It's been several years since we last got a numbered vinyl missive from these Finnish free folk forest dwellers, II and III are both long out of print, and not sure we ever even saw number one, but IV takes up right where II and II left off, creating a woozy, trippy, psychedelic sound that only these Finns seem able to conjure.
Simple stumbling drumming underpins cyclical looped out riffage, that teeters on the verge of losing control, but manages stay the course, the sound thickens and grows more and more tripped out, the effects getting more and more dense, the guitars peeling off in strange twisted melodic flares, before slipping back into the beginning of another slow build, more chaotic percussion, another drone-y looped riff, but before it builds too much, it gets all mellow, and woozy and dark and meandery, eventually breaking down to a rickety campfire lope, the guitars spidery and skeletal.
The flipside is one sidelong track, which begins with what sounds like strings over a sea of drifting scrape and scrabble, warm swooshes of druggy effects, the whole thing warm and languid and laid back, building to almost orchestral sounding swells here and there, interrupted by brief soft squalls of blurred psych buzz, but always shifting back into that far out smoldering Avarus-y abstract shimmer. So nice.
Awesome eye popping cover art, that includes ice covered asteroids, flying popcicles, hot rods, totem poles, miners, wolves, lizards, lonesome highways, cacti and all sorts of other drugged out weirdness.
First off, nice pun Sir Richard, nice pun! With a title like The Freak Of Araby, do we really even need to review this? Well, probably not for SRB's legion of fans, who will already have an idea of what to expect here from this master of exotic, intricate guitar playing. For them, the prospect of a new solo album by SRB is automatically a pleasant one, and purchase should occur as automatically as one picks up the new releases on ethnic field recordings label Sublime Frequencies, run by Bishop's brother and fellow former Sun City Girl, Alan. Plus we've heard it, and recommended it too!
Inspired by the music of late Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid among others, here SRB presents ten tracks of instrumental improvisations (?) in a Middle Eastern mood. Delicate and detailed, sultry and sandy. Opener "Taqasim For Omar" is quite traditional-sounding, but elsewhere Bishop's electric guitar takes on almost a surfy twang, and thoughts of dusty Spaghetti Western soundtracks might enter ones mind whilst enjoying this record. Most of the tracks feature percussion and other supporting instrumentation, but the focus is certainly on Bishop's adept and evocative six string manipulation. By Sun City Girls standards, this is easy listening, and certainly lovely, reminiscent of some of the SCGs' most accessible stuff. However, echoey FX get laid on thick during track nine, "Sidi Mansour", in case you forgot the "Freak" part of this album's title, while the tenth and final number "Blood-Stained Sands" really shakes things up by abandoning guitar in favor much multilayered buzzing saz (we think it is), for a seven and a half minutes of dervishly whirling, droning delirium that ends the album leaving no doubt about SRB being The Freak Of Araby indeed.
After the tease that was the Record Store Day 7", it's finally here, a brand new full length from Black Moth Super Rainbow, who continue to create rainbow wrapped, keyboard drenched, big drummed, new wave-d outsider bliss pop. We can't seem to get enough.
The record opens with the track from that Record Store Day single, the excellently titled "Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise", all druggy and swirly and sun dappled and psychedelic. There are strings and warm whirring synths, and breathless dreamy vox, and lilting melodies, not super freaked out or spastic, although there are bits of swooping electronics and streaks of glitch and hiss, but for the most part this is just some awesomely new wave flecked jangly futuristic psych pop. Which pretty much describes this whole record. For some reason we thought maybe it would be super heavy or totally twisted, but if anything, the songs are more fully realized, the sound still lush and slightly cracked, but all of BMSR's drugged out psych tendencies are harnassed into proper songs, that wouldn't sound at all out of place in a mix between the Flaming Lips and M83. The drums hold it all together, big and booming, processed sometimes, but usually loud, if not, theyr sublte and skittery, and there are synths EVERYWHERE, soaring and buzzing and whirring and shimmering, the guitars are minimal, more for a bit of filigree here and there, except when a bit of crunh or chug is required. And the vocals, all dreamy and heavily effected, whether it's vocoder or autotuning, they're perfectly matched to the glimmering kaliedoscope of sound that is constantly swirling and changing shape and color.
The majority of the record is surprsingly laid back, blissed out and sun dappled, a lot of it sounds almost folky, a little new age-y for sure, we also hear bits of old school pop groups like the Free Design, the Cowsills, even a bit of Stereolab here and there, there are lots of fluttery flute, acoustic guitar, lilting melodies, soft drifty twang, but all tangled up with some of the more buzzy new waveiness, and everything shot through with just the right amount of space aged, futuristic polish. So good. The perfect late afternoon, cloudy day, mix tape, dreamy drifty, future chill out disc for sure.
While they last, we have the super limited version, that comes in a zippered fur pouch!!
So on his last album, Blackshaw stepped into new territory with some orchestral instrumentation, even laying down a few piano tracks. And even though we didn't think it was possible, he just might have outdone himself, yet again, with his most dynamic album to date, The Glass Bead Game, released on the infamous Young God Records. Most aQ costumers are well aware of the talent and mystery that surrounds Mr. Blackshaw and his twelve-string mastery. And while we've really dug all of his numerous past albums, it seems like Blackshaw has never sounded so confident in his mantra-like finger picking and ornate compositions. With the freedom to compose works for piano, strings, flute, clarinet and a choir, Blackshaw's vision has grown from a small sprout into a sea of blooming vines.
It baffles us how cinematic this stuff is. These tracks all tell epic tales of being lost at sea, nighttime woodland campfires, sad goodbyes and lonely mornings, all without any lyrics. Sometimes there are these moments where Blackshaw will simply change chords and suddenly the piece takes on a whole new feel, a whole new sound, and you can't help but feel emotionally struck. His playing is so recognizable and distinguished from his solo-guitar peers, a perfect marriage of patients and skill, droning and droning on one chord only to build suspense and anticipation before suddenly revealing the next movement, so good! And there's something about his playing that is so European, so different from the Americana-type sound of other finger pickin' contemporaries. Blackshaw's pieces seem to shimmer with an ethereal haze that faintly glows like an old lantern in the woods, casting flickering light on faces of spirits in the night.
The Glass Bead Games starts things off running with a lush harmonium drone and Blackshaw's quick, raga-esque finger picking soaring above. Gradually female vocals and strings creep in to blanket Blackshaw's guitar in a silky ambience, creating an almost dreamlike experience. We really love how the vocals have this Philip Glass or Steve Reich orchestral kind of vibe. Instead of long swells the voices are short, repetitive wordless ohs and ahs, kind of like some carousel organ or angelic harp. "Cross" builds and retreats in some cosmic ebb and flow, continually swirling with deep, melodic range and heartfelt emotion, all with the twelve string at its glowing core. "Bled", the second track, begins with a slow, contemplative mood. Notes plucked then left to dissipate into thin air. Somber and desolate, the piece only grows into a dark journey through Eastern ragas and into celestial radiance, only to return in the 9th minute to the opening, contemplative passage. ��
The album comes to a gorgeous close with the 18 minute "Arc". With James on the piano, he builds from quiet contemplative drops of rain into huge waves of quickly flourishing arpeggios, not all that different sounding from his guitar picking. We totally love how his style and aesthetic remains intact, whether he's sitting at the piano or with a guitar on his knee, his close attention to detail and use of hypnotic, emotionally captivating melodies shines throughout. Notes flickering and shimmering about as overtones soar above like clouds. There's so much about this record that you can get fully wrapped up in, so much detail it would be impossible to absorb it all in just one listen. We've already been listening to Glass Bead Game for over a week, and still new details keep popping out of the woodwork. And to top it off, beautifully fitting, earth-toned artwork of various birds of prey perfectly adorns the album with some magical visual hex. By far our favorite Blackshaw album to date and quite possibly his best, highly and fully recommended!
Fuck YES! One of the most unstoppable and prolific projects in recent memory returns with full length #2... we think. Regardless, after a slew of limited run eps and singles, we were curious to see if Blank Dogs could handle the full length format as well as they - sorry, HE - did with the awesome On Two Sides lp a while back. It seems like some people were expecting Blank Dogs to crack under the pressure of increased exposure or in the face of a fiery hipster backlash. Well, we are happy to report that Under And Under more than ably delivers on all of the initial promise, another winner loaded with classic Blank Dogs and one of the most thrilling releases we have heard this year. It's pretty insane to think that someone could just keep churning this stuff out at such a rate with continually awesome results, but Blank Dogs sound as confident, or at least as melancholy, catchy, and propulsive as ever here. In terms of the actual sound, things haven't changed that much, which we consider a very good thing. The fidelity is maybe slightly higher, but just barely. The songs are a little tighter and more suited to a full length rather than an ep, making this one that will undoubtedly bring out more with repeated focused listens. But overall, this is just more of what we have loved since we came across Blank Dogs, with wandering bass lines, reverberated drum machines, super melodic single note guitar leads, and that awesome monotone voice all here in spades. In the end, Under And Under is a sure indicator that when it comes to actual songcraft, the man behind this project is clearly a cut above most others doing the lo-fi garage thing.
It's pretty accurate to mention bands like Joy Division and the Cure when describing this, but the more poppy numbers seem to follow a more Buzzcocksian approach while the transitions to the anthemic choruses are just classic pop. Some of these songs sound like fractured love songs, all warbly with upbeat guitar leads and weird spooky keyboards. They may be for all we know, though lyrical clarity has never really been an issue for Blank Dogs, the voice de-emphasized within the throbbing lo-fi recording almost like another instrument itself. These songs provide a nice contrast to the more menacing numbers, like the acknowledged hit (around these parts anyway) "Setting Fire To Your House" with its ominous bass and distinctive organ lead. Lo-fi but dense, Blank Dogs still sound like a lost Factory Records band being transmitted from some far away galaxy, but the whole album exudes a beautiful dreaminess that just can't be denied. There appears to be no end in sight for Blank Dogs, and we aren't complaining one bit.
Finally, the very first cd release from Northwestern blacknoize terrorists Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, not a proper full length exactly, more a collection of odds and ends, a selection of out of print tracks, culled from various 7"s and 12"s and tapes, as well as a couple previously unreleased jams.
Those new to Blue Sabbath Black Cheer should definitely beware, the sound this dastardly duo conjure up is more noise than music, more drone than metal, yet it manages to be all of those things at once. They described their sound as "black acid bog death, blackened noise volume assault", and it most definitely is that, it's the sound of SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Organum, mixed with black metal and dark ambience, power electronics and minimal dronemusic, and somehow molded into harsh and harrowing blackened buzzscapes, veering from full on caustic assault, to hushed mysterious creep, often in the same song.
One of the tracks here is from the Borre Fen lp, and of the various micro-releases represented here, that was the only one that we ever managed to get in the shop, which means for many folks, ourselves included, this is practically a new record.
From the opener "Untitled" (most of the tracks are titled "Untitled"!), a swirling buzzing cacophony of crumbling industrial whir, peppered with buried percussion, howled voices lost in the mix, keening sheets of feedback, and a fierce white noise blow out, to the follow up "Untitled", a much more minimal, bit of cinematic drift, still pretty ominous and spooky, but here it's about the drone, and the strange processed gurgling sounds underneath, the heartbeat like pulse, the fragmented melodies and the overall hellish vibe, to another "Untitled", another wash of minimal scrape and creak and groan and grind, shot through with minor key moodiness, and wreathed in warm layers of deeeeeeep whirring rumble.
The record's centerpiece is the 17+ minute track from Borre Fen, which oozes to the surface, a long death march trawl some bleak black underworld of sound, a roiling pit of blackness and despair, thick layers of black drone, processed tapes, field recordings, disembodied voices processed into still more drones, distant streaks of feedback, gurgled grunted 'vocals', rumbling, grinding stretches of abstract sound, fragments of melody drifting in a churning black sonic sea, creepy and dark and desolate and downtuned and very very evil. Besides the above mentioned bands, we also hear bits of Lustmord, Stalaggh, Wolf Eyes, Za Frumi (mostly for the Orc like vocals), Abruptum, Anenzephalia, MZ412...
