Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
And Community Library have done a really nice job of it, the gatefold cd sleeve containing a thick 32 page cd booklet with elaborate colorful collage style liner notes by bandleader Scott "Dr. Tex Nology" Ryser, a Units manifesto of sorts, he also talks about the wild and crazy San Francisco of the '70s/early '80s era, and also there's several pages of old fliers for Units gigs at the Fab Mab and other SF punk venues... we noticed one for the Warfield too, with The Units opening for OMD and Gary Numan. Also shows with Romeo Void, Dead Boys, Soft Cell, Psychedelic Furs, Dead Kennedys, Crime, Screamers, Iggy Pop, the Police, Tuxedomoon... Definitely makes us young 'uns wish we'd been around in SF back then. (Another note about the packaging, it says copyright 2007 on the back but that that's a mistake, it's when the artwork was initially prepared, this is indeed a brand new 2009 release, with also a vinyl version upcoming as well, not sure when, though.)
Score three in a row for the always amazing Analog Africa label! First African Scream Contest, then Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou, and now Legends of Benin! Focusing on four composers, Gnonnas Pedro, Honore Avolonto, Antoine Dougbe, and El Rego from the small West African country Benin, recording between 1969 and 1981. All coming from different regional musical traditions but operating in the same fervent musical scene in Cotonou where the Orchestre Poly Rhythmo were also from, that group providing back-up on a couple of tracks here.
As with the other two Analog Africa compilations, this one also focuses on tight danceable grooves and rare afro-funk. Gnonnas Pedro was perhaps the most popular of the four, being a master of the style known as Agbadja, derived from early burial rituals focusing on three differently toned percussion instruments, Pedro modernized the sound to such a degree that the first track, the highly infectious "Dadje Von O Von Non" later became the anthem for the national football team. Honore Avolonto, a young tumba player from Togo, was the most prolific composer in Benin, writing songs for pretty much every group around. Amazingly, he had no band of his own, but would score a hit, tour with the band until the hit faded and then write another hit with some other band and be off. He eventually recorded an LP,which became Benin's biggest selling LP ever. El Rego, a boxer in his young life and a brothel owner later on, made one of the first recordings of Jerk music (as soul and funk music was so dubbed) in Benin. His tracks are the most Western influenced, often times singing in English. Antoine Dougbe, is the most obscure and his tracks are among the rarest finds. His style combined elements of Congolese Rhumba, High Life, and traditional Beninese rhythms into a form he called Afro-Cavacha, named after the fast rhythms of pop music from Zaire. Dougbe, often worked with the Orchestre Poly-Rhytmo, but it was often an uneasy relationship since Dougbe's father was a feared and powerful Voudon priest, and the band (most of them practicing Voudons) feared reprisals should they question Dougbe's arrangements and musical instruction. But undoubtedly this religious quality so pervasive in Benin is what created such intensely tight and dynamic music, hypnotic and bewitching and endlessly captivating. Pure Gold!
Now available on vinyl!
All June long we've been having a "graycation" here in foggy San Francisco, but yesterday the clouds lifted and it finally feels like summer!! Just in time for weekend barbecues comes this sizzling hottie of a compilation of Cumbia, Salsa and Calypso Funk from the Southern most country of North America, Panama! This is the second volume of sixties and seventies jams from this tiny nation that sees plenty of cross-pollination from many musical forms to the North, South and East. Northern Soul and Salsa influences, Afro-Caribbean calypso, Cubano percussion, Columbian Cumbia and Panama's own Musica Tipica, a black and mestizo rural country form notable for its wide array of rustic percussion as well as its use of multiple violins and accordian-led arrangements. The beauty of these compilations is their flow; traditonal cumbia is followed by sweaty salsa into Latin funk and back like it was tailor made for dance party listening. There's some amazing psychedelic soul funk numbers in here too from The Duncan Brother's "Dreams", The Soul Fantastic's awesome version of Bill Wither's "Ain't No Sunshine", and Lord Cobra's "Love Letters". Summer starts right here!!!
