A quick look online reveals a crazy amount of negative feedback and terrible reviews for this, the newest record from Norwegian black metal supergroup 1349. Most of that negativity stems from the fact that everyone seemed to be hoping for a Hellfire Part 2. Hellfire being their last record, a frenetic non stop blast of frenzied lightning speed berserk blackened buzz. Which is strange, because we were actually hoping for something different. Hellfire was SO fast, and SO relentless, so much so that in many places it just became a furious black blur, which is fine, and we do love that record, but where does a band go from there? Certainly not faster, but somehow, faster seemed to be what most folks expected. What we can tell you is no one expected THIS. Slower. Weirder. Even a Pink Floyd cover. Could this really be 1349? It is, and it's awesome. Dark and lurching doom-ed blackness, shades of Celtic Frost for sure (whose Tom G. Warrior did some production work here). So fuck the haters, we already have a Hellfire, this is something way more interesting and original.
The record opens with some anguished screams, which give way to a long drifting dronescape, deep rumbling dark ambience, thick and layered, caustic and ominous, before finally lurching into song, but not in a black blast, more of a chugging pound, a little bit of tangled blackness, and then woozy, midtempo meander, atonal chords, off kilter rhythms, lots of start and stop, the tempo sort of sea sick, the vibe still WAY sinister, but much more abstract and avant, and way doomier, and it suits them. At first it seemed like maybe drummer Frost was wasted here, but finally, he has the opportunity to do something other than blast maniacally.
The second track is more of the same, a lumbering doomy bit of avant blackness, with gnarled riffs, simple pounding percussion, the arrangement mathy and convoluted, sounding more like Thorns or Khold or Tulus, which is a very good thing.
The record does offer up some blasting black metal, but not a whole lot, as one disgruntled reviewer put it "there's like maybe 10 minutes of ACTUAL black metal on the whole record!", which is true, the majority of the record is still 'black', but much weirder, slower, atmospheric, with a few straight up ambient tracks, long snarling dronescapes, spaced out stretches of gauzy piano wrapped in streaks of feedback, and bits of glitchy buzz, drifty chunks of guitar flecked rumble and whir, all butted up against awesomely twisted bits of black doom weirdness.
One of the best tracks sounds like a Deathspell Omega jam slowed way down, "Uncreation" is all woozy and tangled and almost gothy at points, but with cool bursts of staccato almost industrial sounding chug, and those dense black riffs, pulled apart and wrapped around the pounding rhythms.
The record closes with the haunting "At The Gate..." which begins like some doomdrone record, all downtuned guitar drone, thickening and sprawling like some noxious black cloud, it eventually splinters into a song, but all that means is the wall of guitar buzz and grinding low end is peppered with occasional drum pound, distant guitar leads, and super creepy processed vocals, before eventually blissing out and drifting off.
And let's not forget the Pink Floyd cover. It's almost unrecognizable, but for THAT bass line, super fuzzy and distorted, drifting through swirling layers of effects, the vocals whispered and doused in delay, the drums a machinelike pound, the guitars unfurling all manner of strange sounds, drones and whirs and shrieks and buzzes, no proper riffs, it's the bass and drums that drive this track, the guitars left to fill in the surrounding space with all manner of blurred black ambience. Haunting and spaced out but still plenty black.
As if that weren't enough, while we have 'em, Revelations comes housed in a slipcover, with a bonus disc, a live recording, from in Sweden in 2005, raw and lo-fi and fierce and furious, perfect for folks still hankering for some Hellfire, this should definitely satisfy, meanwhile, the rest of us can revel in 1349's strange new direction. WAY recommended.
Turkish psych fans! Here's another one for ya. We've already given the thumbs up to the wonderful Hurel Arsivi album from the Hur-el brothers. Now we've got a cd reissue of their first album, a self-titled longplayer from 196-. It's just as 'exotic' as Hurel Arsivi, but less overtly rock n' roll, being even more ethnic in flavor -- though it's very far from a purely traditional Turkish music recording! There's definitely Western '60s rock influences, but don't expect much in the way of heavy guitar fuzz-fests. Rather, you'll groove to a infectious rhythmic feast with melodious singing that's rooted in 'old school' Middle Eastern music but has a cool sixties pop-era vibe as well.
The sonorous vocals (all in Turkish) are highlighted, backed by every hipster's 'oriental' beat fantasy. 3 Hur-el are equally effective when playing uptempo dances, or much slower, moodier numbers, so the whole disc's a treat.
It's been two long years we've been waiting for this, another mysterious rhythmic communique from French blackened post krautrock alchemists Aluk Todolo. But it's not like they've been idle. Since 2007's Descension, two thirds of Aluk Todolo have recorded a record and toured the world as Gunslingers, and all of Aluk Todolo do double duty in French black metallers Diamatregon, who recently released a new full length on tUMULt called Crossroad.
But as much as we love those other two bands, and we do, there will always be something magical about the strange sonic world Aluk Todolo are able to conjure up. Especially considering they're a three piece, a power trio, drums, guitar, bass. Nothing else, no synths, no strings, just the basic rock band instruments. It's testament to the power these three wield, that they can do so much with so little. Or more accurately, so little with so little. As the music of Aluk Todolo, is disarmingly simple, subtle and minimal, but in its minimalism, lies its power. The power of rhythm, of texture, of mood, these five long pieces are so evocative, so expressive and strangely emotional. Even at its most spare and skeletal, the sound is palpable, almost a physical presence, which is surprising again considering just how stripped down Finsternis actually is.
Descension, Aluk Todolo's debut, was heavy and space-y and rhythmic, we described it as a buzz-less black metal, some of the songs were thick and caustic, others were loping and motorik, but on Finsternis, it's as if the band decided to strip away all the extraneous sounds, leaving just the core, the root, the heart of the music, and that heart beats out a simple, hypnotic rhythm.
The record is split into 4 parts, with a brief interlude, but those four parts are split into two distinct movements. The first, which comprises the first two parts, is much of what we described above, simple skeletal rhythms, surrounded by minimal guitar whir, bursts of grinding distortion, fragmented jangle, keening feedback, but it's all about the rhythm. After a brief burst of mathy chaos, the track reverts to its initial rhythm, this time the bass more prominent, fuzzy, distorted, woozy and mesmerizing, the band locked in tight, the bass and drums solid and unwavering, while the guitar sings in the background, moaning and keening and howling, giving the track an ominous otherworldly vibe, a trudge across some hostile alien landscape, a weary, washed out deathmarch.
Then the interlude, a haunting abstract percussive sprawl, simple percussive thuds set amidst a sea of warped distorted low end, bits of glitch and hiss, and grinding shards of industrial clatter, which gives way to the second, noisier movement, the drums transformed into a simple machinelike pound, snare and cymbal crashing over and over and over, the guitars whipped into a frenzy of blurred buzz and warped swirling blackened chaos, what at first sounds noisy and harsh, soon reveals itself as strangely textural, and as hypnotic as the more stripped down first movement, the guitars slip from monochromatic whir, to insectoid black metal riffing, constantly swirling around the motorik pound and pummel, the final track finds the guitars slipping into ever higher registers, blissing out, laced with feedback, smoothing out into warm smears and blurs, before a brief deconstruction, and a surprisingly tranquil last few minutes, the drums back to a woozy lope, the guitar offering up warm swells and shimmering thrum, the bass throbbing beneath, eventually stumbling to a halt in a cloud of creaking metals and static-like tape hiss. Woah.
Just like Descension, Finsternis is an intense and emotional journey through sound, a haunting and hard to describe exploration of rhythm, mood and texture, a slow shifting otherworld defined by This Heat, Geronimo, Laddio Bolocko, Can, Faust, accessible only via the three shadowy figures that make up Aluk Todolo, whose magic and mystery has been rendered in these glorious black rhythms.
Housed in a multi panel jacket with super striking original artwork by Stephen Kasner, on the always impressive Utech label (whose other two new releases, from Gog and Olivier Dumont, we'll review on the next list, although we do have both in stock if you want 'em, and we're fairly sure you do!).
No one does stoned and blissed out deep-in-the-forest jams better than Bardo Pond. For over fifteen years now this Philly outfit have been kicking out some of the most gorgeous organic spaced out rock EVER. Bardo Pond have so many different sides to their sound, from more song based tracks, to full on psychedelia, to dirgey space rock, and of course there's the sprawling tripped out and totally dreamy epic jams.
Gazing At Shilla finds the Pond in the latter mode, which is just fine as we can't get enough of that sound, when the band somehow bring earth and sky together in gloriously cataclysmic ways, allowing us to get so totally and fantastically lost in their sound. Recorded between 2003-2006, each side is a single, fantastic, sprawling twenty minute instrumental. "Eight - Thousanders" finds the band soaring and floating and gliding with such ease and fluidity. While "Kali" gets a little buzzier and darker, gritty space-y sonics transmitted from another dimension. Imagine if Roy Montgomery and Sonic Youth joined forces, or those special moments when Kawabata Makoto and his Acid Mothers Temple set their trajectory for cosmic spheres unknown. Ultimately though, it sounds like Bardo Pond (albeit only one of their many sides), a band who continue to grow, evolve and rule!
