Well, this is certainly a strange one, in the best of ways. It probably goes without saying that most of you have never heard of 39 Clocks. We sure hadn't. But one day a promo copy of Zoned showed up and pretty much knocked us on our asses. Who was this strange band that sounded like the Modern Lovers on Quaaludes with the guy from Faust singing? It wasn't until we received the actual album that we figured we could go about piecing together a loose history of this obscure German duo...but the liner notes, not to mention a dearth of information online (the gist of it all is that they seemed to stir shit up), do little except make it abundantly clear that these weirdos will remain a mystery. Without any external details to worry about, we can instead focus on what matters most: the music, natch!
We're sure plenty of you remember the killer Onna 7" Holy Mountain reissued a few months ago. Well, if Onna were a couple of German dudes who set their sights on reinterpreting '60s proto-punk with an unhealthy amount of dissonant NOISE and a smart ass sense of humor, they might have sounded a bit like 39 Clocks. The band pumps out catchy songs based on simple riffs and wraps them in ungodly noise, the results sounding like they were recorded in some grimey, post-industrial slaughterhouse. Like Onna, 39 Clocks appear as a total anomaly during the 1980s, and these selected recordings, represented chronologically backwards from 1987-1980, are a delightfully confusing, slightly disturbing example of psychedelia's true legacy during a time when many bands were participating in a rather unfortunate psych revival based on superficial and idealized evaluations of the 1960s - you know, just like today. 39 Clocks, instead, were damaged, druggy, and fully willing to emphasize repetitive, droning grooves that submerge themselves deep within your sick brain. Time is kept with primitive drum machines (and occasionally real drums) and, not surprisingly, the rhythmic flow is heavily indebted to many of their Krautrock predecessors. At various other points, the band conjures everyone from Suicide to the Velvet Underground to Syd Barrett's solo work. But when the smoke clears, 39 Clocks are very much their own fucked up band.
The flow of this anthology is surprisingly fluid, the unifying thread being 39 Clocks' skewed approach to music making. On "My Tears Will Drown The World", the first and possibly most "normal" song on the album, acoustic guitars accompany deadpan vocals with sustained guitar drones, as brilliantly sampled orchestral movements and percussion provided by the sounds of soldiers marching send things into another dimension. The demented "78 Soldier Dead" thrashes about drunkenly before unexpectedly switching into the riff to "Sweet Jane". They even offer a totally warped cover of "Twist & Shout", all detached and super German, somehow finding the ability to take all the sweat and emotion out of a frantic crowd pleaser, making it almost clinical. The song begins to sound like it is coming to life with an overblown guitar playing the main melody before everything is overtaken by earsplitting feedback. Elsewhere we find extensive use of trashy guitars in the vein of Pussy Galore, some wailing harmonicas, and hilarious but acidic lyrics conveying a nihilistic interpretation of recent world history (probably that whole being from Germany thing...) The songs represented from 1982 seem to indicate the boys' most fertile drug period, as the mostly 7+ minute songs bring to mind shambolic '60s punks the Godz, meaning a heavy emphasis on noise and atonality which may or may not be as intellectual as some people make it out to be, but kills nonetheless.
Wrapping up this review makes it clear how difficult it is trying to accurately describe a band like 39 Clocks. We realize how often we used the word "noise" in this review, and even comparisons to other bands can't really evaluate the unique vibe of this album. It certainly won't be for everyone, but we know their are enough adventurous aQ customers who will totally love this expansive collection of bizarre rockers. In fact, your assessment of whether or not this is for you could be based on how you respond to lyrics like "I'm the best of all genetic chimps". We dig.
A Camp = 1 part Cardigans (Nina Persson), 1 part Shudder To Think (Nathan Larson) and 1 part Atomic Swing (Niclas Frisk).
Colonia = their long awaited sophomore album (their first, import only disc was way back in 2001!).
Sounds promising... enticing even, right? But we're sad to say that our hopes were snuffed fairly swiftly.
As with her main band the downy dewy loveliness of the songs mis-directs the listener from the biting social commentary of her lyrics. On many of the songs here, they come across considerably more heavy-handed than ever before, making the contrast with the mellow soft rock and retro pop backdrop seem a bit forced. We were a bit surprised to hear that the album was being released by Nettwerk (record label and management company to the stars - Avril Lavigne, Sarah Maclachlan, etc), but after hearing Colonia it does make a bit more sense. This is a very glossily produced affair, very palatable for mainstream AOR. Actually her voice could easily be mistaken for the former (which around here is only a good thing if your last name is Connors). Both it and the music as a whole sound strangely homogenized and faceless. Alas, A Camp, alas! Mark "Sparklehorse" Linkous, who produced and performed on the first A Camp album, is pretty much MIA here, and that might be a big part of the problem.
We're not sure what's stranger - that Ilyas Ahmed made a rock record or that Root Strata put one out.
Though perceptions of what constitute "rock" music will obviously differ wildly, relatively speaking this is the most straight ahead musical record we've heard from the Root Strata Label. As for Ahmed, it's definitely a bold leap forward from his past releases of mystical and fragile experimental folk.
For one thing, there's nary an acoustic instrument to be heard, or if there is, it's buried under a blown out sound of buzzing electric guitars, lurching bass and pummeling drums. But the mystical and fragile qualities are still there, namely in the vocals which still maintain their ghostly resonance, reverbed to hell and sung in a high murmur suggesting words without really forming them. Like Neil Young covering a Grouper song. Speaking of whom, Grouper makes a special guest appearance on the final track, which makes sense since they're both from Portland and have always shared similar murky sonic sensibilities.
Goner reminds us of the heavier and more mystically urgent moments of Six Organs of Admittance, but with the fuzzed out lo-fi rock sound of early Iran and OCS. There's enough of his past sound to please fans of his earlier work, but will also gain new fans through a direct and immediate approach that was harder to find on past releases. Recommended!
When we first got this in, we were convinced it was some reissued lost psychedelic gem from the sixties or seventies. From the blurry red and black cover, the dearth of information, and heck it's on Locust, a label well known for killer reissues. So we threw it on, and we were still convinced, although we were blown away by its raw feral blown out psychedelic poppiness. Were there really bands making this sort of inspired and drug fueled racket 30 or 40 years ago? Perhaps, but Amen Dunes wasn't one of them. No, Amen Dunes is apparently the work of one man, a guy called Damon McMahon, who spent an extended stretch holed up in his house in the Catskills (although apparently now, he's holed up in his new house, in CHINA!) channeling some serious demons, and creating a brain melting, warped and distorted, fucked up and freaked out psychedelic classic.
There are definitely hints of the new wave of noise rock, all that shit gaze stuff, and lo-fi garage, Eat Skull, Psychedelic Horseshit, Wavves, Oh Sees, etc, but Amen Dunes' sound is much more old school, going all the way back to drugged out sonic visionaries like Roky Erickson and George Brigman and the like.
Super distorted, everything doused in reverb and delay and distortion, the recording super lo-fi, tape hiss all over the place, murky and muddy, and gloriously fuggy, the vocals slipping from feral shriek, to swoonsome moan, to almost Beach Boys like croon, but even at their most melodic, they remain a bit off kilter, slightly ominous, the rantings of some inspired lunatic right on the edge. The music is rough and raw, but catchy as hell, guitars buzz and jangle, detuned into bizarre Eastern sounding modalities or whipped up into a frenzied squall of Hendrixian freakout. The bass is a huge part of the sound too, rubbery and warm, thick and undulating, sometimes just offering up a layer of deep rumble, other times creating some truly haunting melodic counterpoint. The drums are simple and sporadic, a shuffling pound, a minimal skitter, a loose rickety framework for the Dunes' constantly-on-the-verge-of-collapse echo drenched drone pop, a sort of chilled out Dead C vibe permeates the proceedings as well, a way more damaged and even more druggy Velvets vibe too, all of this shit through with some old timey folkiness, it's a bit of a hodge podge, but it works.
The fractured looped psych drone weirdness of "Fleshless Esta Mira Wife Of Spades" is followed by the almost countryish "Patagonian Domes", before the woozy atonal Supreme Dicks worship of "By The Bridal", with some serious shades of Neutral Milk Hotel (we kid you not).
The rest of the record is equally as tripped out and all over the place, while managing to sound like an actual record, not just a collection of songs. "White Lace" is a gorgeous chunk of softly strummed murk, with super catchy vocals, layers of hiss and buzz, and a smattering of strange electronics, "Castles" is total Laurel Canyon country folk, but infused with just a little more pathos, the vocals a super gorgeous, on the verge of cracking wail, the hand claps, shakers and simple strumming underpinned by a warm wheezing organ. A handful of the songs sound almost Beatles-esque, super classic jangly pop, just barely psychedelic, with the guitars subtly warped, but the killer hooks totally intact, and then the record closes with "Breaker", maybe one of the most moving and intense tracks on the record, the musical accompaniment, minimal, simple softly strummed guitar, and some soft organ shimmer, but the vocals, so impassioned and emotional, raw and way up front, melodic and intense, howling and wailing, with multiple voices multitracked into a gorgeous wavery, fractured two part harmony, that ends up sounding like some sort of outsider gospel music. Totally inspirational, mind blowing, rocking, catchy, darkly mysterious... Easily one of our favorite records of the year so far!!
What a perfect record, two of our favorite crafters of elegant ambience together for the first time, weaving an entrancing sonic spell, a lush, slow burning, sprawling expanse of burnished soft focus dronemusic. Anduin, for those who don't already know, is the experimental ambient side project of Jonathan Lee who fronts aQ metallic post rock faves Souvenir's Young America, and of course Jasper TX, is the work of Dag Rosenqvist, whose sound is a gloriously murky drift, and whose debut I'll Be Long Gone Before My Light Reaches You we made a Record Of The Week way back in 2006, and we've loved everything we've heard from him since.
