It's been more than 6 years since we last heard from Greece's End, whose last record, entitled of course II, we described thusly: "For fans of Weakling, Eikenskaden, Khold, Satyricon, and Burzum - which means basically, if you like black metal, you want this! Actually, forget black metal for a second. If the idea of speaker-threatening fuzz-dirge loping from your stereo appeals to you, then you still want this."
Which heck, still holds true with this most recent disc, the only difference being that the sound is a bit more polished, a bit tighter. Whereas the first two End records were pretty raw, III finds End taking their raw buzz and furious blast and adding some heft, and a bit of groove. For every explosive face-melting soul-shearing burst of frenetic grinding black fury, there's some lurching, loping doomic dirge, often slipping into gorgeous spidery drifts, or drifting toward something much more post rocky than black metal, there's still plenty of acoustic guitar, but instead of peeling back all the other instruments, the buzzing steel strings are woven into the buzzing blackness, adding another woozy almost folky dimension.
And the mention of Khold in the old review is even more applicable now, and heck Code too, as this new End, spends much of its time droning dramatically, or in cool mathy gnarled bits of Deathspell-ed crunch, with lots of stop starts, dizzying arpeggiated guitars, warped almost gothic sounding breakdowns, soaring melodies all over the place, weirdly technical, and dramatic, and emotional, there seems to be a new wave of avant post black metal, and End seemed to have tapped into it, and perfectly fused it with their classic Greek blackness. III seems to be another one of those records that benefits from repeated listens, the poppiness and sonic mystery that pervades pretty much every song, seem to no longer lurk in the background, instead, driving these songs and defining End's awesome new sound.
Packaged in a super deluxe 6 panel digipak, with a big booklet, and some seriously gorgeous (and scary) black and white artwork.
For those who love rhythm, attention! Is it Fire?, Jessie Evans' first solo record, has enough percussion to satisfy even the most energetic dancefloor junkie. Latin- and African-inspired beats programmed by Jessie are masterfully enhanced with live percussion performed by Toby Dammit (of Iggy Pop fame) and, on a few tracks, none other than Budgie (of the Banshees/Creatures). For the most part, the instrumentation is kept to a minimum, letting the rhythm drive the songs. Saxophone and bass played by Jessie add melody, and the occasional trumpet and other horns (played by Martin Wenk of Calexico) enhance the Latin air. A couple of songs are even sung in Spanish. Synths pop up every once in a while, and, except on a track or three, are left buried in the mix, serving only to add a little flavor. Sometimes, as on the last Vanishing LP, the vocals are fuzzed out into incomprehension, more of a washy layer than a narrative, opting to let the drums tell the story. And what a story they tell!
Don't misunderstand: there's a lot going on within every track. Jessie had been bringing us great music for years, now: The Subtonix, The Vanishing, Autonervous. Is it Fire? is a strong notch on the belt of an artist who will hopefully continue to bring us great music for a long time.
One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice.
But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"
Eleanor and Matthew Friedlander are back with their eighth full length, and they've got Sebadude Jason Lowenstein on board, both engineering and playing bass on the album. For some reason the band and/or the label chose to use a somewhat unfortunate point of reference in their press release which has cast a distracting pall across our listening experience. Normally the whimsically strange and elliptical music of Fiery Furnaces exist in a realm all its own, free from current trends and pop culture references. The irksome comment was an obtuse mention of the TV show Taxi and the movie Titanic. We quote "All rock music is a sort of dramatic music. And since the times are tough, it makes sense to have that "drama" be something more like a version of Taxi than something like a version of Titanic. We like Taxi better than Titanic anyway. So we hope that some of the songs on this record can be used as theme songs to folks' own personal versions of Taxi." WTF?! Well, at least it's been successful in getting us to talk about the release a few moment longer, although not necessarily about what is most important, the music itself! So how is this new FF anyways? Well, although it comes tearing out of the gate all rapid fire, a lot of the songs seem remarkably tame in delivery! For instance on "The End Is Near" Ms Eleanor verges on '70s Helen Reddy "Delta Dawn" territory. While there are fleeting moments of the delirious abandon that's been their trademark for years, many times it seems like they were reaching for unbridled soulfulness, but ended up sounding over-arching and awkwardly white. For a duo whose songs can take impossibly loop-de-loopy acrobatic flips or clever twists and still land 'em on their feet, this album occasionally suffers from two left feet. Don't want to totally heave-ho though. We all know FF albums are an acquired taste, but perhaps this one is a bit more so? Give 'er a listen and see what your taste buds tell you!
We listed another record by this French one man band a few lists back, sold out of them in a flash, so when we restocked, we managed to get the remaining copies of this second release, Towards The Surface, we got less than a dozen though, and once they're gone they are GONE for good, as it's out of print.
We mentioned in that other review that Fragment. (the period IS part of the name) was mining a sound not all that removed from Jesu and Nadja, but listening to this now, it's really driving home just how much this stuff sounds EXACTLY like Jesu, it's almost criminal actually, but hell, if you're hankering for some heavy blissed out dreamy chugging shoegazey post metal, and can't wait for the next Jesu record, then heck, grab one of these.
The sound is of course fantastic, epic and majestic and bleary eyed, a little bit more mellow and laid back than Jesu proper, but quite similar in most other respects, the industrial pound, the layered warm guitar shimmer, the muted metallic chug, the mumbled sad boy vocals, all woven into a gorgeously blown out drone drenched epic dream metal drift. Listening to it again right now, and it sounds so fantastic, it just also happens to sound so fantastically like Jesu.
Cool packaging too, a cd sized dvd case with the full color artwork on a narrow strip along the center of the case, leaving the rest of the case transparent and the disc revealed.
These guys are tough to pin down, in the past they've been described as "Gram Parsons meets Pavement" or "The Shins meets Califone", both applicable to the albums they were describing, we were of course first interested in these guys because of their pedigree, featuring as they do members of long time faves like Califone, Red Red Meat and Loftus, and their sound tended to feel like an extension of all those bands that came before.
As they've progressed, they've gotten more and more lush and sprawling, their sound still identifiable by the above shorthand comparisons, but more and more distinctly the Fruit Bats. The vocals are clear and crystalline, reminding us of Death Cab and the Shins, the music though remains rooted in country, plenty of jangle, little curlicues of twang, smooth slippery slide, but also infused with plenty of vintage pop as well, the sound a strange hybrid of old time bluegrass, modern downer country, classic FM radio pop (we're hearing Supertramp a bit on the title track!) and hushed minimal folk. Some songs are delicate and quiet and heartfelt, others are playful and rambunctious, frontman Eric Johnson has such a stunning voice, haunting and intense, delicate but still powerful, and the songwriting is classic sounding, plenty of nods to the Wings, Emmit Rhodes, Nick Drake, the Beatles (of course), the Jayhawks... Fantastic classic sounding ultra lush countrified pop! The Ruminant Band, just like with Spelled In Bones, the last FB record, has us once again trying to figure out why these guys aren't WAY more popular than they are!
We're so psyched that all these amazing Serge Gainsbourg records have been getting the reissue treatment lately, since for the last several years any time you tried to find Gainsbourg on vinyl, that section in the record store would always be empty, or somehow worse, filled with outlandishly expensive imports.
Originally released in 1968, Bonnie And Clyde was labeled as a collaboration between Gainsbourg and his sultry fling of that moment, the illustrious Brigitte Bardot. While she isn't on all of the record, the tracks she does appear on do soar with such sultry and seductive pop perfection. And the tracks where Gainsbourg goes at it alone manage to be equally as suave and swirly, tapping into his masterful ability to bring so much texture and depth in demonstrating the ultimate possibilities of pop music. You can hear so many more contemporary bands in these songs, the influence is irrefutable. Everyone from Air, Stereolab, Beck, Sebastian Tellier, Stereo Total, Magnetic Fields, Jens Lekman, Rufus Wainwright, April March and about a million more have followed in one way or another the blueprints that Gainsbourg created. Bonnie and Clyde perfectly displays Gainsbourg's flair for cabaret inspired lush and colorful pop. Yet another document of the man's musical genius!
We can't believe it's been 20 years since this trio (and their trio of albums) so gracefully touched our lives during the band's way too brief lifespan. Boy, does it make us feel old! But we can't complain too much as it's so awesome to see these three crucial records available on vinyl once again! For those who may not know, Galaxie 500 was made up of core members Damon Krukowski (drums), Naomi Yang (bass, vocals) and Dean Wareham (guitar, vocals), who are probably more well known now for the bands that formed in Galaxie 500's wake: Damon and Naomi, Luna, and Dean and Britta.
Hailing from the mid-eighties Boston college rock scene (all three attended Harvard), Galaxie 500 were very different from The Pixies and Throwing Muses, who were the more prominent Boston bands at the time, favoring slower-paced reverbed drenched songs, big in sound but played with a minimalist economy. Influenced by later period Velvet Underground, The Modern Lovers, Young Marble Giants and early New Order (all of whom they covered), Galaxie 500's signature dream pop sound (courtesy of producer Kramer, Bongwater frontman and head of the great Shimmy-Disc label) paved the way for both the shoegaze and slowcore scenes of the early nineties. In fact Kramer went on to produce Low's debut in 1994. After three great records for Rough Trade, Galaxie 500 parted ways less than amicably, with guitarist/vocalist Wareham unexpectedly quitting to form his own band Luna, leaving the rhythm section of Damon and Naomi to fend for themselves. While both parties went on to more successful ventures, none of them have quite replaced Galaxie 500's unparalleled pop majesty in our hearts.
On Fire was the band's 1989 follow-up to Today, and is widely considered their best album (though we love them all, and really find it hard to favor one in particular over the others). It's definitely their most varied yet most assured album. The songs have more blissed-out dynamics, without losing their understated verve. The instrumentation is augmented on a few songs by more acoustic guitar underlayers and moments of organ and even guest cameo Ralph Carney's tenor sax on "Decomposing Trees". But a noticeable standout is Naomi Yang singing on "Another Day", a soft gauzy highlight on an already stellar album. If there were any longstanding regrets about this band among fans, the big one would be we wished she got to sing more. The cover song this time goes to George Harrison's "Isn't It A Pity", a sentiment that extends way past Harrison's original intent and hovers over this band like a ghost.
