We pretty much thought the well had run dry as far as great lost tropicalia gems goes. A few years back there was an explosion of amazing finds from this fertile era in Brazilian music history, with records by folks like Som Imaginario, Ronnie Von, Paulo Bagunca and Alceu Valenca & Gerardo Azevedo.
While there has been totally essential reissues of many of the biggest names of tropicalia (Jorge Ben, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, etc.) it was looking like we were going to have to concede that there might not be anymore totally obscure gems left. Of course time after time we're always blown away by unearthed discoveries that just sound way too damn good to have remained obscure and unheard for so long. Such is the case for Liverpool, who released this record in 1969 and of course by their name you know they were influenced by some of the paisley sounds coming out of the UK, and they incorporated that influence into their own take on breezy and driving tropicalia. With a vocal delivery and arrangements that would sound right at home on some of Caetano Veloso's best outings, Liverpool were just as potent mellow and sun baked as they were rocking and psychedelic. We're so happy this has been unearthed for us to finally appreciate, an absolute classic!
Hungarian black metal lords Marblebog have been a longstanding favorite here at aQuarius, and this split with fellow countrymen Vorkuta marks a triumphant return indeed. Both bands specialize in abject black metal with smatterings of goth and punk. Oddly enough, at various moments throughout the record, each band brought to mind Dance With Me era T.S.O.L. - but maybe that's just us. Either way, we're digging it.
The record begins with Marblebog's "Uttalan Utakon", a seven minute blast of furious black metal that also sounds surprisingly like early American hardcore, at least before the harsh goblin vocals croak their way into the mix. The momentum is kept going with super fast drums and buzzy guitars before a weird, gothy outro plays out over siren like feedback. Vorkuta's "Prophecies" is a three part display of classic, Darkthrone-esque black metal outlining the joys of killing. While the band doesn't have to work too hard to prove their metal credentials, they also work in an interesting instrumental middle part with backwards tape effects and slow, distorted drums suggesting a somewhat psychedelic approach to their music. Definitely looking forward to checking out more from these dudes, who seem to specialize in splits.
A glorious slab of concentrated blackness, limited to 500 copies and pressed on bonechilling pink vinyl.
Regarding Mastodon, here at Aquarius we were fairly early adopters, being pretty into the mathy, very metal metalcore of their first ep and album, which we reviewed quite enthusiastically at the time. But, as their career continued, we got bored and began to lose interest in 'em. Unlike most folks - as of course Mastodon have since gotten quite big. We didn't even review their last album, but when this new one came in (and thence flew out, as it's been selling quite well here already) we eventually gave it a spin and opening track "Oblivion" immediately made us sit up and take notice. Hmm, Mastodon have changed. They've pretty much done away with the shouty 'brutal' death vocals in favor of a variety of more melodic vocal options, many of which are displayed in "Oblivion", from an Ozzyish wail to singing that sounds more 'grunge', like Alice In Chains maybe. When a few years ago they first dabbled with 'clean' vocals we weren't as into it, but now it works, 'cause in doing so, they've added a definite 'pop' element to what's in other respects totally technical proggy metal a la recent Opeth or Enslaved. In addition, metalcore and even emo are mixed in to Mastodon's weird (but successful) hybrid, that in that first track alone manages to makes us think of all those artists we just mentioned along with both Torche and Coheed and Cambria!
We already had Mastodon pegged as prog (they did a whole concept album based on Moby Dick, remember? And this disc's got a four-part, 11 minute track about Russian royalty or something) but being complex and epic AND pop, that's pretty neat. There's a lot going on here, lots of nifty details, as well as sheer metallic might, and it seems that Mastodon have finally arrived at a point where all the different stuff they do works in context, compositionally. We'll definitely be giving this album (and maybe their previous one too) some repeated, closer listens. Perhaps our expectations were unfairly low and shouldn't have been, but in any case we have to say that this new disc seems worthy of all the attention Mastodon had been getting lately from pretty much everyone but us.
Mazes are Edward Anderson and Caroline Donovan (aka two prominent members of those dandy Chicagoans The 1900s, a band who caught our ear and wouldn't let go!) plus their pal Charles D'Autremont. Together they've crafted some sweet lilting pop that's not too distant from their main band's lush psych-tinged pop sounds, and that also recalls the glory days of the Elephant Six Collective. Recorded over the course of four years in various apartments and studios, the album definitely feels homespun with a warm off the cuff 'gathering of friends' kind of immediacy. Some terrific, uplifting vocal performances! Yet at the same time the dense, elaborate arrangements also suggest much revisiting, layering on and tweaking of details over the years. Fans of The Minders, Yo La Tengo and Belle & Sebastian, don't miss!
Krautrock fans are familiar with these guys: Dieter Moebius, who is one one-half of Cluster, and Conny Plank, the producer/engineer responsible for recording sooooo many amazing albums in the '70s and '80s. Both were also members of Liliental. In the early-mid '80s they teamed up for a series of albums together, of which 1980's Rastakraut Pasta was the first.
Various instruments (and non-instruments too?) were played by the duo, then manipulated via Plank's mixing desk, with Moebius providing additional electronics. Can's Holger Czukay also dropped in to lay down bass on a few of the tracks. The results are all quite pleasant and playful, goofy even, tinged with a sunny Jamaican dub reggae influence (hence the Rastakraut title), most notable in the quirky percolating grooves of "Missi Cacadou". And it's quite obvious that this album has something to do with Cluster, nobody else really ever made music like this. Experimental and accessible, weird and wonderful, sorta surreal and not so serious, yet still quite affecting - and full of effects! From the chugging motorik distortion of "Feedback 66" to the looping lovely melodies of "Two Oldtimers" to the more abstract ambience of "Solar Plexus", Rastakraut Pasta is an airy delight. It's mostly instrumental, but when there are vocals, they are heavily treated and fragmentary, and with or without 'em you'll be humming and nodding along.
This new Water label reissue includes new liner notes, providing quotes from Moebius or Plank about each track. Recommended, and we're looking forward to what we'll assume are upcoming Water reissues of the other M&P records, especially the darker, more rhythmically driven Zero Set from '82.
Not to be confused with the Russian black metal Moloch, this Moloch is something much grimier and grittier and doomier, treading a path closer to Eyehategod, and of course the current crop of ultra doomlords like Moss, Bunkur, Monarch, and of course Noothgrush and Corrupted. In fact, if it sounds like we just described your collection, you might as well stop right now and grab one of these, cuz if sloooooow, ultra heavy, doomic crush is your thing, then Moloch will definitely hit the spot.
Four songs, 25 minutes, this UK foursome offer up some pretty fearsome heaviness, slipping easily from plodding lumbering slow motion, to swinging stonery groove and back again, the guitars thick and viscous, the drums pounding and pummeling, the vocals a wild shriek. The more we listen to this we're also hearing plenty of Grief and Bongzilla, the riffs like 16rpm Sabbath, the band's crawl druggy and dissonant, but laced with some super swinging NOLA-esque grooviness, and some surprisingly Pantera-ish vox, which makes some of this sound like Down, but only if Down were WAY crustier and filthier and DIY and lo-fi. Which is most definitely not a bad thing. Heartily recommended for you drugged out, stoner rock, ultra doom, slow and low misfits, some seriously crushing black hole brutality, with just enough swing to keep it interesting.
Released on the same label that did that kick ass Ghast / Yoga split!
This futuristic-psychedelic Italian band from the Malleus/Ufomammut outer space orbit has come back to visit Earth again, blasting and baffling our senses with the intense radiation of the three long tracks that comprise this 40 minute disc/trip. As with their previous Monstro, the trio of Lin, Lan and Len again indulge in heavy, throbbing, occasionally spaced-out instrumentals with a rhythmic, industrial edge - something like Godflesh gone postrock amok. Or imagine the soundtrack to an alien autopsy that mixed up the internal organs of Lightning Bolt, Shellac, and Ufomammut. Sick.
MoRkObOt's guitars (both basses!) are distorted and drilling, laced with noise and FX, that gives way to moody electronic expanses, brushed with restrained, jazzy drumming. Indeed, we said "occasionally spaced-out" but maybe it's the other way around, the bulk the album actually consisting of near-ambient void-drone interrupted by the frantic panic of urgent, abrupt riffage and rigid clangorous rhythms. While this idiosyncratic band doesn't sound like most of the "doom" music we sell, believe us it's plenty ominous and intense, the doom it portends (a catastrophic asteroid impact? our sun going nova? the eventual heat-death of the universe?) not in doubt.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another super limited vinyl only Mountain Goats record, this one a collaboration concept record with SF power popper John Vanderslice. The Mountain Goats (aka John Darnielle) and Vanderslice toured together earlier this year, and took the opportunity to make a record together, but not just any record, a CONCEPT record. And not just any concept record, no, this one tells the story of organ harvesting colonies on the moon, and the employees of said colonies, who spend their non work time living in luxurious seclusion throughout America. Wow.
