried in the mix, lots of fluttering flutes, thick squalls of wild guitar freakout, the drums a pounding thud. Just check out the opener "Karwan", a slithery sprawling sludgey groove, the guitars thick and cloudy, the drums more of a slow motion tribal pulse than a rhythm, the main riff loping and woozy and druggy, the vocals laid back and weary, the whole thing sounding like it's being broadcast through a haze of pot smoke.
"The Path" is short and more delicate, the vocals and flutes way up front, but fiery guitars buzz just below the surface, the vibe almost folky, which perfectly segues into "Libation" a way more laid back space jam, the drums skittery and spare, the guitars spidery and crystalline, the vocals again buried in the mix, and a wicked psych blowout outro.
"Chicken Gun" was a live staple from the nineties, and features a bad ass main riff, lots of wah wah, thick distorted guitars, cool chanteuse like vocals, strange atonal flute freakouts, and a sound that just gets heavier and heavier and more dense as the track progresses. Finally, the record closes with "Silver Pavillion", another classic Bardo oldie, tripped out and dreamy and druggy, more krautrocky than anything, the guitars unfurling soft shimmery buzz, but again with an explosive climax, wild intense drumming, and some intense tangled psych guitar dueling. Total space rock / drone rock / krautrock nirvana.
Weirdly, the vinyl is limited to 1640 copies, while the cd-only version is limited to a mere 350 copies, so those will most likely be gone before the lps. But heck, you might as well buy the lp, since not only does it ALSO come with a cd anyway, it comes in a gorgeous ultra heavy, super swank and super deluxe gatefold jacket!
Through all the genre's he's dabbled in, all the concepts he's fucked with, all the hits he's had, for many of us the story of Beck begins and ends with One Foot In The Grave. Recorded months before Mellow Gold, which ended up being released before it and turned Beck into a poster boy for the '90s alternative-nation, One Foot In The Grave is Beck's most stripped down, raw and impacting album. And a long time favorite of most folks around here.
Recorded by Calvin Johnson at Dub Narcotic Studios and released on K, this record shared much more in common with the humble raw sounds of the underground then it did videos on MTV, glossy photos shoots and all that would follow. The whole world seemed focused on "Loser" and and all the bullshit that came with Beck's sudden ascent to superstar status, but this record was proof that beneath it all was an amazing songwriter and a fantastic singer. While a stripped down lo-fi folksy/bluesy record sounds like such an ordinary thing now, back in the early '90s there really wasn't much of this going on. This was a decade before indie-folk would blow up big, it was the same year that Elliott Smith released his first solo album, the beginnings of a new burst of indie minded souls making folk music in a truly unique way. One Foot In The Grave was one of those records that kicked our asses, a record we could totally connect to, a record that we listened to ENDLESSLY. There weren't many singer songwriters around at the time who seemed to bring real grit to their sound, or who had any sort of unique perspective. Beck then was someone who you could tell loved Sonic Youth, Beat Happening and Neil Young, and was just sort of making real heartfelt songs, songs that sounded like they were being performed around a campfire, just us and beck, making s'mores, telling ghost stories and singing songs.
Rustic and haunting, simple and strong, One Foot In The Grave still sounds so great after all these years, and still manages to be the best sounding Beck record, even considering everything that came after!!
This reissue comes with sixteen bonus tracks (thirteen of which have never been released!)
Captured Tracks is turning into the go to label for rad and limited vinyl pressings of some of the most interesting and offbeat damaged garage pop bands around. Recent releases from the label include records by Blank Dogs, Brilliant Colors, Dum Dum Girls, etc. The Beets fit perfectly with the label's aesthetic, these are some way lo-fi reverbed out rudimentary garage pop gems with a charming kind of innocence about them. We hear a kinship with Thee Oh Sees, especially circa Sucks Blood, as these tracks have that same kind of stoned and lacka-daze-ical quality. Imagine what it might sound like if Dwyer and company did a bunch of Shaggs covers and you'd pretty much have the Beets. There is something so refreshingly effortless and free flowing about this record. Maybe it's their name but we have dreams of seeing them play live in a friend's kitchen as we nibble on snacks and they use everything in the kitchen sink to create totally endearing lo-fi punk rock brilliance.
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??
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another Record Store Day artifact (thanks to everyone who came out for RSD!!!) that we managed to get enough of, so we'd have a few left after the big day, to share with the aQ faithful who don't have a local record store to call their own, or who just consider US their indie record shop.
A little taster of the upcoming Black Moth Super Rainbow full length. This 7" is limited to 500 copies, pressed on orange vinyl, and was whipped up just for Record Store Day. It features the awesomely titled jam "Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise" from the new album, which is everything we could have hoped for, all druggy and swirly and sun dappled and psychedelic. There are strings and warn whirring synths, and breathless dreamy vox, and lilting melodies, not super freaked out or spastic, although there are hits of swooping electronics and glitchy bits, but for the most part this is just some awesomely new wave flecked jangly futuristic psych pop.
The flipside offers up a drastically different demo version, that actually sounds more like Blackmoth, skittery drum machines, the main melody plucked out on a banjo, disembodied vocodered vocals, the strings pushed way up in the mix, much more of a hip hop / trip hop vibe, more effects and swooping swirling synths, really rad, and exclusive to this here 7".
Can NOT wait for the new record, but this will hold us over until then...
Anyone paying attention will know that in the past few years, the unlikely nation of France has been churning out some of the most progressive, intelligent, and best black metal around. There's Deathspell Omega, Peste Noire, Spektr, and of course, the mighty Blut Aus Nord, a shadowy group who seamlessly blends synthy ambience with a relentless, yet interestingly controlled black metal assault. Seasick guitar riffs, plodding, often midtempo drums, and vocalist Vindsval's vile black metal rasp (and occasional operatic chant, no shit) meet up in an unholy union of strangely structured songs that are at once hallucinatory, majestic, and beautiful.
Blut Aus Nord possess a unique, cyclical style of songwriting, and even though we have no idea what they are saying, it is evident through titles that each song fits within a well defined philosophical theme. With names like "This Formless Sphere (Beyond the Reason)", "...the Meditant (Dialogue With the Stars)", and "Elevation", it's clear that the band's interest goes beyond any sort of juvenile take on Satanism, instead seeking to make sense of an endlessly unfathomable universe. Their albums seem to exist as esoteric and surreal dream worlds, and the band's intense, psychedelic approach isn't as much furious as it is contemplative. Within this potent mixture, they are also surprisingly "rocking".
Memoria Vetusta II - Dialogue With The Stars (part I, Fathers of the Icy Age, was released waaaaay back in 1996) starts with "Acceptance (Aske)", a GORGEOUS synthscape that sets the moody atmosphere for the next hour. It was interesting to watch customers enter the store during such a beautiful and melancholy piece, only to be hit with the loping, super blackened approach that kicks off the next track, "Disciple's Libration (Lost in the Nine Worlds)", which over the course of 9 minutes, manages to perfectly encapsulate everything that is so great about this band.
The impeccable production on this album certainly adds to its greatness. Clear and spacious, the music within sounds as if it has existed forever, created by a group of immortal mystics, not, you know, a couple of guys from France. In the end, we are presented with what will undoubtedly be one of the best metal records of 2009.
You might not expect a band featuring former members of Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jugend to sound a bit like some twisted noiserock hybrid of old Today is The Day, the crushing bombast of the Swans, and the ominous brooding doom and gloom of Joy Division, but that's precisely what Bodychoke conjure up on this, their long out of print final album, circa 1998, now reissued by Relapse.
We always assumed we didn't like Bodychoke all that much, the other records we heard we really not that good, and their version of "Painted Black" was even left off the tUMULt comp featuring multiple version of that iconic song, but holy shit has this record knocked our fucking blocks off. There's plenty of noise for sure, jagged and processed and crumbling and crunchy and blown out, but noise is just one element here, the band in full on noise rock / post rock. Unfurling low slung bass lines, jagged riffing, some cool complex drumming, the arrangements super dynamic, the vocals slipping from ominous deep Michael Gira like croon, to strangled punkish wail.
