13th Chime were an obscure band for sure, having issued only 3 singles in the early '80s before calling it quits. Their history was not a charmed one for sure, as the band known as 13th Chime came out of another punk band known as The Anticx, whose bass player died during a Dead Kennedy's gig in 1980. The remaining members of The Anticx kept playing as 13th Chime, having found another bassist who helped push the band in a new direction. Perhaps because of the death of their friend, 13th Chime found themselves darkening their sound and embracing the Goth redux of punk at the time. The Damned's Black Album, the first Bauhaus record, Crispy Ambulance, the first Christian Death record, and X-Mal Deutschland would have been the contemporaries of 13th Chime's singles, with their gloomy take on punk whilst all the while maintaining driving, propulsive rhythms throughout. The guitars offered detuned buzzsaw attacks with little in the way of melody, as that was pretty much the role of the bassist (Terry Taylor) whose high-neck basslines lead almost all of the songs (a la Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order). Mick Hand's vocals are somewhat nasal in delivery, but certainly not without their Howard Devoto charm. There's plenty of Bat Cave theatrics (including some guitar cabinets made out of coffins), clearly dating this material to the early '80s; but even so, 13th Chime were better than most of the bands that seemed to emerge from that scene without those three amazing singles to show for it. And all of the tracks from those singles are featured here on this fine collection from Sacred Bones.
Ready for another ripping, rousing session of state of the art, orc slaughtering, ultra-metal action?? That's right, Canada's remarkably popular (both at AQ and elsewhere - they have their own signature Nike sneaker now, we're told!) 3 Inches Of Blood are back, let the headbanging commence! Their entertaining, energetic brand of '80s influenced power metal (birthed, though, from the modern metalcore scene) is as thrillingly, thrashingly over the top and unabashedly METAL as ever. Un-ironically so, we think, though the song title "All Of Them Witches" sounds like something The Fucking Champs would have come up with. Other titles though, like "Rock In Hell", "Fierce Defender" and "Battles And Brotherhood", are definitely sincere, face-value, heavy metal to the death declarations.
Shredding and shrieking, the eleven tracks of Here Waits Thy Doom pretty much all traffic in triumphant galloping glory. "Preachers Daughter" is a bit of a departure, more of a mid paced, blues metal stomp, in which we realize that the high pitched, always on the verge of a gargle vocals of the appropriately named Cam Pipes remind us slightly of a power metal version of Eric Wagner from Trouble. There's also an all-acoustic instrumental interlude (penultimate track "12:34") before the album concludes. So there's some variety, but what you'll mainly find here is an enjoyable overdose of balls to the wall speed metal from a band who owe a lot to the '80s but are definitely modern metal extremists as well.
Oh, and this is the first album without their other vocalist (they used to have two), the lanky short-haired guy who did the more growly hardcore/death metal vox. He retired or something, so now it's all ragged high-end, long-haired singer Pipes' show, although one of the guitarists does chip in with some more guttural backing vocals now and then.
Fuckin' awesome. And yes, our gratuitous use of such fuckin' language is perfectly suited to this album and band!
Not many bands have a sound that fits their moniker as perfectly as A Sunny Day In Glasgow. Though they hail from Pennsylvania, their lush swirling day dream shoegaze pop really evoke not only so many great Glasgow bands but also exactly how we imagine a crisp bright sunny day over there to feel like. The band's debut Scribble Mural was an out of nowhere sleeper hit of 2007, in fact it was one of our favorite records of that year. Ashes Grammar finds them upping the ante, adding even more complex elements to their already dense mix of sounds. There is definitely a really nice 4AD influence in their sound as we're always reminded a bit of the Cocteau Twins, and there are BIG nods to Loveless era My Bloody Valentine. This time out you can also hear hints of 21st century composition in their saturated colorful approach to dense avant pop. Imagine if The Swirlies and Seefeel collaborated to create some seriously shimmering blissed out pop perfection!
Split apart from the more politicized fraction known as Amon Duul I (Psychedelic Underground, etc.), Amon Duul II emerged in 1969 when they released this fantastic debut album. It's a masterwork of drug-dazed guitar psych, long tracks, middle eastern
Here it is, the record you've been waiting for - that is, if you saw the surprisingly well-received documentary "Anvil: The Story Of Anvil", wherein the long-suffering Canadian thrash band go through emotional and financial hell, and endure misadventures of Spinal Tap proportions, to record this, their 13th album if you didn't figure that out from the title. In the movie, it's the album they hope will put them back in the big leagues (where the were for about 15 minutes, maybe, back in the early '80s). And in the movie, it's obvious to everyone but them that going to the UK to record with a big name (and expensive) producer, the same one who recorded their early classic Metal On Metal in 1982, is NOT going to guarantee them the major label deal and rock star status they desire and (desperately believe they) deserve. But, it does leave you curious to hear the results.