We can't believe it's been 20 years since this trio (and their trio of albums) so gracefully touched our lives during the band's way too brief lifespan. Boy, does it make us feel old! But we can't complain too much as it's so awesome to see these three crucial records available on vinyl once again! For those who may not know, Galaxie 500 was made up of core members Damon Krukowski (drums), Naomi Yang (bass, vocals) and Dean Wareham (guitar, vocals), who are probably more well known now for the bands that formed in Galaxie 500's wake: Damon and Naomi, Luna, and Dean and Britta.
Hailing from the mid-eighties Boston college rock scene (all three attended Harvard), Galaxie 500 were very different from The Pixies and Throwing Muses, who were the more prominent Boston bands at the time, favoring slower-paced reverbed drenched songs, big in sound but played with a minimalist economy. Influenced by later period Velvet Underground, The Modern Lovers, Young Marble Giants and early New Order (all of whom they covered), Galaxie 500's signature dream pop sound (courtesy of producer Kramer, Bongwater frontman and head of the great Shimmy-Disc label) paved the way for both the shoegaze and slowcore scenes of the early nineties. In fact Kramer went on to produce Low's debut in 1994. After three great records for Rough Trade, Galaxie 500 parted ways less than amicably, with guitarist/vocalist Wareham unexpectedly quitting to form his own band Luna, leaving the rhythm section of Damon and Naomi to fend for themselves. While both parties went on to more successful ventures, none of them have quite replaced Galaxie 500's unparalleled pop majesty in our hearts.
This Is Our Music from 1990 wasn't planned as a final album, as the band seemed to be striving for larger recognition with their most accomplished and widely-received record. The opener "Fourth of July" (which was also the single) leaps out with a charge more than any of their other opening songs. Yet most of the rest of the songs are sublimely slow beautiful bummers, with more noticeable shoegazey shimmer. Of course, the centerpiece, yet again is another gorgeous cover. This time it's Yoko Ono's "Listen, The Snow Is Falling". Sung by Yang, the band expands upon a simple original with a stretched out epic instrumental climax. The final track, "King of Spain, Part Two", a kind of follow-up to the b-side of their first single, brings the band around full circle, as the song seems to drift off into the sunset. You couldn't plan a more perfect note for a band like Galaxie 500 to end on.
We can't believe it's been 20 years since this trio (and their trio of albums) so gracefully touched our lives during the band's way too brief lifespan. Boy, does it make us feel old! But we can't complain too much as it's so awesome to see these three crucial records available on vinyl once again! For those who may not know, Galaxie 500 was made up of core members Damon Krukowski (drums), Naomi Yang (bass, vocals) and Dean Wareham (guitar, vocals), who are probably more well known now for the bands that formed in Galaxie 500's wake: Damon and Naomi, Luna, and Dean and Britta.
Hailing from the mid-eighties Boston college rock scene (all three attended Harvard), Galaxie 500 were very different from The Pixies and Throwing Muses, who were the more prominent Boston bands at the time, favoring slower-paced reverbed drenched songs, big in sound but played with a minimalist economy. Influenced by later period Velvet Underground, The Modern Lovers, Young Marble Giants and early New Order (all of whom they covered), Galaxie 500's signature dream pop sound (courtesy of producer Kramer, Bongwater frontman and head of the great Shimmy-Disc label) paved the way for both the shoegaze and slowcore scenes of the early nineties. In fact Kramer went on to produce Low's debut in 1994. After three great records for Rough Trade, Galaxie 500 parted ways less than amicably, with guitarist/vocalist Wareham unexpectedly quitting to form his own band Luna, leaving the rhythm section of Damon and Naomi to fend for themselves. While both parties went on to more successful ventures, none of them have quite replaced Galaxie 500's unparalleled pop majesty in our hearts.
Today was Galaxie 500's 1988 debut, and it's a slow burning paean to the more unstable sides of love and patient resolve. The elliptical rhythm section smolders and intensifies without ever fully "rocking out" while the warm guitar work strums over the top occasionally veering into understated solos. But Wareham's forlorn low-key vocals with clever but enigmatically simple songwriting is what ties the songs together. The centerpiece of the album however is their cover of Jonathan Richman's "Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste". The original version being a short, a capella, almost spoken poem, in Galaxie 500's hands, it becomes a simmering epic as they bookend the singing with forceful driving instrumental passages, sounding like something the early Velvets would have come up with. The final song, "Tugboat" was also their first single, and nicely sets up of what this band is all about: lonely and introspective but decisive, leading and in full control.
Gary War definitely found a perfect home for his tweaked and twisted pop, right next to the best of recent outsider pop deconstructionists like Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, John Maus, Blank Dogs, etc. With his latest lp he carefully stretches his already compelling sound into even more tripped out directions, some gorgeously bizarre, warped catchy, electronics melded with ultra fucked up pop that sound like they really belong on some sort of amazing Ariel Pink/John Maus collaboration. While his last records oozed with residues of '70s psychedelia, Horribles Parade almost sounds like an amazing deconstruction of new-wave gone way weird. Like if someone got a hold of old master tapes from Devo, the Units and Gary Numan and doused them mysterious liquids, messed with the speed a bit, and played it all back on an old analog reel to reel through shitty speakers in the room next door. Deliciously delirious.
Brand new super sizzling 12" from everyone's favorite sultry and sassy nu-disco duo Glass Candy. With two songs from the cd-only Deep Gems collection, "Geto Boys" and "Animal Imagination", each getting a side of wax for not only the original version, but in true '80s 12" fashion, each song is given multiple reworkings. You get the vocal/drums version of Geto Boys as well as the instrumental. And there is the "Soft Boundaries" version of "Animal Imagination" as well as the instrumental. And those instrumentals really serve to further demonstrate to how damn well Johnny Jewel uses his synths to create such icy and infectious moods and melodies. Always a great thing to have more Glass Candy on wax!
What might you glean from an image of a shepherd with a ram's head cradling a baby lamb, standing amidst a flock of sheep, or what appears to be an image of Jesus or a saint or angel, also with a ram's head? What if those images were accompanied by phrases like "Rend Each Other Like Wild Beasts, Till Earth Shall Reek With Midnight Massacre", or "Then Shall They Come, Oh Master, Shrieking From Red Battlefields To People Thy Dark Realms", or "In Sullen Silence Stalks Forth Pestilence"? Well if you've been reading the aQuarius list for a while, you'd no doubt realize that this must be another filthy blackened sonic missive from our favorite master of cinematic black doom, Gnaw Their Tongues.
Three new tracks, all lengthy and dense and brutal and hellishly symphonic, we've struggled to describe the sound of GTT in the past, it's not doom, or black metal, although it incorporates bits of both, it's the strings and horns and haunting ambience, the weird samples and film clips, the strange arrangements that play out more like orchestrations than jams, that make Gnaw Their Tongues so singularly fucked up and genius.
Side one is all hellish deep drones wrapped around distant foghorns, or some sort of inhuman cries, layered atop dense rumbles and muted industrial percussion, tense, ominous, harrowing, building to a crushing cacophony, like a Godflesh record played at 16 rpm, alongside a soulful strings record playing at 8 rpm, the horns bleating and skronking and moaning beneath the heaving machinelike pound. Bursts of blasting buzzing crunch pepper the doomscape, as do super distorted harsh howls, and all manner of tangled melody, like some symphony of filth and crust, a creeping lumbering abstract soundscape, with a super haunting horror movie outro.
The 2nd side is more spacious and doomy, but no less intense, bits of backwards melody lace the stumbling pound, like some Bernard Hermann horror movie score gone haywire, all screaming strings, screaming voices, mysterious samples, all gorgeously abject, but hauntingly beautiful, the mournful horns, the dramatic stings, and the crumbling black wall of sound carrying everything forward and dragging it down to hell.
Gorgeous packaging, the aforementioned ram headed figures on the cover, with a heavy printed inner sleeve, and pressed on thick vinyl. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Almost out of print, these are most likely our last copies ever...
NOTE: All jackets slightly damaged, not enough to distress most folks, but anal record collectors beware!
We haven't heard from Goliath Bird Eater in a while, a guitar and drums duo from LA featuring one Mr. Bobb Bruno as the axe wielding half. We were warned (or was it promised?) by Caligulan label head honcho Anthony, that this GBE was gonna be the heaviest yet, and just a few minutes in, and we're convinced. Whereas the last GBE was sort of mathy and freaked out, we compared it to a stripped down Dazzling Killmen, this new one is all slow burning heaviness, heaving churning guitars, sounds like an ocean of guitars, all tuned as low as they go, and unfurling massive swells of crumbling rumbling glacial heaviness. Eventually, the heaviness recedes, leaving something much more abstract and spacey, all processed guitars, swirling effects, very droney and krautrocky, fans of Expo 70 will probably flip, but best not be averse to heaviness, as they band slip right back into that churning roiling crush that started things off, before finally slipping into a slow simmering low end drift to finish off the first side. There doesn't seem to be any drums on side A so as he's credited with organ too, we can only assume that some of that heaviness could be attributed to some serious organ abuse.
The flipside starts off with another metallic riff, this one a bit more propulsive, and wreathed in shimmering organs, somehow melding some grinding slow motion metal with spaced out krautrock drift, pretty bad ass for sure. This side two doesn't offer up much in the way of drumming, other than what sounds like the click of a hi-hat keeping time, but it hardly detracts from the oozing sprawling heaviness, in fact if anything, the lack of drums lets the sound spill over in all directions, the main riff becoming more and more muddy and blown out, the organs and synths taking on more of the sound, until yes, the drums finally drop, and the song is transformed into some gorgeously in-the-red krautdrone space rock groove that definitely rivals anything you've heard from the various sonic space explorers reviewed elsewhere on the site. The music gets downright majestic, the drums locked in and motorik, the sort of jam that could, and as far as we're concerned SHOULD, go on forever. FUCKING AWESOME.
Killer packaging too, silkscreened and painted photo paper sleeve, with printed metallic gold cardstock insert.