Opener "Control" pretty much has it all, beginning with a weird cacophony of fractured fragmented noise, the band soon slip into a minimal bass groove, before the guitars kick in and lock in with the snares, the song transformed into a brooding almost Angels Of Light sounding jam, until the chorus, which EXPLODES, and the noise from the beginning returns, wrapping the churning loping crush in a swirling field of feedback and crumbling grit and grime. It's just so intense and heavy and weirdly catchy, and so much better than we ever remember Bodychoke being.
And so it goes, the rest of the record continues to display a sound that's almost more slow building post rock than noise, but most of the tracks are laced with heaping doses of caustic crunch. There's also a cello player in the band, who offers up some gorgeously moaning ambience, and subtle strings here and there. Many of the tracks spread way out, sprawling lugubriously, expansive minimal post punk soundcapes, skitter and whisper, burning slowly until the song is engulfed in tangled riffage and wild tribal pounding, and even the noise, it's so deftly crafted and well placed, it's hard to imagine anyone into heavy music being put off at all, it's just like another layer of heaviness, another level of dynamicism, it's weird, we all had the exact same response when this record came on. "Oh I don't like Bodychoke", but gradually, it seemed everyone was listening to this, ALL the time, even now, as this is being written, not only is it playing on the stereo in the back room, but also in the store, this record just slays. So dark and heavy and brutal and melodic and epic and AMAZING. Based on nothing but how often this gets played in the store and how often we've listened to this since it came in, we're beginning to think maybe we should have made this Record Of The Week, so consider this an EXTREME highlight, and thus overwhelmingly recommended!
Oh how we love Brutal Truth, and oh how psyched we were to hear about their return. At this point, it's probably more out of the ordinary for a band to NOT get back together, but Brutal Truth were actually one of the few bands we always wished would reunite, and obviously we were not alone.
So how does Evolution Through Revolution stack up to say, Extreme Conditions, or Sounds Of The Animal Kingdom, or even Need To Control, quite possibly our favorite grind record EVER? Well, we're happy to report, as cliched as it sounds, it's like they never left, this is some furious, grinding, hyperspeed metal mayhem, so dense and insanely chaotic and kick ass, and the riffs RULE, usually with bands this fast and fucked the riffs don't matter, but like Discordance Axis, you'll find these jams lodged in your head like crazy. How can music like this be so catchy? It speaks volumes about these guys, it's like they just threw a bunch of instruments into a magic metal blender and out spewed glorious glorious grind.
This is not a proper full band reunion, there's a new guitarist, but it hardly matters, he destroys, definitely holding his own, and of course Rich Hoak's drumming is inhuman and octopoidal and impossibly relentless. And Kevin Sharp, who the fuck knows how that guy even has a voice left after all these years, and it's still AWESOME to behold, not just a brittle shriek, he's got a killer guttural yowl that peels paint. And the band definitely mix it up, slowing it down here and there, getting all doomy on a few tracks, getting seriously BLACK FLAG here and there (check out "Detached", a dead ringer for Rollins era Flag, rife with wild guitar Ginn-isms), a bunch of the songs are seriously poppy, others are harsh and hateful and offer up no melody at all, hell, they even do a Minutemen cover.
We're trying not to gush, but c'mon! Not only has one of our favorite bands EVER finally returned, but this is no half assed walk down memory lane, this record SLAYS, a total fucking full on grind masterpiece.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We got less than 20 of these, so we won't go into too much detail, since we could have done with at least twice that many, but c'mon, funeral folk weirdos Silvester Anfang and creeped out black ambient ritualist Burial Hex together on a 7", how amazing is that?! Unfortunately for all but about 20 of you, it is plenty amazing! But, it's LIMITED TO 500 copies (each one hand numbered), and already sold out, so if you want one, better be quick.
The Silvester Anfang side is gorgeous and dark and tribal and trippy, with a definite Morricone vibe, high end guitar squiggles way off in the distance, simple drumming, twangy guitars up front, some seriously super dramatic crescendos, but all the way through super raw and lo-fi, with a wild tangled second half that almost sounds space rock!
The Burial Hex side is a primitive and fractured lo-fi noise ritual, deep synthy rumbles, super distorted vocals, like a more doomy blackened Whitehouse if that makes any sense, vocals run through a bank of Merzbow-ish effects, the music a surprisingly gorgeous and minimal sprawl of deep rib cage rattling tones and low low low low buzz. Cool and creepy.
In a time when so many male singers are going for the falsetto pot of gold, or the whining indie warble, or the muffled too-cool-for-school barley audible mumble, Bill Callahan's deep and clear voice rings so true, with more strength and truth than ever. This is Callahan's second album released under his own name, after dropping the Smog moniker, but no doubt longtime Smog fans will still love these darkly poetic songs.
While his last album featured some of his sunniest and dare we say maybe even happiest moments ever set to tape, Sometimes I Wish... finds Callahan in more of a solemn and subdued mood, but what makes Callahan such a special songwriter is that even when his songs are sad or forlorn, they are never that simply defined. The songs here are lush and subtly epic, soaring with a heightened level of story telling, this is immaculate songcraft, all the various elements woven delicately into Callahan's unique soundworld. The music is at once immediate and intense, the sort of sound that gives you goosebumps, but also abstract and free, allowing the listener to wander freely, freeing your mind, drifting through memories, lingering desires and undying devotion.
We've always adored Camera Obscura's swirlingly lush, angora-soft, unmistakably Scottish dream pop, and we certainly are quite fond of their latest full length. However, is it possible to have too much of a good thing? At times we sorta found it to be a little heavy-handed with the sumptuous Bacharach/Welk-style string arrangements. Now, obviously we at aQ are all for grandiose orchestral excess (a la E.L.O. and Flaming Lips) and a bit of musical melodrama, but here it doesn't quite always work. For instance on the opening track "French Navy" the string section seems to be sitting at a distance from the rest of the band/song, occasionally overwhelming the delicate vocals and other instrumentation. 'Tis somewhat surprising because Camera Obscura are usually masters of tastefully mannered pop restraint, but maybe this time they went "Fuck it! Let's cut loose!" and that just happens to have been where their bustin' loose manifested. Don't wanna make a mountain out of a molehill though 'cause My Maudlin Career is really a lovely, achingly bittersweet album. Sure to please their fans, and lure over some converts from the camps of Belle & Sebastian, The Delgados, and Peter, Bjorn & John. The hushed slow number "James" is a definite standout as is the '60s girl group sway of the album's title track! Scrumptiously sweet!
By this point the charismatic Ian Svenonius is most loved as a indie cultural icon, his ramblings, writings, and TV show (Soft Focus on VBTV.com) are all so undeniably entertaining and compelling. Though, we have to say we haven't been too thrilled with most of his musical output since he pulled the plug on The Make Up. But before that most of us were all pretty obsessed with his first band Nation Of Ulysses as well as the ultra short lived Cupid Car Club. His newest project Chain And The Gang is closest in aesthetic to the gospel funk of The Make Up. Lots of call and response vocals, tons of sharp witted sass, and darker take on that classic girl group sound. We'd still probably rather hear Ian shoot the shit or read his latest manifesto but this is sounding pretty darn OK to us. Not amazing by any stretch, but Ian Svenonius diehards (and we know you are out there!) will definitely want to snag this.
George Chen is responsible for so many cool things in the Bay Area. Whether it's helping keep the all-ages scene alive with Club Sandwich, injecting life into zine culture, championing all sorts of weird and unusual music, etc. So it's kind of easy to forget that the man is also quite an awesome music maker himself, for proof just check out records he's been on in bands like 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Common Eider King Eider, Voltz, etc.
Teamed up with Steve Santa Maria the two have put together quite a potent concoction of damaged, haunting and often gorgeous textural sounds that rank right up there with folks like Taiga Remians, Simon Wickham-Smith and Birchville Cat Motel. Collapsing electronics, fractured guitar, seamless samples and primitive drum machines all come together to create sounds that would make the perfect soundtrack to a mysterious and brooding post-apocalyptic experimental film. These are sounds of machines on their last legs, creeping and crawling through fields of grit and grime and buzz and glitch trying to survive. Their affiliation with the East Bay noise scene can be heard on some of the more squelching and stuttering moments here, but they also have a more subtle side to their sound that is more dreamy and drifting keeping things drifting and spacey and oh so hypnotic!