Another rich and immersive vintage compilation from the always reliable Honest's Jons label, The World Is Shaking focuses on a highly productive period during the fifties of urban popular music that was the seed for what would become Congolese Rumba, one of the African Continent's most popular musical dance forms of the sixties and seventies. We often hear of the westwardly influence of African music on West Indies, Cuba and the Caribbean Islands, but not so much in reverse. Yet the Congo in the fifties after suffering centuries of decimation from slave traders and Belgian colonial rule, embraced the Latin music of South and Central America like no other country. Many factors contributed to this, including the exports of radios and records from slave trading countries as well as the increasing popularity of early American Jazz music and European Torch singers that attracted Congolese musicians to play less traditional and indigenous musical forms in order to get work in colonial nightclubs. But perhaps the biggest factor was the arrival of recording equipment to the region that allowed radio stations to record and broadcast local musicians allowing them to become more disciplined in their musical approach due to the strict limitations of the three minute song format. And so with more records and bands, popular nightlife increased. Inspired by 78's from Latin America, musicians would often adopt the tunes and rewrite the lyrics in their own language. Adwika Depala, one of the more successful players recorded his own take on the popular latin song, El Manicero (The Peanut Vendor), changing the word for peanut (Mani) to a women's name (Moni), offering a lament to a jilting lover that local audiences perhaps related more to than the original lyrics. The danceable rhythms provided by guitars, horns, and accordions with occasional moments of odder instrumentation like banjo and kazoos sparked attraction in audiences hungry for modernity as well as a renewed sense of identity. Honest Jon's scores again!
Killer quadruple cassette tape box, featuring a handful of amazing sound and noise makers, some definite aQ faves, as well as a whole bunch of names ne to us, each band was instructed to compose a single sidelong piece, representing either light or darkness, and as the Earjerk website mentions, it's really no surprise that most bands chose darkness (either that or they have a weirdly skewed idea of what constitutes 'light').
Up first, long time aQ fave Sorc'Henn, who in the past has dabbled in buzzy black metal, shimmery deep ambience, here it something else entirely, a thick caustic fog of hiss and buzz and grit and grime, buried melodies swirl beneath a constantly shifting layered soft blackened noise. Grim and haunting for sure.
Teeth Collection are a name we know, but we'd never heard their (his?) music until now. A strangely haunting soundscape of reverbed clatter, truncated melodies, distant hiss, muted rumble, all slowly building to a cathartic swirl of blown out heaviness.
We had a Drunjus cassette ages ago, and had always wanted to hear more. Here, the sound is a crystalline web of haunting synths, of keening long tones, of muted melodies, bowed gongs (courtesy of one of the guys from Pelt), this is some mysterious otherworldly cinematic drift for sure. Like a way more minimal abstract Goblin almost. Then comes Crystal Dragon, awesome name, and even more awesome sound, a super raw and primitive chunk of outer space sci-fi weirdness, grinding synths, wound into whirring dronescapes, thick and undulating, warm and luxuriously textured.
Then we have Burial Hex, aka Clay Ruby, who also does time in Jex Thoth and Wormsblood, but Burial Hex is his ritualistic black ambient project, and that's precisely what you get here, a super raw recording, distorted and effected, the tape seeming to crumble, plenty of low end warble, clang and clatter and crunch, doused in effects, like a madman locked in a dungeon, dragging chains, and assembling some unholy machine, super creepy and pretty hard to describe. Black Sparrow are another group we'd never heard of, but they fit pretty well amongst this esteemed brotherhood of sound, an ethereal ephemeral shimmer, made from crumbling effected guitars and processed synths (we think), woven into a soft almost serene bit of buzzy drift, peppered with bits of glitch and squelch, but smoothed out into a blurred bit of mesmer.