After we saw the movie the first time last year, we (like everyone else who sees it) were overwhelmed with sympathy (pity?) for these never-say-die, 50-something kids still trying to make it big. Plus we already liked Anvil anyway. So we contacted the band via their website and tried to order their self-released This Is Thirteen album for AQ, figuring we should do our part for the cause. Unfortunately, it turned out the band wanted WAY too much money for 'em, we'd have had to sell 'em for like $25. So we had to pass. But now, thanks to the success of the quite excellent movie (go see it if you haven't already, even if you don't care about metal, trust us, it's great), it turns out that this is the lucky 13th album of Anvil's career after all, now getting a wider release. They've gotten more press in the last year or so than they had over the last two decades probably. Thanks to the film, Anvil is now touring regularly (double billed with the movie, at times, in fact) and apparently were finally able to quit their day jobs! We almost thought they would want to make a whole new album now with songs explicitly referencing the themes of the documentary - never giving up, following your dreams, believing in your friends and family, rockin' out, and being beaten down by harsh reality (not necessarily in that order). But now we realize those things ARE actually what these songs are about. Titles here include "Worry", "Should'a Would'a Could'a" and "Flying Blind" after all. "Ready To Fight" is another one, and in the movie guys did fight (each other) a lot too, though they always made up in the end. Furthermore, this IS very much an Anvil album, and the movie was called Anvil: The Story Of Anvil after all.
If you've heard any of Anvil's other records you know what to expect here. Straightforward '80s speed (and not so speedy) metal. Lots of shredding guitar solos, powerhouse drumming, catchy riffage, and singer/guitarist Lips' unique gravelly caterwaul, which can convey a lot of emotion at times (he's an emotional dude, you know if you've seen the movie). Basically, a headbanging good time, not unlike a hyper caffeinated Motorhead (if we had to describe this to someone unfamiliar with most metal).
The opening, title track is certainly quite heavy, a lumbering behemoth, though some might find it a little boring at over six minutes long. It showcases the powerful production job that the band were so proud of, however. The album then picks up speed up pretty quickly, with "Bombs Away" assaulting the ears in thrashy fashion, clocking in, as do most of the tracks here, at closer to 3 minutes. There's 13 songs (of course) plus one bonus - for this domestic VH1 Classic label release, they've added an extra track, and not just any track, it's "Thumb Hang", the wonderfully juvenile, Inquisition-themed, previously unrecorded early Anvil tune that was demoed a cappella by Lips in a scene in the movie, now done properly by the whole band! One of our faves here, with a memorable build up and killer galloping middle section.
While we can't say this is as good as Metal On Metal or Forged In Fire, it's no disgrace to their legacy either. Recommended to those who already have all dozen previous Anvil albums (of course). Or even just a couple Anvil albums. And to those who love the movie. And to those who just want to rock. The feel-good throwback metal album of the year!
First record from Swedish depressive black metal trio, Apati (Apathy we assume), who travel a well worn path, one most recently and fantastically tread by their countrymen Lifelover, but who manage to take that sound and do their own thing with it. To be fair, that 'thing' is most definitely not that far removed from Lifelover, although we do hear plenty of other sonically similar groups like Hypothermia and Happy Days, and other outfits who are melding melodic blackened pop with harsh shrieking vocals and black atmospherics. Also worth mentioning is Katatonia, who seem to have inadvertently created the template for the modern wave of depressive black metal, strip the hellish shrieks away, introduce some deep crooning vocals, and you'd have some seriously dark and catchy blackened doom pop. Which should give you an idea of what's going on with Apati, the music is mournful and melodic, epic and grandiose, the drums sound programmed, but they're simple and there more as a framework, allowing the guitars to loop into mesmerizing riffscapes, most of the tracks only have one or two parts, more about repetition and mood than songsmithery. The vocals are really the only thing that keep Apati at all tethered to black metal, they shriek maniacally, frenzied, hysterical, anguished, wailed dramatically, easily the most metal element besides the buzzy guitars, but the guitar buzz is less harsh and hellish and more melodic and poppy.
Apati also offer up plenty of haunting instrumental interludes (which is probably another reason they get slagged off for being Lifelover copies), dark chamber music, looping piano figures, the sound of storms, disembodied voices, sampled dialogue, all draped over hazy, gauzy stretches of dreamy shimmer, or murky ambience. Where Lifelover are seriously demented and fucked up and damaged, Apati don't concern themselves more with creating beautiful music, the juxtaposition is certainly odd, and is what make them what they are, but it's not willfully far out, it seems more like an aesthetic choice, the harsh vocals, adding to the dread and drama of the melancholy music underneath.
We're pretty partial to this new breed of depressive black metal, most of our favorite BM has elements of pop anyway, this more like a dark rock band infusing their sound with elements of black metal, whatever you call it, gloom pop, dark metal, depressive dirge pop, black pop, it hardly matters, this stuff is awesome, moody, melodic, hypnotic and heavy, and heck, it will definitely tide us over until the next Lifelover record, or even the next Apati record. RECOMMENDED!
Along with the Pentemple cd/lp reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, this Ascend record had also been floating in limbo, as we wanted to bring in an alternate import version, but like with Pentemple, the wait got way longer than we expected, and we realized what a huge drag it was that we had yet to list either of these, both of which we dig a LOT, so yeah, it's been out forever, you probably have it already, but on the off chance, someone out there never picked this up, or even worse, was waiting for us to review it (sorry!), here it is, the long awaited (at the time) collaboration between Greg Anderson of SUNNO))), Engine Kid and others, and Gentry Densley of the late great Iceburn. Since this record was released, Densley went on to form Eagle Twin, also on Southern Lord (and recentlyl reviewed by us in timely fashion) the seeds of which can be heard here, but Ascend is its own strange dark beast.