Everyone remembers Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright, big boss of the Ponderosa Ranch on the TV show Bonanza. He cut a striking figure, salt and pepper hair, deep stentorian voice, broad shouldered and ruggedly handsome, so of course like most stars of the time (and really ANY time), Greene set out to be a recording star as well as a television star, and is the case with so many wouldbe rockstars, or country stars, Greene managed a few records, might have even had a hit or two, but it just wasn't in the cards. It's not really that he's a bad singer, although he does seem to slip into a more sung/spoken thing that actually belting it out, and it's not that these are bad songs, some of these jams are CRAZY catchy, it seems like maybe he was mismarketed at the time, instead of separating his singing career from his TV career, someone made the choice that Greene would be a singing cowboy, singing about the sort of stuff that Ben Cartwright might have sung about. The result being some serious (silly) kitsch, almost every song features a spoken word intro by Greene, his voice booming, reverbed, as if speaking from on high, and every song is about working on the railroad, or mining, or being in prison, or playing poker in a saloon, or a love song from a cowboy to his gal, then there's the music, fuzzy guitars, weird doo wop background vocals, gorgeous harmonies, a little bit of exotica, some goofy sound effects, some definite Morricone-isms (how could there not be, the twangy whistly Western vibe is all over these tracks obviously), and of course Greene crooning over the top, again spending much of his time sing/speaking, but when he does let loose, he almost sounds like Thurl Ravenscroft (who sang the them from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas), and at times some of these tracks even sound a bit like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, really good stuff for sure, and so fun, definite mix tape / party music, we've been playing this non stop, thankfully it doesn't quite devolve into a vanity vehicle like the William Shatner / Leonard Nimoy records. Instead it plays like some awesome, slightly cheesy, way over the top, catchy as all get out, lost country record, which it basically is.
Anyone who dug the Plantation Gold comp we made Record Of The Week a while back will WAY dig this. Another killer job from Omni, whose reissues have set a new standard, tons of photos, a long vintage interview with Greene and tons more. The Man collects two albums in their entirety, as well as a handful of tracks from several later records, a killer package for sure. Now, if only Omni would put together an Eddie Noack collection!!! One of the most amazing (and sickest) country rockabilly legends ever...
Finally, the full length has landed, a killer collection of industrial, electronic flecked, dubbed out metallic pummel from Grey Machine, three parts Jesu, one part Isis, the long anticipated team up of Justin Broadrick and Aaron Turner. We were treated to a teaser in the form of a super limited 12". We still have a few copies left, actually, with an exclusive super rad dubby remix B-side. The A-side, "Vultures Descend" is found on Disconnected as well, we described it thusly:
"A wild cacophonous chaotic noise jam, that features crunchy post industrial rhythms wrapped around a thick blown out blast of dubstep style bass, the vocals fuzzy and lo-fi buried way down in the mix, some woozy dark descending riffage, the timbre prickly and abrasive, but beneath all the churning and roiling heaviness (and it IS heavy) are some awesomely melodic guitar lines and some tripped out spacerock FX draped over the almost jungle bass and drums (or should we say drum + bass)."
Sounds good huh? Cuz it IS good. Really good. Although the whole record isn't quite as chaotic and abrasive, every song is pretty dense and sprawling, much of it sounding quite a bit like Broadrick's former outfit Godflesh, but with way more weirdness mixed in, be it extra programmed beats, layered guitars, explosions of thick oozing psych buzz, whatever. The opening track is the perfect example, with its low slung bass and industrial drumming, weaving trancelike through clouds of electronic hiss, mysterious creaks and groans, the vocals processed and chopped up, the song a lurching, unstoppable beast, but all around it, strange sounds are surfacing, transforming, becoming tangled up in that lumbering crush, as the guitars get thicker and more distorted, but seem to be twisting and warping... Eventually the drums drop out leaving just a sky full of high end streaks and a feedback skree drone drift.
So yeah, the sound here is Godfleshy, definitely not as blissy as Jesu, although some of those elements still remain, wrapped around a dense rigid industrial framework, with some surprising bits of modern electronic music (dubstep!) deftly woven into GM's sound without sticking out or sounding forced.
"When Attention Just Isn't Enough" begins life as another gloriously plodding dirge, but chiming guitars and fat fuzzy dubby bass transform it into something much more moody and groovy. "Wasted" begins with that sort of super heavy synth bass that defines most dubstep jams, but here it's laced over skittery metallic percussion and squiggly psychedelic leads, and lots and lots of noise. But it does rear up and buzz wildly every few measures, making it almost feel like some sort of industrial metal dubstep. But the wah guitars and squalls of freaked out FX also give it a distinctly Loop / Hawkwind sort of drug jam vibe as well. A killer combination for sure.
"Sweatshop" is the only really electronic sounding track, still thick ropy basslines, but with a killer loping programmed beat, super distorted and sort-of-funky, the whole thing super skeletal and dubby, with tons of texture and ambience, before giving way to the final track, probably the most blissed out of the bunch, still industrial and murky and washed out sounding, but everything is wreathed in a warm haze, the guitars muted, the drums minimal, the bass rumbling and fuzzy, lots of tape hiss and amp buzz, almost dreamy, but still appropriately ominous and intense.
Killer packaging too, blacks and greys and metallic silvers, printed on transparent vellum, with the other pages of the booklet visible through the cover, inside all sorts of high contrast video stills, a look both modern and reminiscent of the old Earache / Godflesh days. Cool.
Most of you weird music obsessives should probably remember Dutch black ambient freaks Stalaggh, whose MO was creating harsh atonal drones and buzzes, hellish noise drenched soundscapes as backdrops for various vocalists, those vocalists all inmates at a local psychiatric hospital. Yup.
The results were chilling, and creepy, and pretty fucking demented and incredible. Those Stalaggh recordings made even the evilest black metal sound totally tame in comparison. Some seriously emotional, demented and damaged, psychological sonic terror.
Since then, the band has regrouped, now called Gulaggh, with a similar plan of attack, with one little twist, according to the band, Gulaggh will be about "the perversion and inversion of Classical music combined with the vocals of the mentally insane". Definitely sounds good. Or maybe good is not the right word. But like Stalaggh, it seemed like Gulaggh would be equally disturbing.
So here it is. One track, 45 minutes, of totally haunting, mysterious... music? Sound? Soundart? Hard to know how to classify this. The sound of a voice, reverbed, over a deep distant thrum, all wrapped in little bits of hiss and creak, long tones rumble and drone, and then the voices begin to surface, mewling and moaning, groaning and mumbling, all over an insidious low end thrum, horns bleat, various bits of percussion pound scrape, and still the various voices get louder, more and more frenzied, the overall vibe ever more terrifying. The sound does seem to get classical, but more like an orchestra tuning up, abstract tones and atonal bleats and blurps, and then things go fucking apeshit, with all the vocalists, shrieking and screaming and howling, pounding on walls, stomping on floors, the cries growing more and more anguished, then out of nowhere some random drumming comes in, just in the middle of this cacophony of howls and shrieks, building to a frantic climax, before the voices begin to fade, swirling screams, sounding more like kids on a playground, but still intense knowing these aren't kids and they aren't on the playground. The horns step it up, honking and skronking and bleating and moaning, the drums skittering to a halt, then it's a weird fade out, quite voices, humming and murmuring and squeaking beneath the slowly fading horns, streaks of feedback, and that commanding, authoritarian voice from the beginning returns, the track ending how it started.
Holy shit, definitely super intense, and squirm inducing, somewhere between abject black ambience, a horror movie soundtrack, an educational film, a field recording, and a smattering of stumbling musical experimentation. Freaky as all get out, but in it's harrowing miserablism, does lurk moments of beauty, bits of melody, but for the most part those are definitely overshadowed by the evil and misery and terror, that the maniacs in Gulaggh have somehow rendered into music. Or at least sound.
Reservedly recommended. Difficult listening of the highest order, but would definitely be right at home on your cd shelf next to the Conet Project, the Ghost Orchid EVP recordings, and other mysterious and challenging collections of sounds found and otherwise.
Second record from these mysterious medieval liturgical soundscapers, who at one time were members of the awesomely avant black metal horde Emit. As we mentioned in the review of the first Emit record, that band was only tangentially 'black metal', choosing instead to take black metal elements and weave them into something more ritualistic and abstract. Well, Hammemit is the logical extension, ejecting all the black metal elements, minus some ominous black ambience, focusing more on mood and texture, creating a song suite that sounds like a collection of ancient hymns, the sounds of haunted cathedrals, the crumbling spires and broken stained glass, still imbued with the spirits and souls that had passed through before.
It's not hard to imagine wandering through some ruined stone church, at dusk, the moon bringing the shadows to life, the splintered pews in small bonfire ready piles, pages from hymnals scattered like dead leaves, when suddenly strange sounds come wafting down from the choir, shards of detuned guitar, deep rumbling drones, monk like chants, the occasional raspy whisper, warm whirling off kilter chordal whirs, washed out reverb drenched drifts of buzzing steel strings and moaned ghostlike voices, soft flutters of out of tune piano tumbling over soft crystalline shimmers, dark heaving slabs of ominous buzz, shot through with growled vocals and more spidery detuned warble and thick swirls of church organ. Gorgeous and ancient and haunting and mystical. Mood music for ruin'd cathedrals, a soundtrack for midnite pagan rituals, or as the legend on the cd sleeve reads: "Mediaeval Music For Modern Sensibilites"!
We reviewed Dave Bixby's Ode To Quetzalcoatl record on the last list. A glorious batch of born again, weirdly damaged outsider folk, chronicling Bixby's struggle to recover from drug abuse, and to find God, which culminated in receiving actual messages from God.
Needless to say, that record was pretty intense, the music not that far out, spare and sparse and jangly and folky, but the lyrics, woah, harrowing and twisted and depressive and dark dark dark, and did we mention a bit bizarre, especially considering Bixby had achieved some sort of physical covenant with God apparently.
So here we we have Bixby's second record, released shortly after Ode To Quetzalcoatl, circa 1969, but much had changed in his life, he had hooked up with a dubious spiritual advisor / guru who eventually joined the band and wrested some of the control from Bixby (as well as being investigated by the government in connection with his sort-of-cult the Group), the performances were much larger, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, at Christian colleges and at secular venues, Bixby had found a home, and had friends and support, but was still tortured by the same questions and fears that haunted the first record.