The record finally finishes off with another "Untitled" track, which eschews all that low end for a 5 minute stretch of horror movie high end, stretched to its breaking point, some definite difficult listening, like some sort of boiling teapot / dog whistle dronejam, all over a grinding bit of crunchy rumble, finishing off the record, if not with a bang, then an ear piercing shriek.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in super cool black on black cardboard sleeves, and for those that care, mastered by Herr Hans Grusel, of das infamous Krankenkabinet!
When two of your band members are credited with playing "cement mixer", listeners can safely assume that you are loud and noisy as hell. Combined with the accepted knowledge that Blue Sabbath Black Cheer is one of the most dense and monolithically HEAVY noise crews currently in existence, it won't take long before you're either running in terror or hitting the "add to cart" button. Of course, at $29 a pop, these aren't cheap, but here's a quick rundown as to why D.D.T.T.N.B. may well worth your time and money, provided this is your cup of noise: 200 copies, awesome cardboard sleeves featuring an ominous silver silkscreened skull on each side with four insectoid/Motorhead looking shapes alongside the credits on an extended flap, and, the crowning glory - a gorgeous slab of one sided pitch black vinyl with another hand screened skull displayed prominently on side 2, a work of art unto itself.
Now lets talk about the menacing tones sunk within these grooves. At first, you will probably be thinking, "It's a cement mixer. I get it." And indeed, the horrifically grating buzzing sounds are just that. But what might sound ridiculous on paper soon takes on a life of its own, and before long the mixers blend with other overblown electronics to create a pulsing, vaguely rhythmic wall of sound. Oddly enough, it becomes comforting and trancelike, and if you allow yourself to be fully hypnotized, the results are almost soothing. If you are wondering what's up with the title, it stands for "Destructively Dedicated to the New Blockaders", as BSBC allegedly worked some of the aforementioned group's material into this piece. We say "allegedly" because more than anything we were overwhelmed by the dense sheets of sound and not really too into the idea of keeping an ear out for anything resembling melody. Not that we're complaining, as this strangely beautiful record expertly harnesses harsh, filthy sounds and works them into a endlessly writhing piece of cinematic white noise. These are already sold out at the label, so you'll probably want to act fast before being forced to hit up eBay with tears streaming down your face. Don't say we didn't warn you.
We've been dying for more Bong. Ever since we got our ears around their long awaited debut lp a little while back, two side long tracks of crushing Sabbathy slow motion dooooooooom, we've been jonesing for another fix. Which has finally arrived, in the form of this split 12". Bong on one side, and fellow (new to us) doomlords Quttinirpaaq on the other.
Bong sound even heavier and more sluggishly propulsive than on their debut. Like space rock slowed waaaaaay down, Bong unleash a dark, dense roiling dirge drone doom, that slowly and gradually, and yes, druggily develops into something super rocking and ultra heavy. Crushing low end, lugubrious stoner doom riffs, pounding drums, and this time around some buzzing sitar (or at least it sounds like a sitar), adding a woozy Eastern vibe to the otherwise sludge-y proceedings. This is a total druggy lumbering stoned slow motion doom groove drug jam, channeling Monster Magnet, Black Sabbath, SUNNO))) and especially some Electric Wizard. The second half gets pretty rocking, seriously upping the churning downtuned chug, and upping the tempo from plod to rocking plod! It's heavy for sure, but still lo-fi and murky and muddy and mysterious - and that sitar, playing the same melody over and over and over the whole track gives it a super hypnotic and trancelike vibe. So good.
The flipside belongs to the impossible to pronounce Quttinirpaaq who counter with their own chunk of ultra low doom exploration. Beginning all blissed out and space-y and krauty and new age-y, with swirling effects and soft synths all shimmering and glistening over deep sweels of muted feedback, the band easily slip into some serious dronedoomdirge, kicking out a thick wall of downtuned buzz that will have SUNNO))) fans frothing for sure, and then the drums kick in, and the band lock into an impossible slow, ultra doom jam, the drums not so much a rhythm as occasional accents to the crushing crunch of guitars, beneath the surface, headphones reveal all sorts of weirdness going on, strange sonic events, mysterious voices, all churning and roiling underneath the layers of buzz and that impossible slow drum plod, think Khanate, Habsyll, Bunkur, Moss, that sort of thing, but more spaced out and abstract. Killer stuff for sure, and a perfect match for the mighty Bong!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Plain black sleeves with paste on red and black front cover.
Such warm, woozy and punchy West Coast pop delivered spot on by this San Francisco band, whose songs are made for that Eternal Summer we all wish we could live in. Their sound reminding us of everyone from the breeziest side of The Kinks, the more at ease moments of The Strokes, a looser Vetiver, a more sun soaked Grizzly Bear, some of that early solo McCartney magic... In other words the Botticellis write some pretty damn great irresistible pop that we can imagine being blasted in the bedroom with the window open so everyone playing in the backyard could soak up these infectious sounds. Pressed on clear vinyl and sounding better and better each time we lay the needle in its grooves.
Oh how we love Brutal Truth, and oh how psyched we were to hear about their return. At this point, it's probably more out of the ordinary for a band to NOT get back together, but Brutal Truth were actually one of the few bands we always wished would reunite, and obviously we were not alone.
So how does Evolution Through Revolution stack up to say, Extreme Conditions, or Sounds Of The Animal Kingdom, or even Need To Control, quite possibly our favorite grind record EVER? Well, we're happy to report, as cliched as it sounds, it's like they never left, this is some furious, grinding, hyperspeed metal mayhem, so dense and insanely chaotic and kick ass, and the riffs RULE, usually with bands this fast and fucked the riffs don't matter, but like Discordance Axis, you'll find these jams lodged in your head like crazy. How can music like this be so catchy? It speaks volumes about these guys, it's like they just threw a bunch of instruments into a magic metal blender and out spewed glorious glorious grind.
This is not a proper full band reunion, there's a new guitarist, but it hardly matters, he destroys, definitely holding his own, and of course Rich Hoak's drumming is inhuman and octopoidal and impossibly relentless. And Kevin Sharp, who the fuck knows how that guy even has a voice left after all these years, and it's still AWESOME to behold, not just a brittle shriek, he's got a killer guttural yowl that peels paint. And the band definitely mix it up, slowing it down here and there, getting all doomy on a few tracks, getting seriously BLACK FLAG here and there (check out "Detached", a dead ringer for Rollins era Flag, rife with wild guitar Ginn-isms), a bunch of the songs are seriously poppy, others are harsh and hateful and offer up no melody at all, hell, they even do a Minutemen cover.
We're trying not to gush, but c'mon! Not only has one of our favorite bands EVER finally returned, but this is no half assed walk down memory lane, this record SLAYS, a total fucking full on grind masterpiece.
From the same mysterious Russian otherworld that brought us the blackened genius of Ithdabquth Qliphoth comes the amazingly monickered Cadaver Yelleth At Amber Tower, which as far as we can tell is one of the many side projects that IQ mainman AL-LA-ShT-ORR employs to explore some seriously twisted and esoteric sounds.
And it doesn't get much more esoteric than this. Falling somewhere between the mysterious shortwave broadcasts of the Conet Project, and the disembodied ghostly blacknoise of Prurient, Code:Algeria is a strange sonic artifact, a manufactured lost transmission from the abyss, voices from some recovered black box recorder, broadcast from some other dimension, travelling through the atmosphere, gathering strange distortions and interference as it goes, a dizzying assemblage of beeps and hiss and warm buzzing textures, the voices speaking French? Arabic? Russian? Hard to tell, distorted as they are, 3 voices, 4 voices, the cadence and interplay almost musical, interrupted by bursts of hiss and sonar like pings, by the second track, some woozy warbly organ has joined the mix, the hiss sounds more scuplted, stuttering and skittering almost rhythmically, still wound around those strange voices, and the hiss taking on an almost Sunroof! like melodiousness, but those voices, continue to haunt and perplex, is it a military exercise? Is it something more sinister? Definitely sounds like it. Whatever it is, it's fantastic, and enthralling, and like the Conet Project, transcends its parts to become melodic and musical and surprisingly listenable. For field recording freeks too, especially ones into EVP and the Ghost Orchid and the like...
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Wooooohoooooyeaaaaaaahhhhhhh! This Canadian, old school (yet "Young And Hungry") metal trio of Jason Decay (bass/vocals), Ian Chains (guitar) and Steel Rider (drums), unleash their debut full length! The sticker on the front of this actually says "for fans of Dokken, Queensryche and Diamond Head". Wow, that's a bold move, putting Dokken on there. Diamond Head is currently considered cool of course but Dokken and Queensryche might fall into the too much information category for many of today's black/death/doom/thrash metallers. Of course, one can assume they must be referring to early Dokken and really early Queensryche, which is all right as far as we're concerned. While Cauldron celebrates a certain sort of '80s cheese - the cheesecake album cover ferinstance - it's heavy metal, not poofy hair metal. (The band pictures confirm that these guys don't use hairspray, though it does look like they are familiar with the use of conditioner.) Nor is it an ironic pisstake, though we would hope that nobody would spell night "nite" in their album title without tongue slightly in cheek!
Cauldron's inspirations certainly come from the galloping NWOBHM stuff (Angel Witch!), their U.S. progeny Metallica circa Kill 'Em All, as well as the better/grittier side of Sunset Strip glam a la Ratt and W.A.S.P., and arena Ozzy circa The Ultimate Sin, so this disc has got a refreshing, unabashed pop sheen and sensibility, but there's no ballads, nothing like that. Their quick riffing songs�about such subjects as being "Bound To The Stake" (presumably after a "Witch Trial" though that's the not the order in which they appear on the album) or "Chained Up In Chains" (the best redundant title ever, and also the song they contributed to Earache's Heavy Metal Killers comp reviewed here a couple lists back) are more like fist in the air metal, that's both melodic and ballsy, a killer combo of speedy slayage and catchy choruses. Another good song title is "Fermenting Enchantress"! They've got self-aware wit and style enough to appeal to the indie-hipster-metal crowd (a la Early Man, Dead Child, The Sword) whilst maintaining true metal cred, which also derives from the band's previous, doomier incarnation as Goat Horn. And, indeed, they do have some hard rockin' hair metal cred too, since, in keeping with the chains theme, they wrap up this album with a cover of a song called "Chains Around Heaven" originally by LA glam also-rans Black 'N Blue circa 1984. (Andee is so STOKED.) Any unfounded doubts that Cauldron aren't the real deal dissipate with that irony-proof move. We just wonder why they didn't cover Dokken's "Unchain The Night" too... maybe 'cause they don't actually sound like Dokken anyway.
What's left to say? Buy this, and turn it up LOUD! Soon you'll have lyrics like "chained up in chains, in the moonlight" stuck in your banging head, and be lovin' it!
While they last, we have the deluxe slipcased edition of this, which comes with an extra bonus disc containing two songs, taken from Cauldron's out of print indie ep Into The Cauldron. One of which, "Restless", might be our favorite song of theirs, so lucky for you it's on here.
First encountered this NYC trio opening for The Sword and Slough Feg on tour out here last year. And it was an excellent match, if you like either of those bands, there's a good chance you'll dig Children too. Featuring ex-members of Early Man and S.T.R.E.E.T.S., these hipster longhairs have got some of that currently cool psychedelic indie ironic image stuff happening (they claim they play "peace metal" ferinstance, and probably wear more American Apparel than black leather)... but then when you press play, blam, the headbanging is ON. With abundant energy, galloping beats, raging riffs, rapidfire thrash technology, and a weensy bit of left field (for metal) artsiness! Plus, most crucially, plenty of Champsy guitar harmonies - and like the Fucking Champs, there's no bass, just two guitars and drums. Though, the band these kids remind us the most of is their labelmates SF's Saviours, with similarly badass blazing leads and gruff, not-so-melodic singing/screaming.