Then some Finnish weirdness from Taikuri Tali, definitely a band we're gonna have to hear more from, some random bits of conversation, before the trio launch into a gorgeously tweaked bit of mad scientists soundscaping, squeaks and rattles and scrapes and whirs that get more and more abstract as the track progresses, eventually transforming into some sort of alien shortwave broadcast.
Finally, Pan To Scratch, another new to us outfit, they finish things off with a super old school bit of layered dronemusic, letting the overtones crate strange and subtle rhythms, intertwined with what sounds like birdsong, tape manipulation, lots of tape hiss, and random bumps and thumps, weird and pretty wonderful.
Which is a pretty good way of describing this whole collection, weird and wonderful, as well as abstract and haunting and dark and buzzy and raw. The usual suspects should freak for this, SUPER LIMITED of course, handsomely packaged as well in one of those oversized molded plastic booklike folders, the kind of case instructional language tapes usually come in. Cool!
John Vanderslice reaches the seventh album marker with what is arguably his most immediately engaging work to date. He hasn't completely left behind the roaming patchwork-y feel of his previous albums, but each song seems a bit more focused and encapsulated. Softly rumpled like a comfy sweater, Vanderslice's hushed vocal delivery draws the listener in close, and as always, his achingly earnest introspective songs take a pluck at your heartstrings. Slowly playing out intertwined melodies in gentle fashion, the album's multi-layered instrumentation is lush but never seems heavy handed. Gauzily drifting in and out of focus, Romanian Names maintains an airiness throughout. As a point of reference, at times we found it to be quite akin to the latest solo album by Grandaddy's Jason Lytle or Calexico's more pop moments. Good stuff!
We love Venetian Snares, every record, we're faced with the possibility of more of we love, or something new and twisted that's bound to confuse and confound. Whether it's splattery drill and bass, or cinematic string drenched soundtrackisms or old school nineties retro techno weirdness, we're pretty much into everything this guy give us.
That said, the most recent full length, Filth, was the first one in a long time that just didn't hit the spot, it just wasn't... well, filthy enough. A little bit of the same old thing, and even then not the same old thing that we loved, definitely sort of blah.
But then comes along Horsey Noises, and we're flipping our lids. The firs thing you'll notice are the vocals. Yep, vocals, the title track is weird fractured electro Depeche Mode-ish slow burn groove, complete with crooned vocals talking about how he wants to make the horse teethed girl make horsey noises. Sick and twisted, and the music suits it perfectly, rubbery buzzy basslines, skittery beats, even handclaps, but all blown out and woozy, lots of atonal abstract melodies, like Venetian Snares remixed through a mainstream pop funhouse mirror. By the end, all the sounds and the vocals are chopped up and twisted and super distorted and twisted all around into a noise drenched electro noisejam. If there was ever gonna be a hit single (there wasn't!) this could be it, if it wasn't so fucked up and jumbled and chaotic and if the lyrics weren't so bizarre. But we love it. Kinda has us hoping VS will sing more in the future. Picture Venetian Snares as some twisted electro pop crooner. Could be cool.
The title track gets remixed, the vocals get pushed way up, but the music is even more far out, eventually exploding into some classic super damaged drilled out jungle craziness. Might be the jam of the record!
The other two tracks are pretty bad ass too, "Horsey Vag Island" is post Aphex, Squarepushery jazz bass bit of looped skittery buzz and stutter, groovy and danceable, but filtered through a sort of ADD, full frontal lobotomy, DJ meltdown. The second track "Pig Dync", about a pig's special part, is a tad more tame, with woozy synths, haunting late night melodies, some total house music synths, but the beats still plenty convoluted, everything chopped up, and thrown back together, even mixes in what sounds like some 'oinks'. Crazy shit. But so good. So good in fact that we might have to revisit Filth. But for now, "Horsey Noises" and the even more mutated remix "Horsey Noisers" will remain in constant heavy rotation in the wild all night dancefloor that exists only in our heads. That's where we dance to stuff like this. Yeah, weird, we know....