Harbinger is much more polished, recorded in an actual studio, with occasional female vocals, lush harmonies, overall a more positive vibe, but still the songs are intense, and emotional, mysterious and dark, just check out "Cosmic Energy", tense and minor key, Bixby's vocals more confident, but at the same time more intense, haunting atonal guitar figures, lots of buzz, a killer track for sure. And the rest of the record is pretty excellent too, a warm sunshine-y dark Christian folks, with definite dark undertones. A rare lost gem for fans of freaky outsider psychedelic folk and anyone into Jandek, Nick Drake, Bill Fay, Roy Harper, Perry Leopold, Charles Manson and other troubled folk troubadours...
All most folks will need to know about this, is BRAND NEW HARVEY MILK TRACK. And maybe LIMITED TO 550 COPIES and ALREADY ALMOST OUT OF PRINT. If you're a long time aQ New Arrivals list reader, then the deal will no doubt be further sealed by these words: BRAND NEW WILDILDLIFE TRACK. Okay, that's enough all caps for one review. But that's it in a nutshell, killer new super limited split 7" from the gods of epic slow motion majestic sludge, and the up and coming masters of chaotic tripped out psychedelic metallic noise pop. Both bands bringing their A game, with tracks that sound like they could have come off either of their kick ass last albums.
So Harvey Milk, if you need an introduction, have a gander at the multitude of gushing reviews elsewhere on the aQ website, needless to say, there are a handful of bands who practically define aQ, who embody everything we love about music, and Harvey Milk is definitely one of those bands. And even in one side of a 7" it's easy to understand why. Even at 45, it still almost sounds too slow. And while it most certainly is sludgey and doomy and drone-y and dirgey it's also super catchy, with killer vocal harmonies, but those weird harmonies only HM can pull off, rough and raw and howled but still somehow harmonious, the sound and song majestic and epic, slow burning and emotional, like some classic rock staple slowed waaaaaaaaay doooooooown. So good.
Wildildlife counter with probably their poppiest song ever, still with that lysergic Butthole Surfers vibe, but WAY more hooky and bubblegummy, this track too has a classic rock vibe, but also a little Janes Addiction, sludgey guitars (that also sound a bit Aerosmith-y), chaotic drumming, tangled vocal lines, some clean and clear and crooned, others processed and sped up, all a little tripped out, with some killer squiggly guitar leads, lots of effects, delay and reverb all over the place, a dense, heavy, catchy hook filled pop psych jam that totally slays. Produced by Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux btw (she's also producing their forthcoming full length).
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Weird cover art: HM dude eating toast on one side, corpse painted cat on the other, some tripped out illustrations and liner notes inside. Will be gone before you know it.
Henke - software engineer for Ableton and one time Chain Reaction recording artist - had been approached by the Swedish installation artist Fredrik Wretman to use his track Indigo, which Henke had offered as a free download on his own website. This was a softened piece of nocturnal ambience that Henke had sourced from the drips of his own bathtub! Out of that original material, Henke stretched out a Brian Eno meets Thomas Koner driftscape of rumbling tones, sustained washes of dark, grey/blue sounds, and occasional interjections of the dripping water itself. While Henke did not feel it was appropriate for Wretman's installation to merely broadcast a stereo feed of Indigo, he recontextualized the composition through six-channels (i.e. three cds with different mixes, all in stereo); and as he instructed that those three cds would be started at different times, the loops of the cd would thus warrant a constantly evolving composition to match the rippling pools of water and light which Wretman had installed in the Fargfabrieken Gallery in Sweden. Yeah, this is pretty commonplace for a sound installation strategy; but the sounds that had come together for this re-re-composed stereo mix is pretty entrancing. Certainly for fans of Koner, the darker Brian Eno records, and Bass Communion.
Ooooh. Muted jazz trumpet. Breathy and gentle. Improvising melodically o'er shimmering background ambience... Well that's certainly part of what Supersilent's Arve Henriksen brings to this new "solo" album for the legendary German new music label ECM. But he's not really solo here, rather the bandleader of a (virtual?) ensemble that includes percussion, sampling, strings, double-bass, guitar, synth, field recordings, etc. Many folks are credited with sampling, programming, and "treatments", with vocals contributed by Trio Medieval and David Sylvian (whose fans will most likely enjoy this record). The twelve tracks here include much in the way of mysterious, somnolent electronic textures, crackling Philip Jeck style loopings, layered and effected spoken word interludes, and of course the gorgeous, feathery caresses of Henriksen's trumpet. It's all very moody, and certainly soundtrack-ready, a Scandinavian chill-out album that's part Miles Davis, part Portishead, part Djivan Gasparyan... Imagine an "easy listening" edition of Supersilent, a lot of the same sorts of sounds and glitchery but all on the mellow side. Also this would be easy to imagine, if you've heard any of Henriksen's previous lovely soundscapey solo discs on Rune Grammofon (which featured several of the same collaborators). And we'd recommend this too, for those who dig stuff on the Type and Miasmah labels.
Nice tripped out split from these two New York outfits who both venture into psychedelic sonic realms in their own compelling ways. High Places is a duo that we've heard in passing before but we didn't remember them sounding like this. Their side is one long, really spaced out and percussive slow burner with early Throbbing Gristle like textures, infused with an underlying dubbed out and hypnotic groove. We realized that the first few times we played this we had it on the wrong speed but we have to say whether you slow it down (and the vocals start sounding like some cool mixture of Arthur Russell and Panda Bear) or you play it at the correct speed, it sounds pretty awesome either way, so you kind of get two rad long High Places tracks instead of just one.
Soft Circle is the project of Hisham A. Bharoocha, well respected visual artist and a former member of Black Dice (who in our opinion have never been quite as good since he left their fold). His debut as Soft Circle from a couple years ago was a great exercise in warm exploratory percussive bliss. This outing finds him gravitating more towards a drugged out pulsating dancefloor sound, in fact one of the songs "Don't Just Stand There" was remixed on the latest Milky Disco compilation. It's really cool to see folks finding refreshing new avenues to reach such soaring psychedelic heights.
Something very strange must have transpired since the last Horseback disc. Something traumatic maybe? Some spiritual crisis of sonic faith? Where that record was a glistening, glimmering, dreamy, drifty drone record, this one is, well, much heavier, and more rocking, and WAY more intense and EVIL sounding. So much so that it almost sounds like a different band. That said, we dig it. A LOT.
Super intense, and super heavy psychedelic twang flecked metallic post rock. The guitars buzz, and drone, and occasionally twang, the drums are powerful, tight, the instruments locked into slow burning build ups, some strange hybrid of newer Earth, Godspeed, Circle, the Necks and maybe a little Scenic. There's a sort of krautrock vibe going on too. Sun baked, a little lysergic, space-y hypnotic, repetitive, the tracks looooooong, with mostly a single part, that gradually builds and builds. The cool thing is it never explodes into a metal coda, a la Isis or Neurosis or a million other bands, it's all about the journey not the destination, and the journey is riveting enough without tacking on an explosive blow out.
But then there's the vocals, a harsh demonic rasp totally at odds with the music beneath, which in some ways makes the combination sound that much more intense and evil. Especially when the rasps are locked in a sort of call and response with the guitars, really strange but definitely compelling.
The first three tracks are variations on a theme, each an incredible slab of brooding, mesmerizing hypno-rock, lush and layered, with tons of cool little extra guitar flourishes, the drums busy enough to be interesting, but still locked tight into the groove, those vocals, adding menace for sure, but also a strange element that as mentioned above changes the whole feel. A track will be moody and woozy and will suddenly sound a bit evil, or at least a little ominous, before slipping back into the loping, pounding crush of the main riffs.
The strangest thing about this record is that the track with the most overtly evil title, the closer "Hatecloud Dissolving Into Nothing", is the least heavy or evil of the bunch, and the only track that sounds like the first Horseback record. A 16+ minute drift of soft focus new age-y ambience, of dreamy drift, sun dappled guitars draped over long stretches of gauzy whir, the sound delicate and crystalline, definitely dreamy and blissed out, the only remnant of the tracks that came before, are some barely audible harsh vokills, way way way down in the mix, that almost sound like a slow shifting layer of hiss or buzz, beneath the kaleidoscopic shimmer of blurred guitar hum and melancholic melody, another strange combination, but similar to the vocals on the first three tracks, they lend a very subtle hint of menace to the otherwise tranquil proceedings.
Gorgeous packaging, black on maroon, oversized vellum sleeves, inside, another vellum sleeve housing the disc and a printed poster with lyrics, liner notes and a strikingly detailed and garish ink drawing of a horse being attacked by wolves!
The long anticipated return of Inh Halentropy, a band we know very little about, other than they make a sound like almost nothing we've EVER heard before. A band who introduced themselves to us with a random package in the mail, containing a cd-r, and these simple words: "Dark Greetings. For your grimnatious becryptlement�" as well as the similarly mysterious sign off: "In ancient solemnity, none so grimm�".
We expected black metal, and that's what we got. sort of. Their sound was most definitely black, but not metal in any way we were familiar with, instead they unfurled a cinematic new age-y black ambient doom, equal parts Esoteric, Goblin, and Low, a sort of mysterious blissed out yet grim slowcore. Or something. Their cd-r release disappeared in no time, and no word from the band until recently, a new cd-r just showed up one day, that familiar two part band name, an owl and all sorts of strange symbols, we were soooo excited. We originally thought it was a record called Dull Knife, but soon discovered Inh Halentropy were sharing the cds with another like minded horde CALLED Dull Knife.
So what has changed in the last two years, if anything? Well, the sound is still grim, and haunting, a swirling slo-mo mix of atmospheric doom and creepy crawly slowcore, an eighties horror movie soundtrack vibe infused with a shimmery drifty bit of new age ambience, two tracks, the first a plodding cinematic sprawl, with abstract programmed drums, dark swells of distant rumble, smears of almost cheesy sounding synths, what sounds like faux horns (also probably synths), deeeeeeep bass that throbs underneath, all wrapped up with super lyrical, haunting minor key melodies, definitely like the soundtrack to some lost 30 year old European horror film.