The record itself isn't like a typical rock opera, it's loosely related to the concept, so it plays just fine simply as a gorgeous pop record, and a gorgeous pop record it is. Lush and well produced, with lots of instruments, guitars and organs and cellos and harmonicas and even handclaps (we know, not actually an instrument)! Darnielle and Vanderslice trade off songs, each writes and sings his own, but both contribute to all of them. Plus the record was produced by Chris Stamey, of pop legends the dB's, he also plays on a bunch of the songs.
Darnielle's instantly recognizable, slightly nasal croon plays nicely with Vanderslice's more traditional power pop vocals, lots of lovely harmonies, woven into the gorgeous instrumentation, plenty of hooks, catchy melodies, moody and melancholy mostly, but with moments of joyous exuberance, fans of both the Mountain Goats and Vanderslice should dig this a lot. We definitely do.
This is super limited, and not a lot of places are selling it. We got a bunch direct from the band, but not sure if we'll be able to get more once these are gone. A very few of the lps are pressed on crazy thick, beautiful mint green vinyl, you might get lucky, the rest are on good old heavy black wax, and housed in thick full color sleeves. While they last, VERY recommended.
Vinyl only soundtrack to the forthcoming No Neck Blues Band dvd, featuring we can only guess judging from the album cover, naked dudes and weird bits of machinery. But really, nothing about these guys should surprise us anymore. They've been following their own idiosyncratic trajectory from day one, and unlike most bands, they seem to grow further and further out with every new record. At 6am is another gloriously clattery, abstract rhythmic workout, tribal, primitive, feral, but spiritual and otherworldly. It's of course all about the drums, percussion, thumps,and pounds, and rattles and crunch, and clang and bang, but woven into long dark undulating dreamscapes, ominous and haunting and mysterious, lots of dark magic going on, creaking moaning guitars, bits of squeak and creak, streaks of feedback, disembodied voices. In fact, on listening to this, were more inclined to think the picture on the sleeve isn't from the movie, but is just a regular old No Neck performance. That's exactly how this sounds, like naked writhing bodies lit by flickering firelight, masked drummers, a strange symphony of shadow and light.
Elsewhere, long form low drones are introduces, fragmented chords, muted muffled voices, all smoothed out and blurred into stretches of dark ambient free folk shimmer, but always with a distinctly dangerous vibe, heavier on the shadow than the light, squalls of free jazz like percussive clatter lead into moaning choruses, Henry Flynt like fiddle freakouts. One of the tracks begins like a No Neck / Avarus forest drum jam, but slowly evolves into something almost space rocky, lots of effects, warbly guitar melodies, delay, drifting bits of tinkle and chime, fragments of African drumming that drift in and then fade out again, and then finally, the last track is a strangely lo-fi soundscape of brittle tones and abstract percussion, long shimmery high end drones, and muted old timey sounding ambience, until the band lock into a gorgeous outro, that sounds a bit like a gamelan, but all distorted and jazzy and atonal. Awesome as always! Definitely harkening back to the NNCK sound of old, in fact this stuff IS old, from the archives, ferinstance two of these tracks were recorded (but not used) for the soundtrack to 1997's Gummo, and Lord knows they would have been perfect, dark and creepy and abstract and twisted and gorgeous.
Noveller is the working name for avant-drone guitarist / filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. Having graduated from the legion sized guitar symphonies of both Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham, Lipstate produced a couple of cd-rs, a cassette, and some tracks for some compilations. She's also been moonlighting as the guitarist for Parts & Labor, but it's this album that caught our attention. Recorded for the increasingly confounding label No Fun (less aggro noise these days and more occluded psychedelic dronemusik), Paint On The Shadows begins with a liltingly pretty, side-long construction of intertwining guitar loops and elliptical fingerpicked patterns that conjures all of the best that Grouper and Colleen had managed through their loopstation laboratories. All of these sounds blossom out of a harmonic bed of bowed guitar drones; and steady low end thrums sublimate into richly plucked chiming notes that could even double for Jozef Van Wissem. The flipside offers up two pieces which seem to reflect her live presentations, with ebows, motors, and hand-held tape decks driving the strings and pick-ups from her double necked guitar. With precise placements of the ebows and some choice tremolo effects, Lipstate generates phasing tones often heard in the cosmic explorations of Eno & Fripp's No Pussyfooting or certainly not that far from Emeralds. Another one of those hyper-limited lp pressings from No Fun. Just 300 were made, and don't expect these to last very long!
Listening to Help, it's almost impossible to hear anything but mere traces of the chaotic noise rock path John Dwyer followed to make it to Thee Oh Sees (aka OCS, and Ohsees), but it's that noisy past, and penchant for musical shit stirring, that informs the jangly garage pop on Help, and transforms the band's jangle and shuffle and pound into near perfect buzzy fuzzy catchy retro pop, and makes it easily the best Oh Sees record yet. And a definite contended for (garage) pop record of the year.
Most of us were introduced to Dwyer via his two piece noise rock costume rock combo Pink And Brown (after brief stints in some well known Providence outfits), but unlike most of the costumed joke bands at the time, P&B offered some serious songsmithery along with the unhinged live shows and audience baiting. A brief stint drumming for SF grindlords Burmese led directly into the band that brought Dwyer to worldwide attention, the Coachwhips. Arguably one of the best live bands around, the Coachwhips made up for what they lacked in actual songs with sweat and alcohol soaked performances, utter chaos, and sometimes literally, ultra destructive houseshows. Coachwhips shows were all about the energy, the vibe, jumping around, flailing wildly, getting wrecked and having a blast. Sometimes though, that energy was difficult to translate to home listening. Take away the sweaty throng and the deafening volume and, well why would you want to do that?
And so came the Oh Sees, originally called OCS, and a double cd release on Andee's tUMULt label a few years back, essentially a solo record, one disc of folky fluttery lo-fi twang flecked pop, another of corrosive textured noise experiments, which ended up being, for many of us, one of our favorite post Pink And Brown Dwyer documents. OCS transformed into The Oh Sees and became a real band, and seemed poised to follow in the sonic footsteps of the Coachwhips, stripped down garage rock, super lo-fi, lost of brittle high end, yelped distorted vocals, tribal drumming, but there was definitely something more, more refined, more catchy, more timeless sounding, something much more than garage rock, a sound that reminded us of sixties girl groups, of Phil Spector productions, raw and primal, but lush and expansive and catchy. But that catchy lush side of the Oh Sees remained hidden beneath squalls of tweeter abuse and fractured effects, a wall of fuzz and buzz more than an actual wall of sound. Until now.
Help finds the band making their first record for garage rock stalwarts In The Red, which is ironic as this is Thee Oh Sees' least typically garage rock record yet. Instead, the sound is total pop, plucked fresh from a time capsule buried in the sixties, the guitars jangle as much as crunch, lots of reverb, the vocals wreathed in a haze of delay, lots of female vox, the choruses are lush, the drums are still tribal, but much more measured, often quite spare, the arrangements though are anything but classic, sometimes getting super abstract, but never losing their catchiness, sometimes adding all sorts of extra distorted overload, but just as quickly slipping into something smooth and groovy. Minus the weird moments and the fucked up productions, some of these songs do really sound like they were just transported forward four decades.
"Meat Step Lively" starts off all Cramps-y, with a fuzzy grinding main riff, simple pounding rhythm, but adds some awesome female vocals and background 'ooooohs', some spidery lead guitars, and coolest of all breaks it down with about a minute to go into a swinging sixties smoke-y jazzy flute flecked groove. "The Turn Around" is a minute of blown out drum damage and fractured effects, but wrapped around a sing songy main riff, and some cool distorted and reverbed vox, in total Guided By Voices fashion, they truncate what could have been the jam of the record, and launch into "Can You See", which is all slithery and washed out, with angelic background vocals, shuffling drums, and a cool dreamy bridge, but the whole thing still manages to sound ominous and intense and weirdly sexy.