This the first of a new four part Bardo Pond related series of limited edition vinyl only releases on Important, we also just got the others in, one each by Bardo side projects Alaeshir, Alumbrados, and Moon Phantoms - the latter a collaboration with Japan's Suishu No Fune!
Natasha Khan, the artist behind Bat for Lashes, is a one-woman wonder. Though assisted by numerous musicians - including Scott Walker (!) on "The Big Sleep" - Bat for Lashes is obviously Natasha's heart and soul project. When one person is the primary songwriter/musician, there's an almost undefinable connectivity and synergy in the instrumentation that is difficult to achieve with a "real" band. The interplay between vocals and synths, how one will flow into another and then back, just as the koto-inspired drum programming kicks in, it's brilliant. There's pretty, tinny piano synths, brooding gothic synths, and sweeping orchestral synths, with just enough violin or guitar or live percussion to keep it from sounding completely electronic. Honestly, the artist that comes to mind more than anyone else while listening to "Two Suns" is Kate Bush, and while that may be a turn-off for some, it's a huge freakin' compliment as far as we're concerned. Like Kate Bush, Bat for Lashes can turn what would otherwise be semi-cheesy instrumentation into interesting, beautiful songs. Highlights include the opening song "Glass" (a little bit Bjork, a little bit of the Creatures), the second song "Sleep Alone" (a whole lot of Kate Bush), and the Scott Walker duet "The Big Sleep".
Through all the genre's he's dabbled in, all the concepts he's fucked with, all the hits he's had, for many of us the story of Beck begins and ends with One Foot In The Grave. Recorded months before Mellow Gold, which ended up being released before it and turned Beck into a poster boy for the '90s alternative-nation, One Foot In The Grave is Beck's most stripped down, raw and impacting album. And a long time favorite of most folks around here.
Recorded by Calvin Johnson at Dub Narcotic Studios and released on K, this record shared much more in common with the humble raw sounds of the underground then it did videos on MTV, glossy photos shoots and all that would follow. The whole world seemed focused on "Loser" and and all the bullshit that came with Beck's sudden ascent to superstar status, but this record was proof that beneath it all was an amazing songwriter and a fantastic singer. While a stripped down lo-fi folksy/bluesy record sounds like such an ordinary thing now, back in the early '90s there really wasn't much of this going on. This was a decade before indie-folk would blow up big, it was the same year that Elliott Smith released his first solo album, the beginnings of a new burst of indie minded souls making folk music in a truly unique way. One Foot In The Grave was one of those records that kicked our asses, a record we could totally connect to, a record that we listened to ENDLESSLY. There weren't many singer songwriters around at the time who seemed to bring real grit to their sound, or who had any sort of unique perspective. Beck then was someone who you could tell loved Sonic Youth, Beat Happening and Neil Young, and was just sort of making real heartfelt songs, songs that sounded like they were being performed around a campfire, just us and beck, making s'mores, telling ghost stories and singing songs.
Rustic and haunting, simple and strong, One Foot In The Grave still sounds so great after all these years, and still manages to be the best sounding Beck record, even considering everything that came after!!
This reissue comes with sixteen bonus tracks (thirteen of which have never been released!)
Wireless is a pristinely recorded live album from Biosphere, the Norwegian pioneer of silken ambient techno, who has released a handful of stellar albums over the past two decades now. The set is a seamless interweave of various tracks from his previous records including the jazz inflected rhythms extracted from his Dropsonde album back in 2005 to the locomotive digital breakbeats on track "Kobresia" from his 1997 Substrata album, and sampling from Cirque dotted amongst the tracks. There are three cuts which hadn't appeared previously including a interlude of soft-focus static with field recordings and the book-ending "Pneuma" tracks that feature Biosphere recontextualizing the maudlin bellows of a trombone amidst his ambient wash and drift. For better or for worse, Biosphere leaves behind all of the Apollo recordings from the early '90s; after all, this was performed for a Touch Festival and released on Touch. So why not 'play' all of the hits from his ongoing Touch years?
Upon first hearing the name "Black Hell", you can get at least a vague of idea of where this quartet lies on the sonic spectrum. Then you see the wordless album cover, a beautiful and clear image of a mighty desert rock formation haloed by a shock of pink light and surrounded by a series of optical cubes. Nice cover, for sure, but for some reason it conjures what you might expect from some experimental album or what have you. They say you can't always judge a book by its cover. And maybe that means something, somewhere... Because a few seconds into How The Rest Was Lost, everything clicks and it all makes sense: Oh, this is heavy as fuck cosmic STONER ROCK! From the deserts of Arizona, no less. So you can totally judge a book by its cover.
Black Hell deal in, like we said, heavy as fuck cosmic stoner rock, emphasizing the groove and looking way beyond the stars. There is a good deal of melody too, sort of melancholy, and totally catchy, with absolutely huge sounding production to give you a nice dose of mountainous drumming and totally rifftastic guitars that sound loud enough to fill all the open space on the album cover. The vocals are cool, and somewhat atypical of the genre, maybe higher than what you sometimes get with heavier groups, but definitely not in a bad way. It's actually quite similar to the guy in The Sword. Not quite as high as the dude in Mammatus, and not as whiney as the guy in Kyuss - the singer's voice is clean and expressive, not guttural or booming or anything. With song titles like "Lunar Procession", "Storms of Jupiter", "Lycanthropy", "Planet Maker", and "Celestial Conquest" (that was all of them, they're just pretty fucking cool), you should know whether or not this is for you. We say bring it on.
We hadn't heard anything really about this new release on DFA but when we first put it on we immediately thought "this sort of sounds like a way more dancey version of a Gavin Russom & Delia Gonzalez record." And whattayaknow? After actually checking the liner notes, we discovered that this is indeed the work of one half of that duo, Gavin Russom.
Setting out to make a much more blatantly dancefloor-centric record, this finds Russom channeling the ghosts of Acid House and for sure the influence of his time spent in late night dance clubs while living in Berlin. While some of the record is very fast paced and strobe light ready, it's the more slow burning moments that really push the album into the stratosphere. Russom has such a way with those dark and drifty tones and melodies, so hypnotic and trancelike. No doubt that Russom is drawing from not only his love of dance music culture but also his other more eclectic influences like horror-prog (Goblin) and the repetition and motorik quality of classic krautrock. But make no mistake, this is for sure a full on techno record, and a damn good one! Some of these songs are so long and stretched out, providing the perfect soundtrack to some mind altering k-hole that can't be escaped.
Arguably the definitive blaxploitation horror film (though William Girdler's Abby from1974 is definitely a close second!), the soundtrack to William Crain's Blacula (1972) finally gets the reissue treatment.
Scored by Gene Page who arranged many hits for Barry White as well as being the pop genius behind Syd and Marty Kroft's Puff N'Stuff and The Banana Splits, you know this is gonna be all kinds of cheesy awesomeness! From the disco funk of the opening title "Blacula (The Stalkwalk)" to the pensive creepiness of the finale "Wakeeli (Swahili Farewell)", this is the sordid tale of an 18th century African Prince, cursed and held captive for centuries by Dracula, seeking his revenge on 1970's Los Angeles. Page has all the classic blaxploitation musical cues down: the lilting love theme, the frenetically groovy chase theme, spine-tingling harpsichords and noirish horns. With vocal help from his brother, Billy Page (who sings the sexy/sleazy "Main Chance" which for some reason reminds us of "Dracula The Rock Opera" from Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and The Hues Corporation, years before their hit "Rock The Boat", Blacula is a highly thrilling and amusingly nutty soundtrack, but what else would you possibly expect?
Originally released as a super limited cassette (only 50 copies), this 10" (also way too limited at 300 copies) teams up our favorite demonic duo, with the awesomely monickered Dried Up Corpse for some deep dire noise drenched heaviness.
The BSBC side is about the prettiest thing they've ever done, which means it's still vile and sick and murky and ominous and fucked up, it's just that it's not so harsh, more muted and blurred and black ambient, than some of their other outings. A sprawling deeeeeeeeep doomscape, creeping black rumbles, demonic gurgles, distant foghorn like melodies, bits of muted percussion, plenty of buzzing grit and distorted feedback, but all smeared and woozy and subterranean sounding, a darkly demonic drift, that infuses what might otherwise be warm shimmering blackened ambience, with some seriously abject miserablism and gloom.
Dried Up Corpse counter BSBC's sensitive side with a caustic chunk of chaotic crunch. Beginning with some deep whirring rumbles, the track soon splinters into full on blunted white noise, skittery and fractured and totally blown out, all the while underpinned by that initial rumbling whir, eventually the noise peels back leaving a long stretch of deep softened buzz to play us out.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!! Gorgeous super thick hand screened sleeves, with nice two sided printed inserts.