The second Inh Halentropy jam is even trippier and more spaced out, beginning with heavily effected falsetto vocals, that almost sound like wild animal calls or that little 'cooo' sound from Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie & Clyde" albeit way more evil, some woozy detuned guitars, and some shimmery squalls of warped warble, eventually spreading out into a slow burning sprawl of spidery guitars, hushed whir and glistening tinkles, and some seriously disturbing slowed down samples. So creepy and kick ass. Hate to think we might have to wait 2 more years for another full length.
Inh Halentropy set the bar pretty high, but Dull Knife are undeterred, and offer up their own sort of creepy ambience, deep warped low end tones, unfurling grimly in an expanse of muted buzz and crumbling distortion, reminding us quite a bit of Trollmann, in its minimal low end heaviness, over the course of the track, the low end grows more abrasive, and more active, fluctuating more wildly, like some weirdly distorted symphony for foghorn and black buzz. The second DK track's another bleak bit of minimal grimness, this time even more harrowingly dense, the sounds thick and corrosive, the swells coming faster and faster, eventually blurring into a single oozing slab of blackdrone, shot through with shards of crunch and strange bits of glitch. Wow. Guess we need to hear more from these guys as well.
Needless to say, anyone into sounds slow, low, grim and black, spaced out and atmospheric, haunting and heavy, should grab one of these right quick.
SUPER LIMITED of course. Each one hand screened, different colored ink, on different colored textured paper, every one different.
It's all been leading up to this. Seven releases in less than 4 years, we now find ourselves bowing before long anticipated (at least around here) record number eight from this Weakling worshipping, Black Flag channeling one man black metal band, who as we've mentioned before, began life as nothing more than a fun fuck-around musical HAILZ to the late great Bay Area metal masters Weakling, and heck, if you're gonna pick a band to emulate and be influenced by, you could do a LOT worse. But it didn't take long for that influence to fade, and for Jabaldav to find their own voice. And that voice was indeed a twisted one, a sound that struck a chord with aQ weirdo black metal obsessives, a twisted and gnarled blackness, jagged and harsh, hooky and heavy, and plenty weird and warped.
On Atta Vinter, Jabladav expand their sound considerably, present still are the frenzied buzzing, the relentless blast beats, the grinding Greg Ginn-ish like guitars, but the songs on AV are way more epic and sprawling, weirdly haunting and majestic, long stretches of choral drift, of looped keyboard-drenched ambience, acoustic guitar flecked streaks of orchestral sounding mellotron, strange bits of abstract vocals, soaring strings, all woven seamlessly into huge crushing slabs of black brutality, of howling pounding primitive pound.
Weirdly enough, the punk element is in full effect here too, with some of the tracks sounding like slightly more metal versions of classic Midwestern punk rock, at least one is a dead ringer for Die Kreuzen, which is NEVER a bad thing. The vocals are way more varied too, from yowled bellow, to feral yelp, to hellish shriek, most of the songs are pretty short too, with more than half under 3 minutes, but plenty of wild tangled riffing and octopoidal drumming crammed into those few minutes. And even at its punkest, the sounds are a breath away from full on furious black metal blur, and that's sort of the magic of Jabladav, a careening, lurching unpredictable punkish black metal blowout that confounds and confuses, slipping from total Norwegian style icy blast, to killer loping post punk tangle, to gorgeous shimmery drone, and back again, the various elements so disparate, but so perfectly meshed, the melodies catchy as hell, the riffs super memorable, the sound still strangely sharp and lo-fi, almost lush, but the guitars ultra distorted and super saturated, the drums pounding but buried in the mix, the flow of the record a definite sonic journey, culminating in the final 3 song suite, a long-ish expanse of downtuned doominess, that gives way to mathy grinding witchiness, whose barely there drone outro leads right into a brief blast of weirdly melodic almost power-metal sounding blackness, with harmonized guitars and a super blown out in-the-red sound, which finally, leaves us battered and bruised before the epic 11 minute closer, which begins all spidery minor key guitar, and whirring warbling mellotron, before exploding into perhaps one of the most frantic bits on the record, a lurching, twisted downtuned, buzz drenched stutter, with one of the weirdest, and most KILLER riffs ever, before again slipping into that murky spidery crawl, and then back again, over and over, the heavy riffage, getting simultaneously more and more distorted and fucked up, but more and more catchy and melodic, the weird mellotron drones only adding a distinctly creepy vibe to the proceedings, the whole track impossibly complex and dizzying, before the track stumbles to a standstill, leaving a shadowy blur, a strange funereal drift, the blackened tendrils of sound gradually shriveling up and dying, leaving nothing but darkness.
Next level shit for sure, maybe too much for the grim troo old guard, but screw them, for the rest of us, this is exactly the sort of stuff we're always dying for, buzzing, blackened, outsider, otherworldly, weird as shit heaviness that defies easy categorization. WAY recommended. Maybe the best Jabladav yet, which is saying something!
And just like the other Jabladav records, limited to 100 copies, each one hand numbered and signed, most with a little something extra inside.
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Record number two, originally released way back in 1981, from this not-so-mysterious-anymore and not-so-reclusive-anymore mysterious recluse, finally available again on vinyl!
Another raw glimpse into the hermetic soul of this unliklely underground troubadour, through his ultra-minimal, angular trance-blues soaked with as always, lots of spring reverb and moaned wavering vocal. An acquired taste for sure, but those who do acquire a taste for Jandek's unique twangy murky off kilter caterwaul, often end up completely obsessed.
One of three simultaneous reissues of the mid-seventies records Bert Jansch made for the Charisma label. Never before issued on cd, each one remastered under Jansch's personal supervision with extensive liner notes, bonus tracks and extras.
A Rare Conundrum from1977, sees Jansch returning to England and back to a more stripped down acoustic sound after the ambitious folly of Santa Barbara Honeymoon. Charisma at the time was focussed on the new Phil Collins-led Genesis era and gave Jansch lots of room to find a new band and record a new record. Focusing on more traditional, personal, and back-to-basics material ("Pretty Faro", "The Curragh of Kildare"), A Rare Conundrum feels like the most lost and overlooked of the three Charisma records. The backing band Jansch put together for the recording (including members of Dire Straights, Lindisfarne, and Dando Shaft) couldn't obligate themselves to touring, so the album didn't get promoted at all. That's no surprise since it's rather anachronistically out of step with where popular music was heading (punk being the driving musical force at the time), and Charisma's year long delay on its release sealed the record's fate as well as Jansch's stint on the label, which dropped him without notice a couple of years later. The bonus tracks include three song that were included on the European releases of the record under another title before Charisma officially released this record to US markets. A lovely record that is finally getting its much deserved due!
One of three simultaneous reissues of the mid-seventies records Bert Jansch made for the Charisma label. Never before issued on cd, each one remastered under Jansch's personal supervision with extensive liner notes, bonus tracks and extras.
L.A. Turnaround from 1974 came out of a free-fall period between Pentangle's long-time-coming break-up and a label shake-up at Reprise records that found Jansch looking for new digs. He signed to the "Famous Charisma Label" (home of Genesis, Van Der Graaf Generator and Lindisfarne) whose boss Tony Stratton Smith sought to reinvigorate Jansch's solo glory from what he considered the din of the Pentangle years. Legend has it that Jansch was invited to stay at Smith's Sussex country house where he arrived after an all-night bender with John Martyn. When he awoke the next morning, he was introduced to Mike Nesmith (of Monkees fame), O.J. "Red" Rhodes (a renowned slide guitar session player) and Klaus Voorman at breakfast. Noticing a mobile recording studio set up outside as well as a small film crew, Jansch quickly realized he was supposed to start recording right then with Nesmith brought in to produce. Half-recorded in Sussex and then finished in Los Angeles, L.A. Turnaround is the rarest and most sought after of the Charisma recordings, as well as the freshest, and is most linked to Jansch's Brit folk heyday, yet with a warm rootsy sheen evoked by Rhodes' stellar slide guitar. Jansch even reworks one of his most popular songs, "Needle of Death", with an earthy production that adds an edge the original lacked. The bonus tracks include many alternate version of songs plus "In The Bleak Midwinter", a Christmas single produced by Ralph McTell. There is also a film included on the enhanced cd of the recording sessions documenting four of the songs. Beautiful!
One of three simultaneous reissues of the mid-seventies records Bert Jansch made for the Charisma label. Never before issued on cd, each one remastered under Jansch's personal supervision with extensive liner notes, bonus tracks and extras.
British Folk meets West Coast folk-rock on this 1975 follow-up to L.A. Turnaround. Recorded in L.A. with a full on back-up band on a solo record for the first time, Santa Barbara Honeymoon is one of Jansch's more curious efforts. Perhaps that was due to the change in production crew (Nesmith didn't return to produce), but also may be due to the unlikely inclusion of a Dixieland Jazz ensemble on "Dance Lady Dance" as well as steel drums on "Baby Blue" (not the Dylan song!). While this was a financial and critical disappointment at the time, the quality of the songs still shine through, especially in the stripped down versions performed live at the Montreaux festival, included here as bonus tracks. It's one of those records that is very much of its time, but still a worthy touchstone in the context of bands like Vetiver, Fleet Foxes, and Two Gallants who continue to mine those warm seventies sunshine sounds.
First release from this mysterious new tape only label, and it comes from long time favorite, turntablist Philip Jeck! If you're anything like us, you'll buy ANYTHING with Jeck's name on it, his record is that solid, his records are, well, that solid, every single release is gorgeous and expansive and dark and otherworldly, multiple aQ Records Of The Week, maybe more than any other artist. But that makes perfect sense as his sound, and his technique, his aesthetic is so amazing, and so demonstrates what we love about music. The unrestrained creativity, the recontextualiation of other sounds, the physicality of his performances, but mostly the sound, at once warm and crackly and familiar, at the same time, otherworldly and alien and fantastical.