The two mesh perfectly together, impossible to tell where one ends and another begins, and the resulting sound manages to not tip too far in either direction, instead, the duo have crafted a sublime collection of dark mystery, from thick, humid rumbles, to swirling layered bliss, to sun dappled dreamlike drift, to hushed minimal shimmer, to sizzling raga like buzz, to washed out woozy Pop Ambience, every track on The Bending Of Light is ripe for immersion, thick slow shifting fields of sound that just beg to envelop, perfect for listeners to get lost in, to let go, and to drift off on soft sonic clouds, sinking deeper and deeper into these sprawling soundscapes of warm deeeeep melodic warmth and woozy, bleary ambient blur. So so so nice. Fans of all things drifty and droney will be enthralled and entranced.
Pressed on extra thick vinyl, housed in thick silkscreened cardstock jackets, also includes a cd (not a cd-r) with the same music, only digital.
San Francisco's mellow Lords and Lady of awesomely hazy, drugged out psychedelia return with their third album, a heavily atmospheric work which manages at once to sound both spacey and pastoral. The band knows when to lay low and lock into a hypnotic, blissed out groove, with a heavy debt to non-suck Pink Floyd (think Meddle) and even the Byrds' more cosmic moments. These only make their more aggressive and rocking excursions that much more powerful. It's a cool affair, drenched with organ, warm bass grooves, Theremins, and impressive guitar work. They also leave plenty of space for fuzzy, feedback drenched freakouts, all the while remaining fully in control and never losing themselves in jam band land. Throughout it all, the swirling atmospherics on the album act like an additional band member, covering these eight songs like a thick cloak of fog. The dual male/female vocals help to separate the group from the multitude of other bluesy psych bands, sending things into significantly dreamy realms. It's very California, mannnnnnnn, and sure to find fans in anyone digging fellow SF heads like Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, and Lumerians.
Having contributed to a very nice collaborative drone record with Darren Tate and Ian Holloway about a year ago, Banks Bailey presents a solo offering of field recordings that mostly focus on the desert environs of his native Arizona. On this album, Bailey proves to be a very patient phonographer, as his recordings reveal a considered approach to choosing the sites to record and then waiting for those environments to erupt with sound. Anybody who has listened to Chris Watson's impeccable recordings and thought, "hmmm, I could do this too." has no doubt suffered from the frustration that such a task is far from easy. We'll be honest in saying that Bailey's aren't quite as good as Watson's (seriously, he's the best for a reason!), but don't take that as a swipe against Bailey's richly detailed sounds.
The first two tracks originate in Ohio, with the first investigating the delirious sounds of tree frogs and cicadas crosshatching their sustained buzzings into a wonderful humid ambience from a summertime bog. The second recording contains some of the only industrial and manmade sounds in the recording, as Bailey wanders through downtown Springfield, Ohio where the only sounds can be heard from incoming trains with bellowing steam whistles and rumbling motors. The remainder of the recordings were culled from various excursions into the Arizona wilderness, where the diversity of birdlife is plainly evident. Tweets, trills, and whistles emanate from one bird (which may be something as common as a sparrow, but we can't tell you what it is) whom Bailey has recorded while the bird was perched above a trickling stream. Later on, Bailey documents a very melodious and quite loud bird (again, no telling which one), whose song is reflected with a slight natural echo from the environment. A windstorm through a canyon seems to annoy a red-tailed hawk (now, we can get that one!), who screeches into the wind. Each of the tracks clock in about 8-10 minutes, and provide lots of details of the environment. Exactly what we want in our field recordings, in a micro-edition of 75 copies!
It's been a (little) while since we've had some brand new Aidan Baker / Nadja for the store, thankfully this week heralds two new releases. To be reviewed next time, there's long awaited Nadja all-covers disc (which we'll tell you right now is great), and then there's this, a brand new, limited double lp from Baker solo, and as always it's a doozy, sprawling and shimmery and expansive, that sort of blissed out ambient dronemusic he does so well. But it's far from more of the same. The first track we threw on was almost jungle, with skittery beats buried beneath softly undulating layers of warm whir and deep drifts of soft swirling sound. There's also a bit of Spacemen 3 like processed psych guitar, which gives way to some buzzing raga like blur, draped over still more dreamlike dronescapes, although here, it's laced with chunks of processed alien crunch, and weird little bits of scrape and fragmented riffage.
Long stretches of underwater Oval-like wooziness, shot through with streaks of space-y effects and muted bits of glitch and buzz, some of the most washed out and wondrous space (not quite) rock ever! Warped warbly organs are stretched and smeared into warped Philip Jeck like doomy drifts, one of which is apparently a cover of Joy Division's "Twenty Four Hours", although we could only tell by the vocals, and even then, they're so hushed and barely there, that any sense of the original seems to melt into a gorgeously oozing expanse of thrum and shimmer and softly warped rumble.
Another fantastic and gorgeous and of course WAY too limited chunk of droney dreaminess from Mr. Baker. Released on the always amazing Equation Records, who really go all out with the packaging as well. Thick swirled/splattered blue vinyl, thick full color gatefold jacket, and a printed full color postcard, each of which is hand numbered, LIMITED TO 444 COPIES!
Natasha Khan, the artist behind Bat for Lashes, is a one-woman wonder. Though assisted by numerous musicians - including Scott Walker (!) on "The Big Sleep" - Bat for Lashes is obviously Natasha's heart and soul project. When one person is the primary songwriter/musician, there's an almost undefinable connectivity and synergy in the instrumentation that is difficult to achieve with a "real" band. The interplay between vocals and synths, how one will flow into another and then back, just as the koto-inspired drum programming kicks in, it's brilliant. There's pretty, tinny piano synths, brooding gothic synths, and sweeping orchestral synths, with just enough violin or guitar or live percussion to keep it from sounding completely electronic. Honestly, the artist that comes to mind more than anyone else while listening to "Two Suns" is Kate Bush, and while that may be a turn-off for some, it's a huge freakin' compliment as far as we're concerned. Like Kate Bush, Bat for Lashes can turn what would otherwise be semi-cheesy instrumentation into interesting, beautiful songs. Highlights include the opening song "Glass" (a little bit Bjork, a little bit of the Creatures), the second song "Sleep Alone" (a whole lot of Kate Bush), and the Scott Walker duet "The Big Sleep".
It's been a while, more than a year in fact, since we last got a batch of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA, but it's finally that time once again. We were beginning to jones pretty hard. For those of you who can't quite figure it out from the name of the genre, this stuff is black metal, and psychedelic, and most (if not all) of the bands hail from Sheffield in the UK. Beyond that, this stuff is pretty hard to describe, from blown out grinding blackened psychedelic post rock to chugging in-the-red blacknoise to glistening soft focus krautdrone to pounding distorted sludge to processed machinelike buzz and stutter, and we're not even just describing the genre, most of the bands somehow manage to incorporate all of those elements into one fractured fucked up and seriously and gloriously schizophrenic sound.
We'd been waiting for a proper real cd (non cd-r) release from any of these guys, and while there have been rumors of a new Ice Bound Majesty full length on tUMULt (!), it was Black Vomit who were ultimately immortalized in aluminum and plastic first, thanks to those twisted freaks at Rusty Axe. But even by Rusty Axe's already freaky standards, Jungle Death is some seriously twisted avant heavy black weirdness. The sort of stuff that will have your standard black metal knuckle dragger scratching his head and reaching for the nearest Dimmu Borgir cd.
The metal component of black vomit is a sort of metal that sounds like it was cooked up by Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, Aidan Baker and Justin Broadrick would have conjured up in some underground lair, with no small amount of black magic. Guitars that roar and howl, piled on top of one another until they're so thick, they threaten to collapse your stereo speakers like miniature black holes, the riffs grind and buzz, blurred and smeared into huge heaving walls of blown out white hot sound, usually weirdly processed too, so buried beneath the roiling surface, lurk all manner of electronics and glitch and hiss and static. Sometimes the heaviness stumbles into streaks of sonic black tar, slowing the sound down into some blown out glacial trudge, and even then, it's no ordinary doom, the sound glistens and glows, it's heaviness more a function of staring into some alien sun, the beams of light transformed into sound, wrapping you in thick sheets of effulgent buzz and black hued shimmer.
The various bits of skull crushing heaviness are balanced by some of the coolest drone and ambient music we've heard, from the rumbling, muted and melodic low end intro, that sounds like some creepy krautrock bassline slowed waaaaay down, to the glistening glitched out sun dappled shimmer of "Conderlint5", with it's mysterious alien voices and skittery crystalline textures, to the moaning lonely spidery guitar drift of "Last Cries Of The Lost".
The record starts out damaged, and just gets more and more fucked and freaked out as it progresses, looped tribal drumming wreathed in swirling static, laced with strange samples, gives way to stuttering processed electronic grind, which slowly transforms into a sea of warped drones and Oval like glitches, all smoothed out into an undulating underwater soundscape, wrapped in jagged shards of distorted crunch and sonar like beeps. A brief bit of indie jangle, all minor key strum and sad lilting melody, explodes in a flurry of crumbling stumbling ultra distorted post rock pound, before slipping into some almost Pop Ambient sounding drift, only to again transform into some impossibly twisted bit of cinematic mood music, complete with haunting strings, and dubbed out drums, finally opening up into "Dark Beloved Cloud", the longest track on the record, all Burzumy and murky and buzzy and blackened, woozy and off kilter, with more processed vocals, tons of effects, long stretches of tripped out psychedelic minimalism, before the pounding D-beat climax, and then a soft focus shimmery fade out, which leads directly into the record closer, a warm warped swirl of deeeeeep thrum, and slow moving melodic murk, again shot through with echo drenched voices and bits of electronic twinkle and glimmer, fading out into nearly 5 minutes of near silence. Weird.
But so fucking mind blowing. Totally wiping out any boundaries between drone music and black metal and ambient noise and electronic grind and whatever other fucked up sounds these freaks fuse into their totally genius and totally unique TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!