The guitars are massive and thick and slow, the sound is dense and doomy, but the arrangements are something else, jazzy really, with horns moaning and bleating within the buzz and rumble, a lurching lumbering bit of blackened funereal doom jazz maybe? The sound is most definitely SUNNO)))-y, all about the slabs of crumbling distortion, but then things get super weird, all twangy and Morricone-esque, with some growled evil Tom Waitsian vox, only to have the sound shift to a a weird pounding slow motion almost garage sounding dirge, with wild lysergic leads, and moaned mantra like chanted vocals, that definitely remind us of Om, or for an even more obscure reference, Skin Yard at 16 rpm. The closer "Dark Matter" is a perfect mix of all the songs, spacious skeletal twang gives way to lugubrious tarpit riffing, some blissed out ambient shimmer, rife with sitar like buzz, sprawling out into a gloomy crawl and eventually erupting into a Melvinsy dirge, the vocals becoming more and more distant, practically melting into the guitars, becoming another layer of buzz, finishing off with a 3 minute crush of weirdly psychedelic Harvey Milk like pummel.
Definitely a weird record, groovy, jazzy, heavy, psychedelic and doomy, but somehow it works, Ascend are way out on the fringe of the doomdronesludge sound, still close enough to appeal to metalheads in need of nothing more than buzz and pound, but far enough out to make this one of the cooler weirder records to come out of a scene that is often a little too similar sounding.
We somehow missed the boat on the first two Bachelorette albums but now that the band has landed on Drag City, all the folks who slept on Bachelorette will finally get a chance to experience the utterly charming musical magic of this multitalented New Zealand songstress.
Bachelorette employ a keen pop sensibility as well as a fresh use of electronics, all the while finding inspiration in distinctly left-field musics, creating songs that are so totally engaging and memorable. You can definitely here bits of Broadcast, Bjork, and Goldfrapp, but Bachelorette rises is so much more than her inspiration, easily soaring over the mostly underwhelming hordes aiming for the same sound. The strength of Bachelorette is how she absorbs all sorts of disparate sounds and ideas ('60s psych-pop, Delia Derbshyre-esque electronics, girl groups, and we can't help but think that her song "Mindwarp" might be a tip of a hat to Patrick Cowley's classic hi-nrgy classic of the same name) and deftly weaving them together into so many different musical landscapes, which makes the whole album totally coherent, songs that flow with an ease and assured seduction that has us under her spell. Highly recommended!
San Francisco's dronelords Barn Owl (featuring our very own Jon!) return with Transfiguration, an awe inspiring slab of expansive psychedelia that is both heavy and beautiful. Recorded live on tour in Vancouver in summer 2008, Transfiguration clocks in at a massive 21 minutes, giving the duo plenty of time to put together a sprawling slow burning expanse that manages to retain a high degree of focus while also flowing freely.
Beginning with high pitched, bell like drones and a slowly creeping guitar note, it is hard to tell whether the vibes are good or evil, and before long the piece begins to move forward cinematically. It's like things are ascending way up to the heavens, and as the bells create a hypnotic flow, massive guitar drones take over everything. The sound is truly mountainous, with bits of molten feedback punctuating the atmosphere, and just when you think everything is going to be taken over by total noise, you realize that even though the music appears to be alive and of its own will, things are kept very much in control by the band. Amazingly, there seems to be a sense of implied rhythm, not in the sense of a traditional pop song, but the rhythm of the drone, taking things into a more realized form of existence. The white hot squalls of heavily distorted bliss swirl about but never decay, instead its like they are alive and breathing... and then, the piece is separated into its second half, by a lone voice. The low chant creates its own sort of spacious cavern, and the surrounding silence creates its own tension as more chants enter the atmosphere while higher voices float ethereally at the top. Giant cyclones of droned voices rise and recede, creating their own unique style of movement. The way the voices merge creates a cool disorienting effect where you lose all sense of direction in a state of suspended consciousness. Awesome.
Limited to a scant 200 copies, Transfiguration comes beautifully packaged in a thick cardstock sleeve with a professionally printed cd-r and serves as a nice teaser to the duo's upcoming full length on Root Strata!
We said it about Nirvana a while back, and we'll say it about the Beatles, people who say they hate the Beatles are LYING. And if they're not lying, well, then we just feel sorry for them. We're perfectly willing to admit to Beatles oversaturation, and fair enough if you've heard enough Beatles on classic rock radio, that you never want to hear any again, but that's so unfair to a band's legacy, especially a band who wrote so many amazing songs. Take Led Zeppelin, imagine NEVER having heard them, and then getting your ears on "Stairway To Heaven" or "Immigrant Song" or "No Quarter" or "When The Levee Breaks". Your mind would be BLOWN, and you'd suddenly realize how much every metal band you ever loved owed to Zeppelin. We remember playing Neu! for a friend whose favorite band was Stereolab, she had never heard Neu! but the second the first song started, her whole idea of Stereolab changed, and in fact, if we remember correctly, she said something like "Stereolab is a total Neu! ripoff!!"...
So imagine, for a second, being super into pop music, and never having heard the Beatles, needless to say, you would be overwhelmed by their sheer genius, their utter mastery of pop music, and how much they defined the template for almost all pop to come. No band since has such a distinct and immediately recognizable sound, or such an expansive and hit filled catalog. And yeah, is this reissue campaign number 5, 6, 10? So odds are most of you have all the Beatles records, or at least the ones you like, and probably, you've had your fill of old record nerds getting all misty eyed for the Nth time, and talking about remastered sound quality and stereo versus mono.