Yeah, there's some SWEET guitar action here, from the one mellow quasi-classical instrumental "H.T.H.A.T.E.O.T.W." to the extended dual guitar widdly-ness that makes the epic (nearly 10 minute) album-ender "Time Is The Living" so magnificent. Actually, these guys love to stretch out jamming on their axes all over this disc, with the likes of "Nuclear Bummer" over 7 minutes long, and opener "Advanced Mind Control" clocking in at 9:41. Inveterate air guitarists will wish they were even longer. Heck we'll take our ripping, indulgent metal where we can get it. If it's a so-called "hipster" metal band on Kemado, that's just fine if they shred like these guys do! We like their style.
We've always had much respect for Nels Cline, his guitar playing skills are undeniable for sure, but for SOME of us, it wasn't actually until this solo outing that we've been able to totally fall in love with a Nels Cline album. Coward is one of the most languid, eclectic, yet strangely and enchantingly fluid solo guitar albums we've heard in ages. While there have been no shortage of great solo guitar records lately, as good as many of them are they all tend to be quite narrow in scope. There are either the John Fahey/Takoma school followers whose records are filled with finger picked sweeping pastoral Appalachia from beginning to end, or the drone guitar records, many of which we love, but again don't show much of a range in scope or sound. It's definitely a credit to many of those artists that they stick to what they know and do it very well, but when you're Nels Cline, you know SO MUCH about the guitar and its infinite range of sonic possibilities, and Coward finds him exploring so many of those possibilities with brilliant results! Whether sprawling or rustic, melodic or deconstructed, he's found ways to create sounds and songs that are brimming with personality, mood and emotion. He's also not afraid to get all lush and beautiful, or dark and mysterious, this is most definitely a record that truly has something for almost any music lover.
We hear a spirit and adventurous streak similar to records by greats like Baden Powell, we also hear more moody elements that have us thinking of Loren Connors, as well as fractured noisy moments that could be on a Tetuzi Akiyama record, but most of all a sense of true songwriting and melodic capability with the guitar, that recalls the gorgeous guitarscapes of Roy Montgomery. Nels Cline has proven that he's not only an extremely talented musician but also an artist with a rich imagination and soulful way with sound. Highly recommended!
The later Cluster records, Grosses Wasser and Curiosum, recorded after the Cluster and Eno collaboration in 1977, often undeservedly get short shrift. Marked by a move back to Berlin to work with former Tangerine Dreamer, Peter Baumann, 1979's Grosses Wasser shows Cluster moving forward expansively in their "nature-man-machine" aesthetic while at the same time harkening back to the unformed melodies of their debut. This album is quite the grower, five short pieces with a nineteen minute closing track that is always a dramatically different listening experience each time we play it. Slippery and evasive, shifting subtlety from oceanic piano passages to lurching bell rhythms, trumpet call and responses, woozy funk, hints of klezmer, machine dub, even whale song, all soaking in an elementally warm haze that only Cluster could conjure. Soooo Nice!!!!!!!
Hopefully Water will consider reissuing Curiosum as well. AQ customer Wobbly, who is an avid Cluster fan, noticed that in the liner notes for this, that Water included the Cluster photo from the Curiosum album, sparking fears that a Curiosum reissue is not in the works. We can only hope this isn't so.
Cremations is a collection of previously released tracks from the darling noisenik / minimal wave project Cold Cave, the bulk of which had been so painfully limited that they might as well have not been at all. The first three cuts should be familiar to most Aquarius readers, being from Cold Cave's awesome 7" single Painted Nails. The other tracks came from a cassette and an LP, both of which Cold Cave's Wes Eisold released through his Heartworm Press as editions of 100 in 2009 and 2007 respectively. The description we gave to the Painted Nails single is still apt: a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The tracks that follow the Painted Nails single on this collection certainly live up to the hype of that single, standing as lo-fi, scribbled new wave tunes for simple bass-synth lines, eerie-as-hell melodies, tinny drum machines, and alienated vocals with plenty of megaphone noise and 4-track scratchiness embedded into the mix. Cold Cave also tosses in some incidental music tracks which sort of sound like the interludes from Christian Death's Elektra Descending redone for Brian Eno's Music for Airports. It should be noted that none of the tracks here have been fleshed out like the incredible The Trees Grew Emotions And Died 12" which came and went a couple months back, and we don't mean that as a negative. Seriously, how many times have we championed the shittiest recordings on the crappiest media: flexi-disc, microcassette, wire recordings, shortwave, etc. And much of Cold Cave's grit and grime on Cremations appeals to that very aesthetic of ours. In fact a lot of these tracks remind us of some of our favorite electronic punk acts of the new dark age: The Screamers, Primitive Calculators, early Severed Heads, Dark Day, etc. You won't just be hearing it from us: this is incredible!
(This IS coming out on vinyl too, eventually, but we have no date for that yet...)
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
It's always a challenge to delve into the polyglot mythologies of David Tibet, as the visions in his lyrics reference a host of esoteric subjects: the gnostic Christian texts of the early 2nd Century, Thelemic citations from Aleister Crowley, snippets of Coptic, and plenty of Tibet's feverish dislocations of images delivered in stream of consciousness. The central protagonist here is Aleph, a character with a slippery persona, one that may be acting before God set the universe in order, one that may be acting as a dopplerganger to Adam, one that may be the murderous precursor of Cain, one that may spell out an alternate origin of Lucifer, or one that is unique to Current 93. To avid Current 93 fans, these mysteries and contradictions are commonplace; but the biggest shift for Current 93 is in the musical arrangements. Gone are the fairy-dusted madrigals for just piano, 12-string guitar, and violin. Tibet has now grasped onto a blistering, occasionally sprawling psychedelia centered upon heavy, proto-metal riffs. Amon Duul's Yeti, the psychedelic moments of Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, and certainly early Alice Cooper all factor into Current 93's arrangements. Given the '70s laden heaviness of this album, it's a little hard to believe that Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep) who had previously collaborated with Tibet isn't present. Instead, Tibet has brought on board Alex Neilson, Andrew WK, Keith Wood, Matt Sweeney, Rickey Lee Jones, James Blackshaw, porn-star Sasha Gray, and a host of others. Once again, Steven Stapleton is at the helm of the production with Andrew Liles adding his deft hand in the mix as well. Alex Neilson's presence on drums is of particular note, as his heavy-handed fills and lumbering gate does away with the taut precision which gave some Current 93 albums an anal retentive quality. Neilson in conjunction with the army of guitarists churning through these heavy, psychedelic riffs makes this album as good as it is.
Wow, what a gem of an album that I (Windy) can't believe I never heard before. Doubtless some of you are already aware of Karen Dalton, but for those of you who, like me, are new to her, here's the story:
The half-Irish, half-Cherokee Oklahoman moved to New York around 1960, where she immediately fell in with the Greenwich Village folk scene (there's an awesome photo here of her, Bob Dylan, and Fred Neil). Though Dalton didn't write her own songs, her interpretations of pieces by Fred Neil, Jelly Roll Morton, Tim Hardin, etc. are just lovely...
And HER VOICE! It's this glowing, honeydripping voice -- a country-blues Billie Holiday kind of voice. It is *stunning*. The instrumentation includes Karen on 12-string guitar and banjo, and she's got a talented band backing her up, but her gorgeous voice is foregrounded clearly throughout.
Includes lots of liner notes (written by Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, Fugs, etc.) that appear to only scratch the surface of this amazing woman: she was a lifelong dumpster diver, for one thing, and also a single mom. She was reportedly so shy that only by sort of tricking her into a recording session were these songs ever laid down on tape! Most of them are first and only takes, recorded in one day: so fresh, so alive, so sweet. Enjoy.
Here's some seriously warm, wobbly, surfy, tropical sounding lo-fi gems that have totally captured our attention! Dripping with such melty, melodic yet slightly tripped out perfection. Ducktails had a lot going for it before we even heard the music, the name obviously (!), the great cover art by Jan Anderzen (Kemialliset Ystavat) and the fact that it was mastered by Graham Lambkin of The Shadow Ring already lead us to believe there might be some kind of magic being brewed under the colorful, inviting cover, so we threw this on the stereo right away and it's been beyond the perfect soundtrack for the bright and sizzling sunshine days we've been baking in for the last couple weeks. Ducktails is the work of one person, Matt Mondanile who has found such a unique sound, melding elements of the lo-fi pop movement that came out of New Zealand in the '80s with a tropical undertone and wandering spirit that sounds like bits and pieces from some gem of a find on a Sublime Frequencies compilation, the kind of rare multidimensional sound that Pumice is able to achieve, or the more pastoral side of prog that folks like Bo Hannson explored, or a sun-soaked instrumental passage from an Ariel Pink record (actually this actually reminds us a lot of the great Holy Shit record Ariel Pink made with Matt Fishbeck a while back), or maybe White Rainbow shining their hypnotic rays through the bodies of a band on Woodsist. The album's closer "Surf's Up" is almost like a new generation's version of Terry Riley's A Rainbow In Curved Air!
This record is like a soft edged maze that leads in a million different directions and takes you around on a sonic adventure that isn't as concerned with destination as it is in creating a totally and wholly encapsulating journey. While many in the new wave of one-man-band lo-fi noise pop combos have been focusing their sonic scope more on the fuzz, and burn, and rocked out side of things, Ducktails have a much more languid, dreamy and enchanting approach to finding lo-fi bliss through conjuring up so much warm sun soaked color in their hypnotizing sounds. Highly Recommended!
El-B is one of the pioneers and inspiring forces that helped usher in the sound of dubstep as we know it. Pushing the UK garage scene in new and exciting directions, incorporating elements of house, drum & bass and dancehall creating a pulsating sound that would become the core of modern dubstep. While folks like Burial, Pinch and Kode9 would take bits and pieces of this foundation and give it a much more sinister and brooding vibe, you can still tell that it was probably one of those rare white label 12"s by El-B that helped trigger many of the ideas that would find their way in today's leading dubstep records. A few months ago we raved (pun intended!) about the Zomby record Where Were You In '92 with its amazing combination of various elements from house and rave culture with dubstep's dark driving allure. There's no denying that these El-B tracks had to be a gigantic source of inspiration for Zomby as so much of what he was doing almost a decade ago can be found in the grooves of that record. If you're like us you probably don't have tons of those rare white label 12"s so it's rad to be able to get a great collection of El-B's jams on one single disc along with a really informative 14-page booklet that breaks things down so well.
The vinyl version doesn't have all the songs from the cd, but for vinyl addicts it's definitely cool, with one track stretched out on each side of the double 12".
Emaciator is the work of LA floorcore miserablist Jon Borges, who previously spat out gnarled cassettes galore as Pedestrian Deposit and Monorail Trespassing; and as Emaciator he's got a couple releases on Students Of Decay and Not Not Fun. But damn, this is the one for sure as Borges channels the psychic wasteland of Southern California through these four sides of vinyl for dour drones laced with ghostly melodies and grimly rendered distortion. The first side could be the logical extension of the shortened program that Emeralds gave us on Solar Bridge with an earthmoving hum emanating throughout the track amidst the linear movement of radioscopic static and a mournful loop of descending melodies. Throughout the track, these elements intertwine, build, fade, collapse, resurface, and self-immolate all at once. Quite stunning. Side B radiates with a fluorescent glow of simmering white noise softened just enough to take the edge off while uneasy rippled of low end frequencies push to the surface. The third side gets far more toxic in the blistering analog synth tones pushed through distortion boxes, but Borges still manages to push forward one of his urgent yet depressive phasing tones through the heavy wall of static. Very much on par with the classic Broken Flag sound. The fourth is a reprise of the first side (get it, the title is Reflection), with that looping melody at first appearing like a Basinski piece of hypnogogia, but gradually Borges suffocates that loop through at atomizing cascade of distortion. One of the most exhilarating if tragic pieces of noise+drone we've heard in quite a long time. Limited to a mere 300 copies!