The record closes with "Peanut Butter Oven", which we first heard on the recent (and sadly now out of print) Awesome Vistas 12", and it's obvious why this was the single, it definitely is THE jam of the record, with it's simple stripped down jangle, workmanlike drum beat, and soaring minor key strings, and let's not forget the gorgeous harmony vocals draped over the singing strings and that irresistible main riff.
And so it goes, every track here is a gem, each one offers up something new, some twisted take on that classic sixties garage rock sound, but it's that sound revved up and filtered through Dwyer's gloriously cracked pop sensibilities, bathed in buzz and fuzz or stripped way down and left shimmery and crystalline, sometimes wrapped in HUGE hooks or allowed to simmer and slither, the catchiness subtle yet so irresistible, and unlike past efforts, even at its noisiest, the noise element seems more an organic part of the sound, and is often shaped into something barely recognizable as noisy.
We knew Dwyer and company had it in them, and now they've proven it, BIG TIME. Dying to see what they come up with next, if they could possibly one up this here disc, but hell, for now, Help has us way satisfied. And records like these are exactly why they invented that repeat button on your cd player. Folks with turntable will just have to get up and flip the record over and over and over, again and again and again.
WAY recommended.
After Vancouver's dourest rainy day pop darlings The Organ decided to call it quits a couple of years ago - much to the chagrin of retro Brit swagger lovin' melancholics everywhere - the gals got back together for one final recording session before going their separate ways. The results are the half dozen songs that make up this posthumous release. As with their highly lauded and beloved debut album 2004's Grab That Gun, Thieves captures the still fresh-faced quartet's sullenly brooding, distinctively Smiths-leaning, catchy melodies. By the way, yes, this was released late last year, but it took a little while to get a hold of them. better late than never, we think they're well worth the wait! A wistfully downcast, bittersweet treat.
David Byrne's Luaka Bop label decided to follow up the Os Mutantes "best of" collection which was volume one of their "World Psychedelic Classics" series with this disc of by long-forgotten seventies singer/songwriter Shuggie Otis. Thus those of us who
Pretty much as soon as we heard this, we knew it was going to be Record Of The Week, and not just black metal record of the week. In the past, Peste Noire seems to have always been unfairly categorized as an Amesoeurs / Alcest sideproject (we plead guilty of that as well) due not only to the presence of Neige, the mastermind behind both Amesoeurs and Alcest, but the seemingly shared membership between all three bands, and while Neige did no doubt contribute much to Peste Noire's sound, it seems Peste Noire was much more the brainchild of only remaining original member, Famine, whose other main musical outlet is the almost equally twisted Valfunde, and as if to prove the validity of the above claim, has assembled an almost entirely new lineup (although Audrey from Amesoeurs contributes some vocals) and cobbled together the most damaged, most fucked up, most gloriously bizarre Peste Noire record yet. Which if you've heard any of the other records is definitely saying something!
The record is weirdly arranged, five proper songs, with 2 minute or shorter song fragments and interludes, some that play like proper songs themselves, only truncated, others that act as intros or just totally tweaked unhinged sound experiments, but somehow, songs and non-songs alike hold together beautifully, and bafflingly, the band having created some sort of crusty, blackened, melancholy, depressive French folk flecked classic metal.
The intro begins with sizzling shimmering cymbals, simple percussion, eventually joined by beautiful ethereal female vocals, as well as some raspy blackened not-really-harmony vocals, then the riff comes in, and damn if it isn't a riff from Star Wars, but super distorted and blown out, pounding, crusty, epic and majestic, the rasped vocals over a haunting military sounding speech. And then straight into the first 'proper' track, which begins as some sort of sea shanty like French folk song, but with the addition of some hellish black vokills, you can almost imagine a table full of French soldiers, and one dripping slimy otherworldy beast, all singing along, glasses raised to the sky. Then in comes a very classic sounding metal riff, but the guitars muted and woozy, the tempo lurching and seasick, all manner of different vocals, crooning, shrieking, howling, then an awesomely weird squiggly bit of low end, super tripped out and psychedelic but somehow subtle and buried in the mix. Guitars soar and sing and jangle, wrapped around equally dramatic vocals, a total French folk crust anthem.
The follow up track begins all dark acoustic guitars and birdsong, martial percussion, eventually exploding into a super buzzy distorted march, pounding away, midtemp and melancholy, before returning to a super gorgeous, hauntingly depressive gothic crust almost-ballad, blackened and distorted, but also post rocky and strangely emotional and moving.
The 'interludes' include some warped and warbly haunted house piano, doused in hiss and crackle, ghostly female vocals drifting amidst the warm whir, sinister laughter, squalls of maniacal shrieks, dueling male / female vocals, almost operatic, soon joined again by that monstrous blackened croak, warm woozy calliopes, soundtracky keyboards and the sound of storms, tons of reverb and delay, tape hiss and softly crumbling distortion, all creating perfect segues between loping depressive midtempo blackened post metal lurch, super blown out in the red almost D-beat pounding buzz, those vocals transforming from hellish howl to deep moan, there's even some wheezing harmonica, all leading up to the final track, "Soleils Couchants", which begins with birdsong again, and an awesomely angular and beautifully twisted guitar part, paired up with a gorgeous minor key harmony, before slipping into a moody downtuned creep, complete with weird frog like vocals, and a looped bit of beeps and chirps, total post-doom weirdness, literally like nothing you've ever heard, it sounds a little like that first part of the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disneyland, where you're just floating through the dark bayou, lit only but slivers of moonlight and the flickering light of fireflies, it's like a soundtrack to that, swampy and doomy and mysterious, until the band launches into a strangely melodic black doom midtempo jam, the guitars minor key, multiple vocals merging into raspy otherworldly harmonies, before breaking down into a long stretch of just guitars and vocals, the guitars twisted and spidery but still melodic, the voices tortured but super passionate, yet again infusing the fucked up twisted blackness with pathos and emotion, keeping it from being weird for weird's sake, this is something else entirely. What sounds like a child's voice joins in, twisted around that hellish vokill, all draped over a gorgeously catchy riff, reminding us a bit of Katatonia or Lifelover, before spiraling and sprawling into a seriously melodic blackened post rock jam, and then finally returning to the doomy lurch that began the song some seven minutes earlier.
Peste Noire have (again) managed the seemingly impossible, creating a record both totally twisted and damaged, but also lovely and moving and melodic, a record that ranks up there in our pantheon of most bizarre and fucked up black metal records ever, while somehow appealing to even the not so metal inclined, a confusional mix of black and crust and pop and folk, all twisted and tangled up and forced through Peste Noire's cracked musical sensibilities, the result, a record fucked up and fantastical, and this review not withstanding, almost impossible to describe.
Originally available as a bonus DVD audio disc with the first pressing of Pig Destroyer's Terrifyer album, the half hour plus track "Natasha" functions almost better as its own record (which it now is), seeing as it was pretty sonically removed from the rest of the grinding mayhem found on Terrifyer.
Rumored to have originally been intended for a two-part split with the similarly godlike (and sadly defunct) Creation Is Crucifixion, which never materialized, "Natasha" is possibly the single strangest and greatest effort yet from these Pig Destroying psychopaths. Extrapolating on the previous love-scorned dementia lyrical themes of their Prowler In The Yard opus, "Natasha" is a hallucinogenic half-hour nightmare of epic proportions. Heavy, plodding sonorous drums (and finally a bass guitar!) crash like thunder as ominous feedback echoes off the graven landscape of lyricist JR Hayes's surreal acid-trip of uncomfortable adolescent obsession gone horribly awry. The piece metamorphoses through several states, from long quiet ambient passages to keyboard dirges to full-on metallic surges before finally dissolving into the audio equivalent of the gnashing jaws of the song's eponymous protagonist. Absolutely stunningly majestically heavy and downright, dare we say, beautiful - like a psylocybin-striated amalgam of Corrupted, Boris, Godflesh, Buried at Sea, Old Man Gloom and Neurosis. Includes the same disturbing short story liner notes as before, but with some gorgeously garish new artwork. Natasha is an absolute must-hear and definitely proves once again that Pig Destroyer remain at the very fore of extreme music innovation.