Oh shit! These are some intensely sweaty and dancey jammers that are sure to be the soundtrack of any truly down and dirty party this summer, and probably for a long time to come. Hailing from Portugal, Buraka Som Sistema have become international ambassadors for the Kuduro scene, bringing this unique sound to people throughout the world. It makes perfect sense that M.I.A. lends her voice to the record's standout track, as the sounds on Black Diamond make a great companion to her latest record Kala. Incorporating elements of hip-hop, Baile funk and electronica, Black Diamond is all about being uptempo and making bodies sweat, move and shake and groove. This is one of those records that should appeal to all sots of music lovers, from fans of Konono No.1 seeking that same sort of intense all out energy to fans of Missy Elliott who want something pulsating and creative to move them on the dance floor. So damn good!
They certainly aren't, y'know, lowering expectations with a title like that (unless you were looking for twee indie pop or something else non-metallic). And if anyone could call a record Death Magic Doom it's Candlemass bassist/mastermind Leif Edling and his not-so-merry band of spooky Swedes (and one Texan). Last list we highlighted The Devil You Know, the magnificent reunion album of Ronnie James Dio and Black Sabbath under the Heaven & Hell name, and mentioned in our review that we didn't think any other attempts at epic doom this year could compete. However, a decent runner up has to be this latest slab of heaviosity from Swedish doom veterans Candlemass! They offer up their tenth studio album, also their second full-length with vocalist Robert Lowe (of Texas doomsters Solitude Aeturnus), who has already proved himself to be the best (and maybe only) choice to replace Candlemass's iconic '80s singer Messiah Marcolin at the mic. If you liked Lowe's 2007 Candlemass debut King Of The Grey Islands, you'll like this one too!
More classic soaring vocals, chugging guitars, Sabbathy riffs, depressive atmosphere, frantic soloing... this is heavy, heavy (but melodic) metal! The album starts off fairly uptempo with the storming "If I Ever Die"... but if that's too fast for you, you'll be relieved to be crushed by the lumbering next track, "Hammer Of Doom" in all its bell-tolling glory. It's as if the first track saw the second one coming and just wanted to hurry up and get the heck out of the way. Other faves here include "The Bleeding Baroness" (with a catchy refrain that's a bit bizarre to have stuck in your head), and "House Of 1000 Voices" (the album's longest track at 7:50, and thus most epic epic). We should also mention "Demon Of The Deep" which is a song about a sea monster. Somehow Lowe's dramatic, fist-clenched vocals combine with the subject matter to transcend from the ridiculous to, if not the sublime, at least the quite doomfully entertaining!
In some ways, this review is superfluous. I mean, what doomfan isn't gonna want a record called Death Magic Doom by freakin' Candlemass in their collection??
NB. this version includes "Lucifer Rising" as a bonus track.
The two members of NY black metal duo Castevet may have a pedigree heavy in grind and death metal, but their gnarled angular take on black metal owes way more to post rock and noise rock, these two songs sounding like two parts of the same song, that song an alternately pounding, loping chunk of Voivodian chug and primitive old school blast.
Angular and off kilter, tangled blackened riffs over relentless muscled pound, all wrapped around tortured anguished howls, the rhythm lurches and stutters, ferocious and heavy, but also weirdly moody and atmospheric, almost more like noise rock with a hint of blackness, flurries of double kick, some classic BM guitar buzz, eventually breaking down into some pounding old school black metal. The second side sounds like a part two, but the second part is much more melodic, with some woozy, spidery minor key guitar melodies and short stretches of muted post rockiness, even some Black Flaggy guitars here and there, but this side too gets more black as it goes, slipping into serious Darkthrone territory, before a dense mathy breakdown/outro that revisits that opening minor key melody.
Really awesome stuff. Can't wait for a full length. Cool packaging too, milky clear vinyl, no label, in a sleeve with a very spare insert, visible through the record, and one weird thing, the center hole is slightly too big, so be careful placing the record on the turntable, it's easy to get it off center, which makes the whole record sound even woozier than normal, which is actually kind of cool.
Along with the new Cave full length, which is one of this week's Records Of The Week, comes this super limited 7", which features maybe our favorite jam from Psychic Psummer, but more importantly, an exclusive and unreleased track on the flipside! And it's a doozy. Hard to figure out why the heck they left it off the record. Could be that it's a bit darker and heavier, which is always a good thing in our book.
Fuzzy, spaced out, murky, krautrocky, lysergic, druggy, lots of trippy effects laden psych guitar, a propulsive garagey groove, pounding metronomic drumming, WAY more Hawkwind and Monster Magnet and especially Loop than the full length proper. Think Heads and White Hills and other purveyors of hypno space rock, and this track will definitely push those very same buttons. Bad ass artwork too.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Not one but TWO repeat Record Of The Week honorees, elsewhere, the latest from French alchemical post rockers Aluk Todolo, and this, the latest from Cave, whose recent instore performance totally blew us away. It says a lot about a band that can put together a totally improvised set, with limited gear and various members changing up instruments, and still sound better and tighter and catchier and more rocking than most bands playing their own songs on their proper gear NOT in a record store.
Born from the space drone psych outfit Warhammer 48K, these guys left Missouri, ended up in Chicago, added a whole bunch of new members and became Cave, a kick ass spaced out kraut-drone hypno rock collective, equal parts Circle, Can, Lightning Bolt, Wooden Shjips, and Hawkwind, but so much more. Their first record, Hunt Like Devil, was a glorious cacophony of circular riffage, frenetic drumming, woozy basslines, wild synths, and killer hooks, groovy, hypnotic, space-y, and while this record is more of the same, it's somehow transcends, taking everything we loved about the first record, and making it, well, MORE. We'd have probably loved it even if it was Hunt Like Devil part 2, but thankfully, Psychic Summer finds the band exploring some new territory, but dragging that old sound with them.
The opener begins with just a stripped down guitar, and some subtly noodly synth, before exploding in a sun dappled burst of super distorted, in-the-red psychedelia, before shifting again into a muted sunshiney krautrock groove, laced with some cool synths, and electronic filigree. The song locks into the groove and slowly builds to a triumphant climax, eventually slowing down to a sort of chiming jangly groove, which leads right into "Made In Malaysia" which might be the jam of the disc. Stuttering synths, stop start dynamics, chugging guitars, which gives way to a wild woozy twisted riffy bridge, with shouted vocals, and warble bended guitar notes, and an irresistable staccato groove, first just the synth, but then the drums, motorik and relentless, live it's not hard to imagine this track being stretched into a whole set. A single song, so hooky and loopy and mesmerizing. But it's Cave, so two seconds later, they're locked into a different kind of groove, a tribal rhythm, warm organ chords, underneath blooping effects, buried vocals, it's almost danceable, definitely groovy, like they just took one measure from some classic old school dance track and looped it into some space aged kraut disco space jam.
The other three tracks are just as mesmerizing, the muted space-y throb of "High, I Am", wrapped in a slithery bit of warped synthage, to the dense drum heavy "Requiem For John Sex", with some grinding mathy guitar and a bit of indie jangle all wound up in the tracks summery drift, before a wild super sped up free for all psych out finish, and "Machines And Muscles", which was originally released on the now out of print Butthash single, this seems to be a slightly different version, and is definitely another of the record's highlights, total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer, a Circle-like guitar groove, shuffling drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings, warm organ whir and smears of soft effects in the background, that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get a bit more tripped out, a little distorted, more effects, the synths skitter and stutter, and then finally, the song fades out in a blinding kaleidoscopic burst of warm sunshine-y synth.
And that's really the magic of Cave, we're all so partial to the dark and doomy, the buzzy and droney, that it's so exciting for a record to sound so heavy and tripped out and hypnotic, but at the same time so sunshiney, so Summery, so FUN. These guys totally rule, this record is fantastic, and if you can believe it, live they might be even better.
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.
The debut from Clues, cousins to Montreal's The Arcade Fire and Unicorns, might best be described as an amalgamation of those two bands, with a definite leaning towards the strange pop sensibilities of Unicorns. The record opens with an eclectic track that starts slow and noisy, with jangly guitars and Alden Penner's breathy and nasal (yet never annoying) Wayne Coyne-esque voice, building into an unexpected freak-out ending that lasts less than a minute. There's a lot of great stops and starts on this record. For example on the second track "Remember Severed Head", there's a few times when the drums all of a sudden disappear, replaced by a bit of noisy screeching and a deft guitar line, only to come back a few seconds later backed by a lot of distortion and Penner's vocals. On "Cave Mouth", a xylophone line in the left channel compliments the guitar and synth leads, flushing out the more traditional rock instrumentation of the rest of the record. There's a few anthem-like Arcade Fire elements - a bit of a sing-along chorus on the penultimate track "Ledmonton" and some horns here and there spice up the songwriting nicely. The slower/softer moments on the record, "In the Dream" and "Let's Get Strong" aren't quite as powerful as the more rocking tracks, though the shoegazey second half of "You Have My Eyes Now" blows us away every time the guitars punch in. A must have for fans of strange pop music.