The latest project from the mighty Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Sunroof!, etc.) is not all that far removed from more recent Skullflower records in several ways. The first is the lineup, Voltigeurs is a duo of Bower and one of his newer SF bandmates, Samantha Davies, the second is the sound, which once again finds Bower exploring his own little dark corner of black metal, an admitted recent obsession for him. Much like the SF "black metal" discs (including the most recent, Malediction, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), Bower's black metal is a whole 'nother twisted noise slathered beast than what we're used to. Sure the sound is raw and grim and buzzy and heavy, but this blackness is more concerned with texture and tension, with drone and density, than proper riffage, no drums, so the songs don't blast or pound, even at their heaviest, they still drift, the guitars, possibly the thickest and crunchiest we've heard from Bower in ages, do seem to be unfurling some sort of black riffage, but here the blur and smear into thick clouds of FX drenched buzz, of howling feedback and string strangling crunch, Davies, who plays cello in Skullflower, must be doing terrible things to her cello here (assuming she hasn't switched to guitar), because it's nearly impossible to differentiate who's who and who's playing what in Voltigeurs' big glorious tangle of heaving fractured heaviness.
It almost sounds like a symphony of black metal cassettes unspooling in zero gravity, a swirling mass of a million mobius strips of sound. The strange thing is, for being one of the heavies things we've heard from Bower, it also seems to be one of the loveliest, and most melodic. Not always mind you, but here and there, the furious fug clears, and reveals some woozy mournful soaring bit of melodic doominess, the opening of "Pearlescent Abyss" sounds like some lost early doom jam, slathered in noise and tape hiss and amp buzz, but still, the sound oozes with emotion and anguish. And those moments do surface throughout the record, giving Voltigeurs' noisiness a definite black doom vibe.
There's also a distinctly dronedoomdirge feel to a lot of the songs, Bower's guitar more obviously a guitar, the sounds he's conjuring up more obviously riff based, SUNNO))), Fear Falls Burning, Vulture Club, it's like that sound but more feral, more fierce, less composed, more loose, more instinctual, and somehow more alive, a constantly expanding ball of buzzing smoldering abstract riffage, the sound organic and lush, while remaining fuzzy and abrasive and intensely heavy.
The record finishes off with another bit of melodic mystery, the 9 minute "Condor", is a slow buzz drenched crawl, the guitars crumbling, wrapped around a lurching slow motion pulse, a dense blackened throb, but swirling throughout and within that main guitardrone, spidery tendrils of melody burn white hot, shards and streaks of warm shimmer, a lugubrious bit of glacial downtuned beauty.
Voltigeurs debut full length seems like the perfect foil for the new Skullflower (maybe it was intended to be just that), it's like that other record's shadow, its less evil twin, where the other is noxious and corrosive, this one is effulgent and luminous, where the other is blackened and chaotic, this one seems to glow with some long buried beauty, it almost sounds like the two could be played simultaneously, to create some intense multi part, blacknoise dronedirge epic, but each, on its own, is fantastic, each one in its own way psychedelic and heavy, blackened and buzzy, but Voltigeurs might be the slightly prettier of the two, but still somehow manages to remain as heavy and as intense as any guitardrone record we've heard. WAY WAY recommended (As is the Skullflower!)!!
The return of these Finnish freaks, and another awesome disc of blown out, ultra raw, ultra grim black metal buzz. Vordr may feature a member of aQ faves Circle Of Ouroborus, but as we mentioned in our review of the last Vordr, you won't find any stumbling folk, or abstract black ambience, or bizarre fractured WTF here, the domain of Vordr is reserved for tweeter destroying high end brittle lo-fi blast and pound, a swirling melee of chaotic skree drenched buzz, D-beat death pounding drums and sharp slivers of buzzing insectoid riffage, unfurling in long blurred streaks beneath anguished tortured wails and teeth gnashing demonic shrieks.