Avid readers of our blog probably already got a taste of Chord, a high concept super group, who craft longform compositions, each one the sonic realization of a single chord. Some folks might remember the group Physics from San Diego, a group who did something similar, with a revolving lineup, at one time or another featuring most famous or semi famous San Diego rockers among their ranks, and who typically featured multiple guitarists, all playing a single chord, quite often a C chord.
The group Chord, featuring one member of Pelican along with several other Chicago area musicians, are bit more highbrow with their 'Chords'. This record displaying four of them: Am, Am7, E9 and Gmaj(flat 13). As we mentioned in our blog post too, for an April Fool's Day a while back we imagined the ultimate doomdrone record where Earth, Boris and SUNNO))) would each play one not of a chord, and that chord would be the release. Well, how prescient were we?
Here the players are each assigned a note but are allowed to do whatever they like with that note, octave, timbre, playing style, effects, the various players letting their notes drift and intertwine with the other notes, the resulting chord a lush, cloud of sound, constantly shifting and transforming, changing shape, slipping from hushed shimmer to corrosive buzz and back again, sometimes building to a Sunroof!-like wall of sound, other times, so minimal it seems to be just particles and fragments floating in an expanse of soft focus whirs and whispers. Some parts are simple and strummed and sound like a proper song, but those parts soon blossom into something much more layered and abstract. A Minor is our favorite chord, and the Am track here just completely fries the chord, a cacophonous chaotic wall of crumbling churning super distorted buzz and skree, blurred into an almost hypnotic slab of corrosive pulsing noise. It's all quite dramatic and epic, quite beautiful, stately at certain moments, almost chaotic and crumbling at others, anyone into Conrad, Cale, Maclise, Flynt and especially Branca and Chatham will definitely dig this. As well as guitardrone freaks who count Fear Falls Burning, RST, Seconds In Formaldehyde, Elm, Continuum and the like among their favorites.
We weren't quite sure what to make of this record when it came in. It had all the visual components of numerous experimental and noise records (we initially assumed from the looks of the lp that it was another delightfully punishing No Fun release), but upon further inspection, we noticed the Fat Possum logo on the back, as well as some rather intriguing song titles: "I Wanna Kill", "Sleeping with the Lord", "Summer of Hate", and "Young Drugs". Yep, definitely some potential for cool, and when we finally put the Crocodiles on for a spin, we were quite pleased to be confronted with a dirty, stripped down Jesus and Mary Chain style wallop combined with bits of experimental noise, bluesy swagger, and dense shoegazey goodness. After some detective work, we discovered that this duo is from San Diego, like labelmates and recent aQ favorites Wavves, and while they don't really sound too much like Wavves, the Crocodiles seem to approach their music from a similar standpoint, reevaluating tried and true styles of rock from the past and injecting some fresh new blood into the proceedings. All the while they thankfully avoid falling into the trap of presenting themselves as some retro revival act, though they do have some mighty impressive hair.
A pleasant surprise from the folks at Fat Possum that is sure to appeal to those of you digging the lo-fi pop bliss of the aforementioned Wavves, Kurt Vile, No Age, and Crystal Stilts. Here's looking forward to the upcoming Summer of Hate.
Their debut ep last year from the Crystal Antlers was such a strong burst of loud and scrappy psych rock fury, raw and overflowing with a refreshing energy and urgency that had been lacking in the sometimes stagnant modern psych rock world. It was one of those records we couldn't get enough of, blasting it in the store over and over.
So we were quite anxious to hear what the follow up full length would sound like. And weirdly it's a much different beast this time around. You can tell they spent a good long time locked up in the studio hashing this one out and that plays out in both good ways and bad. There is definitely a risk spending lots of time on a record. Often you lose touch with that stripped down and raw approach that made the songs and sound so special in the first place. This is still a rocking effort for sure, it's just that at times it feels as if they did just that, overthinking things that were meant to be more immediate and intense. On the last record, we heard a nice mixture of '90s San Diego bands like Drive Like Jehu mixed with the likes of Comets On Fire, this time there still is a '90s San Diego sound going on but more in the melodramatic vocal delivery and an abundance of organs, which reminds us of early Three Mile Pilot as well as bands like Zen Guerilla. The scope is much more epic and ambitious and you can never knock a band for going for the gusto but sometimes when you set your sights so wide and high you have to make sacrifices, and while the band has obviously made a cool record for some folks, we liked the less polished ep quite a bit better.
Attention all blackened drone heads!!! We've managed to get a few copies of the new Digitalis release from Darwinsbitch, and it's super dark and super gorgeous! Ore is a slow burring monumental slab of post-apocalyptic dooooomy ambience. Using violin and oscillators, Mills graduate Marielle Jakobsons creates a dim world where Eastern folk melodies meet damaged textures and desolate atmospheres. Not too far off from anything on the Miasma label, we're hearing strong similarities to the recent Elegy release, but Ore takes a different more melodic route through smoldering layers of buzzing drone and washed out haze. A nice balance between industrial filth and organic beauty, Ore is quite the accomplishment and should definitely not be missed! Limited to an edition of 500, don't be left in the smoldering ruins without it!
What hath the mighty Weakling wrought? Surely that legendary SF black metal band spawned a legion of followers and worshippers, but few underground bands have had such a noticeable impact, spawning bands blatantly and openly paying homage to the masters.
First there was Jabladav, who began basically as a tribute, even releasing a couple records called Dead As Duck and Drunk As Duck, both references to Weakling's only album, Dead As Dreams which came out on tUMULt way back in 2000. Now there's the BAND Dead As Dreams, a USBM band who apparently loved Weakling enough to name their band after the group's seminal record. And as if that weren't enough, Dead As Dreams are paired up on this split with a band called Aurvandil, who have a song called "As Dead As Dreams". But you know, bands could do a lot worse for inspiration than Weakling, and if you ask us, and since you're reading this review you sort of are, a band could hardly do better.
So Dead As Dreams, offer up a single looooong song, carving out their own sound, which is definitely heavily influenced by Weakling, but manages to be pretty unique and most assuredly their own. The fast bits are the most Weakling inspired, with similarly hysterical shrieks, drone infused blackened riffing, relentless drumming, but then the band whip out these really awesome depressive slow parts, all mournful and a bit abstract, plodding and melancholic, with some long slow decays and awesome wailing keening high tones, that almost sound like guitar and voice harmonizing, however they do it, it's really dramatic and makes the song!
Aurvandil are from France but sound like they're from Norway, very Buzumic, gloriously buzzy, midtempo, drum machine, but not distractedly so, some awesome riffs for sure, the sound not as murky or muted as Dead As Dreams, more chaotic, but still melodic, definitely need to hear more from both these bands, but especially Dead As Dreams, we find ourselves returning to that track again and again, THAT one part burned into our brains.
Released on the always kick ass Tour De Garde label!!
Maybe you've heard the hype on this Detroit punk rock reissue already. And it's almost too good to be believed. Back in 1974, this trio of brothers, who are also all "brothers" in the African-American sense of the word, and who were fans of the likes of Black Sabbath and The Stooges and Alice Cooper and the MC5, started a band called DEATH, recording an album that was never released (apparently they refused to change their name to get a major label deal). Flash forward to the present. One of these dudes plays in a reggae band now, but his son is in a punk rock band. Dad's like, "hey son, did y'know I had a band like that when I was your age." And then pulls these dusty, 30-some year old master tapes out of the closet. Holy shit, dad!! The long lost Death album. And it IS killer. Not just proto-punk, but practically proto-hardcore. Hear for yourself. The suggestion that HR and the Bad Brains - or Black Flag for that matter - heard this stuff back in the day and were inspired by it (Death did release a 7" single in 1976) doesn't seem entirely implausible. Not sure how Death stayed unknown for so long. Apparently the brothers, finding that Death's brand of uncompromising, politically radical, high energy rock action wasn't getting them anywhere, moved in a more gospel (!) direction... so that was it for Death. Until now, with Drag City's at-long-last release of Death's 1975 album (well, mini-album, it's seven songs, just over 26 minutes).