On one end of the Cold Cave spectrum, there is the blistering terror of low-fi electronics with sparse hints of new wave flecked through a sound better suited to Wolf Eyes; and on the other, Cold Cave can effortlessly toss out a darkly pop-eyed, minimal wave gem that wouldn't out of place next to Depeche Mode or Gary Numan. So far, Cold Cave (aka Wes Eisold) has not done us wrong no matter what he ends up producing. The hyper limited Etsel And Ruby 12" is of the latter, poppier sensibility, in the footsteps of the terminally catchy single The Trees Grew Emotions And Died from 2008. The production values here are a little higher than the gutter-punk scratchiness found on the Cremations collection; and while punchier drum machines and upfront vocals give Cold Cave a gloss with a broader appeal, we seriously hope that he doesn't leave the nastier sound behind.
The A side "Love Comes Close" is a jangly, jaunty number that could very well be a lost track from The Cure's The Head On The Door, with Eisold's croon almost sounding like Stephin Merritt. The first of two B sides finds Eisold handing over the vocal duties to an unknown female singer, whose detached, cold vocals fit perfectly with the Cure / Joy Division basslines laced around the darkened electronics. The cut is like the best Fad Gadget song you've never heard before, with an insistent electroid melody that builds and builds throughout the track. Great stuff. Limited to 300 copies!!! Available only from the label and right here at aQ!
Reissued once more (like many ESP-Disks, constantly going out of and then thankfully back into print), and we are glad to have it back in our racks for sure, since this album is an all-time AQ fave and it's been gone too long. This time around, it's in a digpack with the original black & white version of the cover art, and it's been given its original title of Cave Rock instead of Orgasm. But a freaked out masterpiece by any other name...
Here's the review we first wrote about this when a previous reissued entered our collective Aquarius consciousness some years ago:
Yet another gem we somehow managed to miss, thankfully newly reissued to give us a second chance. (Well, not all of us missed it. Allan had the previously reissued version at one point, and got rid of it somehow. He just wasn't ready for it back then. Now he owns it again!) And a few of our customers have responded with the customary "Oh that record! I love that record. I've had that record for years." So for those of you, like us, managed to somehow miss it, we present to you Cromagnon.
An anomaly, even on the always far out ESP label, Cromagnon was the result of two top 40 songwriters (accustomed to producing bubblegum pop) who seemed to have completely lost their minds. I mean they must have, to produce something as wacked as this record. Austin Grasmere, Brian Elliot, and their mysterious 'Connecticut Tribe' spewed forth 50 minutes of primitive dada-ist folk psych.
Chanting, tribal percussion, short wave radio, maniacal, almost black metal vocals, hysterical laughter, bagpipes all coalesce into something ridiculous and amazing.
Track one "Caledonia" sounds like a strange hybrid of Comus and In Extremo, with bagpipes, jaw harp, crickets, raspy chants and teutonic percussion ("Caledonia" was even covered later by industrialists Test Department, and more recently by Japan's Ghost!). Later on in the record is an alternate version of "Caledonia" from the b-side of the original lp, slowed down to a third of the speed, producing an impenetratable swampy murk. "Ritual Feast of The Libido" features a groaning and moaning vocal over whirring and rumbling machinery. Then comes "Fantasy", where a faux Beach Boys intro almost convinces us that Grasmere and Elliot have returned to their bubblegum roots, that is until it devolves into a messy seven minutes of garbled laughter and clattering percussion. Today this all still seems pretty damn crazy, so back in 1968 when it was recorded it must have really freaked people out, even despite the pervasive drug culture of the time...
So for those of you who aren't already veterans of the Cromagnon experience, and definitely for those of you who were blown away by the Comus, and for everyone who is in need of a new favorite fucked record, this is it. Now, and always, a unanimous AQ fave.
Deutsch Amerikansiche Freundschaft (German American Friendship) or better known as D.A.F. were one of those key early electronic groups that provided the missing link between Cold Wave Minimalism and German Industrial Techno. They, themselves called it EBM or Electronic Body Music. Formed in 1977, out of weirdo art music outfit, Der Plan, D.A.F. started out as a five piece group pioneering the new wave of German Industrial music two years before Einsturzende Neubauten. But after their first two albums, the group quickly slimmed themselves down into the efficient two man sequencer team of Robert Gorl and Gabi Delgado. Playing up themes of Nazi fetishization and hardcore homosexual sex, with the spare and sometimes brutal production of krautrock pioneer, Conny Plank, D.A.F.'s songs were massive underground club hits in the early eighties. If anyone remembers John Dwyer's shortlived "fauxmosexual" industrial-electro joke band, Zeigenbock Kopf, he pretty much ripped D.A.F. off wholesale, if somewhat poorly! This "best of" covers the three records D.A.F. made for Virgin between 1980-1982, Alles Ist Gut, Gold Und Liebe, and Fur Immer, altogether ignoring their Industrial beginnings (sadly), as well as their later 2006 incarnation (thankfully). But it is this fertile period that D.A.F. became famous for, and it's probably a more consistent listen as a whole than if all periods of the group were represented. Fans of groups like Cold Cave, Cut Copy or any of the coldwave / post-punk comps from Belgium, France and Germany, should definitely check this out!
If two albums released at the same time (Microcastle/Weird Era Continued) wasn't enough Deerhunter for you, then here are five more hazy gliding pop gems for your pleasure! More rocking with less sheen, Bradford Cox and the boys seem to be channeling classic-era Breeders with sharp songwriting and satisfyingly shimmering pop hooks. Perfect Summer Listening!
Not to be confused with the Dimmer that was born from NZ's Straightjacket Fits, this Dimmer brings together two stalwarts of the California experimental community: Thomas Dimuzio and Joseph Hammer. The former skirts the boundaries between electro-acoustic technologies and improvisational abstraction, having collaborated with the likes of Chris Cutler, Matmos, Wobbly, Scott Arford, Illusion Of Safety and countless others. Mr. Hammer is one of the prominent members of the willfully oblique Los Angeles Free Music Society, having participated in such projects as Solid Eye, Points Of Friction, and Steaming Coils. Hammer's instrument of choice is the reel-to-reel tape deck, through which he can muster an uncanny palette of sound, noise, and drone. The two have worked together off and on for a good part of the last decade, with a handful of performances throughout California and a couple of releases - Remissions being their second and collecting some of the best moments from those live gigs.
"Sky Wire" builds insectoid buzzes and creepily harmonic drones out of the interplay between Hammer's rough-hewn tape manipulation and Dimuzio's deftly rendered swells, somewhere between Machinefabriek and Christoph Heemann. "Sun Dog" grafts blackened noise onto an electrocutioner's hum, with Hammer's start 'n' stop tapes popping into view like a detached Burroughs cut-up. Both "Gases That Emit Light" and "Giant Eagle" continue along these same strategies with eerie clouds of drones that fold and collapse between harmonic resonance and dissonance with unsettled bursts of soft focus noise. This is really exceptional stuff, and certainly some of the best that we've encountered from either artists individually.
It's been a few years since we'd heard from MF Doom, but he's finally back and has apparently dropped the MF part of his moniker. Thankfully, he still sounds as charged and bumpin' as ever. Featuring production by Madlib and even some by the late great J Dilla this should please fans of sample heavy beat driven hip-hop. No doubt, Doom has seriously great taste as the sample list on this record reads like an AQ favorites collection (ESG, Raymond Scott, Charles Bukowski, Giorgio Moroder). Born Like This won't let down fans of past Doom joints and once again, Doom continues to be a musical force to be reckoned with!
From deep within the Cascadian forests comes this beautiful piece of heavily atmospheric blackened bliss, the solo project of Echtra from black metal duo Fauna, whose awesome Rain album/song we reviewed a few lists back. As with Rain, listening to A War For Wonder requires patience and time, with two highly meditative tracks stretching out to 23 minutes each. Unlike Fauna, however, Echtra's solo work is a much more subdued affair, but no less gorgeous or awesome. It never quite ventures into full on black metal territory, and even when the relentless double bass drums and Darkthrone style blast beats enter the mix the sounds are still much more gentle, with highly melodic acoustic guitars and plenty of 4AD soft squall going on in the background. Sure, there are plenty of bands that incorporate post rock grandeur into their blackened attack, but this is something removed from furious metal almost entirely. It's actually quite strange, and totally mesmerizing, to hear such beautiful, dreamy melodies played out over the relentless, nonstop drumming. Strange as it may sound, the results are actually life affirming, or at least affirmative of something worthwhile... probably not human life, you know, this is still no doubt black as fuck in its peculiar way. Just looking at the four quotes in the album's gatefold, one is able to detect Echtra's take on mysticism, where man's insignificance is laid bare within the glory of the unknown. Such a realization of truth is comforting in itself, and the sounds within A War For Wonder perfectly mirror this knowledge.