Needless to say, a new record by Jeck was a no brainer, we got as many as we could of the 250 copy run, only to discover that there were in fact no turntables, that Spool instead featured Jeck on solo bass! Hmmm. Well, any trepidation we had lasted all of 5 seconds, as Spool seems to explore the exact same sonic space as Jeck's turntable records, the bass rendered unrecognizable, more a soundscaping tool than a rock instrument, run through a bank of effects, had we not been told that this was a bass record and not a turntable record we might never have known. Gorgeous hazy swirls of deep textured rumble, soft scrapes and distant keening shards of feedback, dark buried melodies, layered and textured expanses of warm fluid drift, occasionally building into an almost cacophonous squall, but always managing to settle into some sort of raga like buzz or epic glacial whir. Haunting and so beautiful. We'd love to see what this guy could do with a whole band, especially a whole band of Jecks!
WAY RECOMMENDED. And be warned, we only got about 30 of these, of the only 250 made, which means most likely these will be the only copies we can get.
We got another amazing batch of vintage blues reissues from the wonderful Monk label. Look elsewhere on the list for reviews of two more volumes of Charley Patton recordings and a double lp set by Blind Willie McTell!
If I Had My Way, I'd Tear The Building Down is a compilation of recordings Blind Willie Johnson made for Columbia records between 1927 to 1930. Having recorded 30 songs in total, this compilation gathers nearly half of his entire recorded output. Hailing from Texas, and blinded at a young age by his stepmother (who accidentally threw lye water in his face that was meant for his father while they were fighting) Johnson became known as one of the most talented bottleneck guitar players around (though his slide was actually a pocketknife!), having honed his style on various homemade guitars he built as a kid. His blues style was heavily gospel-influenced, singing with a gruff bass voice so he could be heard above the noise of the street, as he used his music as a preaching tool. He was later joined by his wife, who added 19th century hymns to their repertoire and joined him on some of the later recordings as the high end response to his low-end calls. While she is featured on four of the tracks here, most of them are just Johnson and his beautiful slide guitar!
Golly, doesn't this album absolutely scream "Iceland"? Albeit in the most hushed fashion. Not a bad thing in our books by any means! Very apropos, of course! Jonsi & Alex aka Jon Por Birgisson and Alex Somers are indeed a duo from Reykjavik, Iceland. The cover artwork for their debut album is a deadringer for any release from Mum or Sigur Ros. Go figure as Jonsi is in fact the singer of Sigur Ros! The muted dark tones shroud blurry mysterious figures like snapshots from a dream. As well, their music has both a familiar sighing wistfulness and expansive grandeur to it. The first track "Happiness" follows a three note melody drawn out on bowed strings in a slowly swelling cycle. It's deceptively powerful in its seeming simplicity, and quite capable of stirring up bittersweet aches from days long past. Riceboy Sleeps is graced with strings by Amiina and choral accompaniment by Kopavogsdottur. And really, the album is just as much theirs as it is Jonsi & Alex. Their performances are breathtaking! Other highlights: "Indian Summer", "All The Big Trees" and "Daniell In The Sea". Recommended!
Wait, what? Are we having a collective ultra-doom induced dream? A NEW Khanate record?? We'd practically been ready to slit our wrists (or should that be, ready to *stop* slitting our wrists?) when we heard that this sludgey supergroup (featuring members of SUNNO))) and Old) had split up a while back. But here's Hydra Head with a new, vinyl-only (for now, see below) Khanate release! Turns out, it's music they recorded back in 2005-2006 by James Ploktin, Stephen O'Malley and Tim Wyskida, with vocals apparently added later on by the inimitable Alan Dubin. And it's a pretty killer Khanate set, a fitting finale really, taking things to an extreme, emotional, and artistic level that they'd perhaps never reached before - or ever will again, seeing as how this is indeed their last album.
There's four tracks, "Wings From Spine", "Clean My Heart", "In That Corner", and "Every God Damn Thing". All of 'em claustrophobic and chaotic, but it's doomic slow-motion chaos, a ballet of percussive skitter, sculpted feedback, washes of grim drone, and crucially, insane wailing vokillz. Of course, with Khanate (and Dubin's new project Gnaw) a lot depends on how into his vocals you can get - and maybe you should be worried about your mental health if you get really into 'em! His misanthropic throat-peeling rants about, well, every Dubin-damned thing are perhaps an acquired taste, or affliction. We're fans though, yikes...
Musically, on Clean Hands we were struck by the lengthy semi-ambient stretches, seemingly improvised, that provide a disturbingly quiet yet creepy backdrop for Dubin's bloodcurdling extemporizations. The restrained rumble and clatter of these segments certainly build the tension, for the release that comes when the really heavy parts kick in, as of course they ultimately do. The thirty-plus minute "Every God Damn Thing", which takes up all of the B side, is especially hushed and ambient sounding, humming and hissing with fractured bits of amp buzz and jack/cord glitch, it's Khanate at their most Sinistri/Starfuckers-ish. Experimental, more than metal.
So, this here is the assuredly limited, swank domestic vinyl edition. Real nice O'Malley design, colored vinyl (the one we're looking at now is "caramel vanilla swirl", yum). Apparently, someday there's gonna be a domestic cd version too, with a bonus dvd, but on that "Every God Damn Thing" is given a major edit, shortened to, like, 8 minutes. Also rumored, a picture disc vinyl version (dunno if we'll see that) and a Japanese cd edition on Daymare which we think will include the full half-hour version of "EGDT" heard here... not sure when/if we'll ever have that though, either. Just fyi.
For most casual listeners of music, Kool & The Gang will forever be remembered (and dismissed) for their platinum eighties mega-hit "Celebration". Which is a damn shame! That song alone has nearly built a wall so high over their past efforts that it's hard to convince people that in the seventies, there wasn't a harder working live band or tighter funk unit outside of James Brown & the JB's than Kool & The Gang. Even those familiar with their early funk hits, "Jungle Boogie", "Funky Stuff" or "Hollywood Swinging" (all from their 1973 album Wild and Peaceful) may not realize they put out five records of underrated solid grooves before that. Live At PJ's from 1971 was the band's third album, and their second live album released in a row. A hectic night after night touring schedule of gigs across the country had given the band the necessary chops to pull off one of the most exciting sets committed to wax. Not only were they tight on the funk side, but confident enough on the jazz side of things to get more exploratory and expansive. On the opener "N.T." (short for No Title), both funk and jazz sides are on full display at once. While they are known for having a killer horn section, the most amazing thing about this band is the flute leads, especially on "Sombrero Sam" and "Lucky For Me". Live at PJ's is largely an instrumental record, with occasional vocalizing on a couple of tracks, as the band at this point hadn't expanded much beyond it's soul-jazz roots into the full on funk band it would later become. But it's later hip-hop credentials become apparent on the last song (before the bonus track) "Dujii" as its opening groove became the foundation for "Jazz Thing" by Gang Starr. So awesome, that this underrated live set is available once again! Highly recommended.
They may have taken two years between their first and second records, but here comes number three, mere months after we raved about number two, Stahlhartes Gehause. Malefeasance is another stunner, again mixing all manner of experimentation and soundscapery with a core grim black buzz, but L'Acephale move ever farther from the constricting tropes of black metal here, instead utilizing those sounds and styles to their own end, i.e. creating some of the most mysterious and darkly compelling abstract buzz drenched heaviness we've heard in ages.
Where Stahlhartes Gehause was still essentially a black metal record, Malefeasance feels like anything but, with much of the record buzz-free, and even when the band do create some seriously harrowing grimnity, it's abstract, and obtuse, avant even, bordering on a sort of sculpted noise, utilizing bits of blackness to enhance each track's mood and menace.
Album opener "Vainamoinen Nacht" is an epic 10 minute chunk of blackened drift, hushed and shimmery, laced with strange samples and nits of found sound, ominous and haunting, eventually, the song culminates in a flurry of hiss and static and crunch, leaving just some strange bit of European choral music. The following track, "Hitori Bon Odori", harkens back to L'Acephale's Mord Und Totsclag record, offering up some apocalyptic folk, replete with steel string strum and martial snares, whirling winds, and deem ominous wordless vocals. "A Burned Village" is the first time the band explore any black metal, although the track begins with a haunting funereal drum dirge and deep monk like chanting, which continues throughout the track, which consists of buzzing insectoid riffage, harsh vokills, and no traditional blasting drum beats, instead, more martial snares and that same opening percussion. Heavy for sure, and black, but not necessarily metal, more like some sort of metallic black ambience.
The last three tracks, clocking in at 18:09, 14:17 and 23:00 respectively, make up the bulk of the record, the first, "From A Miserable Abode" explodes in a squall of swirling downtuned guitars, super distorted and saturated vocals, a heaving Merzbowian freakout, tons of effects and stuttering sonic fragments, there do seem to be drums, but they're buried in the mix, instead the track seems to expand ever outwards, a huge dense cloud of frenzied sound, all underpinned by a moaning, keening high end drone, which later on reveals itself as a bagpipe or some sort of horn, the metal and noise fading out, leaving just a glorious Eastern style high end ur-drone, mesmerizing and meditative and very very mysterious. "Sleep Has His House" is another 'metal' track, but again, there seems to be very little forward momentum, very little propulsion, instead, the band whip up supercharged drifts of noise drenched high end skree, while underneath, a guitar is locked in a motorik hypnotic loop, the result a sound like some Finnish forest drone folk outfit remixed by some harsh noise combo, the two disparate elements melding into something wholly original and hauntingly listenable.
Finally, the record closes with the 23 minute "Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted", a deep drone / soft noise exploration, beginning with some subsonic rumbles, some streaks of feedback and brittle high end, and finally an extended doom folk dirge outro, a simple minor key guitar figure over a backdrop of his and whir, the whole thing strangely textural and visceral, ominous and dense with menace.
It's definitely strange that what might be the best L'Acephale record so far, also happens to be the least metal. So much so that we can only recommend this to the most adventurous of metalheads (which we like to think would be the majority of metal loving folk that read the aQ list), but fair warning to the rest, that this is not really a black metal record at all, instead, it's some gloriously abstract, blackened ritualistic collection of dark metallic drift and alchemical doom folk, of blacknoise and apocalyptic dronemusik, and thus, metal or not, is WAY recommended.
We've been trying to get our hands on enough of these to list for ages, a killer 3 way split of obscure strangely melodic blackness, released on Hungarian label Turanian Honour, featuring long time aQ faves Marblebog, Bay Area depressive black metal duo Lascowiec and Verzivatar, another Hungarian horde we had never heard until now.