Raucous, wild n' wooly noisy jazz jamming in collision with an equally noisy indie rock aesthetic... a heavy and freaky blowout with squealing horns, hard frenetic drumming, all manner of electric guitar and analog synth keyboard textures, droning violin, and sometimes some hoarse, throwaway vocals. It's all massively chaotic but, perhaps, carefully composed and even catchy at times. What the heck is this? It's Sam Coomes of Quasi getting his "jazz" on, sorta, in cahoots with a bunch of accomplished Bay Area improvisors -- Kyle Bruckmann, Gino Robair, Scott Rosenberg, and John Shiruba -- who, conversely, all take this as a chance to seriously rock out. The demented, diverse results sound something like Italy's Zu meeting up with Captain Beefheart in Tom Waits' junkyard. With both John Zorn and Melvins on the sidelines, getting drunk and cheering them on. It sounds like they're having that sort of fun. Kinda crazy and pretty darn cool.
Note: not to be confused with the similarly-named Pink MountainTOPS... that's a totally different band. We hear though that the two groups have been in correspondence and are even planning a split single maybe.
Note also: Pink Mountain will in fact be playing a show with Zu (and Citay) in SF pretty soon, Monday June 19th at the Bottom Of The Hill.
The Rockadrome label down in Texas is, as we have said, on a roll, digging up the awesome likes of Jerusalem and Iron Claw for our proto-metal listening pleasure. The both of them were early '70s bands from the UK, but Rockadrome, and related label that preceded it, Monster Records, have actually concentrated more on reissuing records by late '70s/early '80s American hard rock acts, private press obscurities that in a perfect world maybe woulda made it big, but had the misfortune of coming out right when new wave and/or disco was what the record companies wanted.
Here's a great example, something previously reissued by Monster, now at last made available again in the Rockadrome catalog. The mighty POOBAH! A power trio from Ohio, featuring in particular the talents of guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Gustafson, the most kick ass guitar whizz you probably have never heard. This one's their 1979 album Steamroller, and aside from the unexpected, lovely piano intro to the instrumental "Atom Bomb", it pretty much IS a steamroller of rockin' and rollin', wailing guitars, bashing drums, psychedelic effects, and screamin' vocals. Although '79 might be a late date for "proto-metal" that's what we'd say this is, 'cause of the weird psych and prog elements, it's just a little too weird and wild and wacky to fit in with the straight-up metal scene, maybe that's why they stayed underground. The overload of raw, chunky riffage and squiggly, slashing guitar leads (along with campy, tongue-in-cheek lyrics) here wasn't exactly radio-friendly either, though great for a party. Basically the appeal of Poobah can be summed up by image found this disc's back cover of the band's curly-haired drummer wearing a homemade t-shirt that reads "Poobah Jams" in iron-on letters. Damn right, jam they did!
So if you dig lotsa guitar, from a band influenced both by '70s heavies like Led Zeppelin (they do a cover of "Rock And Roll") and '60s surf music too, then you oughta ignore the budget cover art (both old and new, the one you see here is the new version Rockadrome came up with but the original is also fairly hideous) and check 'em out. You'll know if Poobah's for you after the seven minutes and thirty eight seconds of their track "Jump Through The Golden Ring" that opens the album! Oh, and like the previous edition on Monster, this includes some extra unreleased/live tracks also from '79.
We'd like to hear more by these forgotten Midwestern hard rock heroes. Hopefully Rockadrome will also re-reissue the other Poobah album Monster did, 1976's U.S. Rock. And, eventually, all the other cool out of print Monster titles, like Cain's Pound Of Flesh. We'll keep you posted.
Been dying to review this slab of bleak brutal blackened doom drenched power violence for a while now. We were first exposed to these guys when they shared a split lp with the equally downtuned and devastating Burmese. Very few bands are up to the task of sharing a record with the mighty Burmese, but these Macedonian (not Russian as we mistakenly thought) slow motion grindcrushers definitely held their own, enough that we were super psyched to discover there was indeed a full length.
Channels takes up right where those split tracks left off. Heaving, massive, lurching, doomy, crusty crush, but this isn't ultra doom, or even classic power violence, Potop fall right in between, the tempos are slow to midtempo, the guitars crunch and buzz, but just as often ring out, there's tons of space, long stretches dotted with spaced out chords, left hanging, slowly decaying, wrapped in Eyehategod-like sheets of feedback. The vocals are tortured and anguished, a feral yowl, way down in the mix and doused in reverb, those two elements, all tangled up and sprawling, create these epic drifting slabs of angular buzz and monstrous pound, weirdly melodic, and dramatic, sometimes mathy, other times seemingly structureless, but the best moments are when the band lock into a woozy groove, crushing and punishing and massive and so weirdly catchy.
The record finishes off with a 40 second blast of twisted pummeling ultraviolence, a blurred blowout of howling grinding pounding fury. And then it's over. And if you're like us, you go right back to the beginning and listen to the whole thing again...
Maybe you've already seen it. The best music video EVER. On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQiHORkdE_0
That's this band, Red Fang, doing this album's lead off cut "Prehistoric Dog". We won't spoil the video by telling you too much about it before you watch, let's just say it involves a most excellent mocking of LARPers (technically speaking, the LARPers look more like members of The Society for Creative Anachronism, but same dif pretty much).
After seeing that, how can you not need the Red Fang album? Which, as we expected is grungy, loud, heavy, shit kickin' and beer swillin' (as per the video). There's a moodier cut or two ("Humans Remain Human Remains" ferinstance) but mostly this is a walloping dose of balls out rockin' from this hairy bunch of stoner metal reprobates from Portland Oregon (who among 'em include ex-members of such bands as Last Of The Juanitas, All Night, Shiny Beast, Trumans Water, Bad Wizard, Party Time, and Facedowninshit). As raw and riffy as it gets, there's still hints of melody, even in the vocals, that are sometimes sung, sometimes screamed and shouted. Should appeal to fans of High On Fire lookin' for a good time, or Harvey Milk's Pleaser... Also, imagine a cross between Karp and Priestess, or a more punk and disorderly Burning Brides.
This debut 10-song full-length incorporates the tracks from their previous self-released tour-only cd-r ep, all except for their cover of Dust's proto-metal classic "Suicide", darn it.
Soul Jazz has started to release the original albums from whence the tracks came for their excellent cosmic jazz/funk comp "Universal Sounds of America" from a few years back. The Art Ensemble's magnificent "Les Stances A Sophie" was the first, now
It seems like every Jack Rose record we get, when it comes time to review it, we begin by saying something like "well, not sure what to say about Jack Rose that we haven't already said", and you know, that's still pretty much true, of the current crop of modern solo guitarists, neo Appalachian revisionists, whatever the hell you want to call them, few can match Jack Rose, every record is a masterpiece, equal parts classic old school solo guitar, modern interpretations of classic Appalachia, and usually a bit of drone (you can take the guitarist out of Pelt�), and the Black Dirt Sessions is no different. More of the same, the same being dark and doleful, lovely and lyrical solo guitar, incredible slide playing, intricate finger picking, delicate strumming, gorgeous minor key melodies. As always though, there are a few surprises, the main one here is the second loooooong track on side one, "Cross The North Fork", in which Rose channels all of our favorite seventies British folk, we hear lots of Comus (you can almost imagine the flutes and bongos), plenty of Incredible String Band, sprawling, and epic, dark and so intense. Worth it for just that track alone. One of the tracks is super honky tonky and features a bit of barrelhouse piano, while still managing to sound minor key and a bit melancholy, the rest of the record plays out perfectly, more of that subtly slippery slide, dense tangles of intricate picking, long stretches of spare minimal chordal drift, it's all just so fantastic and lovely. Another absolutely essential record from one of the modern masters.
Beautifully packaged in outrageously thick sleeves, and pressed on ultra heavy vinyl.
It's been over three years since we made Shogun Kunitoki's debut our Record Of The Week, which was just about the same time we fell deeply in love with this Finnish group's unique approach to songcraft, most noticeably using analog electronics to create dizzying and melodic songs that ensorcell and enthrall as they burst with color and dynamic flair.
This follow up picks right up where that amazing debut left off. So full of urgency and melody. Taking cues from minimalists like Reich and Glass and infusing a catchy intensity, reminiscent of M83's Dead Cities Read Seas & Lost Ghosts. There is a bombastic overload that grabs a hold of your imagination and lets it run wild amidst its bold and immaculately crafted popscapes. Songs that demand, command and pleasure all of your sensations. Shogun Kunitoki are able to make organs, ring modulators, and oscillators sound both classic and futuristic. Imagine a huge church with a high ceiling and stained glass windows, jammed with massive and ornate organs, while members of Broadcast, Stereolab and Black Moth Super Rainbow rock out on a grandiose Rick Wakeman like setup blasting out sounds that bring joy and ecstasy to all in the congregation.