Jeremy Enigk has made some pretty remarkable records over the years, with his band Sunny Day Real Estate he pretty much created the EMO blueprint, one that would be copied by so many bands over the years, none of which could ever hope to evvoke the true emotion and melodicism of Enigk's songs. One of his best, and sadly most overlooked records was his first solo album, Return Of The Frog Queen, which found him once again drawing up blueprints, this time for orchestral and shimmering, immaculate songcraft realized into a sound that would later make folks like Arcade Fire, Rufus Wainwright, and The Decemberists household names. We've always had a HUGE soft spot for Enigk's voice and songs, but we have to admit his last few outings have left us a bit underwhelmed. Luckily, OK Bear finds him sounding better than ever. Not quite as precious or ambitious as that first breathtaking solo outing and not as full throttle and intense as Sunny Day Real Estate at their prime (though a few of these tracks definitely go there!), but for sure finding a really nice happy medium between those two worlds.
The Field's 2007 album From Here We Go Sublime caught many people by surprise, and we were happy to find ourselves included in that crowd of Field supporters. This was a minimal techno record playing the part of a pop album, through sleights of hand that extracted the sappiest moments of the '80s without appearing the part of the ironist. In pixel-painted blurs of entrancing melodies and soothing ambient warmth, The Field offered nostalgia without having a damn Lionel Richie song stuck in your head. Yup, one of the more memorable samples from From Here We Go Sublime was a wistful guitar lead from Richie's "Hello." In a lot of ways, The Field reached a pinnacle for Kompakt's Pop Ambient strategies, easily surpassing perhaps the album that started it all: Gas' Pop.
Jump two years down the line and several trips around the world, The Field returns with a second album that shouldn't disappoint those who were held rapt by the debut. Yesterday and Today has much of the restrained crescendos of velvety hypnosis grafted onto the steel girds of German engineered techno. Yes, we do know that The Field's Axel Willner is from Sweden, but the heart and soul of the motorik pulse is firmly rooted in Germany. Neu!, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Basic Channel, and of course, Kompakt are the obvious references in the formal structures of The Field, with his source material being those misty-eyed remembrances of music's past. If there are specific samples to be recognized in Yesterday and Today, they are not overt and obvious; but the sentiment is still the same. Nice.
The vinyl version includes a cd of the album as well!
We bet Japan's Christine 23 Onna digs this album! Only in the '60s... a far out, indulgent artifact of the era, an album of instrumental oh-so-psychedelic groovers with titles like "Chewing Gum Delirium" and "Cosmos Rhythms", full of wild organ jamming, funky chicken scratch guitar, and a whole lotta primitive analog synth bubbling burbling bleeping, culminating in the 14:52 tour de force of "F.P.E.T. No.1". It's a lot like the music from one of those cool "Instro-hipsters" comps, overrun with an absurd excess of electronic experimentation, that approach Hawkwindy levels of whooshing and swooshing, swirling FX. Originally released in 1969, it was a one-off project, "a new exciting experience" as it says on the cover, that today while not so new is still quite an experience.
Imagine freaked out electronics amidst go-go dancing grooves that would have both Pierre Henry and Austin Powers saying yeah baby! Or if Comets On Fire were a funky '60s soul group... which is what the core of this band is, Portuguese brothers Jess and James, who were joined by a free jazz drummer from NYC, a Latin percussionist, and most crucially a Moog madman from Belgium, the fellow responsible for all the crazy "free pop" electronics, one Arsene Souffriau. Yes, if you like Christine 23 Onna, Staff Carpenborg, or Les Maledictus Sound, check this out!
Fridge have been an all time aQ fave for more than a decade now, every record a joy to behold, their sound constantly evolving, but still so unique and all their own. But as much as we love pretty much everything we've heard, for some of us, the old stuff will always hold a special place in our hearts. The record Eph remains one of our favorites, an endlessly classic collection of post rocky electronica, but before Eph, the band released a clutch of killer singles and eps, which were even more raw and innovative and home brewed than Eph. This disc collects all those tracks, a glorious assemblage of infectious jams, of wild experiments, of dark brooding grooves, from fuzzy brooding wah wah flecked post rock jangle, to Funky Tortoise-y grooviness, from crunchy super distorted math rock rife with odd samples, to smoldering Stereolab-like modern krautrock, from abstract folky shimmer, to warbly lo-fi electro, from almost-jungle to blissed out late night smoke-y jazziness, it's all warm and smooth and raw and groovy and spacey and super catchy, and be sure to check your iTunes, the last handful of strange sonic fragments spell out the band name phonetically. Cool!
Now this is the one we've been waiting for!! The final installment in the 5 part Genghis Tron remix 12" series. For some reason we only ever reviewed the Temporary Residence 12" (each was on a different label), but there were other volumes on Lovepump United, Relapse and Anticon. We're predicting (hoping for) an eventual cd compilation release, but for now, this is the GT remix record not to miss. Nadja. Tim Hecker. Not sure who Dudes You Can Trust are, but they had us at Nadja and Tim Hecker.
Hecker's mix obliterates the original, in fact, if we didn't already know it was a remix, we probably would assume it was a proper new TH track. All warm and washed out and glistening and gauzy and sun dappled and woozy and blissy and dreamy, organic and shimmery, it's the sound that everyone shoots for, but only Tim Hecker seems to have perfected. The fact that there's a Genghis Tron track in there somewhere only makes it even cooler.
Dudes You Can Trust, which we just learned is actually one of the Genghis Tron guys, most definitely have a Nadja / Jesu vibe happening, the original track is stripped down and then bathed in dense shimmer, until most of the extraneous sounds peel back, leaving just a super minimal rumbly buzz, over a looped drum fill, before slipping into a brief stretch of lo-fi Ariel Pink like FM radio drift, and then finally a bit of glitchy minimal electro (!). Weird, but cool.
Nadja's remix takes up the whole of side 2, the first half of which is all minimal and drifty, with muted electronic bloops and bleeps, subtle effects, all very abstract and ambient, barring some barely there glitchy skitter.
Eventually, bits of the original jam burst through, a pounding howling metallic crunch, that sounds like it could have been looped or processed, but there's no time to figure it out for sure, as it quickly blisses out again into a haunting swirling whoosh of blissed out almost new wave shimmer, draped delicately over the remnants of the original track. So cool.
Needless to say, essential. LIMITED as all of the volumes are, this one is pressed on wicked red and green splatter vinyl!
We're always amazed that so much awesome and little known music from the sixties and seventies continues to be resurrected, and remain very worthy of its cult status. Case in point, this anachronistic synth-heavy psych gem from 1977 by the George-Edwards Group. While punk, disco, glam, bland FM radio, and heavy metal ruled the musical zeitgeist of the era, two multi-instrumentalist friends with a love of synthesizers, home-taping and melancholic spacey folk-pop made a mini-masterpiece in their Detroit, Michigan basement. Briefly mentioned in the Acid Archives book, it doesn't feel so much a late hippie-psych artifact, as it does a sublime and moody soft-rock epic that would have been huge on '70s AM radio in a parallel universe of our fantasies. Where instead of Bread, Chicago, and Seals & Croft, being played ad nauseum, music by Dreamies, Shuggie Otis, Fresh Maggots, Roger Rodier, Emmanuelle Parrenin, Collie Ryan, Biff Rose, Big Star, Scott Walker, Warlus, and of course, the George-Edwards Group would have scored our parallel universe childhood. Yet even that said though, 38:38 is much stranger than we can describe. Often the tracks with their multilayered Arp, Moog, and Mellotron drones and harmonies often sung in falsetto, sound like the less musically-damaged touchstones of what Ariel Pink recorded on his Doldrums album. And though the synthesizers are most prevalent, especially in sci-fi themed instrumental tracks like "Solar Flare" and "Magnetic Variation", other instrumentation like xylophones, autoharps, bells, piano and acoustic guitar play a big part in the compositions. One of our favorite tracks is "Floating Away", a druggy ballad with just acoustic guitar and what is purported to be recordings of ocean sounds, but sound like huge sheets of metal crashing in the background. Even the longest track, the instrumental "Hypertrain" is a kraut-y fuzzed electric guitar raga over drums that reminds a bit of Circle and Cave, while the second to the last track called "Some Fun" features maniacal laughter over a repetitive groove that adds an element of bad trip creepiness to the proceedings. One of the headiest records from the seventies we've heard in a while; those into druggy cyber-space folk-pop weirdness will be very satisfied with this. Solid!
Vinyl only, not sure if there's plans for a cd reissue too.
What is it about France? For years now, this unsuspecting nation has been churning out some of the most vile, merciless, and best black metal on the planet. Groups like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord have set a new standard that expertly blends bizarre, progressive experimentation with a blackened attack that only a fool would criticize for not being "true". The results are undeniable, and it should be clear that among those redefining black metal for a new age, the French are at the top of the heap. For some reason, Glorior Belli has yet to receive the attention bestowed on many of their countrymen, but, Satan willing, things will definitely change with the arrival of Meet Us At The Southern Sign, the band's third album.