Opener "Keep On Knocking" is a decent enough rocker, hinting at the MC5, the Rolling Stones and maybe early badass KISS but it's tame compared to the hyperactive glam slam of what follows - when track two "Rock-N-Roll Victim" comes on and kicks you in the nuts, repeatedly, you'll really realize how freaking punk Death were. Frantic guitars locked in with frenzied drumming, crazed vocals, handclaps (yeah!)... it's pretty darn smokin'. Smoking somethin' all right. They mellow things about a bit for "Let The World Turn", though just a bit. "You're A Prisoner" is another heavy rocker, and "Freakin Out" doesn't let up, its title no lie.
"Where Do We Go From Here???" and "Politicians In My Eyes" are the two remaining tracks on this disc, and the latter in particular is a fierce blend of soulful vocal expression and raging, distorted rockin' with a little bit of a funky vibe. Wow. Definitely in the vein of something like Crushed Butler, but from Detroit a few years later... or in the vein of the Damned, but from Detroit a few years earlier! So, yeah, believe the hype. And by the way, this destroys all that Black Rock Coalition stuff from the early '90s...
Drag City must have been *stoked* to get to put this out. We're sorta surprised there's no liner notes, though they do include handwritten lyrics. Also, fyi, this is available on vinyl but we could barely get any, maybe we'll get some more eventually since the couple copies we have at the moment will be gone in a wink...
While the UK's Terrorizer remains our fave glossy metal magazine, it's got close competition from Decibel. Decibel is definitely the best American metal mag going, having superseded the late great Metal Maniacs - and it is as intentionally witty as MM was often unintentionally funny.
This issue features Heaven And Hell aka Black Sabbath on the cover, and even though the magazine admits that the band's soon-to-be-released album is not so hot, it's still always interesting reading about the gods Dio, Iommi, and Butler. Also this ish: Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Absu (Proscriptor doing Decibel's version of The Wire's Invisible Jukebox), Kylesa, My Dying Bride, Suffocation (being inducted into the Decibel Hall Of Fame for Effigy Of The Forgotten), Samael, Enforcer, Altar Of Plagues, Oceano, and plenty more... Of course there's the usual ton of reviews, columns (including J. Bennett's Cry Now, Cry Later and John "Mountain Goats" Darnielle's South Pole Dispatch) and such. Oh, and this issue also features Decibel's 2009 Extreme Baseball Preview, for those so inclined.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another kick ass Record Store Day release! We ordered an extra handful of these so you out of towners could still get your hands on one of these, a new track from long time aQ faves, Southeast Asian poppers Dengue Fever, with another gorgeous smokey groove, all reverby surf guitars, slithery sexy bass, simple jazzy drums, some gorgeously jazzy almost Maricachi sounding horns, and of course the divine vocals of Chhom Nimol, who seals the deal, her delivery so sultry and effortless. If you haven't heard Dengue Fever, you are in for a treat!
The flipside features Chicha Libre, another band of modern musicians channeling classic sounds of the past, this time the sound of Peruvian Chicha, and just like Dengue Fever, they are a dead ringer for the real thing, heck, they ARE the real thing, twangy guitars, warm warbly organs, gorgeous vocal harmonies, totally groovy and danceable, the sound warm and vintage, we would never guess that this was a new recording. Wow. These two groups just toured the US together, this 7" commemorates that trek, and was released just for Record Store Day, we have about 10 of these, it was LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, pretty sure we won't be able to get more.
It's hard to believe it's been almost SEVEN years since we've heard from French black metal horde Diamatregon. Their last record, Blasphemy For Satan, was an absolute beast, fucked up and frenzied, furious and insanely noisy and chaotic. Released on Andee's tUMULt label (as is this one, although the vinyl is on Paragon), Blasphemy still puts to shame most other black metal, past or present. And somehow, Crossroad, as impossible as it may seem, is poised to one up Blasphemy in almost every way.
In the preceding years, a few things in the Diamatregon camp have changed. Thankfully, the band are still the furious frenzied blackened juggernaut they always were, a band whose sound we once described as "violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal", and that definitely still applies. But Diamatregon's rhythm section has been moonlighting in both the alchemical post rock outfit Aluk Todolo, as well as in wild psychedelic combo the Gunslingers, and that has definitely influenced their sound. Not to mention that Crossroad is in fact a sort of black metal homage to the blues, the title referring to the legendary crossroads where many a musician struck a deal with the devil. And we can only assume these guys have bought into some similar sort of bargain, as Crossroad is mind blowing, still black metal at its core, full of buzzing insectoid riffing, pounding blasting beats, and raspy demonic vokills, but the arrangements are epic and convoluted and so complex, the various riffs and beats often seeming to melt into each other creating long droned out buzzscapes, the textures too are weirdly murky and washed out, tons of reverb and delay, seemingly lo-fi on the surface, but that low fidelity is just another tool in the band's extensive sonic arsenal. And then there's the blues aspect, this is after all a tribute to the blues, and close examination does in fact reveal some surprising bits of bluesiness, deftly woven into the corrosive black fabric of Diamatregon's freaked out grim buzz. A casual listen will reveal no blues at all, but strap on some headphones and let that swirling blackness swallow you whole, and suddenly the songs open up, revealing layer after layer, and within all of that buzz and rrroooar there lurks subtle blues structures.
But that's not all, the songs constantly shift gears sometimes, the guitars drop out completely, leaving just a garagey bass heavy groove, other times the guitars soar and sing, chiming and ringing out, eventually collapsing into yet another black hole of sound. Here and there the band slow things down, and get a bit depressive and Burzumy, loping and melancholic, woozy and warbly, but even within a fairly well defined sound, Diamatregon fuck it up and make it all their own, infusing warm whirring major key melodies, adding all sorts of drones and layers, the vocals a deep ominous rumble, before slipping into some post rocky clean guitar, beneath some twisted Orc-ish vox, and a jam that is total loping post rock, mathy, and minimal, a bit blackened, but it's not difficult to hear and feel the link between Diamatregon and Aluk Todolo.
The title track is the record's centerpiece, beginning with some crumbing lo-fi guitar, soon lurching into a lumbering bit of chaotic blackness, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vocals strange and strangled sounding, the guitars thick and corrosive, the sound of the whole song seeming to warp and warble, until everything drops out minus the guitars which are left to drone and rumble and reverberate, creating thick sheets of chordal buzz, so gorgeously minimal and hypnotic, eventually joined by soaring slow motion leads draped over the top, before exploding into another stretch of chaotic pounding blackness.
The final track, "He Was Not A Believer", is probably the heaviest and harshest of the bunch, a pounding relentless blackened onslaught, but even here the band infuse all sorts of melody and texture, and again, let the song break down into an abject doomic crawl, all grunted anguished voices, monstrous drum plod, warped guitar, droney moodiness, eventually getting almost Sabbathy, before slipping back into an even more frenetic black blast, and finally finishing off with a long stretch of blackened distorted crumble and ooze, that seems to slip slowly away.
Blasphemy For Satan was so extreme, so overdriven, so insanely distorted blown out, that there was really nowhere to go, but deeper, darker, weirder, and yeah, maybe bluesier. Crossroad has so much going on, it definitely plays out like grim blasting black metal, but it's so much more, a sprawling expansive experimental landscape of abstract blackness and deconstructed rock tropes, a constantly shifting soundworld of convoluted heaviness, of layered drones and crumbling abstract otherworldy ambience, at once heavy and brutal and grim, but also rhythmic and melodic, a twisted, outsider, idiosyncratic slab of fucked up and brilliant black metal, that manage to stay true and kvlt while seeming to disregard any and all sonic restrictions placed on the genre. So fucking amazing.
Elsewhere on this list you'll find a kick ass split 7" featuring dueling Hungarian hordes Marblebog and Vorkuta. This 3"s cd is the work of a group called simply DOG, which just so happens to feature the mainmen from both Vorkuta and Marblebog, teaming up to create some of the most twisted damaged and fucked up primitive black thrash EVER. Really. It's says "recordead in miasmatic moors under a puss moon" and we believe it.