Yes! Finally, J.D. Emmanuel's late seventies, early eighties mind expansion music is more readily accessible. Mostly previously available through rare private pressing lps and vinyl rip blogs, Emmanuel is pretty much one of the main underground touchstones of the present wave of sunny new age meditative minimalist outfits such as The Alps, Emeralds, Ducktails, and White Rainbow. We had that limited reissue of his 1982 Wizards LP which flew out of here in a flash and now we have the less-limited Solid Dawn disc, which is a compilation of works between 1979 and 1982 in which Emmanuel seemed to be superhumanly productive. Taking the minimalist template of Terry Riley, the continuous music of Lubomyr Melnyk, and Brian Eno's discreet music, filtering it through a more soft-focus mystical kosmiche veil of Klaus Schulze, Ariel Kalma and Eberhard Schoener, Emmanuel makes long-form compositions that are vaporous and propulsive like swiftly moving clouds using wind chimes, blurry shifting drones, and arpeggiated synth-scapes. Check out his website for more info about this Texan native, who not only offers spiritual consultation, but offers automotive and business management solutions as well! Outsider New Age doesn't get much better than this!
So when these guys came into the shop to drop off their newest tour cd-r, we expected to hear more of the usual E-Tap free bluesy psych jamming. And psych-heads be assured there is a fine amount of freak-out guitar and hypnotic, driving drums here, but the Bindemen brothers and their third, Dewey Mahood have reached an all-time best with this one. They seem to have taken a more gritty and punk influenced direction here, instead of bluesy, the riffs are gritty and damaged in a Black Flag meets Wooden Shjips kinda way. Still very cosmic and sprawling, this shit is waaay darker and waaay more heavy then any other E-Tap stuff we've heard to date. There's even some totally unexpected riffs that are borderline stoner doom! Yes! With apathetic, mumbled Dead C type vocals over turning riffage that bleeds with feedback and gnarled fuuuuuzzzzzzz, we're really diggin' this new direction these dudes are headin' in, totally recommended!
Besides the incomparable freakiness of Betty Davis, and sheer force that is Chaka Khan, we don't see too many female soul singers that can equally seduce us with their soulful wiles, then go in for the kill with their hard-hitting funk edge, and still make us feel their pain. Beginning her career as a featured singer for the James Brown Revue, Fair cut her teeth at Motown recording a single with Marvin Gaye that made Motown producer Norman Whitfield (Undisputed Truth, Rose Royce) take notice, producing a string of singles in the early seventies. Her lone album, The Bitch is Black has been thankfully reissued by Reel Music and features her version of The Temptations classic "Funky Music Sho Nuff Turns Me On", Stevie Wonder's "Tell Me Something Good" and her UK hit "It Should Have Been Me", a spurned lover's soul-shattering breakdown. Just check out the cover, you don't want to mess with this 'bitch'!
NOW ON VINYL!
We were all ready to hate this, not cuz we don't dig the players, we love Michael Flower (Vibracathedral, Sunroof!) and Chris Corsano is a ruling drummer, it's just that for some reason we thought this was gonna be some of that new fangled indie free jazz, which always leaves us a bit cold. Not sure why, maybe it was the 'duo' thing. But then it's on VHF, home to much of our favorite dronemusic and outrock, and the instrumentation definitely looked like anything but free jazz: Japan banjo, tanpura, organ, melodica, cello and drums. So we figured, okay, what the heck, let's give it a try, and BAM, this totally knocked out socks off and our teeth in, at once exactly what we had hoped for, but something we never would have imagined, some impossible hybrid of frenetic chaotic drumming, and strange super distorted looped melodic mantras, like some impossible sonic hybrid of Mick Barr and Dan Higgs, or Orthrelm covering Zomes, tripped out and psychedelic, wild as fuck, but weirdly hypnotic and totally mesmerizing.
The opener is a mad blowout of wild melodies super distorted and all tangled up, like some strange sped up bagpipe, wound around Corsano's non stop drum workout, the banjo here ends up sounding like the guitars on Amps For Christ records, unfurling intense abstract runs of notes and fragmented melodies, sometimes locking into little trills, other times getting all wavery and woozy, the drums somehow remaining totally free but staying locked in with Flower's wild psych freakouts. It's so inherently chaotic and raw and primal and by all rights should be difficult to listen to, but after a few minutes, we find ourselves totally lost, and we never want it to end.
The follow up is more of a percussive free jam, reminding us of groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros and No Neck and Sunburned Hand, very free, but with the metallic shimmer spreading out over the warm low end whirs and the abstract gamelan like melodies. "The Drifter's Miracles" is the most obviously VHF of the batch, a long languorous slow burning ur-drone, all bowed stings and wheezing organ, very raga like, overtones shifting and beating against one another, bits or percussion clink and clank beneath the gloriously heaving sea of rich lustrous tones, this definitely could be a whole record, as it is, it's easily the most 'listenable' of the bunch.
"The Beginning Of The End" sounds like a field recording of some ritualistic musical performance, the sound muted and lo-fi, a sort of crazed dance, the drums a wild tribal patter, sometimes splatter, Flower again offering up dense tangles and billowing squiggles, there is definitely a free jazz element, but the duo manage to take the loose free drumming, and the manic looped sounding melodies and create a another, sort-of abstract, ultra free ur-drone, it's quite magical actually, the parts are so frenetic and tense and relentless, that it seems impossible that combining them would create something soothing and spiritual, but that's precisely what it does.
The closer, the nearly 18 minute "The Main Ingredient" is like a more jubilant, ebullient version of the record opener, the drums muted and minimal, still skittery and feral, but Flower's banjo weaving magical crystalline shapes in the air, melodies, notes, tones, harmonies, overtones, all shimmering and hovering and looping and stuttering and glistening, total Amps For Christ / Higgs / Orthrelm sun baked lysergic spiritual raga drone free jazz out-rock blowout. So completely heavy, and epic, and dreamlike, and tripped out, and intense and so so beautiful.
Finally issue number two of Forgotten Path, one of the very few metal mags going that's focussed almost exclusively on the grim, the kvlt and the obskure. This long in the works issue features a handful of faves, as well as a whole mess of new-to-us groups that will no doubt require further investigation.
1349, Abigor, Skyforger, Angantyrm, Besatt, Blood Stained Dusk, Chthonic from Taiwan, Impiety, Hekel, Berserk, Fearbringer, should be enough for most metalheads, but then there's Pagan Heritage, Har Shatan, Paroxysmal Descent, Black Messiah, Argus Megere, Argharus, Niroth, Linvsnekad, Elhaz, Hellbox, Bloodthirst, Krater, Thygrim and more!
Super thick, glossy cover, tons of reviews too (300+ of shows, records, festivals) and of course as with all things grim and kvlt, it's LIMITED, each copy hand numbered!
We FINALLY got enough lps of this pop jam to list the vinyl:
There is something so self assured about the Fresh & Onlys sound, that really makes them seem like wise old sages in a garage rock scene full of impressionable younguns and wannabe hipsters. Luckily these guys aren't burnt out folks at all, as the sounds they crank out are pretty damn fresh sounding, with enough muscle to hammer those pop chops home, with confidence and enough melody to keep things so entertaining and super rocking. While there are some similarities to label mates Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, there is also an almost old school punk aesthetic a la Mission Of Burma at play in these songs as well as psychedelic undertones that help make the Fresh & Onlys the perfect soundtrack for a nice and drunk and slightly stoned sunny afternoon barbecue.
With a lineup that includes members of Skygreen Leopards, Black Fiction, and 3 Leafs you can hear the excitement in these short blasts of songs as they are so much different in sound and scope then what most of these folks usually crank out.
Best known as one of the cofounders and directors of the great Bang On A Can new music festival in New York, Michael Gordon is also a pretty damn great composer in his own right. Performed by a guitar ensemble led by Emio Greco, this twenty minute composition finds Gordon channeling the likes of New York avant powerhouses like Glen Branca and Rhys Chatham. Sounds that conjure images of rushing waves, cascading waterfalls and thundering eruptions. [Purgatorio] Popopera has the range to appeal to not just classical music fans, but also folks into dramatic and exquisite post-rock like Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky, albeit perhaps with a slightly more avant-garde influence. Cool stuff, and cheap too.
The long awaited debut from Grey Machine, the collaborative beast featuring Justin Broadrick of Jesu, and Aaron Turner from Isis, just two songs, it's a teaser for the forthcoming full length, the A side a track from the record, the B side an exclusive remix available only on this here 12".
So what exactly does Grey Machine sound like? Definitely not as blissy as Jesu, although some of those elements still remain, if anything, it's closer to Godflesh in tone, lumbering and industrial, wish some surprising bits of modern electronic music (dubstep!) which manage to be deftly woven into GM's sound without sticking out or sounding forced.
The track from the forthcoming full length is a monster for sure. A wild cacophonous chaotic noise jam, that features crunchy post industrial rhythms wrapped around a thick blown out blast of dubstep style bass, the vocals fuzzy and lo-fi buried way down in the mix, some woozy dark descending riffage, the timbre prickly and abrasive, but beneath all the churning and roiling heaviness (and it IS heavy) are some awesomely melodic guitar lines and some tripped out spacerock FX draped over the almost jungle bass and drums (or should we say drum + bass).
The B-side is a super stripped down dubbed out groove, tons of space, the beats spare and skeletal, rubbery and bassy, over the top of some howled distorted vox (a la Godflesh), in the background streaks of guitar buzz, blurred bits of droning ambience, all sorts of space-y effects, the track pounds away, drifting through little clouds of blissed out crunch and more of those seriously bassbin destroying, thick buzz drenched dubsteppy basslines. Super cool. Bodes well for the full length!
Old school 12" style packaging. Black vinyl, no labels, plain white sleeve, with a black and white sticker affixed to the front. And of course, LIMITED!
So this past spring Grouper and Pumice graced New Zealand with a small tour, and we were lucky enough to track down a few of the highly limited splits they brought along. Grouper's side is a hazy, dream-like offering of her Way Their Crept type drugged out drone-pop. And Pumice's side is not unlike the material on the recent Quo album. Both previously unreleased tracks for these bedroom pop heavyweights, limited to 500 copies, don't even think about missing out on this one!
An undisputed classic GBV album now reissued on vinyl!
Alien Lanes was the band's eighth full length originally released fourteen years ago in March of 1995 (and twelve years into their GBV career! Geez!). If their Bee Thousand album the previous year won the hearts of indie kids around the globe, this one sealed the deal in indelible ink. Lo-fi indie rock hugely indebted to the Beatles and Big Star that juggled shambling garage rawk psychedelics and odd bedroom 4-track recorded puppy love pop songs. The latter, as obtuse and cryptic as they may initially seem, still find their way and root themselves firmly into your heart and head. Messy, noisy and clumsy at time, but absolutely addictive and endearing in their untethered rock pop abandon. Alien Lanes' whopping 28 song track count and the songs' time lengths (ranging from a mere 18 seconds to just shy of three minutes) were a clear foreshadowing of the unbelievably prolific song output of Pollard, Sprout and Co., as well as their ability to nail a sentiment in under a minute. Awesome!
So it took the rest of the world a while to catch on. Don't be too hard on them. Harvey Milk are one difficult proposition. Don't blame us though. We've been there all along trying to convince everybody just how brilliant this bafflingly bizarre sludge combo really was. Andee even reissued their seminal Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men album on his tUMULt label. And don't blame Henry at Chunklet, the man responsible for this here document. In fact he was right there every step of the way, a one man Harvey Milk archivist and booster club. And of course we don't blame you, loyal AQ list readers, cuz we know you feel the same way we do, you just can't get enough of Harvey Milk's pummeling, crushing, obtuse and confusional heaviness. Well for you, and for us, and for the heavy music lovers of the world who have yet to discover the difficult joy of Harvey Milk, life is is about to get a whole lot sweeter.
Courtesy And Good Will is getting reissued again, on Relapse, any day now, there's a BRAND NEW Harvey Milk record due sometime in the next month or so, there are rumors of a deluxe reissue of the long out of print Harvey Milk debut, a serious holy grail, My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be, maybe with an extra disc, and then there's THIS. Four long years in the making, and it was worth every single second. Most of us who dig Harvey Milk, even those of us who might go so far as to say we are obsessed, never actually got to see the band play live. And this three and a half hour DVD collection of live shows spanning over 12 years is just as much a revelation as we knew it would be.