But, we thought as long as these records are available again, nicely repackaged, and indeed sounding better than ever, we'd make the case for one of our favorites, a commonly dismissed, overlooked, and surprisingly depressive Beatles gem. Beatles For Sale came out in 1964 (we think), and was met with much confusion. Sure there were hits, "Eight Days A Week" was massive, "I'll Follow The Sun" has always been a favorite. But then there was record opener "No Reply", which begins as a total classic sounding, but is broken up by some seriously caustic (and almost heavy) parts, with voice on the verge of cracking, guitars distorted, and the hook, one of the Beatles' best. But our heart belongs to the second track "I'm A Loser", another total classic sounding Beatles jam, with incredible harmonies, and dark lyrics that are at odds with the song's lush sound and groovy feel, acoustic guitars, walking basslines, all sorts of melodic filigree, it's been 20 years or more since we first heard it, and not only are we still not tired of it (maybe partly cuz it NEVER gets played on the radio) but it still ranks up there with our all time favorite pop songs.
The one strange thing about Beatles For Sale, is the mix of dark brooding lush pop, and stomping rock and roll numbers. We had sort of forgotten about the more rocking tracks, cuz to be honest, when we made a tape of this way back when, and later put it on our iPod, we actually left those tracks off, not cuz they're BAD, just because they're not what made us fall in love with this record in the first place. Strip away those rockers, and this is a gorgeous, introspective, hook filled, dark and subtly depressive pop gem.
Fancy new digipak packaging, new liner notes, rare photos, a mini documentary about For Sale, and yeah, it's remastered and sounds AWESOME!
PS we've got a bunch of the other newly reissued remastered digipacked Beatles discs in stock too, love 'em too, just happened to get extra excited to write about this one!
This is pretty much exactly what you'd hope for from a band who has a Flying V guitar as part of their logo! Chicago's Bible Of The Devil are back, all hairy and bearded, with another ripping record of '80s, NWOBHM inspired heavy metal rockin'. It's their fifth album, so along with the guitar, they've got a (Roman numeral) V in the logo on the cover of this, too. V can also stand for victory, and "triumphant" is a word we've used to describe these guys' metallic gallop in the past, a gallop graced with gruff Lemmy-ish vocal gargle and (of course) tons of twin Flying V fret burnin' leads and dual harmonies.
Catchy stoner riffage, soaring melodies, singalong choruses, total shred, these guys bring it on Freedom Metal, recorded by their hometown heaviness production guru, Sanford Parker. No wonder they're such good buddies with those epic eccentrics known as Slough Feg. Their rollicking riffs even seemingly share some of the same Celtic/folk influences at times... or Thin Lizzy influence anyway, as on the likes of "Greek Fire", "500 More", and especially the super Lizzyish, upbeat "Ol' Girl" (which we could also describe as sounding like Southern rock with extra Champs-y guitars). Furthermore, while the whole album hews to BOTD's usual raw rock vibe, one foot still in the garage, they mix it up from track-to-track, some more blazingly metallic, and a few more melodically mellow, as with the moody "Heat Feeler" which has moments that make us think of Elvis Costello or something!
Basically, Bible Of The Devil just keep gettin' better n' better, and Freedom Metal is a blast. And like a blast from the past that ain't actually from the past. Our only question: why no song called "Turn It Up, Man"?
NB. we also have a new BOTD split 7" with Pennsylvania doom metal act Valkyrie, we'll try to list that next time if we still have copies.
It's only their 2nd full-length release and already Raleigh NC's Birds Of Avalon has become one of those bands that seems just so classic and capable that we find it hard to say anything other than that this is self evidently cool, please check it out if you like music! They're not easily pigeonholed you see. Early on when we heard their debut we could readily compare 'em to Thin Lizzy and Cheap Trick and the Allmans, but this album simply sounds like Birds Of Avalon. They're not as retro as before, or at least have incorporated an even wider range of influences, from '60s psychpop to '90s altrock... From track to track, we couldn't predict what was coming up next, so in some ways this the Birds Of Avalon at their experimental, eclectic, and warmly weird. That we've heard thus far anyway. There's plenty of melodic indie rock jangle goin' on, really pretty songs with mellow vocals, even a track ("Dadcage") that sounds like Frippertronics, all ambient guitar and gentle electronic gurgle. There's certainly some more rockin' stuff as well, but even that's got a sheen of laidback blissfulness to it. And power pop is still part of the Birds equation, but tripped out, with buzzing wooshing synths and stuff along with the (occasionally heavy, distorted) guitars.
Though we just said it's harder now to compare 'em to other bands, we like to try and do that anyway in our reviews, so at least will say that this is "recommended for fans of" these bands, and others: Swedish AQ faves Elope, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Cars, The Breeders, Sloan, 31Knots, and (thus) even early '70s Yes... plus all the others that Birds at one time or another has reminded us of.
A very satisfying listen. A bit different than before, but definitely like we said classic Birds Of Avalon no matter what. Experimenting, perhaps, but they know what they're doing.
It's been a while since we've heard from the OTHER half of defunct noise duo the Skaters, after a slew of releases from James Ferraro comes this latest blast of rhythmic cosmic bliss from Ferraro's former partner, Spencer Clark in his latest guise as the Black Joker. Originally released as a super limited (80 copies!) cassette in Europe, this hazy gem is now available on vinyl, and still super limited...