Shogun Kunitoki are one of those rare bands that you can really get anyone into. Prog freaks, electro heads, pop lovers, psych fanatics, 20th century composer aficionados, experimental music fans, there's something for just about everyone in the dense and dizzying sounds that they create. Simply stunning!
Sin Fang Bous is the solo project of Sindri Mar Sigfusson who's also in the Icelandic band Seabear. His album Clangour opens with a light summery boy pop tune that breezes along while seemingly incongruous Coleco game bleepity-bloop sounds play over top. Yes, a little odd, but it adds to the album's effervescence! He's layered up the vocals into an all-out sing along. One of his voices has a bit of a Devendra Banhart-ish warble, while another calls to mind Erlend Oye of Kings Of Convenience. Fans of that band as well as the rambunctious romp of bands such as Hidden Cameras and Wolf Parade will surely snuggle up to Sin Fang Bous! Nice!
Volume one of Smokey Emery's Soundtracks For Invisibility Series (we reviewed Vol. 2, a couple of lists ago). Since we listed these out of order, Daniel Hipolito, the man behind Smokey Emery, repressed Vol. 1 just for us! Recorded in 2002, these tracks of cinematic drones and loops quietly build from slow-burning sonic embers to subtlety shifting drifts of piano, bells, and music boxes mutating into far-off whirring rhythms and wobbly melodic ellipsis. "Invisibility Vignettes" is an epic 16 minute track of 5 movements that lays out what sounds like a barren mechanical wasteland before a soft guitar and organ figure shines a small ray of humanity on the proceedings slowly evolving into an off kilter robotic heartbeat leading into the final track of a lovely far-off and decaying church organ loop. Lonely, Beautiful and of course Limited!
Another slab of crushing doomy filthiness from the Choking Hazard label, who we first heard about via that kick ass Ghast / Yoga split, and who also just released the Moloch cd reviewed elsewhere on this list.
Choking Hazard definitely have their niche, barring the anomaly of the Ghast / Yoga, it seems to be sludgey stonery crusty downtuned distorted drenched doom, whether it's groovy Eyehategod churn and crush, or pounding relentless ultrasludge, they got it covered.
Hard to tell where Midwestern quartet Sollubi fall, they veer chaotically from super slow sludge, to pounding almost AmRep style noiserock, even a bit of drugged out space rock, often careening back and forth between the three in a single song.
There's only there songs, but two of them clock in at over twenty minutes, the songs lock into pounding head banging grooves, seemingly looped, so hypnotic and heavy, "The White Witch" even adds some squiggly space-y effects, making it like the HEAVIEST space rock outro ever, and the outro lasts nearly 10 minutes. The title track is nearly a half hour of slow burning lope, the first half almost pretty, like a sludgey Low, until the song slips into some filthy slithery Killdozery chug, totally channeling old school Midwest thudrock, before spacing out and getting more and more abstract, slower and doomier, until the track finally, and begrudgingly, lurches to a halt. Awesome.
We only have a handful of these, live double cd-r's, recorded at the record release party for that Starkey mix we reviewed a few lists back. A mix which KILLED by the way. And Starkey's live set is equally ferocious, packed with tons of unreleased jams and dubplates, some of the best dubstep we've heard EVER, crushing buzzing bass, swirling synths, jagged stuttering beats, the first track alone, a Starkey jam if we're not mistaken, is worth the price of admission alone, super intense and cinematic, about as heavy as dubstep gets. The only bummer about this collection, is that it's a live disc, so some of the tracks are interrupted by shout outs, but that's a minor complaint with a mix this strong.
There's practically no information, no tracklisting, no artist names, just two printed discs in a clear jewel case. But that almost makes it better. One big ol' mysterious collection of low slung grooves and pounding rhythms, a few have vocals, one or two get all grime-y, but throughout, the sound is devastating, so much bass, plenty of rumbling buzzing low end, some wild synthy squiggles, chopped up loops, weird melodies and fractured samples, all woven into dense speaker shredding bass bin crushing jams, and the beats, holy shit, stuttering, shuffling, skittering, if we were more inclined to dancing, this would definitely have us destroying dancefloors like there was no tomorrow. As it is, even us wallflowers can dig Starkey's deep dark dubbed out din.
Ok, look. Drone records are hard to review. They're drones. Some are better than others (dronier?) but what do you say to make that case? Especially when, in trying to do so, your mind is being lulled and numbed and otherwise not wanting to think and type thoughts. You want to join with the drone, not describe and analyze it. So, if we say that this collaboration between Strings of Consciousness and Angel is a damn good drone record, then maybe you should just take our word for it, whaddya say? Or let the glowing green, desolate atmospheric artwork of Seldon Hunt, in which this is housed, convince you. Or the folks involved - Angel, who have other albums we've recommended, is in part the project of Ilpo Vaisanen of Pan Sonic, while the experimental ensemble Strings Of Consciousness includes French laptopper Philippe Petit who runs the Bip-Hop label (not to be confused with the insane tightrope walking Philippe Petit from the documentary Man On A Wire!).
But of course you want further details. Well... there's two tracks here. Long ones, of course. 22:03 and 18:41. The first track is the more spacious, slowly shimmering drone piece, featuring the cello of Iceland's Hildur Gudnadottir, along with other strings - harp, double bass, guitars... plus harmonium, accordion, and the added abstraction of electronics, effects, and oscillators. Gentle rhythms manifest, and melodies seep in. It builds into an ominous physical presence, the volume increasing, buzzing smoothly like a swarm of non-so-angry bees before the end. Quite glorious.
The second track seems as layered and organic, but more intimate. Instead of chamber strings, the "acoustic" element is limited to accordion and resonating Tibetan bowls. Along with guitars... and again plenty of electronics and effects. More "crinkly" and clanky than the first track, with mysterious rattle and rustle amidst a mix of soothing electronic washes and rather more corroded-sounding digitalized drones. But like we said, we're to busy being mesmerized by this music to really break it all down for you. We just know, we like it!
Recommended, either on cd, released domestically by Important (which allows for uninterrupted drone consumption), or on vinyl, an import on the Conspiracy label (which of course requires the listener to assist in flipping from one side to the next).
- MPEG stream: #1
- MPEG stream: #2
Nothing spells springtime and summer fun like Superchunk! So it makes such perfect sense that this brand new ep from the Chapel Hill indie rock pioneers arrived in our hands as the city was in the midst of full on spring fever with the sun shining so bright and everyone flocking to sprawl out and play in the park. It's been over 8 years since their last album, but oh my god do they sound better then ever! They truly are masters at creating energized blasts of power pop infused with punk energy and an indie sensibility they helped cultivate.
Bookended with both electric and acoustic versions of "Learned To Surf", it's a testament to how great Superchunk's are, as they sound just as good whether fully charged and rocking or slowed down and stripped raw to their core. But other than that acoustic version, this record is all about the kick ass super rockin', windows down, runnin' free side of Superchunks punk pop glory. Feels so damn nice to have new Superchunk sounds, especially since it finds them totally on top of their game. Thrilling, catchy and so sonically scrumptious!
Good God! We were always wondering if this would ever be released. Two of the best cuts from that (now out of print) Resurrection compilation of Christian psych-grooves we reviewed years back were from this crazy British jazz outfit, The Ted Taylor Organsound, sounding like the whitest of whitebread Protestant singers taking a deadly funky spin on traditional Church of England hymns. It was amazingly awesome and so damn silly at the same time! Finally, after many a fan's urging, Jonny Trunk finally reissued the whole record on cd (though in the liner notes, he states he won't bother making an vinyl version because of the prevalence of bootleg lps already - to which we say Boooo!). Turns out the singers are the Mike Sammes Singers who were a popular British singing group that worked with the Beatles and sang the theme to Stingray, and who have also been featured in other Trunk Records releases such as Music For Biscuits, while the band features some of Britain's finest jazzmen including Tubby Hayes, here on flute and saxophone. The best parts of these tracks are the intros, which are a gold mine for sample and beat heads. The gorgeously pastoral sitar and flute break that opens "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" or the Latin percussion workout that unpredictably leads into "All Things Bright and Beautiful". Yet, once the singers establish the hymn structure, the songs tend to flatten out a bit as the melodic structure of hymns don't easily fit in the circuitous repetitions and rhythms of jazz and pop, making the goofier novelty aspects of this cd much more apparent. But if all hymns were sung like "He Who Would Valiant Be", we'd be in church every Sunday!