The record starts off with some cool harmonized guitars, a super catchy riff that sounds like a lo-fi Melvins or maybe Torche, but then with a grunt, the song splinters into a super lo-fi blast of stumbling chaotic blackness, the drums simple and almost stumbling, the guitars raw and punky, and then the vocals, holy shit, completely insane and over the top, grunted and howled, a bit Cookie Monster, a bit like the deep voiced rapper from Hawd Gangstuh Rappuhs MC's Wid Ghatz, or maybe Abruptum or Vondur at their most twisted and tweaked, adds a whole other level of whatthefuck to the lumbering blasting thrashy black chaos underneath. Consider us blown away. We bow before the Carrion responsible for this insanity. It didn't take long at all for DOG and their Ancient Crypt Metal to be inducted into our pantheon of fucked up black metal genius, SOOOOOOO recommended!
It's been a few years since we'd heard from MF Doom, but he's finally back and has apparently dropped the MF part of his moniker. Thankfully, he still sounds as charged and bumpin' as ever. Featuring production by Madlib and even some by the late great J Dilla this should please fans of sample heavy beat driven hip-hop. No doubt, Doom has seriously great taste as the sample list on this record reads like an AQ favorites collection (ESG, Raymond Scott, Charles Bukowski, Giorgio Moroder). Born Like This won't let down fans of past Doom joints and once again, Doom continues to be a musical force to be reckoned with!
Of the three Emeralds releases we've heard so far (Solar Bridge, What Happened, and now Allegory Of Allergies), Allegory has to be the most removed from the scene these guys seem most linked to. Whether the connection is geographic, or sonic, or social, Emeralds for better or for worse have been a part of Wolf Eyes' considerably noisy orbit, as well as a constant presence amidst the No Fun noisemakers. But even since that first disc, these guys definitely stood out, eschewing abject noise and rough raw grit, for something much more drifty and spacey and dare we say new age-y. Klaus Schulze is and has been an obvious reference, and Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, thus Emeralds belong more to a modern strain of kosmiche krautrock than any sort of noise or drone rock scene. Never moreso than on Allegory.
A sprawling double lp, the whole first side is filled with the billowy breathlessness of "Nereus (Spirits Over The Lake)", easily the groups, dreamiest offering to date, and the one that most taps into the sort of timeless new age drift we can't get enough of. Thick rounded tones, softly undulating, a gentle ebb and flow, melodies spread out over minutes, unfurling lazily, sun dappled, soft focus, we've already listened to side on 3 times in a row. So great,
The B side is split into three tracks, but they play out more like 3 linked movements, the sound here is a bit more ominous, minor key, slightly foreboding, but still darkly delicate, the multiple synths creating softly fluttering layers of sound, that by the second track build into something much thicker and fuzzier. Long tones, the various overtones creating buried rhythms and fragmented melodies, pulsing and throbbing thickly, before the final movement dials back the buzz, but cranks up the bottomless low end, offering a vast expanse of deep subterranean rumbles, both intense and heavy, warm and enveloping.
The other 2 sides are also side long epics, the first is about as corrosive as these guys get, layering sheets of buzz and fuzz and rumble into a heaving slab of washed out whir, that seems to breathe, growing thicker and thicker, the tones climbing gradually higher and higher in pitch, eventually locking into a soft focus Sunroof!-like divine ur-drone.
The final side returns to the spare tranquility of the first side, all barely there drift, hushed shimmer, deep softly swirling tones. Those tones are slowly subsumed by what sounds like crackle or glitch, or maybe even field recordings of rainfall, until eventually it's just that crack and glitch and buzz, the tones fading to near silence, before returning, in an altogether reimagined form, thick, viscous, aggressive, intense, a buzzing, softly corrosive rumble, that eventually thins out leaving just shadowy traces. So gorgeous.
Incredible packaging, super thick, full color gatefold sleeves, gold printed inner sleeves, pressed on nice heavy vinyl too! WAY RECOMMENDED!!
To a certain degree, Endless Humiliation sound pretty much exactly what a band called Endless Humiliation -should- sound like. The review we read described EH as a mix of Ildjarn and Hijokaidan, which was enough for us to track some of these down. And heck, that's not all that far off the mark.
A total face melting wall of blacknoise, a continuous blastbeat beneath a churning, ever shifting sea of harsh hissing buzz, blown out circuit blowing distortion, crumbling clouds of processed vocal chaos, thick sheets of feedback, this is definitely NOISE, but that damn drum beat, and we seem to hear riffs, whether they're there or not, this is the sort of thing that puts all those other noisy black metal bands to shame. For Endless Humiliation, noise is an instrument, with which they craft some virulent and abject black fury.
Blasting crusty D-beat style drumming, pounding away beneath a cloud of Merzbowian freakout, shrieking vox, guitars? Maybe, but if so, they've been melted down and poured over the speakers, the sound shifts dramatically and fantastically throughout, from gritty and lo-fi, to brittle and tinny, to thick and corrosive to muted and washed out to sharp and jagged, and those drums just keep pounding away, the whole record throbbing and churning and heaving, we hear Dead C, Prurient, Akitsa, Bone Awl, Malveillance, Hijokaidan, Incapacitants, lots and lots of blasting pounding rrrrrrooooooaaaaaaar. But amidst all this noisiness and brutality and mayhem, there are some seriously sublime moments, like halfway through side two, when the sounds all lock tight into this high end drone, the drums an insanely repetitive metronomic plod, the guitars or synths or whatever the fuck is making that racket coalesce into a near static sheet of high end buzz, the whole thing managing to somehow sound more than noisy, tense, intense and dramatic. Oh and noisy. Totally killer. Noisefreaks will need this for SURE. Metalheads who like their blasting and thrashing just dripping with blown out buzz, and spewing white hot gouts of in-the-red NOISE, well then this is for you too.
Wicked packaging, hand silkscreened on thick cardstock, super striking, inside and out, comes with one photocopied insert, and one full color insert. And pretty sure it's crazy limited too...
What are they enforcing? The law of metal, of course. We welcome the discipline. We almost overlooked this band 'cause we thought they were just another one in the current glut of generic retro-thrashers (many of whom make their home on the Heavy Artillery label). But we're glad we gave it a listen, 'cause Sweden's Enforcer turned out to be a nice surprise, more 'musical' than most and party hardy too. They're a young n' energetic band forging '80s-ish metal along the lines of NWOBHM stuff like Savage, Saxon and Diamond Head. We're also hearing echoes of Riot, Metal Church, early Megadeth, Exciter... No it's not that original, either, but that doesn't stop it from kicking ass (see also Bullet, and Wolf). It's just a good ol' old school rip fest. Speedy but also melodic, with high pitched shreiky (but not too shrieky) singing, shredding leads, and lots of catchy grooves - the bass lines are active and audible, galloping away Maiden style. Death and black and (now) thrash metal bands are a dime a dozen these days but it's impressive when kids kick out something like this, sounding like the real deal from the early eighties, though with better production! The disc is packed with neck wreckers and should have you headbanging and air guitaring with abandon. It's not epic or eccentric or doomy, but sometimes pedal to the metal spandex-clad rockin' is enough! You can buy your umpteenhundredth grim black metal album (we have, and counting...) but once in a while you want metal that's fun and exciting. And for that, Enforcer is just the thing... also check out the Heavy Metal Killers comp on Earache (also reviewed this list) which features a track from this Enforcer album among many other current true heavy metal up and comers.
It's been a while since we've listed anything Skaters related, and not for lack of action on their part, they have an avalanche of new cd-r's, that we'll try to get to eventually, but for now, let's tackle this, the latest lp from half of the Skaters, James Ferraro. Pretty sure this is an lp reissue of some out of print tapes or something, but it hardly matters, cuz wherever it came from it's pretty damn cool. The sticker calls the sounds within "tropical drones". But if we had to describe it, NEW AGE seems way more accurate. And we don't meant that in a bad way at all. We love new age, as long as it's like this, gorgeous blissed out crystalline shimmer, long slow moving tones, delicate melodies, everything glistening and glimmering, reflective and prismatic and hypnotic, but then about halfway through the song shifts and things get freaky, in come the muted crunchy eighties sounding guitars and the muffled buried rhythms, the original tones get a little fuzzier as the song evolves into an imaginary eighties new wave cop show theme song. Which is awesome.