Whereas Ferraro channels his eighties afterschool special cop show theme synthscapes through a bank of effects and a warm whirl of hiss and fuzz, Clark is more about the rhythm, two sidelong jams, each wrapped around a motorik groove, sounding like it was cobbled together from a junkyard gamelan, an amplified thumb piano (a la Konono No.1) and some bongos, locked into an endless loop, the rhythm is sent loping into swirling clouds of wheezing tones and tangled melodies, a soundscape of constantly shifting, spinning, twisting, contorting and expanding sounds, effects galore, sputtering synths, crumbling layers, all wreathed in soft noise, a blown out space psych ur-drone krautrock from another dimension. Hazy, glistening, sun baked and lysergic, mesmerizing and hypnotic, and so so good.
Achtung! UK's Black Sheep are another wonderfully indulgent Julian Cope related heavy psych rawk unit (a la Brain Donor), not to be confused with the '90s hiphop group. If you're a regular at JC's Head Heritage website (you should be) you know all about the man's expert obsession with underground '70s freakrock, The Stooges, Faust, Hawkwind, all that good stuff. That's the idea here, two sprawling discs, Black Sheep jamming away giving musical expression to such political / subversive / revolutionary / radical chic topics as "Underground Resistance" and "Che".
It all begins (of course) with disc one, track one, "Ernesto": urgent strum, field recordings of rain and thunder, it's like an Amon Duul acoustic ritual mashed up with the intro to Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath". The track reaches a screaming peak, then settles back to a simple throb... The throbbing continues on the more drum based "Protest-Underground", a tribal chant of that channels Ya Ho Wha and Edgar Broughton. The disc's third and final track starts off as a sparse voice/acoustic guitar ditty before pounding tom-tom drums join in to accentuate the song's apocalyptic character. Disc two boasts another three, long tracks, again full of chanting and strumming and drumming and gobs of droning spacey synth FX... There's some quite nice mellow parts mixed in, and it all really does sound like something recorded no later than 1976.
Probably coulda/shoulda highlighted this, but we do have to admit that unless you're totally hooked on Cope's Kool Aid, you might find, ferinstance, that someone chanting the phrase "underground resistance" over and over again (signifying what exactly?) IS sorta dumb... though that doesn't stop us from digging it. The title (also one of the songs) "Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse" is also a mite too clever, meaning dumb as well. Sounds like something Acid Mothers Temple would come up with, but of course we like them too, and if you also like Acid Mothers Temple, chances are you'll enjoy Black Sheep, their music and mindset are fairly well aligned.
A new double disc of crushing slow motion space doom from UK doomlords BONG, and be warned, this thing is limited to maybe 100 copies, we tried to order half of those and ended up with more like a dozen. So normally we would highlight this, make a huge deal about it, and sell a ton, cuz this is exactly the format required to fully enjoy the epic glacial cosmic drift of Bong, 2 discs, 3 songs, an epic multi part blackened expanse of slowly unfurling low end doomdronesludge, spaced out and druggy, single riffs spread out to forever, meditative, mesmerizing, a sound somewhere between Electric Wizard, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg and Bohren. Two originals on disc one, and the whole of disc two is filled up with an epic, ultra minimal cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", a surprisingly restrained, deep, dark, smoldering space rock slow jam, total late night chill out come down dream doom for sure.
So we won't make a big deal out of it, but grab one of these while you can, they're probably already out of print which means we most likely won't be able to get more...
Like those little tremors that come right before the big quake, after a seriously long period of near silence, new music has begun to seep out of the Boris camp recently, first, the super strange split we reviewed on the last list, that found Boris getting all shoegazey and Ariel Pink-y and teaming up with a weird Shadowfaxy techno group, now this record, the first in a series of three 7"s, which continues to demonstrate Boris' willingness to push sonic boundaries.
This first seven inch starts off with a bang, the band rocking up a storm Pink style, big and bombastic and blown out, psychedelic and in-the-red, massive guitar crunch and pretty ethereal vocals, wild drumming, a pretty serious slab of... well, heavy rock! Not a huge departure really, but it sounds great, and should have most Boris fanatics going nuts.
The flipside is another rocker, but this one is a bit more fuzzy and poppy, still plenty distorted and heavy, but super hooky, and crazy catchy, a poppier Boris is still probably heavier than most heavy bands on their best day, and like the A side, these new recordings sound fantastic, super hot and way suitable for headphone hearing abuse.
Cool super thick covers too, designed by Stephen O'Malley, and featuring a weird glamor shot of one of the band members, Takeshi we think, which we can only assume means each member will get their own glamorous cover shot. Weird, but hey, it's Boris. Odds are you know you already need this, and are already eagerly awaiting volume two, which drops next month. Can't wait...
Oh lord, are we ever in filthy, crusty, demented, depraved, misanthropic, sludge rock heaven! That's right, FINALLY, it's the second collection of 7"s from Sweden's mightiest musical export (well, if you ask us, at least!) THE BRAINBOMBS! Everything we love about these musical miscreants is in full affect, the pummeling trash can percussion, the downtuned fuzz drenched ultra distorted guitars, the bizarre, sort of fey, sort of scary vocals, regaling tales of murder and mayhem, rape and torture, death and destruction, the warbly dented drunken trumpet, all wrapped up into a stumbling, hypnotic, and seriously fucking disturbed package.�
It's like they took their favorite Stooges riff, stole a bunch of instruments from the music store, and set up in the basement of the local highschool, where in between kidnapping and torturing students, they would record these slabs of abject musical horror, each one a single riff, pounded and pummeled into submission, sometimes flecked with bits of slide guitar, or that damaged trumpet, but always dripping and oozing with all manner of pestilence and putrefaction. And we can't get enough.�
Folks who love Bone Awl and Akitsa and other primitive droning black metal outfits, will probably hear lots of that foul blackness all tangled up in the Brainbombs primitive garage stomp, and folks who have bee digging stuff like the Violent Students and Clockcleaner and Shit And Shine and Rusted Shut and other similar noisy bastards absolutely need this!!