Lascowiec, whose killer demo compilation we raved about a while back (which we still have a small handful left), returns with four more tracks of washed out black beauty, darkly depressive and beautifully buzzy, the music of Lascowiec is a blurred and smeared minor key mystery, remove the distorted vokill croak, and you'd be left with a deep swirling shoegazey bit of soft focus buzz. The riffs are muted and muddy, lo-fi but still lush, locked into trancelike loops, woozy and warbly and hypnotic, about as pretty as black metal can sound without ceasing to be black or metal. Spidery tangled little melodies, wreathed in otherworldly effects, distorted but not harsh or jagged, more smoothed out and blissy, the vocals the grimmest element, but for the most part, it's the music that carries Lascowiec, gorgeously mournful, and hauntingly lovely buzzy blackness.
Marblebog offer up two songs, epic and majestic, melodic too, but with some super twisted way UP in the mix vocals, that transform an otherwise loping mysterious minor key dirge into something creeped out and harrowing. The main melody is gorgeous, almost power metal sounding, albeit slowed down and draped over a monotonous doomy drum plod, but those vocals, the perfect blend of harsh and hellish, brooding and pretty. Their second track is another strange blend, this time the guitars and drums are buried beneath thick swirling keyboards, and some fucked up demonic gurgled croaking vocals. Again, the effect is the same, a sort of woozy softly buzzing prettiness transformed into a fractured, Burzumic, off kilter depressive black dirge.
Finally Verzivatar deliver two tracks of fierce and frantic blasting blackness, but like the other two bands on the split, their sound is marked by an unlikely melodiousness, the riffs, frenetic and buzzy are also soaring and majestic, the vocals here too are weird, but less black metal, or really metal at all, more like a raspy punkish howl, or a strangled mewl. Gives Verzivatar a sort of crusty punkish vibe, reminding us a bit of French faerical black metal punks Nuit Noire. Definitely need to hear more from these guys.
All three bands offer up some seriously gorgeous melodic grimness, some surprisingly blissed out black metal buzz, unfortunately this is LIMITED TO 666 COPIES, and has been out for a while, so not sure we can get more. Each one is hand numbered, with a big full color booklet, liner notes, lyrics and the works.
With a name like Lazarus Blackstar, we were sort of expecting something a bit more polished, it definitely has a nu-metal or modern rock ring to it, but holy shit, nothing could be further from the truth. LB are purveyors of some of the crustiest, filthiest, heaviest sludge doom we've heard in ages. Featuring a who's who of British sludge / punk / crust / metal royalty (including at least one member of the legendary Sore Throat) these guys are broooootal. Massive, thick downtuned chug, crushing drum pound, a vocalist who sounds like he's spitting out vital organs with every anguished guttural roar, definitely hearing some Eyehategod, Grief, Bongzilla and that sort of thing, but the band bring some weirdness, like in the opening track, when after trudging through some seriously glacial black tar buzz, a guitar line soars from beneath the murk, tracing out a weirdly warm and buzzy and almost major key melody over the lurching lumber below. "Son Of Sorrow" slows it down even more, veering into some serious Bunkur / Moss / Monarch territory, before launching into an Electric Wizardly, almost stonery groove. The closer "Victim Of The Clergy", superimposes some demonic growling over a haunting hymn, the hammer falls and the song erupts in a slow negative trudge, the vocals this time punkish and yelped. There are some fucked up samples, some weird ambient percussion, like the sound of water dripping, or echoey footsteps, but the riff and the drums pound away, relentlessly, as various voices hover over the top, finally dropping out and finishing with a priest offering absolution. Heavy as fuck. Definitely need to track down the full lengths....
So magical! This album has swept us off our feet! We should have known as soon as we heard of the fine company these folks have been keeping. They recently backed up Roger Wootton of Comus (!) for a recorded performance in Sweden, and Mattias Gustavsson of Dungen produced this very album. Fear not, any elevated expectations will be met effortlessly. Needless to say, both of those bands are serious longtime aQ faves, and Lisa O Piu is well on its way to becoming a new one. This is wonderful.
But before we proceed any further, please allow us to advise you that this is best heard on headphones! Why? Well, for one thing, there might be no better sounds at the moment to tune out the ruckus of the world outside. Traffic congestion, construction work, random yelling in the street begone! No, we're not exaggerating. Lisa O Piu's debut album is filled with such glintingly opulent folk that both gently creeps and majestically soars. Entering into its embrace is like embarking on a magic carpet ride to some distant enchanted forest. Secondly, they've taken good advantage of the stereo field in the recording process. So headphones really enhance the listening experience. When the three female vocalists - frontwoman Lisa Isakkson, along with Jennie Stabis and Maria Lagerlof - are singing and performing all at once, it's as though your whole head is filled with glorious song. This is a particular joy on the robust opener "Cinnamon Sea". When they are singing solo as they do on the closing track "And So On", it's as though they are taking turns singing right in each of your ears. The lush instrumentation is centered around acoustic, electric and 12-string guitars as well as an ensemble of woodwinds, but subtle introductions of mellotron, theremin, cellotron and harp slip the proceedings deeper into a hazy psych-tinged dream realm.
Fans of Linda Perhacs, Vashti Bunyan, Sybille Baier and Marissa Nadler... open your arms and ears to these Stockholm beauties!
NOW ON VINYL!!
We love dancehall, the beat, the rhythms, the toasting especially, the lurching hypnotic groove of it, but what we, and lots of other folks have always had trouble with, was the lyrical content, the whole scene in fact, rife with violence, and homophobia and misogyny, much like American hip hop, but even more fucked up and seriously unpalatable.
So much so that plenty of folks around aQ land who might otherwise dig dancehall big time, have sworn off it completely. UNTIL NOW.
Diplo and Switch, bring their twisted and tweaked approach to beats and grooves, and whip up one the wildest, craziest dancehall records EVER. And what better way to thumb their noses at traditional dancehall than by getting a whole gaggle of female rappers and toasters to team up with the more well know male Jamaican dancehall vocalists, often verbally sparring back and forth in the same song. The sound is supercharged, electrifying, the beats banging, the samples bizarre but perfect, a tangled technicolor musical backdrop over which the vocalists do their THANG.
Morricone-esque guitars, the clip clop of horse hooves, ringing cell phones, horse whinnies, dizzying looped rhythms, a killer stuttery beat, tons of woozy low end, everything chopped and hiccuppy, an awesome deep growly bit of toasting, and some cool looped Santigold vox, before she gets to spit her own bad ass verse, and that's just the first song.
The whole disc destroys though, relentless non stop hip shaking head bobbing sweaty sexy speaker destroying musical magic, some tracks bliss out into some sunshiney reggae grooviness, all laid back, infused with some awesome smoky sultry vox, other tracks get raw and rough, with buzzing guitars and fuzzed out bass lines, plenty of clatter and crunch, others are fizzly and festive, with vocodered vocals and skittery beats, and still others are dense tightly wound jams, drenched in effects and tangled up with rollicking block rocking beats and squiggly melodies. Even as an instrumental record, this would kill, but the vocalists push it over the top, tongue twisting flows all over the place, lightning fast sputters, growly drawls, head spinning back and forth and of course plenty of whoops and whooooooos...
Summer dancehall party record of the year for sure, with awesome Major Lazer cartoon cover art, very reminiscent of the classic old Scientist albums!! So recommended. Every time we play this in the store, someone comes up to see what the heck it is!
We've been getting tons of requests for this, and after many attempts at contacting the band, we've finally got copies of their full length vinyl debut!! Maus Haus is a local San Francisco experimental pop six piece group, whose analogue synth-driven sounds lend themselves to comparisons to bands like Hot Chip, Stereolab, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Aavikko and Grizzly Bear. They're sure garnering a popular following with floor-filling live club gigs and word-of-mouth buzz!! But Maus Haus also mine a more off-kilter chamber pop sound that often forays into adventurous noirish British jazz territory that set the group apart from their perhaps better known contemporaries and influences. Whipsmart lyrics, soulful harmonies and tightly shifting musical arrangements (pensive harpsichords, far-off flutes and hypnotic saxophone hooks weave throughout) aptly display the group's fine-tuned musicianship and makes this local band definitely one to watch! Each LP comes with a mp3 download card for those who are vinyl-impaired! Very Recommended!
We got another amazing batch of vintage blues reissues from the wonderful Monk label. Look elsewhere on the list for reviews of two more volumes of Charley Patton recordings and an lp by Blind Willie Johnson (not to be confused with this Blind Willie)!
Born blind at the turn of the century, Blind Willie McTell was not only an astute guitar player, but even a more avid businessman, often using a myriad of pseudonyms (Hot Shot Willie, Georgia Bill) to juggle multiple record deals. Having developed a unique subgenre of the blues called Piedmont Blues, combining a hard roots Delta style with the more sophisticated East-Coast style, his guitar playing often sounded like there were multiple instruments playing. McTell was less gospel-influenced than Blind Willie Johnson, favoring songs about hard-living and hard-loving. He had a long recording career with a few labels, but with not as much success as he hoped for due to the Great Depression. This compilation spans 26 recordings between 1927 and 1931 recorded in his home town of Atlanta for the Victor Records label.
The Meads of Asphodel have been a longtime favorite around these parts, not surprisingly, since they've been pushing the boundaries of how black metal is defined with their bizarre, often hilarious brand of nutso, super anti-Christian metal with notable medieval and Middle Eastern influences. Though you will find it impossible to stifle (nervous?) laughter at various moments, the Meads, however, are no joke. In fact, one could argue that their highly unorthodox stance is actually WAY more real and bad ass than the plethora of groups all adopting the same boring, pseudo-Satanic bullshit pose. Maybe some find it difficult to take seriously a band with a penchant for dressing up in medieval armor, but why not? It's certainly no less ridiculous than corpsepaint. The notes in this collection of demos from the band's first phase (1998-2002), penned by group leader Metatron, make it clear that sucking up to record labels and metal fans in general was never part of the agenda. Instead, the Meads have been, and continue to be, true to only themselves. Fuck yeah.