The flipside definitely sounds tropical, with squiggly fake flute melodies, the chirp of dolphin calls buried in the ooze and warble of the shimmery underwater warble, the sound gorgeously warped and washed out, trippy and almost otherworldly, it's a bit like the sound you hear when you wake up on the couch in the middle of the night, all groggy and half asleep and you left the TV on and some bizarre nature program or softcore porn is playing, but all you can hear is the sound, and then you suddenly open your eyes and all you can see are clouds and pyramids and your living room seems to have sunken into the deep blue, it sort of sounds like that. Awesome.
Comes with a download card too, so you can get your self another digital chunk of underwater tropical new age-y bliss.
At long last, reissues of the four best works by San Francisco's own Flipper!
Founded in 1979, Flipper was an anomaly. Though featured in the 2006 documentary "American Hardcore," alongside bands like Minor Threat and Bad Brains, they seemed totally miscategorized. They were far easier understood in the context of SF artpunk, but their shitty production values, menacing lyrics and nihilistic attitude ingratiated them with the hardcore crowd.
Often credited with inspiring a thousand sludge rock bands, there's no doubt that their influence runs far and wide. From '80s contemporaries like No Trend and Drunks with Guns, to Rick Rubin's copycat band Hose, to bands with later, greater success like the Melvins and Nirvana, the impact of Flipper is formidable. In fact, the Melvins in particular owe so much to Flipper; having recorded SO MANY covers of their songs - and obviously influenced by Flipper's hollow, sparse, plodding drum style - they may be Flipper's number one fans. But unlike their disciples, Flipper's music remains far less polished, less categorizable and more enigmatic, in our humble opinion.
Their debut album, Generic, is classic - a crushing, pounding, drug-addled nightmare of existential angst and torment. Lyrically hateful - yet hopeful - Flipper seems like a band at war with the audience and themselves. Their music is an utter trainwreck - it's often out of time and out of tune. You get the feeling that the band could really give a damn about playing well or recording quality. It's cynical, blase and yet utterly hypnotizing. It's also occasionally hilarious. From the opener "Ever," with its caustic lyrics (complemented by hand clapping!) to the seriously dark and murky "(I Saw You) Shine," to its ultimate peak with the optimistic "Life" ("Life is the only thing worth living for"), it's a glorious, fucked up listening experience.
Ending with the 8 minute long epic "Sex Bomb" - a punk "Louie Louie" if there ever was one - Flipper managed to create an album that epitomizes alienation and discomfort. It's pure poetry.
Reissue contains additional photos and obligatory liner notes by Nirvana's Krist Novoselic, who joined the band a few years ago.
Great breezy indie pop sounds from this new San Francisco band. Foma explore a few different directions, from more spacious and dreamy sounds to a more straight ahead and catchy onslaught. Fans of folks like Arcade Fire, Grandaddy and Terror Twilight era Pavement will find lots to love on this debut. A few of the tracks here have caused customers to come up and ask what Death Cab For Cutie record we were listening to, as the vocals can definitely get into that super sweet Ben Gibbard territory. A very nice debut.
In a career of odd outings, this one is perhaps the oddest, but it works soooo well! This is Serge Gainsbourg's REGGAE DUB record from 1979. But this isn't just a bunch of French cats doing their own take on Jamaican reggae, this one is home-grown in Kingston using some of the finest session players: Sly and Robbie, Rita Marley, Ansell Collins, Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths, and Leroy Wallace doing a full on Compass Point / Lee Perry-style dub and dread burner. There's a story that most of the musicians who signed up for this session first cast a suspicious eye on the white man they were to be working for, but once they figured out this was the man behind "Je T'aime Moi Non Plus", a global make-out hit, the ice was broken and the players were fully on board. And what prevents this from straying into full on camp territory is Gainsbourg's allowance of his tunes to be transformed by the musicians while his vocals stay in the laissez-faire mode of being sort of chanted rather than being sung. Of all the later day Gainsbourg releases out there, this one is really worth your time!
More long unavailable Gainsbourg gems are available once again, which always makes us happy around here! In 1976, Serge Gainsbourg returned to the concept album format, he had begun with the exceptional Histoire De Melody Nelson. While that story was perverse without being explicit, L'Homme A Tete De Chou (The Man With a Cabbage Head) is downright x-rated and violently surreal, not that you could necessarily understand that if you don't know French. This is another love story gone wrong about an obsessive trist with a black shampoo girl who is beaten to death, but her attacker ends up in the psych ward convinced his head has turned into a cabbage!?! The music is less focused than on Melody Nelson, venturing into a wide range of genres including cafe rock, jazzy prog, disco and most notably reggae and funk (which he would explore more fully a couple of years later on his record Aux Armes Et Cetera - reviewed elsewhere on this list)! It's also not as immediately engaging as Melody Nelson, but it's still one of the weirder French pop concept records this side of J.P Massiera!
Hallow is a group of blackened noisemakers loosely related to blacknoise merchants Ancestors (whose new ep is reviewed elsewhere on this list) and their debut double lp is in fact the soundtrack to an art show by Hallow mainman (only man?) Mark McCoy, who is also the mainman of Ancestors, which means the two are probably more than loosely related. Fuck. Who are we kidding, Hallow sound like a meaner, less black metal, more fucked up hardcore Ancestors, and anyone, and we mean ANYone who loves those Ancestors records, absolutely needs this too.
In addition to fronting these to monstrous metallic behemoths, McCoy also creates some super intense artwork, strange assemblages of ruined buildings, of crumbling riggings, collapsing structures suspended in space, intricate to the point of being the work of a madman, these drawings are captivating, incredible, precise and ultra detailed, and in their own way, they are imbued with some sort of fucked up energy, they seem, sad, they seem violent, abandoned, lonely, possessed, EVIL even. And thus, McCoy created Hallow, who recorded a series of songs, of soundtracks, each to accompany one of his pieces. Included is a booklet, oversized, featuring the various drawings, it's up to the listener to determine which song, accompanies which drawing. But again, it hardly matters, on their own, the images are breathtaking, and the music, even minus the art, Hallow create a serious racket.
The A side plays out like an Ancestors records, a bunch of short sharp tracks, furious frenetic post hardcore black metal buzz and pound and blast, super harsh, hellish, hateful, awesomely buzzy riffs, wildly blasting beats, walls of feedback wrapped around lurching anti-grooves, the songs stuttering and lumbering and exploding into jagged freakouts before locking back into some churning rhythm or white hot blast.
The B side is split into two longer tracks, sonically similar to the A side in some ways, but a whole different beast in others, the first a noisy depressive dirge, epic and spacious, definitely doomy, the guitars heavily distorted and processed, effects all over the place, the vocals insane and harsh and noisy draped over the sheets of buzz and blur and the spaced out plod below. While the second track is similarly plodding and depressive, the sound is even more blown out, the guitars blindingly effulgent, all of the sounds on the verge of total collapse, but at the same time strangely melodic and epic.
The second record is split into two sidelong tracks, and for some reason we can only think they accompany the images on the front and back cover. The first is a thick corrosive noisescape equal parts Wolf Eyes and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, caustic and abject, tangled strands of feedback wound around thick heaving slabs of distorted low end, all melted down into something thick and black and viscous. The flipside is super abstract, all high end, chittering, chirping, stuttering, squeaking shards of upper register squelch and glitch, Morse code beeps, chirping crickets, wheezing creaks, a hauntingly melodic field of fragmented skree, chaotic and abrasive, but also textural and abstract and actually sort of beautiful.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Gorgeous packaging, striking McCoy drawings on the front and back, pressed on thick vinyl, inside a thick oversized booklet featuring all of McCoy's drawings and some practically unreadable liner notes.
If your thing is rock music (or pop, or rap, or country, or whatever) and you're inclined to make music, well that's probably the genre of music you're going to be making, right? So if someone's super into "world music", and can't get enough Javanese gamelan or Morroccan trance or Indian raga or Tuvan throat singing... well then that someone would probably come up with their own music in that vein, and that might sound a lot like Harappian Night Recordings! Imagine the murky improvs of Thuja or Kemiallisat Ystavat going full tilt into anything goes "ethnological forgery" territory, an experimental exercise in dronological DIY exotica.