Includes the single that came out on Andee's tUMULt label, the most recent Stinking Memory 7" on Anthem, as well as the Wabana Gun Court single, the Ken Rock single as well as the Big Brothel single. Easily some of our favorite BB tracks ever, "Stigma Of The Ripper", "The Grinder", "I Need Speed"... fuck! If only more bands could do so much with so little. Stripped down and blown out, catchy as all get out but still grimy and brutal and very very very fucked up.��
Also included are some rare live tracks, all time BB classics, "Urge To Kill" among them, recorded live in Norway way back in 1993, the sound appropriately distorted and low fidelity, and don't miss the hidden last track, a minute long, post performance Brainbombs sign off, with some demented crowd action, chanting for more...
Essential!
Can't think of a Bay Area band at the moment that's been so consistently capable of blowing us away live more than Bronze. Something so damn refreshing and exhilarating about their approach to rhythmic psychedelic post-punk, a sound overflowing with dizzying synths and syncopated rhythms that totally transport us to another dimension. So psyched we were finally able to get our hands on this, their debut recording. A beautifully packaged clear 10" with a bronze tinted embossed cover (there is a crazy limited edition version with an actual bronze cover! that we might get in at some point, but don't hold your breath!) but the classy packaging is just icing on the cake as it's the two wonderful songs in these grooves that dazzle and delight.
The sounds of underground luminaries like Silver Apples, Public Image Ltd., Suicide, and Throbbing Gristle are the launching point for Bronze's mind melting excursions into swirling and sizzling sonic mystery and melody, but they really do take those influences and craft a sound all their own. Not to be missed live, Bronze's stage presence and delivery are so damn action packed and captivating, and this debut recording offers a really nice glimpse of that fiery disposition. This is a band that truly deserves to get some world wide attention. So damn good!
Another primo slice of forgotten Nashville from the always kick ass Omni Recording Corporation. Over the last few months, Omni has brought us discs from Johnny Paycheck, Tommy Cash, Dee Mulling, Lorne Greene, Gil Trythall, as well as the amazing Plantation Gold compilation we made Record Of The Week back on list 314.
Apparently Cargill was quite a hitmaker back in the day, his "Skip A Rope", a rumination on racism, was somewhat controversial, but also netted him some serious chart action on both the country and pop charts. But before that, he had apparently struggled to get heard, as a page in the cd booklet proclaims: "Rejected by nearly every label in Nashville"! That all changed after the hit, but this collection focuses on the recordings pre breakthrough, and it's difficult to understand why some of these weren't hits as well.
Lots of Omni stuff is far out and kitschy, but this is just some serious genuine sixties country pop, we've seen it referred to elsewhere as 'countrypolitan', but whatever you call it, this is some gorgeous stuff, simple and heartfelt, lush instrumentation, Cargill's voice is deep and dramatic, his songs touch on some sensitive topics even in these early days, the whole On The Road record a study of the great Depression, tales of poverty, war, loss, death and loneliness. The early tracks are definitely the best, tacked on to the end are some later tracks, recorded in the seventies, and they tend toward the overly dramatic, lush, string laden, shades of Neil Diamond and Tom Jones, some killer moments, but stick to the first 22 tracks, all appearing on cd for the first time, and a handful, stone cold classics.
As always, a massive booklet, tone of rare photos, and lengthy and super informative liner notes.
It would take way more space than we have for this review to list off all the great bands who have been influenced by The Clean over the years. For the sake of brevity we'll just mention off a handful: Yo La Tengo, The Chills, Jay Reatard, R.E.M, Eat Skull, Times New Viking, Woods, Pavement, Sebadoh, the list goes on and on! Since the early '80s this New Zealand band has been crafting totally infectious left of center pop that really helped usher in the sound of "college radio" as we know it.
It's been quite a long while since we last heard from The Clean, yet with Mister Pop there is something so natural and free flowing that it feels like they were never gone. Focusing more on their hazy psychedelic dream pop side, the songs on Mister Pop unfold so easily, yet with a sonic depth that makes you keep going back to them over and over. While it would be so easy for The Clean to just rest on their laurels and dial in a standard reunion album, they instead remind us of why they are the legends they are, and what great songsmiths they were and still are, with an unparalleled ability to not only create hooks and melody but mood and feeling.
Crank this album all the way up at the beginning and slowly begin to back down the volume on this, lest you want to set off car alarms outside your building or trigger seismic sensors or just have this recording be way too fucking loud. On the first side of Creek, an ominous hum rises out of icy silence, following the path set forth on Kevin Drumm's unsettled ambient opus Imperial Distortion or even some of the Eliane Radigue constructs. These are sounds that could hail from field recordings of massive tanker ship engines or a bank of oscillators tuned to be as low as possible or the thrum of feedback from a bass guitar slumped over an amplifier. Very little happens in this arcing, darkly meditative offering; but that's exactly the point. The second side picks up exactly where the first left off, with a similarly oppressive tone exhibiting some minute ripples and variations on the theme. No idea who or what Cloaked Light happens to be, but he/she/they managed a cassette on Monorail Trespassing. And that always causes us to perk our ears up a bit. Limited to 125 copies.