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!
MISSISSIPPI RECORDS NEW RELEASE!!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS NEW RELEASE!!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS NEW RELEASE!!!
We gotta do that every time, there's so many folks now who want them all, every Mississippi Records release, be it blues, or country, or gospel or punk rock. And can't say that we blame you, pretty much everyone at aQ is the same way, a box from Mississippi shows up, and we all gather round to see what magical sounds are awaiting us.
This time, it's a collection of unreleased recordings from Bishop Perry Tillis, preacher, and master of the electric blues, with a super idiosyncratic guitar playing style and a gorgeous voice, and a truly strange approach to music and spirituality.
Unlike the Tillis cd a couple years back on Birdman, which featured songs recorded in the seventies, these tracks here were collected from home recordings, made in the years right before Tillis' death. Super lo-fi and raw, these tracks were recorded on an old boombox in Tillis' living room, even going so far as to use multiple boomboxes for a primitive sort of multitracking, the results are fantastic and strange and gorgeous.
Yeah, it's classic sounding blues, but the guitar parts are dense and angular and tangly, his voice raw and rough, but everything smoothed by the lo-fu recording, and there are strange harmonies happening too, the result of Tillis "channeling angels" who want to help him by singing along and testifying.
The enclosed liner notes, feature an interview with Tillis, where he answers questions in the voice of his 'guardian angel', and, well it's a bit confusing for sure, but he, or she, tells the story of his life, talks about the angels, really fascinating.
But it's the music that matters, and once again Mississippi seemingly can do no wrong. The sounds here are soulful and energetic, mysterious and beautiful, spiritual and emotional, but also surprisingly rocking and groovy, and bluesy and bad ass.
The packaging as always is fantastic, super thick sleeves, nice heavy vinyl, and extensive liner notes. Needless to say, if you haven't started collecting Mississippi releases, this one is as good a place to start as any, and like the other Mississippi lps, these go our of print pretty quick, so grab one while you can.
Unless you've been in some sort of high security isolation unit, or stranded on a deserted island, you've no doubt been inundated with the hype around this band, Tinted Windows. We were just at SXSW in Texas, and they were one of the bands everyone wanted to see. It sort of makes sense, c'mon, a band with the guitarist from Smashing Pumpkins, the bass player from Fountains Of Wayne, the drummer from Cheap Trick and, wait for it, the singer is one of the Hanson brothers! Exactly. They had it made before anyone even heard a note. Or maybe they were doomed to fail, the most ridiculous and unlikely supergroup ever, one that on paper seemed like a put on. But you know what? This record kicks ass. It's not ground breaking or anything, it's just a killer chunk of old school seventies / eighties style power pop. You can hear Cheap Trick all over Tinted Windows, but you can also hear "Jesse's Girl" era Rick Springfield. We know Fountains Of Wayne dude is a pop master, having written tons of power pop classics, as well as writing the music for the movie That Thing You Do (still one of our favorite rock movies), and Iha definitely had a hand in some classic Pumpkins jams, and maybe most surprising of all, Taylor Hanson has got a decent set of pipes on him, surprisingly gritty and kick ass, but able to slip smoothly into a falsetto, and right back. And as mentioned above, with a pop pedigree like this (and yeah we're counting Taylor Hanson too), these guys were bound to be able to kick out some seriously catchy jams, and they do.
The slower songs don't fare quite as well, sort of ballady, a little bit cheesy, but thankfully those are few and far between. Tracks like the first single "Kind Of A Girl", "Can't Get A Read On You" and our favorite of the bunch "Messing With My Head" (which we just listened to about 10 times in a row, no lie) just kill. Total mix tape, cruising with the top down, kick ass, eighties rom-com montage, stereo cranked, feel good, rock and roll, power pop radness for sure!
Killer black metal comp featuring exclusive tracks from a few big time aQ faves, the mere mention of which should probably have most of you metalheads frothing at the mouth. Which is good since we only got 20 of these and apparently it's already out of print. So check it out. AKITSA. ASH POOL. WOODS OF INFINITY. Yep, that's all we needed too, to know we had to get some of these. But there are also tracks from Darkest Grove, Pagan Hellfire, Morker, Gaszimmer and Nasheim. Indeed. Here's a quick rundown of the bands and their tracks:
Akitsa: A surprisingly plodding dirgey jam, filthy and blackened, raw and grim, with an awesome woozy main riff.
Darkest Grove: Some seriously primitive thrashing blackness, the drums buried beneath a layer of relentless old school black metal, grunty growly vocals and soaring epic choruses.
Pagan Hellfire: Another blast of brittle lo-fi black metal, plenty raw and buzzy, with a cool loping bridge, and some crazy wheedly guitar shreddery.
Ash Pool: Fuck yeah. Been far too long since we've gotten some Ash Pool. Totally fucked up and genius. A damaged gnarled main riff, so killer, woven into a dense mathy arrangements with some lurching start stops, the drums muffled and thumpy but plenty chaotic, the vocals howled then shrieked, and like all Ash Pool, a weird undercurrent of unlikely poppiness.
Morker: Super epic, ultra melodic midtempo black metal, that reminds us of Lifelover, melancholy, almost poppy, with an explosion of frenzied blackness near the end of the track.
Gaszimmer: These guys give up some WAY lo-fi, practice space, demo tape black metal pound, muted, muffled, the guitars buzzy and brittle, but with an awesome vocalist, who has a sort of maniacal froggy croak, which balances the other, cleaner chantlike vocals.
Nasheim: Super abstract and cinematic, and seemingly barely even black metal, epic, sweeping, melodic, like the music that would be playing during the credits of some black metal anime. So weird, but really awesome.
Woods Of Infinity: A lurching, tripped out damaged blackened dirge from these weirdos. Mournful guitars laced with off kilter electronics, dueling tortured vocals, howling and crooning and wailing, the whole thing warped and wacked and awesome.
Comes with a huge 4 page, 12" x 12" booklet, with band logos, liner notes and lyrics. And fair warning, there is some NSBM action happening here, Gaszimmer is the only blatantly NS band of the bunch, but the title with all the 88 symbolism, and one or two of the tracks, definitely problematic, so if you can look past that stuff, or ignore it, and maybe just get it for Ash Pool and Akitsa and Woods Of Infinity, or just dig the music and pay no heed to whatever lame politics are happening, or maybe just skip/ignore the Gaszimmer track, definitely an awesome collection, otherwise, you have been warned, steer clear.
LIMITED TO 488 COPIES, each one hand numbered. Already sold out, last copies ever.
Earache, as befits their name, has always been a label known for "extreme" music, whether it be grindcore, death metal, or even gabber. This compilation, though, highlights a different sort of extreme, new bands who are hard and heavy but also melodic, with lo and behold actual singing. These outfits ARE extreme - extremely retro that is. And (as far as we're concerned) extremely cool. Heavy Metal Killers, whose cover art seems to be a nod to that of Iron Maiden's Killers, collects tracks from Castle Donnington worthy youngsters who hark back to the glory days of the NWOBHM in the late '70s, early '80s. And thus it has more in common with classic NWOBHM era comps like Metal For Muthas than it does such previous Earache anthologies like Grindcrusher and Hellspawn. And despite the NWOBHMishness, these bands hail from all over the planet, from Finland to Mexico.
Between Allan and Andee at Aquarius, we possess albums by a goodly portion of this disc's lineup, but the rest are totally new to us too. (Which brings up another subject, perhaps to be addressed in a future AQ-blog post, about all the cool records Allan and Andee order for themselves that we somewhat inexplicably never review for our website or even stock in the store!). We already know and love Cast Iron, Cauldron (who should get an award for their track's title, "Chained Up In Chains"!), Portrait, and Enforcer (whose full-length from which their track here is taken is also reviewed this list, actually), but thanks to this comp are glad to be introduced to a slew of other denim-and-leather clad, true metal torchbearers.
As with all comps, some tracks we like better'n others, but actually these Heavy Metal Killers ARE all pretty killer. We'll just mention a couple highlights, like the opening salvo from Holland's Powervice, boasting perhaps the best dual guitar harmony motif on the whole disc, damn it's catchy. Then there's the Mercyful Fate-ish mastery of Sweden's Portrait, complete with King Diamond style falsetto. And we got a kick out of the unabashed Sunset Strip style pop panache of LA's White Wizzard. Other acts here include Ram, H.O.D., Celtic Legacy, Alltehniko, Voltax, In Solitude, and Crowning Glory. Only a few of the tracks are exclusives, most appearing also on these band's albums (upcoming or otherwise) but it's not like you probably have 'em do you??? Though hopefully we soon will, we know for sure we'll be looking out for more by a bunch of 'em.