From super grainy early live footage, when the band was much more of a punk rock, Touch And Go / AmRep sort of beast, you can, out of the corner of your eye, see the sludginess and fuckedupness creep up through the music, slowly and subtly infusing every song and sound with some ineffable something, that helped turn Harvey Milk into a band that sounded unlike any other band, then or now. Theirs was a career trajectory based entirely on getting weirder and sludgier and more obtuse and WAY more difficult and fucked up, a bit like the Melvins, but without the unexpected mainstream success and major label deal. Harvey Milk also unexpectedly shifted gears for a while, letting their ZZ Top obsession take control, and becoming impossibly groovy and rocking, which only lasted a single record before the band returned EVEN MORE damaged and slow and brutal, as if that was even possible.
The band look so unassuming, frontman Creston Spiers just an every day Joe until he opens his mouth and unleashes that impossible low banshee-like howl, bass player Stephen Tanner, with his weird, fey, Doogie Howser look, goofy smile and even goofier sexy hip swivel. And the drums, the drummers... Harvey Milk's songs are so full of space, so slow and stretched out, the drums are often the only thing holding the songs together. Whether they are shuffling in the background, or pounding out a massive slow motion throb, it's the drums that allow the guitars to spin off into space and the songs to unfurl into confusing super spacious epics.
Probably the most amazing part of the disc is when Creston wields a sledgehammer, pounding an anvil in time with the downtuned bass and pounding drums, while howling in that anguished banshee wail of his. Normally it would be weird to see a band set-up like that -- bass, drums and sledgehammer -- but somehow, for Harvey Milk it seems perfect. Creston swaying back and forth, cradling the hammer like it was a guitar, while the band pounds out a sludgy dirge behind him. So good! Woven in to the older material are plenty of long slow drawn out moody post rockisms, with drifting simple mournful melodies, and mumbled crooned vocals that eventually build into the epic whirls of swirling sludge we hold so near and dear to our hearts.
The biggest surprise here is how much footage there is from the band's "ZZ Top period," a stretch that on record only lasted a single album, but live seemed to have spanned several years. A wild and hair twirling, head banging super groovy sort-of-Southern rock with howled and yelped superrock vocals, less obviously sludgy, but still ultra heavy. This was never really a favorite sound for lots of Milk fans (although it is Allan's favorite) but seeing these songs performed live is enough to convince us that maybe we were WAY off and this stuff is some of the best Harvey Milk EVER!!!
It sounds like southern rock filtered through the Melvins. Or Ram Jam played by the Corrupted. It's just so awesome to watch with drummer Kyle Spence's massive Boham-esque kit (complete with Bonham's logo on the bass drum head) a huge gong, just tearing it up Bill Ward style holding the whole thing together... And because of the film stock and the sound and the style, it's almost feels like watching some recently unearthed German television footage of some ultra heavy long lost proto metal band from the seventies, they even whip out a little "Pinball Wizard!" Someone needs to reissue The Pleaser now. C'mon!! Maybe we just weren't in the right frame of mind when it first came out, but we're pretty sure that record would kick our asses now!
After that, the band sort of drifted off and disappeared, before resurfacing in 2005, as a much grungier, hairier looking Milk, all jeans and long hair and Voivod t-shirts, and they sound like it too. A return to the impossibly glacial dirge of Courtesy, but even heavier and somehow more even more fucked up sounding. Like Sabbath at 16rpm, massive lumbering, blown out sludgerock divinity. How many ways can we say it. WE LOVE HARVEY MILK!!! THEY ARE WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE GREATEST BANDS OF THE LAST 20 YEARS!!
There's also a DVD Easter egg (thanks Jace!): just go to the credits menu and push up until "40 Watt '93" is highlighted, for some footage from an April Fool's show where the band tackle three R.E.M. covers, taken from a show where the band covered R.E.M.'s Reckoning in its entirety. Seriously! (the also once did a whole set of Hank Williams covers, let's pray someone has a tape of that stashed!) It's pretty dang cool to see one generation of Athens rock take on another. And they don't really sludge it up all that much, playing 'em pretty straight, but managing to make them -almost- sound like Harvey Milk originals!
Also included is a four song 3"cd containing previously unreleased, super rare tracks, one of which is their version of R.E.M.'s "South Central Rain"!!!
And of course the packaging is breathtaking. Designed by Stephen O'Malley and Henry Chunklet, it's a gorgeous oversized DVD style, fold over interlocking cardstock sleeve, greenish brown, with O'Malley's instantly recognizable graphic shards in dark brown, the title in embossed reflective silver, inside copious liner notes from Henry printed in metallic silver, the back has an angular H and M diecut, through which you can see the inside sleeve, a black folded cardstock gatefold with silver metallic ink which houses both the DVD and the 3" cd affixed to the inside on little nubs. So awesome!
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 1000 COPIES!!!!!!!!
It's weird to think that there was a time when it was practically impossible to get a Harvey Milk record. We spent ages trying to track down any information about these guys, looking for their Courtesy And Good Will lp, trying to decipher the mystery of the My Love Is Higher album cover. A random sequence of events led to Andee reissuing Courtesy on tUMULt, which was later snapped up by Relapse. And after that, things started to snowball, singles collections, reissues, and lo and behold a new album, the band back together again, and touring! Finally taking their rightful place at the head of the heavy rock table where they always belonged. Only now, they're the elder statesmen instead of the young upstarts. But hell, they still sound way heavier and more alive than any of the current crop of heavies. And this brand new disc just seals the deal.
And as if the band weren't heavy enough, they've added Mr. Joe Preston (Thrones/Melvins/Earth/High On Fire/etc.) to the group. And the results are pretty stellar. Not only do the band still crush and destroy (they couldn't really get any heavier, could they?) but they're even more melodic. In some strange twist, they seem to have melded the classic rock tendencies of Pleaser era Milk, with the infuriatingly and brilliantly repetitive dirge of Courtesy, creating something both epic and catchy, hooky and heavy, and insanely obtuse and difficult.
The opening track begins with Creston singing in a delicate falsetto, over simple strummed guitar, and then the bomb drops, and the band explode into some post-Melvins, post-Killdozer dirgey crawl, but even at their most sludgiest, they still manage to sound incredible. It's like some pop band got flayed alive and shoved in a bubbling tar pit. Only to emerge a stumbling lurching dripping beast. Epic grinding riffage and classic rock leads give way to an extended chugscape, over and over and over, the vocals suddenly sounding all Gibby-like, the guitar so distorted it crumbles and falls like sodden chunks through the grill of your speaker, until the very end when the vocals transform into a line from the Beatles' "A Day In The Life", and then they finish off with their own version of -that- famous chord. What the fuck?
The next track begins all Led Zep, huge booming drums, until in swings the riff, and vocalist Creston Spiers wounded howl. Then there's "After All I've Done For You" a super dense tangled riffscape that recalls Don Caballero or Bastro, with it's furious mathiness, but it is Harvey Milk, so it of course mutates into a slow motion doomdirge complete with fucked up backwards production.
Our favorite track might be "Motown", with it's soaring melody, and super hooky main riff. A total pop classic albeit one bathed in guitar crunch, and delivered in a feral croon. Some killer leads seal the deal, and some almost Eagles like guitar harmonies. Then there's "Roses", which begins all gentle piano, and guitar harmonics, and Creston's plaintive warble, before slipping into something a little sludgier and sloooooooooooow. Very Courtesy sounding for sure. Near the end, "Barn Burner explodes into another frenzy of mathy riffage, proving again that HM are not a slow motion one trick pony. But it's not just a riff fest, there are some gorgeous harmonies, and some amazing guitar playing going on.
Finally the band finish off with a bang. The nearly nine minute "Good Bye Blues", an impossible slow trudge, peppered with little jagged chunks of riff, plenty of space, stop start weirdness, an almost classic rock sounding bridge, all tangled soaring leads and manic drumming, only to slip back into epic dirgery, and finishing off with a goofy little burst of 'Milked polka and a big Gong Show goooooong. Irreverent, goofy, funny, but somehow still deadly serious, musically merciless, creating epic skull crushing doomscapes one second, whispered balladry the next, and fucked up mathy what-the-fuck the very next, and thus remaining still, without a doubt, one of the best bands in the world.
This is the fancy Japanese double disc edition, which is the only one we're carrying right now, since we figured that most folks into Harvey Milk are WAY into Harvey Milk, and wouldn't mind paying a little extra for a whole extra disc, not to mention some fancy Japanese gatefold packaging. If you really want the cheaper domestic single disc version, just ask, we can order it for you, but heck? Why would you. Who can argue with MORE Harvey Milk? Not us. SO here we have a whole second disc of MORE. Basically, it's the whole record, in demo form, which means, that it's instrumental, and that the arrangements and recordings are dramatically different. Some songs are truncated, others are way stretched out, some changed dramatically between the demo and the album, some remained almost the same, but in both cases, these versions are fantastic. And you know it's something when a band's demos sound better than most other band's actual albums. But as if that weren't enough, there's also an unreleased Leonard Cohen cover! "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" And HM fans will remember what these guys can do with a Cohen track, as is evidenced by "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" on Courtesy. This one is similar, not quite as anguished, but close, dark and strangely haunting, Creston's vocals more retrained, but still raw and raspy and deep, over a simple strummed guitar, a mournful lament, which in true HM fashion finishes off with some retarded super effected riffing that sort of grinds and noodles until a computer voice intones "This cellphone is a piece of shit."
How can you not love Harvey Milk?! You can't. You just can't. So buy this. It's probably the best record you'll buy this year, and for lots of you, it will immediately become the best record you own. All hail the Milk!
As mentioned above, this comes in a super swank full color Japanese style mini gatefold, with an obi, and multiple printed inserts, track listing, a bunch of Japanese text, and lyrics in English!
In keeping with the duality within this band's name, there's probably two sorts of people reading this review. There are those who are dedicated fans, familiar with the latter-day Black Sabbath saga, awaiting this album with eager anticipation. And then there's those who need to be told that Heaven & Hell IS Black Sabbath, in all but name - hence this album's title, The Devil You Know. For the latter folks, we'll help 'em get with the program by explaining that this so-called Heaven And Hell band is the Black Sabbath lineup - Ronnie James Dio on vocals, Tony Iommi on guitar, Geezer Butler on bass, and Vinnie Appice on drums - that last appeared on a studio album seventeen (!) years ago: 1992's Dehumanizer, which in hindsight was a pretty good record. Dio of course was original Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osbourne's replacement in the band, joining up in 1980 for the Heaven and Hell album (natch), followed by Mob Rules and Live Evil. He then quit for a solo career, and Sabbath's fortunes soon declined... a decade later, Dehumanizer was a short lived reunion, scuttled when Sabbath sans Dio agreed to open for Ozzy's so-called "retirement" show... Ozzy obviously didn't ever retire, and eventually rejoined Sabbath himself, for several successful tours - but no new studio album. And it seemed that there never would be another Sabbath album... until now, though it's not called Sabbath! Getting restless just going around doing "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" with a doddering Ozzy, recently Tony and Geezer were lucky to persuade Dio to let bygones be bygones and get back together with his old Sabbath mates for a tour and live album under this new name (Black Sabbath with Ozzy remaining on some sort of official hiatus we suppose).
We saw 'em play in San Jose and good grief, for a 66 year old frontman, Dio was AMAZING. Full of energy and as impressive/expressive/excessive vocally as ever. It's no wonder that inspired by their touring, these senior citizens (well perhaps Vinnie isn't quite so old) answered the prayers of Dio/Sabbath fans everywhere and recorded a brand new album! (Now the first batch of people referred to at the top of this review can tune back in.)
The truth is, we sorta had low expectations for this. As good as they were live doing old classic tracks, could they really write a worthy new record? The 3 new Dio-fronted studio tunes that were included as a bonus on Sabbath's The Dio Years anthology in 2007 were kind of weak, though they sounded better in concert, we must admit. And many a venerable band has stumbled when a long-awaited reunion album has finally happened (The Stooges being a good, or rather bad, example).