Glorior Belli may not be the weirdest of the bunch, but FUCK do these guys know how to conjure up the perfect blend of crushing brutality with a well defined sense of off kilter, seasick melodies and an overall approach that simply rocks. With that said, this album does come across as something different, but not in a "listen to my oscillator" kind of way. Maybe the weirdness here is relative, since we're talking about a band that is relentlessly metal at the heart of it all, but Glorior Belli's more lumbering numbers, such as opener "Once In A Blood Red Moon" almost come across as what present day Earth might sound like if they gave it all up to the dark side. It's hard to come out and say this, surely many will disagree, but some of this *almost* moves with the flow of the blues. It's doomy. It's dirgey. It sounds like the black metal version of waking up in your trailer with a horrible hangover after a night of intense drinking at the local shithole. Mainman Infestvvs's guttural croak is surprisingly similar to the legendary bark of John Brannon, most famous for his work with hardcore gods Negative Approach, but ALSO revered as the crooner for bluesy post-punk crew the Laughing Hyenas. Of course, the artwork could also confirm this bluesy presence, as could the song titles themselves. And then, holy shit, without even looking beforehand, we notice a peculiar song title... "In Every Grief Stricken Blues", another behemoth of mid-tempo, down and out goodness. Fuck, first Diamatragon's Crossroad, now this. Maybe we're in the early stages of a new sub-genre?
With all that said, it is certainly impossible to ignore how insanely, overwhelmingly METAL this is. Fear not, for there are plenty of lightspeed blast beats, grinding dual guitars, and heavy as fuck winding bass grooves, which add a weird mathy element to the maelstrom. All contribute equally to the potent, concentrated assault of Glorior Belli, making this one of the best metal albums of the year. So unbelievably, incomprehensibly awesome, we're stilll trying to wrap our heads around it all...
Some of us still remember seeing Green Day play at Gilman St. or small $5 all-ages shows in our hometowns (Phoenix, San Diego, etc.) and what a crazy evolution: from bratty, catchy pop-punk band on Lookout! to one of the most famous rock 'n' roll bands on the planet. We have to say mainstream rock could do a lot worse then Green Day, whose sound has adapted to fit the large arenas they now find themselves rocking all across the globe. For their latest you can tell they looked to the big guns of arena rock for inspiration, plenty of huge Who and Queen moments busting out on 21st Century Breakdown as well as a healthy dose of The Clash (of course). It does go on a bit longer then we think it needs to but we guess that's what all that arena rock excess is all about, right? There are definitely songs here that are already somehow stuck in our heads, and hell, for polished commercial radio rock Green Day still stand far above the rest.
Looks like this is gonna be the album that establishes Grizzly Bear and brings them to the next level, and for good reason, as it's their most ambitious and assured outing yet. Filled with such lush deep harmonies, these are songs that create such lovely states of brooding, dramatic pop both smart and emotional. Imagine sprinkling Van Dyke Parks arrangements on top of the songs Elliott Smith was creating near the end of his life as well as a healthy dose of inspiration from Nina Simone and you start to get an idea for the kind of intense orchestral baroque pop Grizzly Bear have created with Veckatimest. They enlisted Nico Muhly to create arrangements on a few of the tracks, but even the songs without Muhly's touch are are still impossibly lush and rich sounding. Veckatimest almost makes us want it to be gray and wet outside forever as these are the kind of sounds to keep you warm in the darkest and coldest of times. So nice! And even Andee, who was never that keen on Grizzly Bear, was immediately smitten by the track "Two Weeks". If that track doesn't convince you, then maybe you just don't like pop music...
Finally available on cd!
It doesn't really seem possible that the music of Grouper could get any more beautiful, any more majestic and epic, or any more mysterious and dreamlike. No, but what it can do is change, and grow, expand, and subtly alter its shape and timbre, it's coloring and shading, which is what it has been doing, on every single outing, but never so much as on Cover The Windows And Walls. The core of Grouper's sound remains unchanged, dense bleary eyed fields of druggy reverb, thick swirls of blurred vocals, smeared into indistinct melodies, all abstract and shimmery, soft focus and billowy, the musical version of those soft fuzzy grey clouds that fill the sky at twilight. It's still an impossible blend of Arvo Part, Morton Feldman and Skullflower, but the new record sounds a little bit more, well, folky maybe, or perhaps slightly less tripped out. A lot of it has to do with the vocals, which have attained an until now unheard of clarity. Which in no way means you can actually hear the vocals, they are still another gauzy layer in Grouper's blown out soundscape, but, sometimes, they -are- a bit clearer, you can actually pick out words here and there, sometimes even whole lines. Before, if we hadn't been told, we wouldn't necessarily have even known that the main element of Grouper's sound was in fact vocals. They were that indistinct and that drenched in FX. But here, it actually sounds like a singer, singing songs, but just barely, it's almost like listening to some super lonesome stripped down folk, recorded onto a wax cylinder, and then broadcast through a huge speaker mounted at the very bottom of an elaborate cave system, the songs careening back and forth and picking up more and more reverb and echo with every bounce, until they become this blissed out beautiful blur. Thick buzzing single guitar notes spread out into wavery fields of murky muted twang, which wrap themselves serpent like around the equally disembodied vocals. Imagine a field recording of ghosts performing ancient folk songs, a whispery thrum, so barely audible, that it's nearly impossible to capture, but once it is, and the sound is turned up enough to be audible to the human ear, it becomes this gorgeously distorted smear of sound.
What else can we say about Liz Harris and her Grouper project? We've hardly heard anything this beautiful and mysterious ever. EVER!
Absolutely and emphatically recommended.
Seems like these days, the devastating improv trio Heavy Winged is abandoning their more metal roots, and heading into a more harsh psych realm, not unlike Japanese noise-rockers Mainliner. And here they team up with West-coast, one woman band Inca Ore for two sides of free-psych meltdown. So side A is thick and crushing, mostly weighed down by Heavy Winged's relentless fury. Little glimpses of keyboard haze and distant vocals trail in and out, just in case you forgot Inca Ore was floating somewhere in the sea of chaos. Side B is an actual live recording of the two outfits playing together at the late North Six in Brooklyn. Here's were Inca Ore's vocals are very prominent in a lead singer type of way, sounding like Damo Suzuki possessed by a muppet demon. A blistering, somehow awesome document of what these two psych powerhouses can do as a team, not to be missed by fans of crushing psych bliss or the Not Not Fun label. Dig it, now!
Less a split, than a sort of adjustable collaboration, Monolith: Earth is the first in a series of single sided lps, where two bands are paired together, and each contributes a single mono track, one track stereo left, the other stereo right, so depending on how the listener dials it in, he or she can listen to just one of the bands' tracks, or some easily adjusted blend of the two. Thankfully, the lp comes with a cd featuring stereo version of both the tracks, as well as an extra track or two.
For the first volume, the to bands are pretty stellar choices, dreamdrone duo Windy & Carl, and distorto psych rock trio Heavy Winged. For this experiment to really work, without turning into a sonic clusterfuck, one or both of the bands has to be the ambient half, and Windy & Carl are more than happy to take on that role, their track being a slow burning shimmer, all processed and effected guitars, smeared and blurred into long smeary streaks, layered and woven into subtle soft melodies and warm gauzy expanses, there's some buzz buried way down in the mix, but for the most part it's all glorious drone and drift.
Heavy Winged take on the other role, which is not that different from their usual sound, super blown out distorted guitars, pounding drums, super lo-fi and high end, the guitars not riffing so much as offering up thick sheets of sound and dense squalls of feedback and psychdrone freakout. Which suits the concept perfectly, as it's basically like two drones wrapped around each other, leaving the drums to meander and skitter and do what they will. Perfectly happy to listen to each track on its own, but they do sound pretty badass together, and the picture disc image spinning round and round is quite mesmerizing.
The extra track on the cd is an actual collaboration, or seems to be as far as we can tell, but ends up sounding more like a Heavy Winged track with some extra texture and ambience, as HW's super blown out distorted heaviness overwhelms the Windy & Carl's shimmery sounds, but with the picture disc, you can control the levels, creating quite possibly one of the few instances where Windy & Carl sonically overwhelm Heavy Winged!
We only have a dozen of these, the label was sold out, we got all the copies the band had too, so once these are gone, that's probably it...