There is most definitely plenty of melody lurking below the surface, but those bits of melody are well protected, only the blackest of souls can withstand the constantly churning sea of fucked up sound that surrounds them, billious bursts of abject fury, in-the-red shards of buzz drenched rrroooaaar, festering gouts of sonic virulence, this is sick, ugly, gloriously noxious black grimnity, a series of musical ice picks to the inner ear, a tinnitus inducing swarm of beautiful blackness, which will most definitely warm the cold dead hearts of all who worship at the altars of Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Akitsa Vegas Martyrs and the like.
First vinyl release from these NY based drug addled space rock explorers, featuring a new member and a somewhat different sound. The new member is Kid Millions, drummer for the band Oneida, whose most recent disc, Preteen Weaponry, was a huge hit around here. But the addition of Millions doesn't signify a shift towards the abstract rhythmic heaviness of Oneida, instead, White Hills seem to have gone in the opposite direction, ditching some of their heavy freak out tendencies, and instead sprawling languorously, letting the instruments unwind, the songs unfurl, laid back, blissed out, far out, and endlessly drifting space rock, heavier on the space than the rock.
Two sidelong jams, the first, is thick with wah guitars, but those guitars are suspended in wide open stretches of whir and hum, wreathed in reverb, and allowed to drift and shimmer, the drums are the steadiest part, alternately jazzy and shuffling, subtle and propulsive, the recording and production is raw and immediate, almost like a rehearsal space demo, but it definitely suits the sound. The track wanders and meanders, like a super stripped down Hawkwind, until the various sounds become enveloped in soft clouds of spacey FX and buzzing synths, a crescendo of sorts, but the track never explodes, never gets heavy, it's almost like a field recording of some eternal space jam, a neverending sonic entity that continues forever in both directions, backwards until the birth of the universe, forward into infinity, we're just offered a glimpse as it passes us by.
The flipside is a bit dirgier, more garagey, a sort of stripped down Stooges-y stomp, but slowed way down, until it's almost a doomy dirge, more clouds of spaced out FX, this time a bit more raw, the sound a bit heavier, but still more spacey and abstract, the second half of side two a tripped out ambient bliss out, layers of drones and buzz, whirling beneath random minimal effects and some creepy looped vocals.
LIMITED TO 333 COPIES. White sleeves with paste on art, front and back, inside a red vellum insert, we did get a whole bunch of these, but as with most White Hills releases, they'll probably go pretty fast, and odds are we won't be able to get more.
It's almost impossible to keep ourselves still and write about this new White Magic release as every time we listen to it all we want to do is spin and jump around. We've only had New Egypt in our hands and ears for a week now but we've already lost count of how many times we've pressed repeat to hear this ten minute track over and over again. Like some kind of amazing mantra on love, hope, paranoia and what the future could hold, this is White Magic at their fiery and feverish best!
Taking some of the ingredients of what was previously our favorite White Magic song "One-Note" from their Through The Sun Door debut over four years ago and stretching it out with even more dynamics, more fire and a dizzying spell that casts its magic in such physical ways. What separates White Magic from the psychedelic folk masses is that they create music that actually creates a strong physical sensation as well as tapping into emotional realms. It's impossible to listen to "New Egypt" and not have your body start responding physically to the sounds, it's perfect for strapping on headphones and taking on the city and walking faster and with more purpose than ever before.
We'd been hearing that this was supposed to come out for several months, but somehow the timing of it finally arriving now seems so perfect for the crisp October air, as this really sounds like a ceremonial offering to the season of fall. There is a flame ignited at the core of what White Magic creates that's truly connected to all the Earth elements while still inhabiting a space that's filled with intriguing mystique. Make sure to play this one loud as we've found it resonates with such striking glory when it blasts through our skin and inhabits both the inner and outer realms of our psyche.
Packaged with the latitudes series usual classy cardboard aesthetic with a gold embossed pyramid on the cover giving a clue to the transcendental song that is within! While this one is a bit pricey for its length coming it at over a dollar a minute, the song makes that math equation a no-brainer as it really is a priceless gem!