Cool that this scene is getting big enough for Earache to jump on the bandwagon. Our only complaints? This comp shoulda had San Francisco's Space Vacation on it too! And Finland's Solitaire. And... well, hopefully there's a volume II in store!
This new Numero Group comp and we assume new series of comps, is like the inversion of the Eccentric Soul series in that instead of a small regional record label head honing in on a key stable of talent, this is about a custom studio that invited its local community to record their own songs and music. Felton Williams started his Double U Studio in Ecorse, Michigan, a small suburb downriver from Detroit in 1967 (it lasted until 1981). With a knack for home built electronics and instruments, his studio was open to anyone who wanted to cut a record, and with Motown changing the course of soul music just upriver, he had a lot of takers. But unlike other custom record presses, Williams would own the publishing rights and release the records on a series of labels, Revival, Compose, Cass and Solid Rock, acting as a kind of Alan Lomax figure in hopes of recording vital regional talent for cultural prosperity. Luckily, Williams had a nearby pool of talent in his local church and the bulk and the best parts of this comp focuses on the amazing gospel soul sounds that came out of this studio. Though there's also soul, funk, jazz and even some garage rock cuts too, it's the gospel cuts that are worth the price of admission and anyone who's been digging the Mississippi Record gospel comps, should look here too, because there are some monster jams from Shirley Ann Lee, Bobby Cook and The Explosions and the beautifully named Deliverance Echoes. Can I get an Amen!
Thanks to all the folks who came out for Record Store Day last Saturday. It was a blast, lots of music, familiar faces, not so familiar faces, snacks and beer, and most importantly, tons of hanging out and listening to great music, not to mention a handful of records pressed up specifically for the big day. Lucky for those of you without a local record store, we managed to get extra copies of some of the Record Store Day releases, one of which is this super limited lp from Thrill Jockey, featuring a bunch of bands we love, as well as a cool old school zine, featuring all sorts of folks talking records, and record stores, and waxing poetic on how important record stores have been in all of our lives.
But let's talk about the record itself first. First up, an exclusive track from aQ faves Mountains, more gloriously sun dappled pop ambience, all prismatic and warm, drifty and dreamy and divine. Then a brand new Tortoise track, a sneak peek at the new record, an extended jam that is most definitely surprising, all new wave-y with buzzy synths and skittery beats, a seriously fusiony electro vibe, total late night future funk, that gets super heavy in the second half, very post/kraut rocky like a heavier Stereolab! Cool.
Flipside starts out with Double Dagger, who we had never heard but who definitely kick ass, super distorted, howly, drum heavy, bass heavy post punk, arty, angular, crunchy, almost a bit metal, full length coming out soon (or just out) that we will definitely check into. Then another track from another aQ fave, NY's White Hills, called "Eye To Eye" from an out of print cd-r, and it's just what you'd expect, druggy, tripped out, psychedelic space rock, with plenty of wild guitar freakouts, kick ass drumming and looooong asssss stretches of space-y jamming. Not to mention a second half that gets all wah wah classic rock! Then finally, a new Trans Am jam, featuring the Fucking Champs' Tim Soete on back up vocals and lead (!) guitars, groovy, metallic, post rocky, classic rocky, with some awesomely cheesy deep vocals, call and response of course, ripping leads, the whole thing a serious slab of total car chase old school classic rock jammery.
As if that weren't enough, the packaging is fantastic, gorgeous, ultra thick sleeves, and inside, a mini manifesto, for record store day, and a zine featuring all sorts of folks reminiscing about their favorite records, or first records, or favorite record stores, lots of record store owners, band folks: the guy from Double Dagger, Mike Watt, Julia Cafritz from Pussy Galore, Ron House from Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments (also a record store owner), Nathan Means from Trans Am, Stephen from the Pastels, as well as record store folk from Pier Platters, Dusty Groove, Other Music, Reckless, Permanent as well as our very own Andee (who is both a record store owner and former Thrill Jockey recording artist in his old band A Minor Forest)!!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Most of which sold on Record Store Day. We have a bunch, but odds are these will most likely be the only copies we ever have.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Record Store Day was a huge success around here (a million thank you's again to all of you who came out and showed your support and to those of you who couldn't be here physically, but ordered stuff online!!!!). And the good thing is we still have a few of the cooler items left that labels had specially made for the occasion. This one is a doozy, a vinyl only compilation of exclusive tracks put together by a consortium of some of our favorite independent labels: Numero Group, Light In The Attic, Finders Keepers, Sublime Frequencies, Daptone, Honest Jon's, VampiSoul, Jazzman, Timmion, and NowAgain. You know these labels collectively have the market cornered on infectious, far-flung, vintage and soulful grooves and this comp does not disappoint with tracks by The Monks, Group Doueh, Los Destillos, Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens, Noor Jehan, P.E. Hewitt Jazz Ensemble, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Pisces, Myron & E with The Soul Investigators, and John Heartsman & Circles.
Gorgeously packaged, thick sleeves with some super striking artwork, both sides featuring awesome photos of the record spines from releases of the labels involved, and inside, jam packed with stickers, and booklets and liner notes and other cool little freebies.
Phew!!
Don't hesitate, because once these are gone, they're Gone Baby GONE!!!!!!!!
Yet another collection of fantastic and far out musical weirdness from Finnish madman Verde, also known as Mika Rintala, one time member of Circle and Extroverde, but by now, much better known as a mad scientist instrument builder, whose records are constructed using the various and sundry electronic devices Rintala designs and assembles. The inside cover of Verde's new disc offers up a cool snapshot of some of these contraptions, all brightly colored, with tubes and switches and levers and speakers and knobs, and all placed in front of a field of blossoming flowers.
They may be pretty and colorful, but those machines can create pretty out there sounds, which Rintala deftly mixes with bits of jazz, looped droniness, and hypnotic rock. Fans of Circle and the various Circular offshoots will definitely find much to love here. Analog synths swoop and shimmer, wrapped around a repetitive guitar figure and some sizzling cymbals, deep pulsing bass tones throb underneath atonal steel string clang. The result a little bit new age, a little bit abstract electro, pretty hard to describe, as is the whole disc, from old timey jazz accompanied by what sounds like whales songs, wreathed in tape hiss and whirring fuzz, to ominous downtuned looped low end rhythms, peppered with percussive thumps, and squalls of creepy robotic buzz, to wildly malfunctioning electronics wrapped around off kilter guitars and thick sheets of feedback, to gorgeously warped chamber music, played on what sounds like the inside of a piano and some thick warbly rubber band strings, to gorgeous minimal rhythmscapes, with muted percussion, and mesmerizingly woozy melodies, fractured detuned steel string guitar, found sounds, a men's choir speaking not singing and more weird sounds and musics than we could ever find words for.
The cool thing about Verde records, and this one is no different, is that these are not just collections of 'weird sounds', or even sonic experiments, these are actual proper (or perhaps IMproper) songs, pieces, movements, they just so happen to be composed and recorded using a motley collection of hand assembled machines, which if anything, makes the music of Verde more bizarre, but also, way more special and unique.
Oh yeah! The Guerssen label strikes gold again with another rad reissue of totally obscure psych-pop, this time out of France, circa 1975. Unless you're one of the two hundred people who actually got a copy of this private press record the first time around there is no way you (like us) have ever heard Warlus before. The timing couldn't be better on this reissue, as its stoned and breezy sounds would be so at home in today's underground. Imagine if Ariel Pink or Kurt Vile were coming of age in the '70s, this might be the home recording they would have made. We also hear hints of the more stoned and drifty side of Thee Oh Sees, even.
While this duo were French they sang in English and this, combined with the group's lo-fi and D.I.Y aesthetic, makes Walrus sound almost like some kind of amazing proto-Shrimper release. We're reminded of the psych-pop of Roger Rodier and, at times this makes us imagine a more melodic Jandek joining forces with fellow outsider Bob Trimble, covering Kinks songs! Or something equally awesome. The songs are intimate and woozy, with nice sound experiments sprinkled throughout. We've been hooked on this the second we heard it. Highly recommended!
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.