Imagine the most beautiful music in the world. Then with an old thrift store camera, take a super grainy snapshot of that music. Fold up the photo and place it in an envelope and mail it to an address that no longer exists. 20 years later, happen upon an old abandoned post office, and discover that letter unopened, but browned with age, remove the photo and place it in your pocket. Lose those pants on a camping trip, only to discover them the next summer, all wadded up in a corner, sprinkled with a years worth of dust and cobwebs. Wash the pants, and only afterwards discover the photo. Prop in up in the window of the cabin to dry, where it sits soaking up the sun for the whole summer. Right before you leave, grab the photo of the most beautiful music in the world and place it in your book to mark your place. Place the book back on your shelf and forget all about it. Move several times over the course of the next several years, finally unpacking a dusty old trunk filled with books. Leaf through several of them, when suddenly the most beautiful music in the world flutters to the floor, dusty and tattered, worn and nearly transparent. Finally, tear it up into tiny pieces and drop them one by one into the speaker of an antique victrola, wind it up and what comes out will be Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet.
We often reference Hecker when reviewing records by other practitioners of a similar soundmaking process, but there's something so pure and organic about the way Hecker composes and creates, how he deftly assembles and degrades his sounds and songs and melodies. Managing to sound modern but antiquated at the same time, viewing the world through sleep filled eyes, everything soft and fuzzy, sometimes intense and ominous, sometimes even dark and downright scary, but always suffused with a shimmering radiant warmth, making all of his sounds glow from within. Each song a weather worn snapshot, frayed and dusty, comfortable and lived in sounding. It's a music that requires close listening, a subtly immersive sound, but once inside it, once the sound is all around you, only then can you pick out all of the details, hear the hidden melodies, only then can you let go, and get completely lost in Hecker's gorgeous world of mysterious sound. Some of the most beautiful music in the world indeed.
From the onset of this choice release, British drone-centrist Ian Holloway engages in a long-staring contest upon the horizon. Through his undulating sustained tones that gradually contort and shift in timbre and clarity, Holloway sets his attention on sun-flecked hazes upon faraway vistas, watery mirages, and sunblind hallucinations. These tones are more on par with the best work from the Ora / Monos axis, which is not surprising considering that Holloway has worked with Darren Tate on a number of occasions in the past. But not before long, he plunges this piece deep into the center of the earth, with cavernous reverberations of actionist gestures that have some of the acoustic doom properties that we have come to expect from Svarte Greiner and Xela. The sinewy tones give way to these heavy clanks and jarring noises swaddled in the long-decay reverb of what we could imagine to be a subterranean sewer, or perhaps a massive cave chamber, or some abandoned industrial warehouse. As Holloway puts aside his bricks and chunks of metal, the earlier gilded tones make their reprise amidst a distant set of bird songs and softly struck hand bells. One of the better pieces to emerge from Holloway's own Quiet World imprint, and this one is limited to just 80 copies.
Yet another archival release from grim suicidal one man black metal outfit I Shalt Become, aka S. Holliman, who hails from Illinois of all grim places, and who, as far as we can tell, has been pretty much inactive for the last decade. This release was recorded way back in 1998 and was originally released as a demo credited to Birkenau, the name Holliman used before switching to I Shalt Become.
Like Wanderings before it, In The Falling Snow is a fantastic, and fantastically twisted chunk of sorrowful black misery. As doomy as it is black, heavily indebted to Burzum of course, but I Shalt Become shares much in common with other more modern practitioners of this sort of ultra grim, plodding midtempo blackness, Xasthur, Krohm, Nortt, Make A Change Kill Yourself, the riffs buzzing and crumbling, the temps loping and dirgey, the mood grim and dour, super atmospheric, not lo-fi necessarily, but murky and muddy and washed out sounding, dreary and drone-y, sweeping swaths of epic keyboard, and the vocals, an exhausted miserable sounding croak, as if most of the lifeforce has already drained away, not leaving enough vitriol to howl or shriek, just enough energy to barely get out these last words from a moldering old deathbed, the wasted, dead quality of the vocals perfectly matching the depressive mood of the music.
But even as miserable and despondent and depressive as these sounds are, they're also hauntingly and harrowingly beautiful, soaring strings, minor key melodies, super dramatic and ultra personal, everything weirdly soft focus and dreamlike, the buzz and plod blurred into gauzy dronemetal soundscapes, the double kick, a pulse buried beneath thick layers of billowing fuzz, the riffs looped and repeated into black buzzing mantras. Way recommended of course, for the miserable and the black hearted.
A new disc from one man black metal outfit I Shalt Become is always welcome around these parts. The washed out weary blackened blurscapes are for us, the black metal equivalent of Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, a sort of black metal Pop Ambience, the various sounds distinctly black metal, but in ISB's strange otherworldly drift, rendered in shades of grey instead of black, the guitars warm whirring smears, the drums murky pulses, the vocals a croak barely audible over the heaving swells of soft buzz. The melodies mournful and miserable, the tempos lugubrious, the vibe grim and forsaken, depressive black metal nirvana for sure.
Sonically, ISB probably has the most in common with Xasthur, but where Xasthur's sound is distinctly lo-fi, almost stumbling at times, the music of ISB manages to be both lo-fi and incredible lush, the sheets of dreamlike buzz spun into lush expanses of warm shimmer, traditional blast and buzz has no place in ISB's windswept sonic wasteland, instead, the buzz is worn smooth, and spread out like gauzy low hanging clouds, there is no blast, only plod and pound, lope and lumber, there are keyboards everywhere, but they are at one with the guitars, adding dense texture, creating soft shadows, occasionally manifesting as super dramatic streaks of sonic melancholia.
The songs tend toward one, maybe two parts, hypnotic and so mesmerizing, almost looped sounding, repeating over and over, totally trancelike, blackly blissful and dismally dreamy.
Near the end of the record, several of the tracks grow fairly aggressive and get about as heavy as any ISB gets, but even then, the sound is infused with the strange choral sounding atmosphere, the instruments wreathed in delay and reverb, everything slowly melting together into one gorgeously bleary and blown slow motion sprawl, culminating in the two chord, storm drenched bliss drone outro.
Some seriously gorgeous depressive black metal for sure, that like past releases, is so blurred and blissy, that it might possibly appeal to folks into stuff like Nadja, Jesu, Fear Falls Burning and other dronedirgedoom outfits as well.
Maybe not your typical jazz trio, this Japanese group. Not that we'd expect anything typical from the Doubtmusic label. Bandleader Imai Kazuo (of Marginal Consort) plays amplified acoustic guitar, Suzuki Manabu is credited with electronics, and the third member of the trio, Ito Atsuhiro, performs on something called an "optron". As near as we can tell, that unusual instrument is a homebuilt device resembling a florescent tube light fixture. In fact, it IS a florescent light fixture, with some modifications.
Kazuo's "controllable instrument" the guitar handles the orthodox musical content here, playing some lovely, recognizable melodies and jazzy chords, though he switches to sudden atonal outbursts of frantic skronk sometimes too. But it's the other two members of the trio who really bring the noise and nothing but, the "uncontrollable" electronics and optron outputting a varied, often quite cacophonous improvised barrage of buzzings and cracklings and feedback, all fritzed and glitched like malfunctioning mad scientist laboratory equipment! It can be calm, as with their version of avant composer/vocalist Annette Peacock's "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway" that features Imai picking out slow, sparse notes on his guitar amidst near-ambient hum and static from Ito's optron and what sounds a lot like video-arcade machine sounds emulated by Suzuki's electronics.
But at (many) points, this gets pretty intensely dense with distortion and noisiness. Definitely a crossover from straight jazz into full-on, Hijokaidan or Merzbow style Japanese noise territory, as on the totally freaked out title track, another composition by Annette Peacock. These guys are REALLY into Peacock, there's in fact four of her pieces on the cd, alongside tunes originally by Cole Porter, Thelonious Monk, Lee Konitz, Georges Brassens, and even J.S. Bach! The inclusion of several well-known standards serves to make this seem even noisier, yet also more accessible at the same time. For instance, Cole Porter's "So In Love" sounds like you're hearing it via a shortwave radio transmission, with heavy hissing atmospheric interference.
Not surprisingly, it turns out that the 54 year old Imai had been a student of the late great guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, who pioneered some of the noisiest jazz ever but also performed traditional stuff too. (In the '70s, Imai briefly played with Takayanagi's New Directions Unit - and also the Taj Mahal Travellers and East Bionic Symphonia too!). So if Imai were to "play pretty" it makes sense he would do so in a context such as this.
And, packaged along with the cd in the thick, gatefold miniature LP style sleeve, there's also a 40-minute dvd disc included here too, wherein you can see the optron in action, intermittently blinking brightly in Ito's lap as it makes its strange sounds. In close up shots, it's as if the trio is performing amidst flashes of lightning. The dvd features alternate takes of a couple of the tracks from the cd, as well as three Imai originals and yet another composition by Annette Peacock. As with the cd, this material was recorded live in the GOK Sound studio... some of the tracks in front of a studio audience, all of whom are politely acknowledged by name on the sleeve.