We aQuarians have been jonesin' for anything to do with Blank Dogs as of late, as they are one of those rare groups that EVERYONE at the store goes crazy for. The sound is murky, dark, more than a tad bit goth, and masterfully lo-fi, but at the end of the day, Blank Dogs are essentially a pop band, and a damn fine one at that. Since it took a while for them to enter our radar, we are getting to gleefully sift through an extensive catalog of eps and lps from the past few years while patiently waiting for the upcoming full length on In The Red.
This ep, released back in 2007, but newly available, is certainly worth the price of admission for the two songs which open each side of the record, but the others are quite impressive as well. "Leaving The Light On" and "Scenes From A New Town" are certainly among the most beautiful, melancholy, and just plain weird Blank Dogs songs to date. Things are kept moving with a steady drum machine beat as the overall melodies are shaped by single note guitars and bass lines that give the songs the feeling of some surf rock/goth hybrid with surprisingly anthemic choruses. Coupled with a recording fidelity that sounds like a crackling transmission from some parallel reality, creepy analog synthesizers galore, and Blank Dogs' spectral vocals, you'd be forgiven if you assumed these recordings might have been recorded at any point within the last thirty years. That said, there is nothing retro about Blank Dogs, nor would you call them (or more appropriately, "him" at this point) "ahead of their time". Instead, the music seems to exist simply OUT of time, which is probably why we have found Blank Dogs so very striking. A typically stellar release from this eccentric, hyper prolific pop machine.
We're pretty excited about this new vintage reissue label, Monk, that's releasing these nice deluxe vinyl versions of early recorded music that are hard to come by these days: blues, folk, country, bluegrass, Western swing and early jazz. Sure there's Mississippi records, but these have nicer packaging, are well researched, and compiled, and just a bit more, well, deluxe. Plus Monk also seems to be focusing on the veritable stars of these genres like Charley Patton, Charlie Poole, Dock Boggs and Django Reinhardt, providing a fine selection of their best early recordings.
Dock Boggs, if you aren't familiar, was a singer and banjo player, discovered playing in mining camps as he worked the mines all over the Appalachian Mountains. A contract from Brunswick Records in 1927 got him out of the mining camps to record these 12 songs after which he had the start of a fine career, touring extensively and playing parties before the Great Depression hit and he was forced to give up professional music. It wasn't until the folk revival of the sixties where he was re-discovered and recorded three more records for Smithsonian Folkways. This record represents his complete recordings for the Brunswick label made between 1927 and 1929, and a more sadly intense and beautiful document of early Appalachia may nary be found!
Sometimes you just gotta get down and dirty, sleazy and rocking, and we have to say it's been hard to find bands doing that sort of thing right these days. So thank the stars for Bridez, a San Francisco band who make sounds made reckless nights on the dancefloor, beer soaked chaos, reminding us that rock n roll is supposed to be trashy and wild and impassioned!
There is definitely a '90s vibe happening on Evilroad that reminds us of all those great records by bands like L7, Babes In Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, Hole, Mudhoney, The Gits, Royal Trux, etc. that we've recently been revisiting, reveling in how damn good they still are. For their debut full length Bridez teamed up with Greg Ashley of Gris Gris fame producing and he definitely brings his keen sense of melody and atmosphere to the Bridez' high energy infectious rock assault. While we're sure lead singer Liza Thorn is sick of the Courtney Love comparisons, there is no denying that her voice and energy conjures images of the Courtney we used to go crazy for circa Pretty On The Inside and Live Through This. But while she commands plenty of attention the rest of the band have some serious chops as well and a truly relentless spirit which helps make Bridez a full on band to take notice of.
While much of their reputation surrounds their reckless and chaotic live shows, it's awesome to hear that behind all the commotion and mayhem, this band has some seriously great songs running happening too. So fucking good!
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!
We rave about jazz legend Don Cherry as often as we can. Every reissue has us all in a tizzy. In the past we made his mind blowing Orient an aQ record Of The Week. And in retrospect, we probably should have made the Blue Lake reissue a ROTW as well. Cherry was continually pushing the boundaries of jazz, exploring and helping shape free jazz, and incorporating all manner of world music into his ever changing and expanding sound.
This disc, recorded in 1978, found Cherry once again reimagining the sound of jazz, and challenging unadventurous jazz fans, by teaming up with legendary Indian percussionist Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan. Cherry had experimented with Indian music before on past recordings, but this was the first full on collaboration. Two sides, one featuring Cherry compositions, accompanied by Khan on tablas, the other side, Khan compositions, the tablas more of the driving force, the sound distinctly more Indian classical, with Cherry accompanying Khan.
The untitled opener finds Cherry and Khan covering Ornette Coleman, Cherry's former band leader. It's a dark brooding shuffle, all warm keyboard grooves, and the tablas, how they change everything, the skittery rhythms, but also the strange rubbery low end, the song eventually morphs into a Cherry original, and gets a bit proggy with wild trumpets and thick organs, the tablas still driving the whole thing. It's the next track where it gets really interesting though. A sprawling rhythmscape, the tablas doing double time, the rhythm, and a pulsing sort-of-bass line, Cherry delivering abstract almost scat like falsetto vocals, dark and drone-y and spaced out and minimal, peppered with occasional bursts of wild horn skronk, but for the most part, a swirling tripped out stretch of throbbing subtly psychedelic jazz minimalism. The final Cherry composed track is another gem, all glistening chimes and high end tones, flurries of piano, distant horns, whooshing effects, and of course the skitter of the tablas, more melodic almost that rhythmic on this track. Cherry also introduces some flute, which gives the track a sort of freak folk vibe, really!
Khan's side is distinctly less jazz. The tablas way up in the mix, his dexterous rhythms totally spellbinding, intricate, and again melodic, Cherry offering up strange bits of percussion, muted keyboards, very abstract and so cool. The final track, a sprawling 13 minute epic begins with just organ, drifting in space, until the tablas come in, and holy shit, even more intense and intricate, wreathed in a bit of reverb, and slipping from loping grooves to wild bursts of impossibly complex rhythmatism, the organ, a constant warm whir in the background, and the timbre of the keyboards, continues to infuse the track with a distinctly prog feel. Making this some sort of abstract classical Indian jazz prog? Whatever you want to call it, these are some gorgeously hypnotic and meditative sounds. So very recommended. Fans of the Necks might get into this too, similarly dark minimal vibe, especially the Khan tracks, and well worth checking out for the rest of you, even if jazz isn't normally your thing.
Alice plays it all on this reissue of her weird 1976 album -- she's wields the harp and organ, a Fender Rhodes electric piano, even cymbals. Each song is different in mood and instrumentation, with the first track "Spiritual Eternal" featuring a veritable
Wow! What is it about the sudden appearance of a cache of lost amateur folk recordings that just makes us stop everything we're doing and pay attention? Well, in the case of Connie Converse who made these recordings between 1954 and 1961, her sadly beautiful songcraft coupled with her mysterious (and most likely, tragic) disappearance in the early seventies, paints a tinge of regret and missed opportunities on the proceedings that make her gentle and deeply personal songs resonate more poignantly. A bookish gal from New Hampshire with academic leanings and no strong musical background, she took to writing poems and songs after leaving college in New York a year before she was to graduate. Her songs attracted the interest of animator and amateur recordist Gene Deitch who taped over 40 songs of hers, before she moved to Michigan to live with her brother and set her mind to other pursuits. In the years since, she still played music for friends and family, but her hopes that her recordings would lead to successful opportunities did not pan out and she became more despondent. Taking a leave of absence from her job, she wrote several farewell letters to family and friends, packed up her Volkswagon and disappeared, her whereabouts still unknown...
Similar in tone to Vashti Bunyan and Sibylle Baier, Converse came from a generation earlier. Her songs have a folk-country revivalist vibe popular during the time but her songs don't seemed to be influenced directly by the folk revival movement. Instead it seems she was orbiting in her own parallel universe, like a folksinger version of Emily Dickinson, focussing on the subtle details of daily life and the lovely and lonely qualities that intertwine throughout. Those qualities are heightened by the raw and intimate feel of the recording with its natural imperfections, and side dialogue left thankfully intact.
Fans of Bunyan and Baier, Barbara Dane, Ruth Friedman, Karen Dalton and Niela Miller will find lots to love here. How Sad, How Lovely, Indeed!
Cultural Amnesia would have certainly disappeared entirely, but one of the band's earliest supporters was an 18 year old kid named Geoff Rushton, who later changed his name to John Balance when he formed Coil in 1983 (the same year that Cultural Amnesia ceased activities). Cultural Amnesia managed three cassettes, some compilation tracks, and a half-finished album during that time period, with one of those cassettes being released through Rushton's Hearsay And Heresy label. In all likelihood, Coil completists had come across these cassettes and brought them to light over two decades later. Vinyl On Demand was responsible for one of the anthologies of Cultural Amnesia material, but the better collection was Enormous Savages first released on vinyl by Anna Logue in 2006. This cd version through Klanggalerie flushes out the comp with five tracks recorded in recent years, now that they've gotten back together.
Had it not been for their early demise, this was a band that could have followed in the footsteps of Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, Dome, and Cabaret Voltaire circa 1981, as a blank austerity followed through the eccentric darkness grafted onto post-punk songs bristling with inventive if cheap electronics. Choppy sparkplug guitars influenced by Keith Levene's work on PiL's Metal Box punctuate the synthetic melodies, drum machinations, and motorik electronics. Lyrically, these are abject tales of blood, scars, alienation, and British misery, with some of the lyrics penned by Rushton himself. Those painfully eloquent songs are prescient of what Rushton was to bring to Coil's early work on Scatology, but they serve Cultural Amnesia very well on their own. The band had reformed in 2000, and offered 5 new tracks, which actually seem to pick up right where they left off, moving more towards the Pop Group's muscular grooves and fidgety funk, with the same Spartan tape recording which dominated their early work. A very welcome document from Britain's cassette culture.