At last, this wonderful wonderful album is back in print on cd! Water gets a big AQ thank you for reissuing one of our favorite Krautrock, or heck, just plain ol' records ever, the first of two collaborations between art rock / "ambient" music pioneer n' generally acknowledged genius Brian Eno and Krautrock electronics legends Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius aka Cluster! You know that's got to be good, and it is, paving the way for the likes of Aphex Twin so many years later. This self-titled disc (the one with the microphone stand silhouetted against a blue sky on the cover) dates originally from 1977. Water also just reissued the other Eno/Moebius/Roedelius album, 1978's After The Heat, which comes equally recommended (see our review elsewhere this list). On this one, they're joined by guests including Asmus Tietchens and Can's Holger Czukay, and construct warm, organic instrumentals utilizing both acoustic instruments and analog synths. This is soft and mellow and melodic but at the same time these songs are no push-overs, however gentle. To be honest, I (Allan) had never heard *anything* quite like Cluster before these got reissued on cd the last time that happened, on the Gyroscope label back in the mid '90s, but I very quickly fell in love with 'em (these Water reissues are much nicer, by the way, with liner notes and photos in the cd booklets -- the Gyroscope editions didn't even have booklets!). The discs with Eno are good starting places to get into the extensive Cluster and Cluster-related discography, and certainly they're Cluster's best-sellers... but anything with Moebius and/or Roedelius involved is worth hearing, we'd say. These new reissues haven't been accorded the fanfare of the Neu! discs on Astralwerks or the recent Can remasters, but we'd rate them just as highly.
On the cover, the return of IMMORTAL!! Inside, an awesome oral history of splatter metal legends Gwar, as well as Municipal Waste, Job For A Cowboy, Nile, Devildriver, Divine Heresy, Asphyx, Goreaphobia, Keelhaul, Amon, Rammstein, City Of Ships, Scale The Summit, Sarke, Demonical, Born Of Osiris, Arkaea, Bill Steer of Carcass, reviews a handful of MP3's, Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares reviews his favorite restaurants, an extreme metal football preview, Cynic's Focus inducted into the Decibel Hall Of Fame, and of course tons of reviews, as well as some hilarious back page snark from the Mountain Goats John Darnielle.
A long time ago, we became pretty obsessed with a record called Your Children Left With The Stranger, from weirdo outsider metal murk merchants Devoid Of All Mercy, one of a handful of releases on the now defunct Battlecruiser label, a sort-of-metal sublabel of the also now defunct legendary New Zealand boutique label Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. The weird thing was, the sound of Devoid Of All Mercy was barely metal at all, instead, it was some strange Bohren / Low style slowcore, a super minimal, skeletal post rock, that slithered and oozed and creeped, gorgeously and oh so lugubriously.
We hadn't heard a peep since, but then out of the blue, a clutch of these showed up, an ultra limited (and we mean ULTRA, as in, limited to THIRTY COPIES, of which we got half), hand cut lathe all the way from New Zealand, in a cool, transparent cover, the whole thing hazy and see through.
The record finds DOAM refining their sound even further, at low volume, we weren't sure at first if there was any sound at all, but in headphones, the record unfolded, a whispery, hushed, barely there creep, the guitars spidery and ethereal, the melodies detuned and warbly, the vocals, a demonic gurgle, but it too is almost a whisper, in the background, are footsteps and voices, and all manner of room sound, as if Mr. Devoid was just hunched over in the corner, pouring this blackened mystery onto tape, while the world just went on around him, oblivious to the delicate and haunting grimness taking place right under their noses.
Imagine a WAY less lush, WAY more abstract, WAY more metal (in spirit if not actual sound) Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, a dark shuffling abstract anti-rock, more ambient than rock, but plenty harrowing and haunting.
Again, LIMITED TO 30 COPIES, we have LESS THAN 15!!!
Long gone are the days when Meric Long's sweet vocals and talented songwriting skills were just our little secret. After carrying his debut self released cd-r from a few years back, Meric has merged his forces into creating one of the most refreshing and rewarding bands in the modern indie-pop landscape. The Dodos have proven to be a force to be reckoned with, their record from last year, Visiter, launched them into the stratosphere and rewarded them with a whole new and very large fan base. Which was well deserved considering that Visiter was most definitely the sound of a band finding their sound, everything falling into place perfectly, passion, hooks and creative instrumentation. Time To Die finds the band sounding even more assured with a refined sound that is pretty darn irresistible. Like a more effervescent Built To Spill, The Dodos create songs that have maximum mix-tape potency, every song here a gem, really not a wasted moment or a throwaway track anywhere to be found. While not many of today's indie rock bands really do it for us, The Dodos are a shining exception!
Before we get into the amazing sounds that John Duncan and C.M. von Hausswolff have created for this album (which we have to say is pretty fucking incredible), we have to drool over the artwork. Sure, it's always nice to get one of those hand-made packages, loving assembled by the musician from scraps of wallpaper or gesso smeared across heavy card stock; where the investment is paid through blood and sweat. But at the same time, it can sometimes be pretty fascinating to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum, to see what happens when money is no object, and thus nearly any vision can be realised. The recent Tool record is one example (reviewed elsewhere on this list) with its incredible built in lenses and stereoscopic booklet. And then there's Our Telluric Conversation, which employs a seriously and gloriously reckless design sensibility. Unfotunately, jpeg reproductions of this cd's cover will never translate how amazingly cool the packaging is. The white O-card / slipcover which wraps around the CD and the accompanying 40-page booklet is printed on a rubberized paper dotted with braille, making it strangely tactile, and thus not a little unsettling just to touch the album! Which is appropriate considering the musical content...