So we were pleasantly surprised to find, when we finally heard it, that The Devil You Know was actually pretty darn good! Great, even. Apparently they took their time and did this right, with serious intent. They didn't try to modernize their sound, nor is it a half-assed cash-in, they simply did what they know best how to do - heck, what they invented. EPIC DOOM METAL. No, it's not the equal of Heaven and Hell or Mob Rules, but who could expect that? It IS at least as good or maybe better than Dehumanizer, and certainly blows any other attempt at epic doom you're gonna hear this year out of the castle moat. How could it not? It's Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler and Ronnie James effin' Dio!! (Too bad for Candlemass that they just put out a new album, too... but they'd probably even agree.)
From the very first song, the lumbering "Atom And Evil", you'll hear this is firmly in their own grand tradition. Dio era Sabbath lives! The wizardly elfin one's vocals are mighty and majestic, Tony's guitar tone sounds straight from the '70s, he and Geezer offering up surging heaviosity o'er which Dio weaves his vocal spell, with portentous lyrics to match the dark doominess of much of the music. Not that it's all a dirge, they rock out plenty too, maybe too much so on "Rock N' Roll Angel", though you gotta love it that there's still a band who'd write a song with a (non-ironic) title like that. Tony gets in some choice solos, and his regal riffage leaves his "riffmaster" reputation unblemished, although what may be more memorable are the melodies of Dio's vocal lines. Possessed by the phantoms of past glories, this is, wonderfully so.
While the debate among Sabbath fans over the relative merits of the band's various vocalists will forever rage (similar to the debate over who's the best James Bond), what's certain is that in the here and now, the ancient yet ageless one known as Dio is clearly the superior, only choice for Sabbath frontman. Can't imagine them making anything as remotely as solid as this if they'd tried it with Ozzy! Celebrity/corporate crapola would ruin it... plus Ozzy's voice these days seems almost entirely computerized. Also, for these guys, it'll never be 1971 again. But 1981, via 1992, is a lot easier to conjure. Dio's still got it, and with him, they truly "click". He'll tell you himself, that despite his many years solo and with other groups, Rainbow, Elf, going back to Ronnie And The Redcaps in 1959, Black Sabbath is THE best band for him.
Who knows if Heaven & Hell aka Black Sabbath will ever make another album (did we mention Dio is pushing 70 years old?), but if they don't, this one is a proud ending to an illustrious career, a classy comeback and/or grand finale, upholding (reinstating?) their legacy indeed.
Eccentric British dronescapists Ian Holloway and Darren Tate (formerly of Ora, currently of Monos) have collaborated in the past on a very sublime album called Summerland which also featured the field recordings of Banks Bailey. This one is more in keeping with Tate's progressive-leaning explorations of cosmic synthesis and guitar meanderings; although it has to be said that we've never heard either Banks or Holloway venture closer to the guttural psychedelic splotches of guitar (with Keiji Haino and Casper Brotzmann being those who immediately come to mind). Low thrumming drones with sawtooth, pink noises sliding into the mix open the Wet Rat Year with periodic punctuations of amp feedback and splattered noises from guitar strings scraped by pieces of metal. Spooky, expressionist stuff. On one of the later untitled tracks, throbbing distorted loops undulate below a cascade of synthetic tones, caught in a perpetual descent as if tumbling out of the sky; and the very next track takes a similar compositional approach with darker results brought on by grizzled guitar, modulated shortwave and a more pronounced rhythm to the underlying loops.
This is one of those micro-editions jointly released by Holloway through his Quiet World imprint and by Tate through Fungal. Only 75 copies made, and they're already out of print at both sources... meaning these copies are all that we will get!
When was the last time anyone made a Sisters Of Mercy reference and meant it as a wholehearted compliment? Well, that's definitely the case for HTRK (pronounced Haterock, FYI) as this Melbourne trio adopts a bleaker than black stance through their psychosexual dirges. With slinky Goth basslines, ghostly coldwave electronics, and skeletal slow-mo drum machine pulses, HTRK's arrangements mirror those that the Sisters Of Mercy produced for The Reptile House EP (which found them at their slowest, creepiest, and most anti-pop). But instead of Andrew Eldritch and his affected baritone, the singer for HTRK is Jonnine Clementine Standish whose comatose droning is seductive and compelling in its own right. She adopts the roles as the co-dependent, the broken-hearted, the addicted, the master, the servant, and the lonely, all delivered in Lydia Lunch's "I Fell In Love With A Ghost" dispassionate, zombified mantra. On the track "Rent Boy", Standish breaks out of that montone delivery, bellowing this dark ballad that comes across more like PJ Harvey than before. We have to wonder if the title is a reference to the These Immortal Souls track "Marry Me," penned by the former Birthday Party guitarist Roland S. Howard who happens to have produced this record and has sprinkled his narcotized swamp rock guitar throughout. No matter if it is or if it isn't, Howard's voodoo production for HTRK certainly gives them that Birthday Party feel. Great, very dark stuff for sure!
This is one of those records that we always thought we were just going to hear about, maybe hear a song or two on some compilation, but never actually get to hear in its entirety. So we're THRILLED to see this pre-CAN album, a soundtrack to a film that never came out (how come those are always the best?!), finally seeing the light of day. And what a tripped out, acid soaked, free-pop-jazz-rock odyssey it is!
Recorded in 1968 by a lineup that included Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit who a year later would make their debut as Can with the release of Monster Movie, listening to these sounds one for sure can hear the seeds of what would become Can's distinctive krautrock sound, but this also displays a much more fried, disjointed and mind altering side to these way ahead of their time music makers. While mostly an instrumental affair that at times reminds us of the equally colorful and fucked up Jean Claude Vannier concept album L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches, there are a few tracks which have vocals courtesy of Irmin Schmidt, but the true show stopper is when Rosy Rosy, a film actress in Germany at the time, takes the mic for "Kamerasong", a track we imagine folks like Broadcast and Stereolab have played on repeat a billion times (like we have now!). While plenty of the songs here hint at the more song based Can records to come, lots of Agilok & Blubbo is much more about sprawling, scrappy, tripped out and fucked up delight, the kind of sounds modern day colorful noise makers like Kemialliset Ystavat and Sunburned Hand Of The Man would bow down to. What makes the record so enjoyable is how its paced, just when things have gotten way deconstructed and abstract they snap into more of a catchy, driving melody and then continue on in more bizarre directions and into outer dimensions. Warped, damaged and engaging in all the right ways!
To the list of lo-fi noise popping shit gazing garage rockers, Thee Ohsees, Mayyors, Psychedelic Horseshit, Times New Viking, Blank Dogs, Wavves, and the like, you can now add the Intelligence. We've seen some live footage of these guys on YouTube, and they kick up a pretty crazy racket, but on record, they're much more subdued and trippy, crafting dark brooding echoey gloom pop, with muted drumming, soft focus jagged guitar crunch, woozy weary vocals, everything surrounded by a haze of delay and tape hiss and amp buzz, positioning these guys closer to groups like Ariel Pink, Holy Shit, and the like, but then when you think you have 'em pegged, they kick out a surfy, groovy hand clappy jam, that sounds surprisingly like "Walking On The Sun" by Smashmouth (we know, we know, but it's true!) although somehow in their hands it sounds WAY cooler. Crunchy guitars, distorted vox, big booming drums, clanging and chiming chords, warm whirring organ, it's also the closest the Intelligence get to sounding like Thee Ohsees weirdly enough. The rest of the record is a much more twisted lo-fi jangly proposition, with many of the songs sounding like creepy sixties garage rock (Fuzztones?) or skiffle-ly reverbed soft pop, but even then, the songs sound fragmented and twisted, with circusy keyboards adding a definite haunting vibe, and some really odd, but oddly catchy hooks. Acoustic guitars, rubbery basslines, trashy practice space drums, and weary deadpan vocals, all woven into some cool, laid back garage jangle, occasionally exploding into a bit of pounding crunch chug, but usually slipping back into something more washed out and groovy.
Not sure what it is, but we just can't stop listening to this. Which is pretty much the best recommendation we can give...
Seeing Iron And Wine perform live in the store recently was a revelation. We've long been huge fans of Sam Beam and his gorgeous hushed country folk (and even the later, more ramped up, full band sound), but seeing him play live, with just an acoustic guitar, and hearing the SOUND he conjured all by his lonesome, was totally breathtaking, impossibly lush and expansive, while remaining totally whispery and intimate, intricate fingerpicked guitar that didn't sound intricate, and his voice, so warm and soothing and almost angelic, and of course the songs, totally lovely and captivating and emotional and moving (we spied at least one person in the crowd and the I&W instore fighting back tears!).
Around The Well is a collection of odds and ends, B-sides, unreleased tracks, radio sessions, live performances and coolest of all, a whole bunch of unlikely covers. The songs throughout tend more toward his earlier stripped down, guy-and-his-guitar sound, which as far as we're concerned is what we like the best, it does seem to be in some sort of chronological order, as by the end of the second disc, Beam is joined by a full band, and while still stripped down, the songs are kitted out with bass and piano and even drums here and there (featuring Joey Burns of Calexico).
Not sure what to say about Iron And Wine that we haven't already. Check the multitude of gushing reviews on the aQ site, listen to the sound samples, Iron And Wine are just amazing. Beam creates some of the most moving, achingly heartfelt modern country folk we've ever heard, his voice is magic, his guitar playing sublime, even here, on what amounts to a collection of songs that didn't make it on the records proper, there's not a bad one in the bunch. And the above mentioned covers, Postal Service, Flaming Lips, New Order, even Stereolab, Beam totally makes them his own, folks not familiar with the originals would certainly be forgiven for assuming they were I&W originals.
It says a lot that a singles / B-sides comp holds up to an artist's records proper, but Around The Well certainly does, lately we find ourselves digging this as much as The Creek Drank The Cradle, the debut record that started it all. Like all Iron And wine, so very recommended. The triple vinyl version includes a download coupon for mp3s of all the tracks, by the way.
Kreiselwelle is the conclusion to a superb trilogy from irr. app. (ext.) who used the words, philosophies, and eccentricities of Wilhelm Reich as the springboard into a realm of post-Surrealist, post-industrialist, post-drone arena of sound design. While a prominent European psychoanalyst, whose ideas could be seen as an occasional counterpoint to those of Freud, Reich may be best known for his parascientific research into Orgone energy, which he claimed was central and unifying force of life throughout the universe. Much of this latter research has been discredited and unfortunately shed a cloud of incredulity upon his psychoanalytic work. While Reich's claims of cloud-busting and orgone therapy offer particularly strong metaphors, M.S. Waldron - the principle architect to irr. app. (ext.) - has looked more to the psychological aspects of Reich's work. Kreiselwelle translates from the German as spiral wave or gyroscopic wave, and points to the similarities which Reich had noted in the structures of microscopic organisms, turbulent wave patterns, and spiral-arm galaxies.
Through this trilogy (which also includes Ozeanische Gefuhle and Cosmic Superimposition), Waldron mirrors Reich's early cosmology through a compositional fluidity that alludes to contemporary drone fascination, constructed through overlapping collages, occluded field recordings, sustained tones from atypical instruments, and crosshatched synthetic noises. All three of these albums were sourced from the same set of field recordings, but each detours into its own particular wandering. Kreiselwelle begins with a very slow hypnotic strum across a detuned guitar with liquid tactility and a warped distance buzz filling in the gaps. Grand sweeps of slashing drones that could originate from an echoing chainsaw deep in the woods forms an unlikely crescendo with sympathetic tones, only to collapse into the softened white noise of cars passing by. Soon after, a rhythmic tapping of agitated electronics forms a motorik rhythm against the tapestry of audio fluidity, with all of the electro-shock bursts of a tesla coil. This in turn morphs into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. For fans of any of work of Nurse With Wound (after all Mr. Waldron is in the NWW touring ensemble!), H.N.A.S., and the more esoteric recordings of Organum; and certainly of note for those of you taken by Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, Xela, Svarte Greiner, Expo '70, Emeralds, or any of the darker, weirder, more fucked-up drone ensembles of recent days. Very highly recommended!