None more self-referential. (Not even Manowar.) This album actually has the words "Dark" and "Throne" in the title. Dark Thrones & Black Flags, could they make it any more plain? Implying the grimnity of Darkthrone's traditional necro Nordic black metal with a severe dose of '80s punk (and metal) infesting the proceedings, which is basically the Darkthrone formula of recent years. If you liked, say, last year's Darkthrone album, F.O.A.D., you'll like this (and if you didn't, you won't!). While we can't expect 'em to replicate old classics like A Blaze In The Northern Sky or Transylvanian Hunger, we do know they can make F.O.A.D. Part II! Heck, it even looks almost identical. Similar cover art, same rounded-corner jewel case. And as with F.O.A.D., the text in the cd booklet delves into fannish detail, including another page of interestin' record-buying recommendations from drummer Fenriz, and individual liner notes for each song on this disc, explaining their inspirations. Which often have to do with obscure '80s bands only collectors know about. Or, have to do with camping trips! These guys love the great outdoors, and thus the cd booklet is illustrated with many photos of Norwegian forests and lakes taken by these "Hiking Metal Punks" (yes, that's a song title here!). You gotta love it. So many black metal bands claim to be "of the forest", but these guys prove they are. They also prove, again, to have a sense of humor... yet remains totally cvlt 'cause heck they're Darkthrone!
Musically, this album rocks, it's a punked-up slab of riffy, raw black metal. Utterly old school - even though it's Darkthrone's new school sound (for the actual ye olde Darkthrone stuff, we still have a few copies of their deluxe demos collection The Frostland Tapes reviewed 2 lists back). There's anthems like "Hiking Metal Punks" and icy epicks like "Norway In September", but whatever the style, headbangingness is job number one. The production is typical Darkthrone filth, the vocals (from both Fenriz and stringed-instrument wielder Nocturno Culto) range from the usual rasping croaks to higher pitched yelps and even some weird, clean vocals (like the chorus of the opening track, "They Winds They Called The Dungeon Shaker" - that's an awesome title by the way, whatever it means). Fenriz does a Tom G. Warrior (Celtic Frost) sometimes, and even gets kinda witchy, sounding just a bit like ol' King Diamond on "Hanging Out In Haiger". On the drums, he bashes away enthusiastically as always. Guitarwise, Nocturno keeps it grim (of course) but throws in the occasional surprisingly widdily solo.
So, basically, the cold, old ones are back with another album of all about their favorite stuff: metal, camping, Darkthrone. It mixes their punk side (which they took to the furthest extreme a couple albums back on The Cult Is Alive) with hoary heavy metal homage, again a la F.O.A.D. And there's definitely a bunch of tracks on here that give that album's biggest hit, the catchy "Canadian Metal", a run for its money! We like.
Review courtesy of aQ pal Forrest:
Bromst wasn't what I expected next from Dan Deacon. Over the last couple years, broheim's spent a lot of time on the road, cajoling kefiya'd hipsters around North America into throwing their hands in the air and dancing like they just do not care. Dan Deacon shows are cheerfully riotous, thanks in no small part to Deacon's maniacal, good-naturedly foulmouthed chivvying of the crowd into helping create the show. (Dude is very big on crowd participation, which, given the apathy of the usual crowd at indie shows, is one of the many reasons we love him so much.) On first listen, however, Bromst is a much more contemplative, conventional record than his previous, Spider of the Rings, and seems to share little in common with Deacon's live show. Where Spider of the Rings was a jabberjawed, neon-encrusted box of whooping, circuit-bent deliriousness, Bromst seems much more sedate and nowhere near as immediate.
Having experienced a good portion of Bromst live, we can tell you that impression of subtlety lasts about 2.5 seconds under the hammering assault of Deacon's new 10-person live ensemble, after which it becomes abundantly clear that the new songs are tooled for the road and the dancefloor is going to be lucky to withstand the frenetic heaving of the crowd. This music is absolutely monstrous live and Deacon leaves audiences with no option but to respond. Given his background in academic electronic composition, Deacon's reference points are not exactly what you'd expect. There's some understandable early Kraftwerkian motorik prog in places (think Autobahn, not Man-Machine), and there are lovely (that's the only word that fits) ornaments decorating the edges of most of the songs that are obviously in the lineage of Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass. There's also a pretty clear affinity with the yahoo freak folk of Akron/Family, with the vague exhortations to universal consciousness and tribal, rolling drums and triumphant chords shouting through the mix. Much less obvious is the clear debt to full-on 50s rock and roll in all its two-(major-)chord glory, with an ironic self-awareness situated somewhere between the New York Dolls and Roxy Music. This all leaves Bromst sounding like an alien refugee from the '70s, albeit one fully conversant with 21st century electronic trickery - never fear, Deacon's ridiculous chipmunked / phased / vocodered vocals are fully intact.
That said, it's a slow grower, taking many listens to fully reveal itself, but once it's burnt itself in, the high points are plentiful. The three highest points are the swooning, Meredith Monk-meets-Appalachia looped vocal drone of "Wet Wings", the chiming, woozy and gentle slow build of "Snookered", and the flatly uncategorizable closer "Get Older", with its fusion of marimba with some of Deacon's itchiest electronics, all over a lumbering rock'n'roll beat and overlaid with thick layers of Reich/Riley/Glass-esque cellular composition. Minimalism has rarely sounded so heavy. On record, it's not the hammer straight to the adrenal gland that it is live, but it's still pretty damn impressive. Like Spiderman of the Rings' "Wham City", it ties everything there is to love about Dan Deacon up in a tidy package: deceptively sophisticated songwriting, a deep awareness of and respect for musical history, earworm electronics, layers upon layers of sound, and a total commitment to wanton excess. It's a brilliant way to end a brilliant record, and is all the advertisement Dan Deacon needs. Get this record and get yourself to one of Deacon's loopy, amazing live shows. Both are good times.
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! This recent Record Of The Week now on lp, lp AND 7" to be exact, as it was too much music to fit on a single lp. Fancy packaging, thick vinyl, very swank, and of course very limited!
For years now, the cryptically (and coolly) monickered Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words has been quietly and consistently releasing some of the most haunting and beautiful minimal dronemusic we've heard, a blend of soft skittery glitch, brooding guitar loops, deeeeeep drone, dreamy drift, and experimental post-everything soundscaping, that is as good if not better than anything produced by the legion of overhyped sound makers constantly fawned over by the public and press alike. We've only managed to review two DLSODW releases so far, both sadly out of print now, but the release of this new one, quite possibly his best, seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally throw our weight behind Dead Letters, and hopefully open some ears to these mysterious and wondrous sounds, and reveal to the hordes of dronelords and free music freeks just what they've been missing.
Dead Letters is the work of Swedish musician Thomas Ekelund, and over the years, his music has drifted from extreme near silent ultra minimalism, to warm whirring dronescapes to muted crunch and clatter to shimmering underwater ambience, but on Lost In Reflections, all of those elements are present, in lesser amounts, the perfect distillation of a lifetime of sounds, here presented more as background then the main event, that main event here being the guitar. Each of the six tracks, however distorted or refracted or fragmented or obfuscated, seems to be borne of the guitar, with Ekelund working his mysterious alchemy and transforming those buzzing steel strings into wholly new shapes.
The opener, "This Room Seems Empty Without You" held us spellbound from the very first few seconds, a bit of reverby guitar, moody and minor key, very post rock, slow core and abstract, the notes hovering in a dark expanse of overtones and deep low end shimmer, the guitar unfurling gradually, subtly processed, peppered with a strange percussive glitch, that gives the music a sort of downtempo vibe, still droney and abstract and free, but with a little Portishead or Bowery Electric mixed in. The glitches coalesce into an almost-rhythm, the end result is some strange minimal instrumental downtuned Galaxie 500 mixed with the brooding barely there drift of Bohren, and a sort of late night lugubrious skitter.
The next track, "Lost & Losing", takes a whole 'nother tack, beginning with bits of scrape and creak, amp buzz, muted harmonics, a subtly percussive textural soundscape, quietly and slowly surrounded by a gorgeously hazy sea of sun spots and solar flares, taking the shoegaze-y shimmer of Nadja and Jesu and dialing it way back, until it's a glimmering sheet of prismatic buzz, all the while those strange sounds from the song's beginning continuing to weave a buried barely there rhythm, everything locked into deep woozy bleary eyed swells.
We have the tendency to go song by song, describing the sound of each, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but often it's not just the sound, it's the mood and the vibe and the feel and the deft and delicate arrangement of those sounds. And Ekelund is a master, taking simple strummed guitars, and wrapping them in a gauzy patina of blur buzz, locking the original riff into a loop, and then gently adding bit of melody, bits of texture, turning something simple into something complex and gorgeous, there are hints of Earth all over Lost In Reflections as well, a particularly abstract bit of fuzzy drift, will suddenly part to reveal a dark elegiac guitar line, slowed way down, creating some sort of underwater blues, while elsewhere, the twang and pluck of the guitar strings is wreathed in sonic sunlight, the sounds allowed to overlap and tangle up, the notes and melodies all wound up, spinning slowly and spitting out sparks, bits of glitch and high end tones, streaks of feedback, until those sounds are smeared into one long undulating stretch, and over the top a string of chiming notes are hung like Christmas lights on a tree, the, guitar often disappearing completely, leaving just a bit of twang to hover and then fade away.