With this anything goes mentality, the Meads have delivered some of the weirdest, most incomprehensible metal maybe ever. The influence of NWOBHM greats, notably Venom, shines bright, but how many other black metal groups would you expect to punctuate their evil riffage with parts that sound like drunken medieval wedding parties, disco breakdowns, and country western hoedowns? Not too many. The strangest part about all of these is how randomly they will pop up, when you're never expecting it.
Symphonic keyboards are also pretty central to the Meads' sound, with heavy as fuck church organs and harpsichord-styled synths adding a decidedly atmospheric element to it all. There are even some moments of strummed 4AD style jangle, but take note of the covers by GBH and Italian thrashers Bulldozer to get an idea of the band's more aggressive influences. Heavy D-Beats, punkish power chords, and harsh bellowing (in addition to some nice black metal croaking, of course) exist in the mix in pretty much equal measure to everything else.
We would be lying if we said this band was for everyone. But for those who like their metal adventurous, totally fucked, and pretty much without precedent, we couldn't recommend this highly enough!
Leave it to the Russians to school us on the dark realities of existence with their relentlessly insular take on black metal. Everyone knows and loves Old Wainds and Nav, and now we have Meti Bhuvah, an intense whirlwind of blackened punk fury from the icy North that sounds like it could have easily stepped out of 1986. The abundance of stripped down thrashing punk riffs and guttural, bile spewing vocals, combined with appropriately lo-fi yet powerful recording quality, pretty much sound like the perfect balance of crusty D-Beat punk and Bathory's first record with bursts of pre-crossover American Hardcore a la Siege, COC, and SSD. The drums are generally a medium paced pound, the guitars are like napalm with occasional moments of phased out weirdness from the archaic recording devices, and the bass sounds amazing as it gurgles and distorts its way around the rest of the maelstrom. There isn't much variation to the affair, nor should there be. Instead, Meti Bhuvah stick to the basics, much in the vein of Ildjarn, and never let you forget why you relinquished your soul to the dark side in the first place. The riffs are evil yet catchy as hell and the saturation of pure metallic rage begins to take on a throb of psychedelic proportions if you just let it sink in and take over. In a little more than thirty minutes, Meti Bhuvah takes you on a blackened journey through the Russian wilderness that skews your perception and pummels your eardrums into senselessness. Just the way we like it.
Mograg Garage is a Japanese DIY art gallery run out of an actual garage in suburban Tokyo. To commemorate their first year of exhibitions, they published this small, but gorgeously detailed and beautifully produced full-color 40 page catalog documenting the artists that exhibited last year.
Eight artists are represented with six writers contributing columns (all translated into English). Their plan is to release a catalog every year. And if they're all like this one, then sign us up for a subscription! The artworks are highly visual, bold and graphic, lots of colorful psychedelic landscape paintings (including one of a giant cave that is also the head of a sabre-toothed tiger), intricate and epic tattoo-like line drawings, pop-surrealism, embroidery of colorful birds, lush photographs, computer-generated collages and graffitti like drawings. Jim Woodring is cited as an influence, and one can see influences of Hayao Miyazaki and Takashi Murakami here too which should give you some idea of the gallery's core aesthetic. A lot of the art looks like what you would see in Juxtapoz magazine (but without that magazine's air of self-importance). The columns are equally strange, in that they're not so much about the artists or artworks (at least not in a way we can directly understand), but about random experiences and points of view. For instance, one column expounds on the art of booger collecting (!), others are more lyrical and poetic, while still others are more informative and practical like the one on how to run your own art and toy gallery. Which is the best advice to take from this, as the folks who run Mograg certainly know what they're doing and how to have fun doing it too. These are VERY LIMITED!! We only got a handful of these from a local Japanese friend and not sure we can get more. Definitely, a unique publication you won't easily find elsewhere!
The UK magazine for music both classic and indie is back with another big issue. On the cover, Mojo's "band of the year", Fleet Foxes. Also they honour a bunch of other of their faves, including Yoko Ono, ZZ Top, and Johnny Marr. Then there's stuff on Tinariwen, TV On The Radio, Blur, and a rare interview with Bob Dylan. And there's more, the usual ton of reviews and news and stuff. Also there's a look back at the Rolling Stones' famous 1969 Hyde Park concert. AND as always there's a cd (in jewel case!) stuck to the cover, this time a comp called New Harvest of "modern North American song" including tracks by Fleet Foxes, Bill Callahan, The Dodos, Iron & Wine, and others.
It seems Ilya Monosov has been letting down his hair of late and going sonically all out (or all in?), and following his muse wherever it might take him, creating a varied and vast array of wild and wonderful sounds.
From his Gainsbourg inspired solo outing on Language Of Stone to his latest 12" of tropical fucked up late night sleeze offered up by The Shining Path, these wildly disparate and super passionate sounds feel light-years away from his earlier, much more academic leanings. These four songs, clocking in at about thirty minutes total, find Ilya completely on fire! The opener "Always Look To You (Extended Mix)" is a motorik burner full of fiery Suicide-isms and a very Wooden Shjips like groove. Next comes "Tropical Relaxation", a dark and infectious prog-like jam rife with otherworldly sounds that unravel into a hypnotic chaos that we could lose ourselves in forever.
The B side opens with "Belly Womb" a dissonant track would feel right at home on an early Matmos record, referencing the more fucked up side of Excepter/Black Dice. The record closes with "Unnatural Ways" which sounds like some late night DJ fading in and out of records by Master Musicians Of Joujouka, Throbbing Gristle, Sun Ra and Cabaret Voltaire. We can't stop playing this 12", so full of vibrant color and bombastic energy while hitting all its idiosyncratic targets so right on!
Every time we get a chance to review a Moondog reissue we can't help ourselves from going on and on about what a musical genius and true visionary Moondog was. Mind boggling that from the 1950's all the way up to his death in 1999 he was making such otherworldly sounds, influenced by his love of classical music and driven by a wild imagination that led him to create his own instruments, weave field recordings into his work and compose some of the most adventurous, impacting and delightful sounds anyone has ever created.
Moondog was completely self-taught, and was blind resulting from an accident when still very young so he composed all his music in braile! Just another dimension to the truly unique backstory that shaped who Moondog was. The ultimate proto-weirdo-outsider musician, but all backed up with pure original genius.
More Moondog was originally released right after his 1956 self-titled debut on Prestige, and opens with two field recordings, the first of which finds him doing a 'duet' on his bamboo pipe with the sounds of the whistle from the Queen Elizabeth cruiseship. As the record goes on he explores such amazing percussive possibilities as well as continuing to weave in and out of a psychedelic array of sounds created with varied instrumentation of his own invention. The album also features one of his stunning vocal rounds "All Is Loneliness" which was later covered by Janis Joplin/Big Brother And The Holding Company.
It's been so awesome to play these Moondog records in the store as lots of our younger customers who are into all the latest experimental and weirdo sounds, always seem to freak out when we play this and then tell them it was recorded in 1956. We see their eyes light up with excited disbelief and we totally understand why. Essential!
Every time we get a chance to review a Moondog reissue we can't help ourselves from going on and on about what a musical genius and true visionary Moondog was. Mind boggling that from the 1950's all the way up to his death in 1999 he was making such otherworldly sounds, influenced by his love of classical music and driven by a wild imagination that led him to create his own instruments, weave field recordings into his work and compose some of the most adventurous, impacting and delightful sounds anyone has ever created.
Moondog was completely self-taught, and was blind resulting from an accident when still very young so he composed all his music in braile! Just another dimension to the truly unique backstory that shaped who Moondog was. The ultimate proto-weirdo-outsider musician, but all backed up with pure original genius.
This, his Prestige debut, came out in 1956 and still sounds like it belongs in another era/galaxy. Whether playing piano, percussion or magical sounds with the instruments he created from his imagination, the sounds on this album are as dazzling as anything he would create throughout his lifetime. So mind blowing the way he intertwined real life field recordings into his songs, and basically created a musical language all his own. Moondog was a man so present and creative with his daily surroundings. Who knew someone often mistaken for nothing more then a street hobo was capable of such musical genius?
It's been so awesome to play these Moondog records in the store as lots of our younger customers who are into all the latest experimental and weirdo sounds, always seem to freak out when we play this and then tell them it was recorded in 1956. We see their eyes light up with excited disbelief and we totally understand why. Essential!
Omni has been kicking our asses with weird and wonderful outsider country reissues, one of our favorites so far was that awesome Plantation Gold collection we made a Record Of The Week, and if you remember, one of our favorite tracks on that double cd (and there were tons of contenders) was "I Am The Grass" by Dee Mullins, who we had never heard, nor even heard OF, before the release of that comp.
"I Am The Grass" did seem on the surface like a straightforward country classic, if it weren't for the strange percussion, the wah wah guitar, the haunting spoken word intro, the lyrics about literally being the grass - especially the part about being the grass over someones's grave, dark. And of course the weird super effected metallic buzz of the chorus. But this was no gimmick, Mullins had an incredible voice, and his songs were catchy, and fantastically arranged. Lush, and heartfelt and bittersweet. Listening to this collection, it seems criminal that he wasn't HUGE. "Texas Tea" sounds like it could have been a hit for Kris Kristofferson or Willie Nelson, "Guilt Box" is total classic honky tonk, with an awesome main riff, and some incredible vocals, "War Baby" is an intense anti war track which incorporates passages from "Wild Blue Yonder" (or whatever that song is called), as well as some cool processed E.L.O.-like background vocals. Then there's the slide guitar laced gospel of "The Next Face I See" about a prisoner facing death (the next face he sees will be the Lord's, get it?), and telling tales of how he got there (murder!). And that's the thing with Mullins, these songs on the surface are gorgeous, classic sounding country, slippery slide, shuffling drums, lots of twang, and Mullins' voice which is incredible, but these songs are dark, really dark sometimes, and a little bit twisted, but that's also what makes this stuff so special.
Mullins only had one hit, a sort of novelty track, "The Continuing Story Of Harper Valley P.T.A.", a response to the original, and it's a shame really, since almost ALL of the others could have and should have been even bigger hits.
Of all the Omni reissues, this might just be the best one so far, a perfect combo of twisted and dark, and total classic country, with some of the best and catchiest country songs we've heard, maybe ever.
As with all the Omni releases, tons of rare photos, and lots of liner notes in a big full color booklet.