We almost sold out of these after only a few days, without even reviewing / listing it, but then it IS a new Xasthur record, and it IS a super limited (500 copies) cassette version, and cassette means cult, in a cool oversized clamshell case, with original artwork by Hildolf from Draugar, and inside, it also contains a photocopied booklet, 3 pins and a patch! So yeah, no real surprise that those flew out of here. We did manage to get a handful more of these, but seeing as how these have been selling pretty much nonstop, who knows how long they'll last.
Beyond all that stuff, we're pretty psyched for sure. Finally, a new record from Xasthur, aka Malefic, a one man doom-ed depressive black metal machine, whose last release, Defective Epitaph was a huge hit around these parts, due in no small part to the shift from drum machine to actual drums, no programmed beats, actual kit bashing rhythms courtesy of Malefic himself, and the result was pretty stellar, creating a sound even more raw and murky and lo-fi than past efforts, but no less bleak or introspective or amazing. So now comes All Reflections Drained, soon to come on double lp, and we would assume cd, but for now available only in the very old school, very metal, and very kult kassette format. And it's very much a continuation of Defective Epitaph, from moment one, the sound boomy and reverb drenched, echoey and WAY lo-fi, loping doomy guitars, stumbling midtempo drums, and then WOAH, the sound shifts, and the drums double time it under a layer of thick low end dramatic piano, creating some strange Skepticismy drift, over the relentlessly buzzing blackness below. The mix is REALLY weird, fractured and gloriously fucked up, the sounds shifting and merging into one another, the songs too, woozy and warped and seasick sounding and a bit waltzy, the drum sound super raw and distant and for the most part buried in the mix, minus some flurries of kick drum that practically explode. The guitars are washed out and melancholic, lumbering doomily through hazy clouds of muted buzz and soft focus hiss, lots of creeped out ambience, and dark soundscaping, way less of a focus on vocals, in fact several songs in, and we barely noticed any, minus some far off clean crooning and some rumbled mutterings, the usual blackened harsh rasps seemingly lost in the swirling off kilter mix.
If anything this record is a logical extension of the direction Malefic had been taking the sound of Xasthur, like a Defective Epitaph part two maybe, but somehow quite a bit doomier, and WAY weirder, more spaced out and experimental, with a serious focus on dark brooding non-metal parts, hints of slowcore and drone abound, some parts are downright orchestral, and the sound is definitely even murkier and mysterious than ever, dripping with buzz and tape hiss, blown out low end (that sounds like a tuba or something similar) and thick crumbling distortion, but fear not troo grim hordes, it's still plenty depressive and dolorous, minor key and epic, miserable and moody, gorgeously buzzy and bafflingly brilliant.
Again, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! And these will probably disappear FAST... To be sure, there will be a vinyl and perhaps cd version coming out eventually, but they won't be as kvlt as this! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
Splits are always a strange proposition, it's not always clear what brings the two bands together, often the union is sonic, but just as often it's something less obvious, the bands are on tour together, the bands are pals, but split 7"s are pretty great, just speaking for ourselves, splits have often been responsible for introducing us to new bands even though we bought the split just for the OTHER band. That hardly applies here though. Again, not sure what brought these two bands together, we're guessing it's Louisville. The Louisville connection is strong between both bands and the label.
The Young Widows jam might just be our favorite from these punk rockers yet, stripped down and bass heavy, tons of space, angular guitars, draped over the crunchy buzzy low end, the bass and drums locked tight, the vocals sung spoken, long stretches of pulsing effects, a kick ass climax, low slung and heavy as fuck, can't help but think of Shellac, Tar, Helmet, all that sort of stuff. We loved the last YW full length, we're assuming this got recorded afterwards, cuz it would seem insane to leave a song this good off the record.
Will Oldham as Bonnie Prince Billy offers up his own winner on the flip, a dark and lush, sprawling bit of country blues, surprisingly poppy, some gorgeous vocal harmonies carry the song, as the instrumentation is minimal and subdued. It reminds us of seventies Laurel Canyon style strum and shimmer, there's even an awesome, just this side of cheesy, dramatic spoken word part, before a super emotional second half, again heavy on the vocal harmonies, makes us think folks into Fleet Foxes who have somehow missed out on Oldham all this time, might just be immediately smitten.
Here's a particularly nasty slab of vinyl from Marcia Bassett, formerly of Hototogisu and Double Leopards, and still the pilot behind Zaimph. There have been varying shades of grey to black for Zaimph with some of her work shifting toward the delirious tonal ragas of early Vibracathedral Orchestra, and with other pieces having all of the subtly of a slab of meat hitting a concrete floor. Even set against some of the bleaker works of her past, Death Blooming Pleasure is an ominous crawl through broken glass, rat shit, and sewage scum. Yeah, it's really dark. Had the first track "Great Are The Riches Hidden In Tribulation" been coupled with blastbeats, it could easily double as a cult black metal track, as Bassett sets forth a buzzsaw drone drone stitched crudely from churning hiss, electrical errata, and very lo-fi slabs of barely melodic noise. Throughout this track, she snarls and growls with the cruel, blood-curdling intentions of Dead Raven Choir's Smolken. The second piece cranks up the volume and dynamics through the clusters of noise, pulling away from the black metal references but neverless maintains a devastating ill-spirit. The flipside "As Well In Death" sets that buzzsaw drone to zombie trance with Marcia singing a bizarrely atonal chorale that's half Jandek and half Fursaxa, but fully creepy. Here, Zaimph recalls a classic number from the Nurse With Wound songbook "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree" while summoning those blackened noise projects Gnaw Their Tongues and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer. One of those hyper limited edition LPs from No Fun. Just 300 in print, but not for long!
Anyone who has happened to catch Atlanta's Zoroaster in a live setting will more than likely mention the same few details: walls of multiple full stacked amplifiers, strobe lights with no apparent "off" switch, and three dudes bringing the DOOM like nobody's business. But most of all, massive, MASSIVE volume. And while Zoroaster effortlessly lay waste on stage, their albums manage to retain this monolithic heaviness while also revealing a method of songwriting that probably wouldn't be described as "nuanced", but nonetheless brings more than a few surprises. Unlike many doom bands, Zoroaster display a notable melodic presence, which makes for one hell of a combination with their metallic tendencies toward sloooooooooow, lumbering riffs, powerful caveman drumming, and vocals that sometimes venture into guttural black metal territory. Without fail, any time we put on a Zoroaster disc, someone in the store, be it aQ staffer or customer, will come up with a slightly confused look on their face and ask what we're listening to. After all, you could probably count on one hand the number of doom bands who manage to incorporate French horns and Theremins into the mix while still coming across as uncompromisingly heavy. Atmospherics are another staple of Zoroaster's psychedelicized approach, with strange bursts of oscillated fuckery worming into the mix but never taking over to the point of distraction. AND everyone in the band is credited with playing Moog, which is just fucking awesome...
On Voice of Saturn, the band's second full length, things start with a brief ambient intro that leads right into the first song, "Seeing the Dark". Rather than trying to explain "stoner rock" to someone, it might be more advantageous to simply put on a song like this, a plodding burst of fuzzed out heaviness that rocks ridiculously hard with gigantic guitars and sandpaper vocals. But then, in maybe the biggest what-the-fuck moment in Zoroaster's career, a simple repeated piano note takes over as everything else dwindles away before returning with cleanly hummed vocals for a beautifully mind-melting slowcore jam. Bravo guys. "Spirit Molecule" clocks in at a lengthy 13 minutes, allowing the band time to brew up a heavier than thou dirge with bits of otherworldly noise before heading into "Undying", an ominous downtempo groove accented by strange witchlike vocals that sound like they were beamed in from some unknown galaxy. "White Dwarf" is a decaying soundscape made up of white noise and underlying synth pulses that segues into the title track, where the band sparks up another doomed out blast of negative energy as the appropriate mantra of "Chaos" brings the song to its conclusion. "Lamen of the Master Therion" closes the album with a familiar sound that you quickly realize is the aforementioned beautifully mind-melting slowcore jam, the piano now accompanied by a strummed acoustic guitar! FUCK YES! Even after that, you can stick around a bit for the secret track, a cool drumcentric moment that we will not describe as "tribal".
Hopefully this new disc will bring Zoroaster to the attention of more people, since they are obviously choice candidates to the current throne of doom. Anyone digging Sleep, Electric Wizard, and UFOmammut will do themselves a real favor by picking up Voice of Saturn, and adventurous non-metalheads might find something to like as well. Needless to say, this one is coming to you highly recommended.
CHAOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!