The final track is a monster, nearly 20 minutes, imagine Nadja, Merzbow and Tim Hecker covering Arvo Part, and you might be close. This is some sort of soft noise, blindingly effulgent upper register ur-drone chorale, the streaks and shards of guitars sound like voices, the distortion thick, the effects crumbling and swirling, a glancing listen reveals a wall of sound, but headphones are like a diving bell, allowing us to sink into this roiling sonic sea, that seems to stretch out forever, bottomless and endless, part way through, the song changes shape, that which constituted the whole of the sound up until that point is relegated to a background for these new sounds, a sweeping, loping epic bit of post rock, still washed out and woozy, but with a simple propulsive rhythm, and a gorgeously melodic chiming central riff, darkly fervent and slightly ominous and hauntingly epic, the swirling sounds around those new elements growing more frenetic, thickening, while the song just grows and grows, sprawls and expands, as if any second the heavens will open and the song will become the sonic manifestation of the rapture. So totally intense and powerful and moving and majestic, and simply breathtaking.
The Death & Beauty Foundation is an odd footnote in the history of The Hafler Trio. It's a project that began sometime in the early '80s presumably in and/or around Newcastle, UK featuring a young Andrew McKenzie (who later went on to found The Hafler Trio) and Val Denham, a visual artist who has some history with Psychic TV, Marc Almond, and Cyclobe. Only a couple of compilation tracks of the Death & Beauty Foundation had appeared on Touch cassette compilations, and a tape-only release emerged in 1986; but beyond that, the story to the Death & Beauty Foundation is pretty mysterious. This CD represents the complete 'Darlington Tapes' which the two began in 1982. Instead of the media-savvy collages and psychoacoustic investigations which The Hafler Trio mastered throughout the '80s, the Death & Beauty Foundation penned songs, really weird and fractured songs; but these are nonetheless tunes. A curious falsetto (which we're presuming to belong to Denham) floats in flanging tremolo haze above odd, Spartan electronics, sounding somewhat like "In Heaven" from the Eraserhead soundtrack, but ever more evasive and purposefully meandering. In line with primitive BBC Radiophonic tricknology meets Cabaret Voltaire cut-up methods, tape manipulations guide the bulk of the arrangements to that fluttering voice, with Shadow Ring like splutter across guitar and tin-can percussion on a few tracks. Some of the electronic sounds seem to have reappeared on the h3o album Sea Org; but those recognizable instances are few and far between in this confusing album.
Not sure how many of you remember the group Code, and their record Nouveau Gloaming, from maybe 3 or 4 years ago. A dizzying blend of blasting Norwegian style blackness a la Satyricon (circa Nemesis Divina) and Interpol, or at least some modern post Joy Division gothiness, and no small amount of Swans like doomic crush as well, oh and a bit of Khold like groove. That record destroyed us (and before you order it, we're not entirely sure it's even still available sad to say). We had been wondering though, quite recently in fact, what happened to Code, only to discover... a new Code record in June (!) and this little project right here: Decrepit Spectre. Featuring Code vocalist Kvohst, who also sings for Dodheimsgard, which should give you a clue as to what sort of blackened crooning to expect from Decrepit Spectre. The rest of the band is rounded out by some serious black metal muscle as well. Members of Ved Buens Ende, Manes and Seth among others.
We're happy to report that Decrepit Spectre basically sounds like Code mk. II, which is a very good thing indeed. A killer mix of frenzied blasting blackness, and moody brooding doom-ed gothiness. At its heaviest, sounding quite a bit like classic Satyricon, but maybe more than Code, DS is rife with those awesomely dramatic vocals, that definitely makes Coal Black Hearses sound like a black metal Interpol record, which as far as we're concerned is pretty much something we always fantasized about, or would have if it even seemed like a possibility. The arrangements are mathy and dense and complex, the riffs buzz and snarl, but there's also plenty of winding twisted guitar melodies, haunting harmonies, and the cool thing here is that even the loping gothy parts, are often underpinned by furious double kick drumming, and conversely, the flurries of vintage black buzz, are often wound around deep moaning sorrowful vocals. A strange combination, but one that still works, and still totally hits the spot for us. We were a bit bummed out by the later Dodheimsgard records, not sure what it was exactly, but THIS is exactly how we hoped those DHG discs would sound, super tech, post black metal, melodic and gloomy, mysterious and dramatic, but at the same time heavy as fuck, crushing and thrashing and pounding, with plenty of creeped out interludes, washed out woozy blackness, harsh hellish vox, insane relentless drumming and the occasional stretch of abstract psychedelic weirdness.
A bit of a bummer this is only 16 minutes long (just 3 tracks), but it definitely has us chomping at the bit for a full length. For now, we'll keep on doing what we're doing, playing this over and over and over, while we wait for the full length (and that upcoming Code full length as well!)...
Released on UK label Paradigms, who seemingly can do no wrong. A limited edition, but unclear just how limited.
Wow! Wow! Wow! What a treasure for any Dengue Fever fan!!! Sleepwalking Through The Mekong is a deliriously wonderful dvd+cd set featuring a fascinating documentary / travelogue film of their Cambodian tour (and homecoming for lead vocalist Chhom Nimol), lots of bonus footage, and an accompanying soundtrack compilation that's alternately dreamy and electrifying! Check out the full throttle rendition of familiar favorite "New Year's Eve"! Featuring performances by not only the stars of the show Dengue Fever, but also Cambodian master musicians Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Serey Southea, Khee Sokley, Meas Samoun, Kong Nai and Tep Mary. Need we say more? Absolutely breathtaking and essential!
Scott Herren has shown over the years he's a man of many musical hats. Creating a wide range of sounds with his projects Prefuse 73, Savath & Savalas, Piano Overlord, etc. Diamond Watch Wrist finds him exploring warmly textured songs with moody and ghostly undertones. In fact this record would fit so nicely near Warp label-mates Grizzly Bear. Joined by Zach Hill of Hella on drums who plays in the most restrained and atmospheric fashion we've heard from him, Herren shows he's much more then an electronics wizard as he plays guitar, bass, pedal steel, clarinet and sings so nicely throughout the record, too. We hear the influence of late '90s lush indie bands like Bedhead and Red Stars Theory. Nice to find yet another side to Herren's multitalented musical leanings, same goes for Hill as well.
A brand new blast of filthy fug from this ex member of noise rock legends Wolf Eyes. Since Dilloway left the fold, his solo work has gotten more and more interesting, and more and more far out. Culminating in the confusional chaos that is Chain Shot. A two track 12", created using just tape loops, metal and horns. And it sounds nothing like you could possible imagine.
"Chain Shot" is a side long epic of grimey gruesome minimalism. A murky soundscape of creaking machinery, whirring industrial hum, and a loop of what sounds like that sound roller coasters make when the cars are being pulled up that first big hill, the various sounds looped and locked and repeated, sped up, slowed down, doused in grit and buzz and lots and lots of hiss. It sounds like some cracked field recording (which it sort of is), the various sounds and loops becoming more and more distorted, and getting louder and louder, eventually becoming more and more musical too, which seems sort of impossible, but it does. The harsher it gets, the more, listenable it gets. A symphony of grind and buzz and clank.
The B side, another extended dirge, "Execution Dock" begins with processed vocals, drenched in effects and looped into some weird almost funky groove, but as it's repeated, just like when you say a word over and over, it starts to make less and less sense and sound less 'funky' and more haunting and hypnotic. And very very creepy. The track dissipates into more field recordings, bits of clatter and shuffle, all subtly looped, in the distance a horn plays a mournful melody, the loops ramp up slightly, creating weirdly dreamy minimal rhythms beneath that waiting horn, until that all falls apart, leaving a series of fragmented and rapidly decaying loops, overlapping, falling apart, and eventually grinding to a halt.
Packaged in a SUPER thick, textured sleeve, with a bad ass painting of a pirate on the cover. Yaarrrrrrrr!
Now available on cd!!
Previously only available as a limited lp via Chris Johanson's Awesome Vistas imprint, this is the debut full length from the strangely monikered Dragging an Ox Through Water, the solo project of Portland multi-instrumentalist Brian Mumford who conjures up a warped Americana of old-timey sounding ballads filtered through damaged electronics, field recordings and off-kilter use of horns, guitars, banjos and kazoos. Imagine the early pop-country side of Arthur Russell covering Neutral Milk Hotel's In an Aeroplane Over the Sea with just a broken guitar, a dented tuba, a child's steel drum and a busted radio shack electronics kit, and you come close to the feel of this oddly beautiful record. Weird and lovely!
Had this come out some 20 years ago, the Dropp Ensemble would have only been able to pull this off by the slow process of tape exchanges through the post, in other word: mail art. But through FTP and hefty upload sites, the principle authors / engineers for the Dropp Ensemble can be a bit more nimble and not have to wait for the mailman to deliver that tape from halfway 'round the world. Those two farflung protagonists in the project are Salvatore Dellaria and Adam Sonderberg. The former, we're not all that familiar with his work although he's stated that he's retired from the realm of sound art; and the latter has produced a handful of exceptional tactile-minded drone records under his own name and in the ensemble Haptic. The two had managed to rope together a world class collection of experimental musicians: avant-percussionist Jon Muller, former Anomalous Records bossman Eric Lanzillotta, feedback drone specialist Jason Kahn, the concrete / field recordist Olivia Block, one-time Andrew Chalk collaborator Brendan Walls, prepared guitarist Thomas Korber, and seven others. For such a huge cast of characters, each with their own particular take on the drone, the composition, the noise, the sound, whatever, Dellaria and Sonderberg had proven to be deft not only in coalescing all of these sounds into an exceptional composition but also coaxing sympathetic sounds from all of the contributors. Heavy subharmonic plods and scraping gestures open the album gradually harmonizing into a thrumming arc of sustained rumblings that bellow with the toxicity and pressurization of deep sea vents, accentuated by an agitated motorik clicktrack. Glistening tones emerge out of controlled feedback, and softened textures undulate in what sound like sand pushed around a surface to allude to wind, tidal flow, or any number of hypnotizing forms of white noise. Muted drones from what we're guessing is Olivia Block's trumpet elegantly wrap around some of the found object manipulation to offer somber melodic interludes to these already impressive compositions. If this seems not all dissimilar to the non-Jewelled Antler work of Loren Chasse or field recording manipulation of Tarab and Eric La Casa, those are pretty apt references. And considering how much we love all of those artists, Safety certainly gets a thumbs up here at Aquarius.