The return of a new favorite, Russian black metal outfit Ithdabquth Qliphoth, deliver a 20 minute black okkult ritual, following up their Fyre Walk With Me full length which has been pretty much impossible to keep in stock. It seems this duo has shed a member and is now solely the work of the oddly named AL-LA-ShT-ORR, who is also responsible for the Cadaver Yelleth At Amber Tower cd reviewed elsewhere on this list (does this guy have a way with names or what!).
So how to follow up a confusional collection of far out fractured black metal weirdness and buzzing blown out black ambience? why with the even more oddly titled "Funeral Spirit Of Holy, Holy And Holy Tranceformation", a single twenty minute epic, which begins as a thick churning chunk of grinding low end, what could be super distorted martial drumming, or maybe just thick blackened static, whatever it is, it's intense and dense and in its fluctuations creates a sort of incidental rhythm. Eventually sampled vocals join the fray, as do little bursts of static, the track transformed into some industrial black creep. Soon soaring guitars drift in from the distance, offering washed out chordal buzz and keening feedback, the sound referencing groups like Wolf Eyes and Prurient especially, the pounding and buzzing soon gives way to a mysterious blown out dronescape, of stretched out high end tones, and downtuned rumble, before lurching into something more metallic about the halfway mark, a Burzumy doomic trudge, just crashing drums and WAY up in the mix voKILLS, all held together by a gloomy bass line, and some swirling background ambience, finally the guitars come crashing down, the drums explode into double kick, but instead of black and buzzy, it's moody and mournful like classic old school doom, majestic and epic before everything drops out, and suddenly it's a super minimal shimmer, all muted bass tones, deep reverberating low end, soft barely there chords, spare and abstract and hushed, the sampled voices return again, harmonics pluck out an atonal bell like melody, the rumbles seem to growl and grind, but still muffled and murky, the bells tolling ominously, the melancholy melody leading the song to its eventual end. So creepy and haunting, black and mysterious, otherworldly and magickal. All hail AL-LA-ShT-ORR and his unholy vessel Ithdabquth Qliphoth!!
As we wait for the next Jabladav full length, the ultra brutal Atta Vinter, the band have released this ambient precursor, taking it's cue from the spacier elements of Paysage D'Hiver, but also incorporating plenty of free noise drift, new age shimmer, and abstract kraut-drone.
Unlike past Jabladav ambient missives, the focus here is less on low end, on the rumble and whir and buzz, instead, it's much airier and spacier, tinkling chimes, warm swells of soft focus synths, there are some haunting things happening below, deep bellow thuds, industrial groans and creaks, but they are so far down in the mix as to just add a bit of texture and mystery. Otherwise, the sound is strangely sun dappled, glimmering, shimmering, ethereal and effervescent, and yeah, new age-y, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh, David Parsons, the whole first side is slow sprawling expanse of dreamy new age-y shimmer.
The second side slips a bit more into low end, but not rumbling or buzzing, not doom drone or dirge, instead, another warm whirring, lighter than air bit of sonic weightlessness, mesmerizingly tranquil, relaxingly otherworldly, this is the sound of drifting through space, or floating amongst the clouds, sun dappled or moonlit, the sounds on Ambience are a softly shifting soundtrack to leaving your body and exploring the vast expanses of inner, and outer space.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered....
The concept here is as straightforward as the title, though it might require some explaining for the average Westerner. Kazutoki Umezu is a Japanese jazz saxophone improviser, perhaps best known to us for his collaborations with Ruins. He also had a disc on the Knitting Factory label a long time ago. Enka is kind of the Japanese cultural equivalent of American country or blues music, a traditional song style much beloved by the quote-unquote common folk, songs about life and love from a proletarian perspective. It's not normally intended for instrumental, jazz-inflected saxophone performance, but the talented "Doctor" Umezu takes enka and makes it his own, delivering emotional, intricate, and sometimes quite energetic interpretations of 14 enka standards as solos on alto and soprano sax, also clarinet and bass-clarinet.
Minor key, melancholic, and so very melodic, this is a quite beautiful synthesis of Umezu's Japanese roots with his "foreign" love for jazz (hardly foreign in Japan, of course, which is home to a happenin' jazz scene). The unavoidably "lonely" cry of Umezu's unaccompanied reeds well evokes the mood we expect enka often conveys. We're not exactly jazz experts, so probably many better comparisons could be made, but this reminds us a bit of the work of the late great Albert Ayler, due to Ayler's penchant for the use of folk motifs in his free jazz compositions. Recommended to anyone into sax solos for sure, especially sad ones.
While this doesn't boast a special die-cut cover like that Sim+Otomo disc we highlighted last list, it's still housed in quite a handsome looking digipack as is always the case due to Doubtmusic label's tasteful packaging aesthetic. The inner sleeve includes English language liner notes all about enka to help listeners understand what Umezu is up to here, giving a bit of context that the lack of lyrics may or may not leave necessary.
Whatever you do, don't let the godawful cover art fool you. This is not some crappy new age cd you'd buy in an art gallery in New Mexico, while picking up some healing crystals. This is some seriously demented, gloriously inspired outsider free jazz abstract psychedelic dub tribal weirdness. You'd never know from the cover though. A super cheesy crayon drawing of the band beneath some pyramids... ugh. Inside there's a bad ass photo of the band, killer afros, leather jackets, cravat, one guy holding a flute, leaning against a wall, looking ready to unleash some seriously cosmic musical might. Had that picture been on the cover you'd know exactly what you were getting into. Cuz this is indeed some seriously cosmic shit.
Released originally in 1973 in a run of 300 copies, this disc by vibraphonist Khan Jamal has become a jazz head free music freak holy grail. And it's easy to see why. A heady mix of vibes, marimba, clarinet, drums, glockenspiel, guitar, bass and percussion. But it's all about the drums. These four lengthy tracks are all about rhythm. If the opener doesn't totally blow your mind, there is something seriously wrong. A completely effect drenched burst of free jazz drum splatter, careening and echoing all over the place, horns bleating, reverberating into infinity, adding more tripped out percussive swirl to the already chaotic soundfield. Eventually the drums drift off, and the track morphs into some dizzying glockenspiel marimba jam, all tinkle and shimmer, still drifting in swirls of FX and random clatter. This track alone makes this disc essential. But it's only the beginning.
The second track is like a supercharged, blown out, extended version of the opener, just with more horns and a more obvious rhythm. A groovy free jazz drum jam, beneath skronking horns, shouting and hand clapping, reverb drenched horns, a total wild and wooly free for all, before the marimba comes in, and things coalesce into a slightly less abstract funky free jazz percussion blow out. So good.
Track three is the most subtle of the bunch, but that in no way means it's any less weird or tripped out. A droney bass line, some jazzy smokey guitar, all beneath a dense swirl of percussive shakers, wrapped in tons of FX, a sort of dubbed out ambient jazz. A slow mellow groove that sort of drifts and slithers, occasionally bits of freaky effects float by, but for the most part it's all late night mellowness, a slow stroll through a moonlit alley, or hold up in the dark corner of some alien jazz bar.
The final track takes the smokey moonlit ambience of track three and gives it the King Tubby treatment, Sounds are dubbed to kingdom come, melodies become distorted and crumble into pieces before they're sent careening into the ether, drums shuffle and stutter, occasionally being propelled dubwise, the whole thing sounding like some Wes Montgomery b-side produced by Lee Perry. A supreme, super laid back dub drenched free jazz freakout of the highest order.
In fact this whole disc is some sort of cosmic dub drenched free jazz from beyond. Some seriously Sun Ra meets King Tubby in the great hereafter shit. A divine jam session transmitted through some mysterious sound system and captured on tape.
Totally and completely mindblowing.
It goes without saying that Kraftwerk is one of the most influential groups in pop music history, their influence having touched pretty much every style of music to come since. In the wake of the psychedelic explosion of the late '60s and early '70s, the group's obsessively precise music set them apart from everything else. In a sea of guitar based rock bands, the strange, machine like rhythms and pioneering use of synthesizers made clear to the world that their was nothing remotely rock n' roll about Kraftwerk's approach to music. The albums produced during their classic period (generally recognized from 1974's Autobahn to 1980's Computer World) still sound without precedent, coming across as emotionally detached, yet extremely melodic and melancholy. Of course, nobody could have just created that sound out of thin air, and before venturing into such revolutionary territory, Kraftwerk evolved from the exceptionally fertile experimental German music scene of the early 1970s. Band leaders Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider established an aesthetic that separated Kraftwerk from their contemporaries, creating a mystique that remains to this day.
This well researched documentary takes a deservedly scholarly approach to Dusseldorf's legendary Man Machine, charting their path from the pre-Kraftwerk group, Organisation, to their implosion in the mid 1980s. Despite percussionist Karl Bartos being the only member of Kraftwerk open to interview, well informed journalists and key figures from the German scene are able to shed as much light as we'll probably ever see, given the group's notorious standoffishness.