The Bo'Weavil label is known for both reissued old time folk and modern day folky sounds from around the globe, every thing from Anne Briggs to Zadik Zecharia. This fits right in, the music of Harappian Night Recordings aka the UK's Dr. Syed Kamran Ali being a one-man synthesis of sounds both East and West, mostly East... with a collection of ethnic instruments from around the globe and an equally broad range of musical-cultural influences, HNR generates mysterious, lively soundscapes both rhythmic and droning. There's sixteen tracks here in this disc's approximately 42 minutes, some brief atmospheric interludes, others more fully-developed songs that could be dances and ceremonies of ancient origin. While you might think this was the work of a DJ with a collection of dusty international 78s to sample, apparently this only SOUNDS like a mix of authentic field recordings, instead all of it was composed and performed by HNR's Dr. Ali! (We say apparently 'cause we still suspect that some of this must be sampled.)
He rattles drums and twitters flutes and strums ouds and pumps harmoniums... and occasionally chants and sings as well - the track "The Widow Chang, Lady Pirate" boasting maniacal vocals that wouldn't be out of place on a Sun City Girls album, and in fact we're sure that much of this disc will appeal to SCGs fans, the whole thing coming across as it does like a mashup of music culled from the Sublime Frequencies library! In a similar spirit as the SCGs, this is done with a slightly hallucinatory, gonzo intensity (the Bo'Weavil press release likens HNR's music to "a Cuban guerilla force stepping on Eisenhower's throat, emptying their glorious bladders on his face" among other things). And certainly the warp and warble and distortion inherent in the lo-fi production adds to that sometimes dark atmosphere, though HNR's music is melodic too, often quite catchy, bouncing along ecstatically. Along with the SCG's, we'd recommend this to fans of Siamese Temple Ball (another, possibly, faux-ethnic recording) and the cross-cultural mythmaking of Hungarian composer Laszlo Hortobagyi. But while Hortobagyi invented his own, unknown fake culture, the folk music of which he purported to "document", the HNR's hybrid sounds don't pretend to be from anywhere in particular, making overt if cryptic allusions to many traditions from the far corners of the real world... A quick trip over to Wikipedia clued us in to the meaning of this disc's title, also the name of one of its songs, it comes from a fairly bizarre bit of Indonesian mythology - Hainwele the "Coconut Girl" being a mythical being who had the ability to, ahem, excrete valuables, such items as golden earrings, coral, porcelain dishes, and, indeed, "glorious gongs"! No doubt the other track titles are referencing equally interesting folklore... but even without doing further internet research, your imagination will have much to work with from the sounds and music here alone. Fantastic, in the several senses of the word. But if you would like some visual input, a cinematic analog to the sort of field recording collage that these Harappian Night Recordings resemble, check out the YouTube video for HNR's track "Headless Mule" found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AzLV7zDMtM
New, nice reissues -- in slip covers, with bonus tracks and all the fixin's -- of these two (the only two) original classic High Tide albums. Previous cd reissues were hard to come by so it's even nicer to have these readily available. High Tide were a band at the intersection of psych-pop, prog, and acid rock. A great mix of the proggy, folky -- and HEAVY. For 1969, when their debut Sea Shanties was released, they were one of the heaviest bands around. Heavy due to the monster FUZZ guitar slashings of ax hero Tony Hill (formerly a member of Ugly Things magazine's favorite band, The Misunderstood), who also contributed vocals, sounding a bit like a British Jim Morrison. And High Tide had something else to keep them from being just another English blues rock power trio (a la Cream) -- their music was given an extra edge by the impassioned violin playing of fourth member Simon Hill, who went on to play with the Third Ear Band, Hawkwind and David Bowie.
Both Sea Shanties and the band's self-titled 1970 follow-up feature sinuous side-length songs, shades of light and dark, melodies both regal and rustic, and awesome instrumental interplay betwixt guitar and violin. These two albums are about equally great, and come recommended to anyone into the heavier side of '60s/'70s psych who hasn't yet had the pleasure of hearing 'em! File with The Dark, T2, Groundhogs, Socrates Drank The Conium, Clear Blue Sky, Fraction, and other early-daze proto-metal of the more psych-prog persuasion.
These reissues have copious liner notes, vintage photos, and vast expanses of unreleased bonus tracks -- Sea Shanties featuring five of 'em (two demo cuts and three songs that didn't make the album, including the eleven and a half minute long "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), High Tide with four, again two alternate takes and two unreleased efforts (among them an even longer, nearly 16 minute take on "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), all well worth hearing.
Record number two from the strangely named Human Quena Orchestra, whose first record, Means Without Ends, was one of the most devastating slabs of blackened post industrial ultra doom ever, an abject crawl through layer upon layer of impossibly thick downtuned buzz, massive walls of crumbling distortion, pounding percussion, we mentioned groups like Godflesh and Pitchshifter and Swans, as well as Moss and Bunkur, but even on that record, HQO were going somewhere darker, and deeper, heavier and way more extreme. Take those same bands and mix in some Whitehouse, some Khanate, diSEMBOWELMENT, Thergothon, Lustmord, HQO is the soundtrack to a descent into hell, or at least sounds exactly how we imagine that must sound. Pants shittingly terrifying.
For the follow up, HQO mainman (and only man) Ryan Unks, was joined by his former Creation Is Crucifixion bandmate Nathan Berlinguette, and the two spent months and months meticulously crafting this slab of bleak aural terror. Sampling drums, recording guitars and basses, creating loops and samples, layering and assembling and arranging, recording and rerecording and mixing and remixing, two sonic alchemists poised above their slumbering golem, waiting for the perfect moment to bring it to life.
The Politics Of The Irredeemable is absolutely epic, monstrous, stunning in its scope, if the first record was the soundtrack to an earth stripped bare, of death and destruction and pestilence, then this record is the sound of the end of all life in the universe, of planets hurtling into suns, of stars collapsing into black holes, but the thing is, the music here is much more personal and emotional, it carries the weight of a universal apocalypse, but is more the sound of sadness, personal hell, not a literal trip down the rabbit hole, gnashing teeth and eternal hellfire, this is much more tactile and REAL, it's easy to describe music like this abstractly, but this is some seriously intense and brutal, and stunningly introspective heaviness.
Unlike most of the sludge and doom, where the bands play as low as they can, tune down until the stings are hanging loose on the fretboard, playing as loud as they possibly can, and as slow and they are able, the elements that make up Human Quena Orchestra's sound world are deliberate, are crafted to evoke specific emotions, to conjure up images, to help your mind relate to the message within the music. Four long long tracks, two split into distinct parts, the opener "Progress" plays out like most bands' entire records. A heaving crush of downtuned crunch, the vocals wild and hysterical, wrapped in reverb and often left to wail in the wide open, only occasionally joined by the pound of a drum, or the slow motion avalanche of the next chord. All the while the sky is streaked with feedback and long buzzing tones, all woven into undulating smears, lit from below by buried melodies and a patina of cymbal sizzle. For 13 minutes, the darkness becomes sound, and that sound swallows the listener whole, preparing him for the harrowing musical journey to come.
The rest of the record is split pretty evenly between sprawling expanses of windswept ambience, distant moaning whir and barely audible subterranean drones, deep bell like tones drifting along slow swirls of muted melodies, and lurching crushing slow motion sludge, but sludge seems too dismissive in the case of HQO, this is not filthy or crusty or lo-fi, it's definitely dark and harsh, but hauntingly beautiful, the crush and crunch are strangely lush and rich, layered and textured, the sound becoming almost orchestral at points, often receding into the background, an ominous backdrop to the slow slither of sounds up front, at its harshest, the sounds gather up into a squall of white noise, but even then the edges are dull and rounded, the noise is muted so instead of being brutal or painful, it manages to throb and pulse like the beating of a dying heart, that beating echoed by the reverbed crash of a lone drum, pounding out a simple rhythm, nearly obfuscated by the haze of rumble and buzz, the record finally coalescing into something resembling hopefulness, the last minute or so, a warm glowing ember of drone, drifting, drifting and then slowly fading out. It seems impossible that something this heavy and harsh and brutal and blackened could be so beautiful...