'70s Mexican rockers Los Dug Dug's have been a big fave here at AQ for years and years, but for many of those years now we've had a hard time finding copies of the cd reissues of their albums to stock. Well, FINALLY just the other day we were lucky enough to get a batch of Dug Dug's discs back in, including (hopefully) enough of this one to list, which we'd never been able to do before! We also got a smaller handful of each of their other albums, already on our website.
El Loco originally came out in 1975, and was to be final Dug Dug's album. As you might guess from the cover, to an extent it emphasizes the power trio fuzzed out hard rock side of the band, but definitely not to the exclusion of the other elements that make Dug Dug's so great: the flutey prog, the funky grooves, the Beatlesy pop-psych... That cover photo, depicting the band jamming exuberantly amidst a cloud of dry ice fog, wearing glammy gear that in the case of the guitarist looks like it was borrowed from Ace Frehley's closet, is so cool though. How can you not dig the Dug Dug's looking like that? One thing you don't see in that picture though is the synthesizer, that makes its presence known in quite a trippy manner throughout the album, in particular on the appropriately crazy title track, all buzzing synth, choppy rhythms, and maniacal laughter!
There's a dozen tracks here in total, ranging from riffy rockers (like "Show Me", which might be what they're playing in that cover picture - or it could be "Stupid People" but where's the horn section?) to more gentle mellowness (such as "Quiero Verte"), some songs sung in English, others in Spanish. You get a flute-led instrumental, plenty of urgently uptempo acid rock grooviness, a bit of bubblegum pop, and dreamy psych... basically, like all Dug Dug's albums, El Loco is guaranteed to put a smile on your face one way or another!
Be warned, we don't really have a lot of these, and it might be a while before we can restock...
Something happened to Eat Skull on the way to making Wild And Inside. It seems like only yesterday we were extolling their ramshackle fucked up-ness, their last record Sick To Death, a serious bid to rule the burgeoning 'shit-gaze' scene, populated by folks like Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit, and similarly fucked up noisepop deconstructionists. So we were sort of expecting Wild And Inside to be even MORE damaged and fractured, fucked up and noisy, but instead, it's jam packed with perfect pop gems, lo-fi for sure, and definitely still ramshackle, but jangly and catchy and dripping with irresistible hooks.
Similar to how Further worshipped unabashedly at the altar of the Beach Boys on their Golden Grimes record, on Wild And Inside, Eat Skull seem to be flitting from pop group to pop group, whether it's Guided By Voices, the Lemonheads, Strapping Fieldhands, dour eighties new wave or those Nuggets psych pop collections, it seems like the band spent all the time between records just absorbing all sorts of nineties indie rock, old school jangle pop, classic power pop, and whatever else they could lay their ears on, and now they're just letting it all sort of ooze out, and in the process they've most definitely made it their own.
In interviews, Eat Skull frontman Rob Enbom claims, this is what they were shooting for all along, that the first record sounded the way it did because they were broke and were stuck with super shitty equipment, and while that may be true to a certain extent, there's some seriously superior pop smithery happening on Wild And Inside, it's not hard to imagine what this record might have sounded like with all the grit and grime cleared away, and if they had recorded in a real studio, but who the hell would want to hear that? Eat Skull sound fine just the way they are, noisy and poppy and sloppy and lo-fi, every song a gorgeously hook filled sunshine-y effects laden fractured and fuzzy noise pop gem.
Folks who were into the sheer mayhem and caustic crumbling noise damage of the first record might be a bit disappointed, but so what, there's plenty of that to be found elsewhere these days, for the rest of us, it's kind of refreshing to get a glimpse of the pop magic so often obscured.
For some mistaken reason, we thought this was gonna be really noisy. Maybe 'cause it's on Hanson (home to such earhole excruciators as Wolf Eyes, Metalux, Smegma, and Hair Police just to name a few of the noisniks on the label). But we were wrong wrong wrong. Instead, this is totally calm and lovely electronic space music in the 'kosmiche' vein of '70s and '80s Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and Ashra and the like. It won't harsh your mellow at all, quite the opposite! This is bliss-out droney stuff produced by a Midwestern trio using the equation: analog synthesizers x 2 + (electric guitar + effects). Something like that. Earlier in their career (this is the cd debut after lots of limited cassette and cd-r action) they used to use only TV sets as sound sources! Glad they gave that up, as Solar Bridge wouldn't be nearly so soothing if there were, like, breaks for commercials. You'd have to Tivo it.
Seriously, though, this is a droning delight. There's just two tracks here, but they are 'side-long' ones. The 12:34 "Magic" and the 14:14 "The Quaking Mess". It's almost New Age-y (as so much indie, experimental music is turning out to be, when you think about it) but not too too New Age-y. Though nicely mesmeric, it also has a quietly creepy edge to it, and a real grinding, full physicality at higher volumes. Emeralds create waves and layers of subtle, gently pulsating electronic gurble, but not in an overly wispy way. For instance, feedback whispers and glimmers through the cracks in the drone at the start of "The Quaking Mess", which then builds into more of a dense, fuzzy drone-sheen. The kind that radiates light, and that you want to wrap around yourself and your ears like a blanket. Definitely one of our faves from Hanson thus far, noisy or not!
Paul Gonzenbach is the gent responsible for the guitar, vocals and piano in Bay Area band Jim Yoshii Pile Up. They've been on an indefinite hiatus for a while, so a couple of years ago he busted out on his own solo mission under the moniker Enforcer with this album called Baby Panda! However, there's another band with that same name who recently released a cd too - reviewed here last list, they're a Maideny metal band - hence, he's now making music as Baby Panda. Anyhoo, here's his solo debut album! It's a moody, slow paced indie rock beauty... in turn, it's a bit reminiscent of Seam, Built To Spill, Death Cab For Cutie, and yes, JYP. Earnest, sensitive, well crafted with subtle dynamics. Hopefully we'll get his more recent releases soon!
We get sent a ton of stuff to check out. And it's awesome, truly, So much amazing music to discover, but at the same time it's so overwhelming. But every once in a while a record pops up that makes it all worth while. Such is the case with this disc from these Italian weirdos Father Murphy. What makes it even cooler is that this record, and this band, are SO hard to describe.
It's a bit like folk, a little bit like post punk math rock, a little avant noise, but stripped way down into something skeletal, they definitely sound a little bit like one of the new breed of freak folk psych folk cd-r outfits, but at the same time, they sound like NOTHING you've ever heard. Detuned guitar plod, spaced out rhythmic thump, lots of deep shimmery ambience and FX drenched drifts, wavery falsetto crooning, warbly organs, and the occasional bursts of feral yowling, wow. Unhinged, fractured, freaky, passionate, super intense and awesome.
In discussing Father Murphy, other reviewers have mentioned Robert Wyatt, This Heat, Samla Mamas Manna, we also hear plenty of Marc Ribot in the guitars, all angular and off kilter, there's also some mysterious female vocals that surface here and there, field recordings, crickets, birds, all beneath weepy mournful Morricone-ish twang, a sound both woozy and ominous, dreamy and dense, a glorious deathlike dirge, part Dirty Three, part fluttery forest folk, a little wheezy organ dirge pop, some slooooooowed down Blonde Redhead, like we said this is super hard to describe. but what we do know is we love it. And you will do, if your tastes run toward the dark, the dolorous, the mysterious, the haunting, the dirgey and the deathlike.
Incredible packaging. The cd housed in a die cut multi layered fold over sleeve, that housed in a thick outer vellum jacket so the images on the inner sleeve are just visible through the blurred finish of the outer sleeve.
VERY LIMITED!
Don't be confused, it may look the same, but in fact, it's the second of two lp reissues from James Ferraro, one half of floor core legends the Skaters. We reviewed his Clear lp on our last list, this time it's Discovery, almost the exact same cover, the alien pyramids floating in some strange sea, only the name of the record is different (and don't trust the sticker, on about half of the lps we got the stickers were all switched up), although really it barely matters, as the sounds on Discovery, sound very much like the ones on Clear, which make sense as they are archival recordings from about the same time period.
Two side long jams, exploring that alien new age only those Skaters guys seem capable of, this one sounds like two parts of the same jam, equal parts new age swoosh, staticky old AM radio and alien soap opera theme music, all blurred and smeared into a weirdly organic warped and warbly drift. Bleary and blown out, glistening and glimmery, a buried krautrock groove, that seems to fade out and return at random, all imbued with a cool psychedelic eighties B-movie Goblin vibe.
The flipside is more of the same, only a bit more rocking, more feedback and distortion, but just barely, the guitars a tad more noodly and spidery, but all the sounds still washed out and sun dappled and hypnotic. Like Clear before it, Discovery is a fantastic chunk of blissed out Baywatch new age, and here's hoping Holy Mountain keeps digging up and reissuing these tripped out artifacts.
Comes with a download card too, so you can get iPod-able versions of these tracks as well!!
Brand new full length album from Justin Broadrick's (Jesu, Godflesh, etc.) Final project, which in the past was a sort of solo guitar thing, or so we thought. On Afar, the eight numbered tracks are arrangements of processed loops, with nary a guitar in site. Which becomes harder to believe the further we get into the record.
The sound here is dark and mesmerizing, each track a slow cycling soundscape, rife with shifting textures and pulsing almost-rhythms, the sounds super varied, but all woven together into one cohesive songsuite. Fans of Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck will dig bigtime, as well as guitar drone aficionados into stuff like Fear Falls Burning.