We have to be honest, Wilco's last outing Sky Blue Sky left us a little more then underwhelmed. And most of us had pretty much relegated Wilco to the unflattering status of 'DAD rock'. The songs just lacked that magic that Tweedy and company had built a career on. The disappointment of that record was no doubt due in part to the fact that it came hot on the heels of two of the most adventurous albums Wilco had made, A Ghost Is Born and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. So while there are no kraut-like moments or electronic dabbling on Wilco (The Album) it does find the band sounding more like classic Wilco, with full on irresistible pop moments that recall Summerteeth and that ready to be immortalized on classic rock radio feel of Being There. "You Never Know" should be a mega-hit single , if there's any justice. While we do still wish the band would explore more outer limits territory, truth is, at the heart of it all, Jeff Tweedy knows how to write timeless songs full of texture and a fleeting sense of memory and lingering emotion.
We almost sold out of these after only a few days, without even reviewing / listing it, but then it IS a new Xasthur record, and it IS a super limited (500 copies) cassette version, and cassette means cult, in a cool oversized clamshell case, with original artwork by Hildolf from Draugar, and inside, it also contains a photocopied booklet, 3 pins and a patch! So yeah, no real surprise that those flew out of here. We did manage to get a handful more of these, but seeing as how these have been selling pretty much nonstop, who knows how long they'll last.
Beyond all that stuff, we're pretty psyched for sure. Finally, a new record from Xasthur, aka Malefic, a one man doom-ed depressive black metal machine, whose last release, Defective Epitaph was a huge hit around these parts, due in no small part to the shift from drum machine to actual drums, no programmed beats, actual kit bashing rhythms courtesy of Malefic himself, and the result was pretty stellar, creating a sound even more raw and murky and lo-fi than past efforts, but no less bleak or introspective or amazing. So now comes All Reflections Drained, soon to come on double lp, and we would assume cd, but for now available only in the very old school, very metal, and very kult kassette format. And it's very much a continuation of Defective Epitaph, from moment one, the sound boomy and reverb drenched, echoey and WAY lo-fi, loping doomy guitars, stumbling midtempo drums, and then WOAH, the sound shifts, and the drums double time it under a layer of thick low end dramatic piano, creating some strange Skepticismy drift, over the relentlessly buzzing blackness below. The mix is REALLY weird, fractured and gloriously fucked up, the sounds shifting and merging into one another, the songs too, woozy and warped and seasick sounding and a bit waltzy, the drum sound super raw and distant and for the most part buried in the mix, minus some flurries of kick drum that practically explode. The guitars are washed out and melancholic, lumbering doomily through hazy clouds of muted buzz and soft focus hiss, lots of creeped out ambience, and dark soundscaping, way less of a focus on vocals, in fact several songs in, and we barely noticed any, minus some far off clean crooning and some rumbled mutterings, the usual blackened harsh rasps seemingly lost in the swirling off kilter mix.
If anything this record is a logical extension of the direction Malefic had been taking the sound of Xasthur, like a Defective Epitaph part two maybe, but somehow quite a bit doomier, and WAY weirder, more spaced out and experimental, with a serious focus on dark brooding non-metal parts, hints of slowcore and drone abound, some parts are downright orchestral, and the sound is definitely even murkier and mysterious than ever, dripping with buzz and tape hiss, blown out low end (that sounds like a tuba or something similar) and thick crumbling distortion, but fear not troo grim hordes, it's still plenty depressive and dolorous, minor key and epic, miserable and moody, gorgeously buzzy and bafflingly brilliant.