The downside to this film is its lack of actual Kraftwerk performances (check out YouTube for some truly remarkable footage), and at 180 minutes, it may be a bit much for the casual observer. Krautrock obsessives, however, will find much to love. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! AKRON / FAMILY "Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free" (Dead Oceans) cd/2lp 14.98/17.98 BASINSKI, WILLIAM "92982" (Musex International) cd 14.98 BIG BUSINESS "Mind The Drift" (Hydrahead) cd 13.98 BLACK MATH HORSEMAN "Wylit" (Tee Pee) cd 14.98 BLACK PUS "Down Down Da Drain / Bark Of The Tree" (Skulltones / Corleone) 7" 9.98 BLACKOUT BEACH "Skin Of Evil" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98 BLACULA "OST" (Rev-Ola) cd 16.98 BOXCUTTER "Arecibo Message" (Planet-Mu) cd/2lp 14.98/17.98 BROUGHTON BAND, EDGAR "Demons At The Beeb" (Hux) cd 19.98 CANDLEMASS "Death Magic Doom" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98 COHEN, LEONARD "Live Songs" (Sundazed) lp 21.00 COHEN, LEONARD "New Skin For The Old Ceremony" (Sundazed) lp 21.00 COHEN, LEONARD "Songs From A Room" (Sundazed) lp 21.00 COHEN, LEONARD "Songs Of Love And Hate" (Sundazed) lp 21.00 COLTRANE, ALICE "Huntington Ashram Monastery" (Impulse) lp 15.98 CONGREGACION "Viene..." (Disco Es Cultura) lp 29.00 CRIPPLED BLACK PHOENIX "200 Tons Of Back Luck" (Invada) cd 15.98 DISTANCE "Repercussions" (Planet Mu) 2cd 16.98 DOUBLE DAGGER "More" (Thrill Jockey) cd/lp 14.98/15.98 EARLE, STEVE "Townes" (New West) cd 16.98 EAST OF EDEN "Snafu" (Esoteric Recordings) cd 23.00 EBTEKAR, ATA AND THE IRANIAN ORCHESTRA FOR NEW MUSIC "Performing Works Of Alireza Mashayekhi" (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98 ECHTRA "A War For Wonder" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98 EDLING, LEIF "Songs Of Torment Songs Of Joy" (Candlelight) cd 14.98 EMTIDI "Saat" (Lion Productions) cd 14.98 FIELD, THE "Yesterday And Today" (Kompakt) cd/2lp+cd 15.98/19.98 FRIDGE "Early Output 1996-1998" (Temporary Residence) cd 14.98 FRODUS "Conglomerate International" (Tooth & Nail) 2lp 24.00 FURUSAWA, RYOJIRO & KAN MIKAMI "Tin" (PSF) cd 22.00 GALACTIC RAMBLE "A Peregrination Through British Rock, Pop, Folk, And Jazz Of The 1960's And 1970's" (Fox Cote Books) book 57.00 GEORGE-EDWARDS GROUP, THE "38:38" (Galactic Zoo / Drag City) lp 16.98 GREY WOLVES, THE "Judgement" (Hospital) cd 14.98 GROUP DOUEH "Treeg Salaam" (Sublime Frequencies) lp 25.00 HAACK, BRUCE "Hush Little Robot" (Q.D.K) lp 17.98 HARVEY MILK "The Singles" (Relapse) 2lp 26.00 HAZLEWOOD, LEE "Movin' On" (Ace) cd 13.98 HENRIKSEN, ARVE "Cartography" (ECM) cd 16.98 HIGH RISE "Psychedelic Speed Freaks Live 1986" (PSF) dvd 27.00 HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE "Alyo / Flipside" (Honest Jons) 10" 12.98 IRONSWORD "Overlords Of Chaos" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 12.98 J DILLA "Dillanthology 1" (Rapster) cd 14.98 KHANATE "Clean Hands Go Foul" (Hydrahead) picture disc 27.00 KOZELEK, MARK "Lost Verses" (Caldo Verde) cd 13.98 KRONOS QUARTET "Floodplain" (Nonesuch) cd 14.98 LADY SOVEREIGN "Jigsaw" (Midget Records) cd 11.98 LAZARUS "Trickster" (St. Ives) lp 14.98 LIQUORBALL W/ STEVE MACKAY "Evolutionary Squalor" (Rocketship Records) lp 15.98 MAHIKARI "s/t" (Birdman) lp 14.98 MARTYN "Great Lengths" (3024) cd 16.98 MUELLER, JON "Physical Changes" (Radium) lp+cd+dvd 25.00 NEGURA BUNGET "Maiastru Sfetnic" (Lupus Lounge) cd 15.98 NEGURA BUNGET "Sala Molksa" (Lupus Lounge) 2cd 17.98 NEW ROCK SYNDICATE "From The Dream" (Purifiva) cd-r 8.98 OFEGE "Try And Love" (Acadamy) cd/lp 15.98/19.98 OFERMOD "Tiamtu" (Ajna) cd 15.98 OGRE "Plague Of The Planet" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98 OLD MAN'S CHILD "Slaves Of The World" (Century Media) cd 15.98 PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC "1976 Live Mothership Connection" (Mojo Working / Shout Factory) dvd 14.98 RACEBANNON "IV: Acid Or Blood" (Southern) cd 14.98 REINHARDT, DJANGO "1938 (London Debut and Paris Sessions)" (Monk) lp 24.00 REINHARDT, DJANGO "From The Ultraphone Shelves" (Monk) lp 24.00 REVELATION "Release" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 16.98 SAMAEL "Above" (Nuclear Blast) cd 13.98 SHADOW, DJ "The 4-Track Era Collection (1990-1992)" (Reconstruction Productions) 3cd 32.00 SIMONE, NINA "Emergency Ward!" (Sony) lp 15.98 SIMONE, NINA "Wild Is The Wind" (Universal) lp 15.98 SIMONES, AL "Corridor Of Dreams / Enchanted Forest" (South Side) cd 24.00 SIMONETTI / MORANTE / PIGNATELLI (GOBLIN) "Tenebre OST" (Dagored) lp 23.00 SOULEYMAN, OMAR "Highway To Hassake: Folk & Pop Sounds Of Syria" (Sublime Frequencies) 2lp 30.00 SPIRAL JOY BAND "Little Sparrow" (VHF) cd 13.98 ST. VINCENT "Actor" (4AD) cd/lp 12.98/14.98 TREMBLING BELLS "Carbeth" (Honest Jons) cd/lp 17.98/17.98 TROUM "Eald-Ge-Streon" (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2cd 16.98 TYVEK "s/t" (Siltbreeze) cd/lp 13.98/14.98 V/A "Raks Raks Raks: 17 Golden Garage Psych Nuggets From The Iranian 60's Scene" (Raks Discos) lp 33.00 V/A "Rocky Mountain Low: The Colorado Musical Undergeround Of The Late 1970's" (Hyperpycnal) 2lp+cd 29.00 V/A "Roll Your Moneymaker (Early Black Rock 'N Roll)" (Trikont) cd 24.00 V/A "School Me! Vol. 1 (1968-1975)" (Stage Band Research) lp 21.00 V/A "Slimewave: Goregrind Compilation" (Relapse) cd 14.98 V/A "Take Me To The Water: Immersion Baptism In Vintage Music And Photography 1890-1950" (Dust-To-Digital) Book + CD 34.00 V/A "Thai Funk ZudRangMa" (ZRM) cd 23.00 V/A "This Is Happening Without Your Permission" (Teardrops) lp 14.98 VANDERSLICE, JOHN "Romanian Names" (Dead Oceans) cd 14.98 VENETIAN SNARES "Filth" (Planet Mu) cd/2lp 14.98/17.98 VILE, KURT "Constant Hitmaker" (Gulcher) cd/lp 11.98/14.98 WOLF "Ravenous" (Century Media) cd 12.98 YOUNGS, RICHARD "High Sun Energy" (Dull Knife) 7" 8.98 _______________________________________________________________________ Please place your order via our website. [1] We will contact you to verify your order and let you know when it will be shipped. Please note that occasionally it may take a day or two for us to reply. We are not a faceless bunch of computers replying to your order -- we are human beings! [2] If we are out of some of your items and we think we will get them within the same week, we can wait to ship. Or... If it's going to be more than a few days to complete your order, we will ship what we have and then will contact you as the remainders arrive. [ note ] Due to the everchanging nature of the independent record business, we are not responsible for listed price changes (due to supplier price changes) and often cannot update our site fast enough to reflect these changes, but we will always try to let you know of any differences.
It's taken two years, but L'Acephale have finally returned. This Northwestern black metal horde, whose debut was a massive hit around here, after it mysteriously showed up one day, has risen from the murk once again, dragging an army of deacaying flesh with them, hidden from view in the Cascadian forests, the then proceeded to conjure up all manner of sounds and spirits, capturing them only to flay them alive, spread them out beneath a black sun, guts and all, carefully and meticulously crafting the sonic abomination that is this, their second blackened gospel. Another distrubing hybrid of militaristic martial folk, and furious blasting raw blackness, four songs, long songs, the shortest 12 minutes, the longest nearly 25, the opening, a haunting bit of sampled vocals, militaristic percussion, dense drones, haunting chorales, that goes on for nearly six minutes, building the tension, sprawling out like some black military slowly moving machine like toward their next conquest, until finally, the band explode into action, a black cloud of furious buzzing riffage, blasting beats, grunting growling vocals, all wound up into a woozy dizzyingly blasting bit of lurching blackened metal. And then out of nowhere, the buzz and blast drop away, leaving some dark folk, soft strumming, crooned dramatic vocals, moaning violin, the sound definitely reminiscent of Der Blutharsch or Death In June (or perhaps Blood Axis or Waldteufel, seeing as Markus Wolff, one of the drummers, plays in both), gorgeous and languid and darkly haunting, until the rest of the band joins in, splattering the tranquility with chatoc blasts of wild drumming, and more frenetic riffing, finally dropping out, leaving just the sound of wind, and a woman, singing some sort of folks song. Really intense and mysterious. And that's just the first song!
The other three tracks are just as dense and tangled, with sampled soundtracks, to convoluted Deathspell style blackness, laced with haunting acoustic guitars, the band locking into some seriously intense bursts of mathy buzz, languid stretches of string laced dark ambient folk, simple strum, and mournful melodies, soaring epic sounding black doom, majestic and mighty, suoper chaotic black psychedelia whipped into a frenzy and wrapped around a women's chorus, like some fucked up black metal opera, deep lumbering minimal drones, sprawling out endlessly, beneath strange bits of creak and groan, and deep intoned voices, some sort of incantation, creepy bits of piano parlor music, all wrapped up in, and surrounded by, jagged shards of grim frosty blackend buzz.
A seriously twisted and magickal collection of ritualistik black art, a litany of musical blasphemies, as lovely and mysterious as they are hellish and haunting.A black covenent scrawled in flesh and blood, and rendered in pure audial evil.
Incredible packaging, 6 panel digipak, with a massive booklet, which tons of diagrams, photos, lyrics, liner notes, as well as text about the meaning behind each song.
With a name like Lazarus Blackstar, we were sort of expecting something a bit more polished, it definitely has a nu-metal or modern rock ring to it, but holy shit, nothing could be further from the truth. LB are purveyors of some of the crustiest, filthiest, heaviest sludge doom we've heard in ages. Featuring a who's who of British sludge / punk / crust / metal royalty (including at least one member of the legendary Sore Throat) these guys are broooootal. Massive, thick downtuned chug, crushing drum pound, a vocalist who sounds like he's spitting out vital organs with every anguished guttural roar, definitely hearing some Eyehategod, Grief, Bongzilla and that sort of thing, but the band bring some weirdness, like in the opening track, when after trudging through some seriously glacial black tar buzz, a guitar line soars from beneath the murk, tracing out a weirdly warm and buzzy and almost major key melody over the lurching lumber below. "Son Of Sorrow" slows it down even more, veering into some serious Bunkur / Moss / Monarch territory, before launching into an Electric Wizardly, almost stonery groove. The closer "Victim Of The Clergy", superimposes some demonic growling over a haunting hymn, the hammer falls and the song erupts in a slow negative trudge, the vocals this time punkish and yelped. There are some fucked up samples, some weird ambient percussion, like the sound of water dripping, or echoey footsteps, but the riff and the drums pound away, relentlessly, as various voices hover over the top, finally dropping out and finishing with a priest offering absolution. Heavy as fuck. Definitely need to track down the full lengths....
Yes, it's true, Jason Lytle's solo album sounds remarkably like the sprawling yet cozy aural blanket of his old band Grandaddy, but maybe slightly more direct in its approach... and that's a super good thing because many fans were terribly crestfallen when that band decided to call it a day a few years ago. So needless to say, there's much for their devotees and most other folks to love here. Yours Truly is definitely a keeper for any lover of splendid, swirling sun-dappled pop! Unmistakably a descendent of that delicious '70s West Coast soft rock sound, this is a dozen finely crafted pop songs that strike a balance between the intimate and the epic, the warm'n'fuzzy and the glisteningly orchestral, the heart-swellingly bittersweet and the breezily blithe. This is an album that'll gently draw you into its snuggly embrace! Really recommended!
It might be a bit misleading to begin this review with "Featuring members of the No Neck Blues Band..." Or maybe not, if anyone is aware of that band's connections to the metal world. Either way, there is no denying that Malkuth is pure metal - evil, overwhelmingly negative sounding black metal at that.
Hailing from New York, Malkuth whip up a frenzied hurricane of hateful unrelenting rage that continues without pause for the whole trip. Considering the band's pedigree, we were surprised at how NOT weird this turned out to be, and quite honestly, it's awesome to have a band that bypasses all the trappings of "experimental" black metal and just fucking goes for the throat, old school style. This is not to say that there aren't any surprises, and Malkuth display a winding melodic (but still super evil) sense that has the metalheads here losing their shit. Maybe it's just that these guys take some of the outside influences that supposedly differentiate many of today's black metal bands - moments of plodding post-rock spaciousness, lumbering doomscapes, etc. - and make them unapologetically black metal. The grating vocals are right out of the book of Darkthrone, while the furious, punkish riffs and straightforward but powerful drumming are surprisingly "true". Keeping with traditions, Malkuth expertly emphasize awesome, pukey sounding guitars, each one contributing perfectly complementary parts to the potent riffage, making it so you don't even give a shit that there is no bass - this IS black metal, remember?
It's always great to have a band seemingly appear out of thin air and pummel you with their world ending fury, especially when they conjure those fundamental elements which made you become obsessed with a certain type of music in the first place. Keeping an eye on the past but no doubt in a world of their own creation, Malkuth take a tried and true approach and make it completely worthwhile and refreshing... if "refreshing" is the word you want to use to describe Sefirah Gevurah. We are just going to go ahead and assume you are like us. In that respect, you may have just stumbled upon one of your new favorite albums.