Layers of crunch and buzz are locked into swelling, swaying hypnotic rhythms, the textures and timbre shifting gradually, the looped aspect not always immediately noticeable. Deep rumbles beneath softly processed whirs are woven into stretches of haunting cinematic shimmer, fading into swooping backwards melodies peppered with bits of glitch and crackle. Elsewhere slow burning 'guitar' sounds buzz explosively into epic and majestic sheets of buzzing woozy blur, before being scattered by dense tangles of reverberating metallic hum and rumbling low end way off in the distance. A few tracks definitely dip into Jeck territory with stuttery looped vocals and clipped samples and muted skitter, before finishing off with a hushed bit of whispery murmur.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. We get these direct from Broadrick's Avalanche label in the UK, so when we run out it might take a couple weeks to get more, assuming there are still some left. Nice thick picture disc in a thick PVC plastic sleeve.
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.
Flipper's second album finds them better recorded, although it almost doesn't sound right - like an ill-fitting suit. And no suit can make this band sound any less dirty - Gone Fishin' is still full of lurching, menacing bass lines and repetitive, drug-fried riffs. And occasional piano. And horns. And xylophone. It almost sounds like a UK post-punk band at times, until the vocals kick in and it degenerates into a sloppy, group sing-a-long. It's a mess.
Best songs include the triumphant opener "The Light, The Sound," the chilling "Sacrifice" (since covered by the Melvins, yes, on Lysol), and the disorienting "Talk is Cheap."
The cover reproduces a scaled-down version of the original LP art, which is an interactive cut-out model of their tour van and band members. You could cut this one out, but it's not recommended.
Reissue contains additional photos and highly entertaining liner notes by Buzz Osborne of the Melvins, who rightfully gives thanks.
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.
Sex Bomb Baby! is a compilation of the band's singles, several of which were released before their seminal debut album Generic. Recorded in a trash can, their dirgey, feedbacky songs somehow transcend. Add cheap studio effects, the occasional arty sample or spoken monologue, and Flipper's trademark angst/sneer/fucked up genius definitely shows through. This album is a good companion to Generic but the uninitiated should start there first, not here. Aside from different versions of "Sex Bomb" and "Ever" from Generic, there's the insanely creepy "Ha Ha Ha," a live version of their most overtly political song "Sacrifice," and the bludgeoning "Earthworm." There are other nuggets here, but also quite a few jokey songs that were probably funnier to a teenaged-bong-smoking Flipper freek than the Flipper freek of today.
Reissue contains additional photos and decently entertaining liner notes by Henry Rollins, who was responsible for the last reissue of this oft-reissued disc.
Every time this gets played in the store, we rush up to the front to see what the heck they're listening to. And every time we're convinced it's some classic bit of math rock heaviness. Rodan? June Of 44? Lynx? And every time we're wrong. Fog In The Shell are from Italy and this record is brand new, but man, how it reminds us of the glory days of math rock and post rock, Shellac, Tortoise, Slint, Don Caballero, Breadwinner, Hoover, A Minor Forest, Bitch Magnet, Crain, you know what we're talking about. Thick crunchy guitars, long sprawling serpentine arrangements, epic stretches of brooding loping minimalism, bursts of anguished howled instrumental catharsis, tangled angular melodies, hushed sung spoken vocals buried in the mix, pounding mathy drumming, just check out the first track, "They", beginning with some quite minor key guitars, and thick blasts of crushing metallic heaviness, stop start, staccato, before lurching into some pounding keyboard laden post rock (we're hearing some Tarantula Hawk for sure), before mellowing way out, and letting the drums drift into the background, the bass pulsing darkly, the guitar offering up soft focus chords, the vocals hushed and moody, so awesome! It eventually builds to a cool chugging mathy riff, eventually taking off in a sort of Trans Am krautrock / space rock jam. Man, it's worth it for the first track alone. Definitely the best post/math rock jam we've heard since back in the day.
And so goes the rest of the record, exploring all facets of post rock, from crunching Neurosisy heaviness, to skittery, almost jazzy Tortoise style krautrockiness, to soaring slow building Godpseed sort of epic-ness, it gets downright poppy at times, the vocals melodic and emotional, hints of Stereolab here and there, Blonde Redhead too, but for us, it's when the songs get heavy and the guitars crunch and grind and chug, and the drums get all chaotic and the band lock into dizzying blown out math rock workouts, these guys destroy. Funny too, we had been hankering for a post/math rock resurgence, and to these ears it sounds like Fog In The Shell might be the first band capable of making it happen.
Released on the always kick ass Paradigms label, and like all their releases, limited to 500 copies!
Holy cow!!! A whole second collection of radio dramas from the amazing Judson Fountain and his faithful sidekick and loyal announcer Sandor Weisberger. The aQ faithful will no doubt remember Completely In The Dark, a mind blowing compilation of funny, goofy, clever, way over the top dramas, performed by the two men, each taking on various characters, voicing men and women, even monsters, stealing the various incidental sounds and background noises from old sound effects records. Totally lo-fi and DIY and so so so genius. Not sure we could describe Judson and his oeuvre any better than we did in that first review, so for those who missed that first Judson Fountain collection (if you did, you NEED that one too!) or just need a refresher, here it is:
Judson Fountain was born in 1952 and was obsessed with radio dramas since he was old enough to talk. In fact as soon as he was able to talk he began doing impressions of cackling hags, wicked witches and all sorts of animals. All of which would come to play a big part in these radio dramas right here. Recorded between the ages of 17 and 22, these dramas are only a drop in the bucket of the hundreds of radio plays Judson wrote and performed. All of them primitive and simple, but amazingly creative and entertaining, and all featuring Judson's unique vocalizations along with his partner/foil Sandor Weisberger. But there's no way to describe them, you just have to hear them. Judson has a crazy East Coast accent, and he talks like a hyper schoolboy who thinks faster than he can get the words out. Using crude sound effects and sometimes painfully deliberate plot exposition, these dramas all rely on Judson and Sandor's crazy array of voices, from Irish Brogue, to old 'foreign' man, to various witches and demonic women, all with distinctly hysterical and completely bizarre cackles. The plots are all very simple, good vs. Evil, haunted houses and witches and demons and stuff. But they are all done so sort-of-professionally and so earnestly that they're just completely irresistible. Judson is just so cute. And so is Sandor who introduces each drama (which he pronounces drahmmer) and also reads the credits afterwards.
Sold yet, you should be, as every single one of these drahmmers, as well as the ones collected on the first compilation are a total hoot. The scary ones are only barely frightening, instead, they're fun and funny and kitschy, there's always a moral, the bad guys usually get their comeuppance, the good guys prevail, or if they don't it's because they foolishly failed to heed repeated warnings and sage advice. All of these radio plays are from the early seventies, and are GENIUS!!! But there is a bonus track as well, a radio play called "The Nasty Roomer!" written in the style of Judson Fountain, by one of Judson's biggest fans, and performed by Judson and Sandor, reunited in 1995 and broadcast live on WFMU! The crazy thing is, the two of them sound exactly the same, and sound like they're having a blast, often slipping into giggles, performing the play after only having seen it for the first time a few minutes earlier. So fantastic and fun and joyous and still so goofy and silly and practically perfect.
Unlike the first collection, this one is an actual cd (not a cd-r) and comes with a huge booklet packed with photos, and the transcript of an interview that took place at the same time as the performance of "The Nasty Roomer!", and there's even a mention of a possible volume THREE! Bring it on!!!
It's easy to forget that The Fresh & Only's are a new band as the songs they've been cranking out have the self-assuredness of a band who's been around for decades. Two new cuts of their garage pop sprinkled with enough punk spirit and weirdo undertones to make their songs always piques our interest. We hear a really cool Joe Meek influence in the sound of "I Saw You Seeing Me" proving that just because these folks are zoning in on some pure garage pop delight they haven't forgotten how to infuse nice touches of their wide range of musical influences into the mix. Can't seem to keep Fresh & Only's vinyl in stock too long, they're already flying out the door, so better grab one of these while you can.
Well it's about time!!!!!! After years of wallowing in the hazy convoluted mists of legend, hearsay, and hipster influence, only to be obtained through ultra expensive imports, rare bootlegs, or ripped vinyl blogs, this long unavailable but hugely influential work by Serge Gainsbourg finally sees its first domestic reissue almost forty years after its scandalous release.
You won't need a translator to understand the sublime perversity at the heart of this concept record, arguably Gainsbourg's most accomplished full studio album. Released in 1971, Histoire De Melody Nelson is a seven song suite about an underage English nymphet (the titular Melody Nelson) and the wealthy lecherous older Frenchman who, after nearly running over her in his Rolls Royce, takes her in, falls in love and eventually deflowers her. And of course, like most love stories, there is a tragic climax. While the story is largely lifted from Kubrick's cinematic version of Lolita, the concept was undertaken in actuality as a symphonic love letter to Jane Birken, the British actress and singer (she sings the part of Melody). Though, not underage when they began their affair, she was twenty years younger than Serge, and their relationship became controversial with the release of their 1969 duet "Je t'aime....mon non plus" (originally recorded with Brigitte Bardot) with its sounds of a simulated female orgasm.
But Melody Nelson is not only Gainsbourg's finest moment, its musical reputation would be nothing without the orchestral arrangements and progressive grooves of Jean-Claude Vannier (see our review of L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches, to get some highly praised background). The underlying score is less obviously song-oriented and more atmospheric than previous Gainsbourg outings, yet deceptively simple. The opening and closing tracks each at nearly eight minutes mirror each other with a sinewy descending bass groove and classic drum breaks (sampled heavily by De La Soul, David Holmes and Dan The Automator), which set the stage for acid-y guitar fills, swooning strings and Serge's own seductive speak-singing. The closing track ("Cargo Culte") ups the transcendent quality of the climax by adding a mass choir and full orchestra to the swirling tower of sound. In between these two tracks are shorter but artfully arranged pieces of folk-groove, French chanson, acid rock, and cinematic sonic bliss that move the story forward. It's one of those records that slowly grabs you, lures you into its spell, and eventually hooks you, so you'll want to keep listening to it over and over.