After flirting with mainstream success, and a more mainstream sound, it sounds like Isis have finally gone and done it. Which is not at all a bad thing, they've slowly been drifting that direction since day one, doing their best to shrug off the 'Neur-Isis' stigma that has dogged them since the beginning, and like any band, gradually expanding their sonic scope, looking for new sounds, new directions, trying to find a way to make music exciting and fresh, while still keeping true to the vision of the band, no matter how much that vision has changed.
Thus comes Wavering Radiant, easily their most fully realized record yet. Tighter. More concise. More about songs than sounds and textures. Lots more clean singing. Overall less heavy and more, well, poppy for lack of a better word.
Isis have finally made the transition from rulers of the underground, now existing in a strange place, for them at least, the mainstream. Playing arenas, getting written up in Rolling Stone and Spin, playing shows with HUGE bands, rockstars even, and the sound sort of reflects that. Or maybe more accurately, their shifting sound pushed them in that direction. It's not at all hard to imagine these songs in an arena setting, or even hearing them on modern rock radio, we're reminded of Tool a lot of the time, epic, sprawling, chugging churning minimal metallic grooves, hooks everywhere, but often draped over obtuse riffage or brooding post rock pound, but thankfully, Isis are not nearly as dark as Tool, they're still heavy, but the heaviness is more measured, more controlled. In fact, the bellowing 'metal' vocals are almost a distraction a lot of the time, and we never thought we'd say this, but we almost wish they would ditch them entirely, and pursue their pop muse, continue to create well crafted metallic post rock, but push even further, they are well adept at creating heaviness out of un-heavy elements, just check out album closer "Threshold Of Transformation", an epic slow burning build, that just keeps ratcheting up the tension, layered guitars, crooned clean vocals, might be the best jam on the record.
If you've been with Isis since the beginning, nothing on Wavering Radiant should surprise you, it's more like a distillation of what they'd been aiming for all along. It's probably not heavy enough for the Isis fans who still count Celestial or Oceanic as their favorites, the crushing chugs are few and far between, but for the rest of us, it's a pretty great balance between the Isis of old, and whatever it is they're poised to become. And the more we do listen to Wavering, the more it reveals a band at the top of their game, and the more it reveals ITSELF, as a record that will most likely grow on even the most jaded of ears....
With all the posthumous releases (and their questionable quality control) of the late rap producer still in the works, it's nice to know someone's keeping tabs on all the amazing production work he did for other artists while he was still alive. Covering the last ten years of his life, 1995-2006, plenty of the cream of hiphop acts are represented here, including killer cuts by The Roots, Slum Village, Pharcyde, De LA Soul, Busta Rhymes, Frank N Dank and Common. But for us the best examples of his production are evident in the R&B tracks by Erykah Badu, Amp Fiddler and Steve Spacek. The soft echo-y sheen on these warped beats just makes us ache for more. Like a hiphop Arthur Russell, we're pretty sure there is more Dilla just waiting to be discovered and unearthed.
We've been waiting for this for a while (since 1996!) -- at long last, the third album from Japan's Koenjihyakkei (in English, Hundred Sights of Koenji), the massively Magma-minded side project of the almost-as-Magmoid bass and drums duo Ruins. Ruins leader
Finally, a second release from Mr. Kowalsky, with all his heavy electronic /cassette wizardry, he has been a long time favorite for us at aQ, and we couldn't be more impressed with Tape Chants. After spending several years working and reworking these aptly named tape and oscillator compositions, Gregg offers up his opus, a beautifully sculpted expanse of midnight meditations and thick, buzzing walls of analog radiance. Working with digital composition and software, and becoming frustrated with the seemingly unlimited possibilities of digital music-making, Gregg challenged himself to work with more organic, analog-rich source material. The result was a live performance that involved placing 6 to 10 cassette recorders around a space, and playing them simultaneously to create an experiment in live mixing and psychoacoustics. While Tape Chants is not meant to be a document of these live performances, it attempts to channel the mood and aesthetic of these live invocations. And take it from us, the result is an extremely deep and entrancing listen, beaming with melodic overtones and hypnotic pulsing, Tape Chants is like being at the center of a gong or inside a bell tower. Long tones ringing out through a low-lit cavern or cathedral, slow creeping layers of shruti box and mixer feedback thicken the mix to an overwhelming, otherworldly bliss. And unlike most minimalist composition, this record is super engaging, lots of subtle details and deliberate movements that keep you fully immersed. Not that dissimilar from recent releases on Root Strata or Miasma. If you couldn't tell by now, this is highly recommended and a must have!
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Yet another new (to us at least) release from Northwestern apocalyptic folk / black metal horde L'Acephale, whose new record Stahlhartes we raved about on the last list. These two tracks were recorded back in 2005, when this record was actually released, predating even their first demo / full length Mord Und Totsclag.
And anyone who dug either or both L'Acephale's records will probably need this too. Both tracks unreleased, exclusive to this single, not so much folk here, instead, barring some creepy choral intros and a haunting ambient hymn like outro, this is full on raw and harsh old school black metal, furious and frenetic, pounding and thrashing and blasting, the vocals chaotic and off kilter, the riffage brittle and buzzy, the drums dense and often buried in the mix. There are some strange arrangements, some almost militaristic breakdowns, a bit of post rocky mathiness here and there, but those moments are subtle and barely discernible within L'Acephale's blown out sonic squall, a furious and relentless, grim and blackened two part plague delivered from the depths... glorious, soul shearing pestilence in sound.
Beautiful packaging, a black and red gatefold sleeve, with lyrics, credits, some amazing black and white photos of skulls and catacombs, also a printed insert, pressed on red vinyl, and limited to 1000 copies, each one hand numbered (and the numbers are getting up there, so odds are these are almost gone).
Record number two from this Cave side project, and while the name Lazer Crystal certainly evokes thoughts of pretty much every Myspace band in the land, since those two words have been used in various combinations over and over and over, these guys in fact have most definitely forged their own unique sound, and have been doing so for a while now. Fans of Cave's tribal spaced out drone-y krautrock, should be prepared for something entirely different. This is most definitely dance music, but seeing as it's the work of Cave men (and by extension, members of Warhammer 48k), you can expect something a bit more twisted and home brewed than your typical dancefloor fodder.
Right out of the gate, it sounds like (Daft) punk rock kids doing their own lo-fi sort of Justice dance rock, all stuttery synths, woozy spaced out melodramatic melodies, thick swaths of warm buzz, and some gothy dramatic crooning a la Human League or Depeche Mode. Propulsive and hypnotic, but also groovy, fun, funky and a wee bit goofy.
The second track takes that goofiness a little further, twisting the sounds of the opening track into bleeping blooping malfunctioning glitchery, swirling effects, still more buzzy synths, letting the track get way more abstract and space-y and almost ambient at times.
The flipside starts off with what sounds like some Nintendo 64 8-bit video game music, but fused into some primitive electro jam, still a distinct krautrocky undercurrent, and those croony Human League vocals all tangled up with the warm buzz, giving it an almost M83 vibe. The last track might be our favorite, definitely the darkest and the buzziest, ominous and sinister, but just a bit, still groovy and funky, and those vocals still crooning oddly throughout.
Incredible packaging, we talk about things being 'handmade' all the time, but these sleeves are WAY handmade, all done by different artists, some are collages, others are painted, some are 3-D and very tactile, some are eye poppingly colorful, everyone totally different. Includes a full color insert as well. And as you might imagine, SUPER LIMITED, TO ONLY 300 COPIES.
If someone would have played this for us all 'invisible jukebox' style we would have sworn it was some '80s/early '90s lost gem in the same league as AQ favorites like Young Marble Giants, Vaselines, Shop Assistants, Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, etc. There is such a cool sound and energy to these songs, the vocals do really remind us of Amelia Fletcher (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly) which is a great thing, but the band does have a freshness to them which has kept this record on heavy rotation since it arrived in the store.
The way they draw from twee pop, garage rock, and girl groups to create such breezy and catchy delights is a wonder to behold. Lots of Survival Strategies reminds us of how much we loved the Aisler Set and how the time is ripe for them to reunite! Liechtenstein would make great tourmates for folks like Brilliant Colors or Vivian Girls or heck a reformed Aislers Set. We don't want to sound like a broken record, but man are we happy that Slumberland is back and putting out such great pop gems!
The 10" comes on colored vinyl and with a code for a free download of the album.
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas have become the go-to guys for modern cosmic disco journeys in sound. On their latest collaboration it sounds like they've been listening to a whole lot of Michael Rother's '70s solo records as II really taps into that airy, lightly spaced out and oh-so-breezy vibe. The cascading rhythms and stretched out breeziness also reminds us a lot of the great Sorcerer album from a couple years ago. While it might make for a perfect coming down record the morning after a night full of debauchery in Ibiza, truth is, this is a record that will definitely appeal to many folks who don't usually think of themselves as dance music minded, as these two Norwegians understand how to craft such lush and pleasing sounds with a surprisingly wide range of musical appeal. New age disco? A cosmic beach party? Rolling so smoothly and going down so nice, we don't care what it's called, the fact is it's damn good.