Armed with two analog synths and an alliance of effects pedals, this NY duo conjure forth a deep cleansing slab of grim new agey bliss. In the same droney vein as newcomers Emeralds, Infinity Window delve deep into the divine world of heavy synth wizardry to unveil two sides of all-encompassing aural blitzkrieg. To say their sound is thick would be a total understatement. These guys know how to lay it down heavy, but there is a lighter side to their heaviness, not really a dooomy type of heaviness, more a melodic and shimmering type of heavy that reminds us of the earlier Growing albums. Both sides build from wondrously minimal, video game-y bleeps and bloops to huge walls of trance inducing, glacial radiance. Like staring directly into the blaring sun, these tracks are celestial and huge but damaged and textured. Fuzz and noise subtly encapsulate the reverberating tones to swiftly steer away from any new-agey cheesiness.
The first Irepress record was one of those essential discs for folks into that whole post rock metal hybrid Neur-Isis thing, Pelican, Rosetta, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides, Grails, Angel Eyes Conifer, and yeah, we still love that stuff. And Irepress's take on that sound was definitely bad ass, angular and complex and mathy, but with plenty of spaciness and a little bit of fusion(!), we know, we know, that's a scary word, but in the context of the songs it was just another element that sounded so right. If anything, this new Irepress is like a way more advanced version of the first record, which makes sense. The songs are way more epic, the playing is incredible, so tight and impossibly tangled and intricate, the fusion aspect is cranked up a bit too, which to some might be a bit off putting, but as far as we're concerned it makes Irepress just that much weirder. In fact a few times throughout the record the band slip into something almost funky, with handclaps and weird jangly guitars, but whenever that happens, you're usually only seconds away from an explosive blast of Meshuggah like chug, or soaring Godspeed-ish slow builds.
Anyone into the above mentioned bands, or THAT sound, these guys are definitely stretching the boundaries, the opening track is a dense chug fest, with crazy stop start lurching rhythms, and a long cool stretch where the band infuses little flurries of grinding crunch into glimmering chiming drifts of ethereal guitar, and then a cool sort of hard to describe groove, where the guitar seems all swathed in glitchy electronics. Cool stuff.
And the whole record is pretty out there, definitely not your typical post metal thing at all. Lots of long mellow melodic bits, and some of the metal parts are super intense and grindingly brutal, but those are more than balanced by all the weirdness, fucked up almost jungle jams, woozy melancholy buzz, soaring tangles of lead guitar, lurching start stops, plenty of programmed beats, and weird power metalisms, although most of the record is definitely spent shimmery and jangly and in that 'fusion' mode, which only makes the heavier parts that much more explosive and intense. But be warned, folks looking for nonstop heaviness will either be confused or disappointed, we however are digging this big time!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another special Record Store Day release, this one from one of our all time faves, Iron & Wine, this live recording captured in 2005, and featuring tons of I+W favorites, 18 songs, almost seventy minutes. The sound is great, lush and full, but still plenty raw and immediate and live, no real banter, just the occasional sheepish thanks, and thunderous applause, but for the most part this is just Sam Beam and a guitar.
There's a batch of tracks in the second half that feature Beam with a full band, "Teeth In The Grass" is the hardest track of that bunch, pounding drums, and fuzzed out guitars, the song gets some serious teeth live, but the rest of the set is appropriately hushed and whispery, delicate and oh so beautiful.
We got a whole bunch of these, but most of them sold on Record Store Day, we did however hang on to a handful so you folks who couldn't make it in person, could still grab yourself one of these.
Cool packaging, designed like a cardstock floppy disc, with a printed inner sleeve featuring some of the Sub Pop catalog, which shows through the diecut big hole on one side. And sorry to say, once these are gone, we won't be able to get more.
(And psst... If all goes according to plan, Iron & Wine will soon be playing an instore at aQ! Stay tuned!)
Ah, the Miasmah label, can they do no wrong? Not if darkly moody, cinematic soundscapes are your thing. It you like stuff on Type, for whom Miasmah's boss records as Svarte Greiner, you'll like Miasmah's releases too. Previously, this Norwegian label has brought us several dreamily eerie (or eerily dreamy?) discs by the likes of Elegi, Gultskra Artikler, and (highlighted just a few lists ago) the latest from Jasper TX. Now, Polish electro-acoustic composer Michal Jacaszek makes his Miasmah debut. His rustling electronics are melded with classical strings (cello and violin played by Ania Smiszek-Wesolowska and Stefan Wesolowski) and, crucially, the lovely vocals of Maja Sieminska, which seem inspired by the liturgical chant of medieval 'early music'.
It's all quite intimately lonesome, and somber, and very beautiful. Sieminska's ghostly, gossamer singing sighs amidst those mournful chamber strings, humming glitch and crackling drone, and occasional electronic "beats" that sound more like drops of water, slowly dripping from stalactites... as if you're in some vast dark cavern, Sieminska's siren voice drawing you ever deeper into the catacombs, entranced. One of our new favorite drifting-off-to-sleep records, its many shades of grey so, so very gorgeous.
Oh Jeremy, we can never get enough of your airwalking dreamy and dancey delights!
The 12" is such a perfect format for his songs, as he really is a singles artist in so many ways. Creating such memorable songs that can stand on their own and lend themselves to obsessive repeated listens. Love Everlasting is the late night, slow burning dance floor with a disco light shining bright side to Jeremy's arsenal of charming and seductive songwriting. You can almost see the steam rising off these tracks as you lay the needle into the grooves. This is exactly what you would want to hear the DJ throw on as it gets close to closing time and you're sipping your last drink and all you want to do is slow dance the final moments of the blurry, fun-filled night away. So great!
Seems like a lifetime ago that John Maclean was dishing out noisy and spacey postpunk with his '90s band Six Finger Satellite. The past decade has found Maclean completely embracing his love of electro-dance music and thus has become one of the staples of the DFA roster. The Future Will Come finds him further exploring that classic 'Berlin' sound with a full on dance assault rich with color and fury. We tend to prefer the tracks with Nancy Whang handling the vocals more than the ones with Mr. Maclean on the mic. Not quite exciting us like his last outing Less Than Human did, but certainly filled with a handful of really good tracks.
While many have followed their lead, aping their electro fueled indie-pop, Junior Boys still have so much more class and sophistication than the wannabe masses that flood the scene with their watered down sounds these days.
Begone Dull Care is the Junior Boys' third album and while their songs have always been slow burners, this album is probably the slowest yet, with a bit of patience required to fully appreciate, but if you stick with it, the rewards are pretty damn great! It's tricky to make an album of electro-pop that isn't totally initially catchy or in your face, but Junior Boys have proven that they understand so well how to create an overall mood and sound that can take a few listens before the impact is truly felt! Always the perfect soundtrack for late nights and coming down sessions, enticingly sleek and so richly smooth. While so much of electro-pop these days is about flashing fluorescent colors as bright and obnoxiously as possible, Junior Boys remind us all that it's possible to create something much more fluid and composed while still being able to move bodies with such ease.
Wow, such a beauty! Ms Larissa Loyva is the comely female voice of Vancouver's eclectic chamber pop band P:Ano as well as one of the dulcet songbirds in The Choir Practice. As Kellarissa, she steps out on her own, crafting an incredibly full ensemble sound all by her lonesome with the use of her voice, a Yamaha synthesizer, a loop generating processor and effects pedals. Flamingo is a sumptuous tapestry of sweet voices, whimsical piano melodies, wheezing drones, and mysterious ambient sounds. Her angelic vocals shine sparklingly bright and crystal clear like stars in the deepest indigo night sky. While many songs are surprisingly somber on tone - some even verging on ghostly vision conjuring gothic chamber pieces ("Night Wind", "Carrying On", "When Did I Become") - one of album's most delightfully delicious moments is the title track. "Flamingo" is an awesome buoyant pop song deeply inspired by '60s girl groups. Other poppier songs such as "Tiny Things" cuddle up to the sound of Stephin Merritt's Magnetic Fields. An intimate and absolutely captivating listen! If you swooned for the recent Mira Cook cassette and are seeking something in a similar vein but a bit more elaborate and composed, this may be right up your lovely alley! Recommended!