Though it was a flop on its initial release - Gainsbourg was largely a singles artist before this point, and the leap from that to concept album, especially one of this perverse nature, was perhaps too wide for French audiences - Histoire De Melody Nelson has gained a significant cult following over the years, perhaps reaching its greatest influence in the nineties with bands like Portishead (Dummy), Pulp (This is Hardcore), Massive Attack (Protection), Radiohead (The Bends), Air (Moon Safari), Blonde Redhead (Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons) and Beck (Sea Change), nearly lifting the basic sonic template of this album wholesale.
This awesome, nicely packaged reissue comes with a beautiful booklet of drawings, essays and interviews, outlining not only the full extent of the making of this amazing work, but charting its larger cultural impact as well.
Reissue of the year!
You know the notion of the wise old hermit sitting on a mountaintop? You'd expect to find an Eastern guru like that up on some Himalayan peak, but of course leave it to a bunch of Swiss and German hippies in the '70s to relocate that mountaintop guru concept to the Alps, and why not? These krautrockers, organized as one of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's "Cosmic Couriers" projects, found the perfect frontman, enlisting Swiss writer/folklorist Sergius Golowin (an expert on both Alpine myths and magic mushrooms, not to mention a friend of fugitive acid maven Timothy Leary) to provide mystic recitations over the Eastern-inspired druggy kraut bliss a-sprawl on this 1973 LSD dipped/tripped/hipped "supersession" happening. Said spaced out sounds generated, via flute Mellotron bongos electronics piano tablas organ glockenspiel & guitars, by a cast of musicians including folkies Witthuser & Westrupp, members of hard progsters Wallenstein, and last but not least, he of much kosmiche cred, Klaus Schulze! Actually, Golowin's echoey German-language spoken vox, while adding to the esoteric atmosphere, really take a back seat to the trancey music found on these three long tracks, the longest and most dramatic of which is the third, "Die Hoch-Keit", at almost 20 minutes taking up all of the original vinyl's second side. It begins like an eerie interlude from a particularly psychedelic Spaghetti Western soundtrack, full of abstract percussive sputter, cascading piano, and whispered vocals, its rhythms eventually coalescing into minimalist, Reich/Reichel style pulsations, having a looping, Moolah-like aspect. It and the other two equally freaky pieces on here make for mind expanding, maybe not exactly relaxing music, having a nervous energy that might have something to do with the general drug vibe... yet some portions of this album are quite angelic. While kraut fiends will want this 'cause it was one of the first of Kaiser's post-OHR Cosmic Couriers label albums, released after Ash Ra Tempel's Seven Up and before Walter Wegmuller's Tarot, even the less obsessed might find this an interesting Astral-Alpine excursion!
It's been reissued before, on Spalax, but this new edition boasts much more in the way of liner notes in the thick cd booklet, including some fairly recent interviews with the late Sergius Golowin himself, who passed away in 2006, a true hippie guru 'til the end.
What it is exactly that constitutes Krautrock is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedlia ever recorded. UFO is the former band's debut effort. Fans of heavy psych, German rock of the '70s, and free improv jams will consider this absolutely essential. And chances are, those fans already own this, or they simply haven't found a copy yet... here's the currently in print, Japanese mini-LP sleeve version. Repetitive, hypnotic, transcendent. And at the same time jarring. This is a fist full of mushrooms being shoved through the speakers. Embrace it.
It's been more than 3 years since the last Court And Spark full length, the gorgeous aQ fave Hearts, we were wondering when there would be a new C+S record, but we're beginning to think the answer to that question might be never, as at least part of the band has relocated to North Carolina.
Thankfully, the music plays on, Court And Spark frontman MC Taylor, and his musical partner Scott Hirsch are now Hiss Golden Messenger (how great a name is that!), who take the sound of later Court And Spark, a sort of psychedelic folk with bits of dub (a la Souled American), and incorporate some more jammy improvised sounds, taking inspiration from Traffic, and especially the Grateful Dead, mixing slow burning twang, with wild sprawling grooves, wah wah guitar and horns (lots of horns!).
Fans of the Court And Spark will definitely want to check this out, Taylor's voice is as warm and rough and emotional as ever, but a bit more melodic, and there's still plenty of twang, and Hirsch and Taylor can still pen a mean tune, but they definitely let loose a bit, embracing what some in the underground might consider guilty pleasures, and some of the songs and sounds here are definitely surprising and a bit unexpected. Smooth and groovy, laid back and mellow, a definite seventies FM radio vibe, a little Laurel Canyon, even a bit of funk here and there, a little jazziness, from country ballad to boogie stomp to jazzy dark pop (a sound that were it a bit more fucked up and acid fired could even be an Ariel Pink jam!) to one track that definitely gets a bit ska, but those songs are all wound up in a warm woozy playful sound that manages to be all it's own while proudly flying the flags of all the sounds that came before. As well as still keeping some of that Court And Spark, um, spark we love so much, alive! The record finishes with "Tongue In Cheek", a gorgeous stripped down acoustic lament, with lush harmony vocals, and a killer main hook, just to remind us that whatever wild tangent these guys decide to head out on, beneath it all, beats a heart of country gold.
Country Hai East Cotton definitely might be too commercial sounding for some folks, it's not hard to imagine some of these tunes finding a home amidst other seventies classic rock, but then that's precisely what Taylor and his crew were shooting for.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, packaged in super nice, full color gatefold mini lp style sleeves.
One of three new releases from the Quiet World label, focusing on soft drone, tempered field recording, and quizzical ambience, and it comes by way of the figurehead of the label, Ian Holloway. Where Have We Been In The World Today? follows up his Summerland collaboration with Banks Bailey and Darren Tate as well as his exceptional solo album In A Lonely Place. The dark slumbering drones that open the album allude to much of the same sounds from that aforementioned solo project, yet the second track breaks into a curious electronic shimmer. Here, a seasick rhythm tapped out on something like a metallophone and laced with occasional static emerges out of thin air only to disappear next to apparitions of squelchy synthetic noises. Such electronics are more Heldon and Schnzitler than the Chalk and Colin Potter references of his other work, but certainly no less interesting. Throughout the rest of the album, Holloway grounds much of his crystal powered synthesis upon hypnotic, low-end vibrations whose radiant ambience glows from within. Brighter tones shimmer and sparkle against the curtains of subharmonics with some choice moments from dissonant surges of distorted guitars agitating the background. The final cut is a reprise of the first with those tectonic frequencies slowly crawling to a just conclusion. Limited to a mere 75 copies.
Having recently disbanded after their European farewell tour, the Holy Kiss have reached from beyond the grave to throttle us one last time with this four song ep, limited to a scant 50 copies! As on their recent Under Noon Of Night album, the Holy Kiss channel the spirits of druggy, blues based post-punk greats like the Birthday Party, the Gun Club, and the Cramps, with enough post-millenial insanity coloring the songs to better suit the kids of today. Singer Matty Rue Morgue's unhinged vocal delivery and the overall group dynamic make it clear that the Holy Kiss called it a day at the top of their game, as this darkly aggressive four song ep is full of reckless abandon and a bleary-eyed but cocksure swagger. Super trebly, reverb drenched guitars wrap themselves around wandering Birthday Party styled basslines, as the drums thump frantically (courtesy of our very own Nick) like a heart getting ready to explode. It's as if these deranged songs are alive, like feral children covered in grime and moving about the shadows, waiting to pounce on and sink their teeth into the shoulders of an unsuspecting populace. It may be true that parting is such sweet sorrow, but at least we have this delightfully insane last affront by the Holy Kiss to accompany us in all future moments of mental instability. R.I.P.
Holy Sons is the solo endeavor of Emil Amos, best known for his drum work with Grails, and more recently, Om. While Drifter's Sympathy certainly contains elements of Amos' other groups, it is surprisingly its own strange beast, a unique blend of folky acoustic guitars, droning psychedelic noise, and modern programmed drum beats. Eerie samples fade in and out alongside what sounds like short wave radio static, and Amos' slow drawl, combined with the atmospheric home production (we're assuming, anyway) make this a difficult one to pin down, but the results are pretty stellar. The whole thing plays out quite cinematically, with heavy drones and decaying soundscapes of various textures scraping, pulsing, and buzzing about. While some of the songs seem almost folk based, everything becomes twisted and tangled within Holy Sons' world, with each element contributing equally to the potent brew that makes up Drifter's Sympathy. As confounding as it all is, the album flows quite naturally, even though the eight songs were recorded over a span of two years. Each track is like another part of a strange dream, a dream in which we are more than happy to get stuck.
The funky desert cave nomad is back again! And apparently he's been listening to a lot of Augustus Pablo and Jackie Mittoo too, because Music Is My Medicine is inflected with all kinds of dub and reggae vibes. Echoey bass, melodica, flutes and sunny rhythms, but not in a heavy-handed way that would interrupt the natural flow of Hopkins soul jazz style. Obviously music is not Clutchy Hopkins' only medicine. This is a stone groove!
Since their beginnings, Immaculate Machine have been most known as the band starring Kathryn Calder, the sweet-voiced niece and fellow New Pornographers bandmate of Mr. Carl Newman. But these days singer/guitarist Brooke Gallupe has stepped into center stage and is shining brightly! He is clearly more firmly in the driver's seat on the band's most recent recordings. High On Jackson Hill finds them channelling equal parts New Pornographers (on songs such as "Thank Me Later") and T. Rex (on songs such as "He's A Biter") with ample nods to '70s West coast classic rock too. That said, don't miss the starkly contrasting lovely "You Destroyer", a low-key, folksy Calder-sung song that glows with its own luminous sweetness. A well-crafted treat!
Psst, we've also just gotten in a few other new and new-to-us titles on this fine Vancouver indie label by The Awkward Stage, Buttless Chaps, The Pack A.D. and Neko Case's early band Maow!