Again, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! And these will probably disappear FAST... To be sure, there will be a vinyl and perhaps cd version coming out eventually, but they won't be as kvlt as this! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
We here at Aquarius Records love our jobs. There's just some things you can get working at a record store that otherwise might pass you by for years, if not for your entire life. The pleasure of listening to Yahowah 13 is one of those. The chanting, the improvisation, the psychedelia, the beards! For those of you who didn't pick up God and Hair, the 13 cd reissue box-set, Magnificence in Memory might be a good place to start. Over 70 albums were recorded by Yod and his "sons" in the early '70s, but only 13 were originally issued on vinyl. The rest sat around on tape in a garage for 30 years accumulating dust and unfortunately disintegrating a bit. Magnificence in Memory is the second album to be released from those original unused tapes, and why these songs were never used, only Yod knows. The excellent songs on Magnificence range from early Beefheart-like dissonant blues jams to tribal chanting to improvised hippie whistling workouts to heavy proto-metal yowling. Despite these disparate elements, there is a continuity that escapes the recordings, one that can only come from a bunch of people living together and creating together in close harmony for years. One gets the feeling that most if not all of these cuts were made up on the spot, but the changes within the songs are (mostly) executed with an almost uncanny precision, like the musicians were speaking to each other on another, higher, plane of existence. Well, maybe. But regardless of how you feel towards communes, cults and hippies, we guarantee you will love Magnificence in Memory from the bizarre Yahowah 13.
Volume 3 in the 4 part series of split singles from noise rockers the Young Widows. The first two featured the band teamed up with Bonnie Prince Billy and Melt-Banana, and for number 3 they go toe to toe with metallic post rockers Pelican.
Of the three volumes so far, this is the most laid back and least heavy of the Young Widows jams, a long tribal slow building almost Shellac sounding groove, all drums and buzzing bass, while the guitar grinds and scrapes, tons of space, very minimal, then the vocals come in, hovering over the spare musical backdrop, reminds us quite bit of that classic Amphetamine Reptile sound, especially when the guitar locks in with the vocals, sounds like it could be one of the weirder cooler lesser known groups in the AmRep stable. The last minute though gets rough and raw and heavy, channeling some supercharged Fugazi, howled vocals and sharp crunchy guitars, another killer jam that just like the other two volumes, sounds too good to be relegated to a 7". Or it's a return to the good ol' days when the best songs WERE on 7"s.
Pelican does what they do best for their side, heavy, chunky, melodic instrumental epic metallic post rock, and it sounds fantastic. This particular number is WAY on the melodic side, even with it's churning chugging breakdown, the main part is gorgeous, majestic and massive and crazy catchy. These guys do just keep getting better, but like the 12" featured elsewhere on this list, we still find ourselves imagining various singers doing their thing on Pelican songs. Here's a rad idea for a weirdo Pelican project. Those guys should pick their favorite vocalists, and have those vocalists pick their favorite Pelican songs, and record vocals for a record of 'vocal mixes'. Just give us some credit if it happens!
Like the other 7"s in the series, packaged in cool spot varnished full color covers, all four of which fit together to form one big creepy angular skull image. ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
Z'ev set out to make Sum Things to be his 'dark ambient' record, but with a few restrictions that he imposed upon himself. The first was to use only sources from his vast archive of percussive rituals and explorations with metallic resonance; the second was to use a limited sampling strategy of time-stretching and pitch shifting his sources. With reverb being so central to so many dark ambient projects (most notably Lustmord's recordings of catacombs and subterranean caves specifically for their dank reverberations), Z'ev's reductions are duly noted throughout Sum Things; and at the same time, he's left behind much of the digital artifacts endemic to his sampling tricks. The thunderous metallic rumbles and slippery timbral slashes of sound evolve into shimmering pools of sustained sound. Many of his metallic sounds chime with the sonorous quality of Javanese gamelan, although with the aid of Z'ev's timestretching, he's rendered these sounds into darkly beautiful sets of arcing drones. With more allusions to the wire recordings of Alan Lamb, the sound sculptures of Harry Bertoia, and even some of Andrew Chalk's more aggressive pieces, Sum Things ranks as one of Z'ev's best productions in years.