John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff have made an dark and unsettling album in Our Telluric Conversation, the second collaboration between these two AQ-favorite sound artists, opening with ominous bleeping, sort of sounding like sonar or a life support system barely keeping someone alive. An electronic turbulance gradually swarms around these mechanized pulses and explodes in a torrent of furious magneto noise, sounding very similar to the recent Duncan collaboration with Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisainen. Abruptly, the track comes to a halt as the whispering voice of Hausswolff begins reciting a presumably fictional tale in which the protagonist has been infected with maggots and tries to rid his body of the parasites by communing with lizards and snakes through a combination of occult rituals. Hausswolff's whisper is all that one hears, with his lips closely pressed up to the microphone making saliva, lips smacking, and teeth gnashing all audible. Upon the conclusion of Hausswolff's spoken excerpt, the two proceed with a long-form construction for brilliantly shimmered drones and flickering sinewaves that's as good as anything by Phill Niblock, Mirror, or The Hafler Trio. Our Telluric Conversation concludes with another extended composition that bridges the signature aesthetics of the two artists, with a deadened monotone of processed 60-cycle hums (that's Hausswolff) and a seductive processing of shortwave static (that's Duncan). By themselves, Duncan and Hausswolff have crafted amazing records; but together, these two have really tapped into something eerie, psychologically instable, and sublimely beautiful. Highly recommended!
It's funny that this record came out under the Electric Prunes moniker as the '60s psych band best known for their great hit "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" aren't really anywhere to be found on this record. Instead this is the brainchild and work of legendary arranger & producer David Axelrod -- much like their better known Mass In F Minor, this being its Judiac follow-up. Clocking in at around 25 minutes, and utilizing some of the best Los Angeles players of the late '60s Release Of An Oath is a brilliant concoction of rich grooves, prog moments, acid rock and classical tropes. It's no surprise that to this day Axelrod's work is sampled left and right because his sense of melody and his kick ass breaks are so damn perfect!
Defeat is set of recordings that date back to 2007, around the same time as the seminal Emaciator record Reflection which was transitioning from the blistered noise aggression of his earliest days to the more glacial drifts of his recent output. Jon Borges (the man behind Emaciator, Pedestrian Deposit, and the Monorail Trespassing empire) alluded to this as something like trance-goth noise; and that's pretty accurate. An overblown slab of MB / Broken Flag-ish hiss and distortion acts as the groundwork to the first side of this cassette, with a minor-key two-note melody from an equally overblown synth lilts beneath the surface of noise as if it were the sad remains of a small plant getting fried by the urban desert sun. The flip side retains the same hostile noise underbelly with an insistent squarewave arpeggiation that mechanically scrapes into the surface of that noise. Borges intertwines this throbbing noise with another round of downer melodies - rudimentary yes, but effectively cold bedroom noise hypnosis for sure. Defeat is a 35 minute program altogether and stands as another impressive outing for Emaciator. Oh yeah, it's limited to 125 copies.
Drifting backwards in time from the post-noise excursions into placid meditations for guitar and synth, Emeralds have become one of the favorites here at Aquarius; and for very good reason, everything they touch seems to turn to gold. Solar Bridge was a such a tease of an introduction for us, and probably was the same for many out there entering into the swirling concoctions of electronic drone; but it has been the two albums What Happened and Allegory of Allergies that really laid the foundation for their impending greatness. Not only do they have a strong grasp on the minimalist theatrics of the drone, but also Emeralds enjoys a selective memory of what made progressive electronics and progressive rock in the late '70s and early '80s great. The pastoral colorfields of Cluster, the alienated ethos of Heldon, and the insistent arpeggiations of Achim Reichel and Ash Ra Tempel all figure heavily into Emeralds sound.
This vinyl-only, eponymous record seems to percolate and bubble with electronics, at times veering into the same Omni Magazine territory that Oneothrix Point Never has been mustering for the past year. It may not be a surprise that OPN and Emerald's guitarist Mark McGuire have collaborated in a project called Skyramps, which is as good as you might imagine. The three tracks on the first side wrangle squiggling rhythms, bleepity squelches, and bending sustained tones generated by Emeralds' two synth jockeys John Elliott and Steve Hauschildt, while McGuire dishes out his best Manuel Gottsching impression. The second side is one of the epochal, long form constructs that slows everything on the first side down to an elegant pace with watery field recordings laced throughout. Pretty fucking awesome. And no doubt somewhat limited...
More druggy space-y kraut drone bliss from Justin Wright and his Expo 70, here expanded to a duo for one track, and a trio for the other, a dizzying drifty blend of minimal guitar rumble and Moog and organ whir, peppered with glistening shards of sonic starlight, buried melodies, blurred into a gorgeous ever expanding expanse of hushed new age drift, not nearly as heavy as some past outings, although the first track, a whopping 30 minute epic, does build to a soft blackened roar, although that roar is muted and dulled into something closer to rib cage rattling thrum. Regardless, it's transcendent and sublime, subtly heavy, and utterly cosmic.
The second track is another nearly half hour exploration of inner sonic space, heavy on the organs this time, thick layered buzz and rumble and whir, flecked with strange little stuttery melodies, a sheet of softly swirling effects draped over slow motion organ melodies, slowly shimmering textures, before the track begins to grow ominous, the sound of a darkening sun, bits of high end glimmer throughout, while the core blackens and expands, the sound shifting into pulses, a strangely surreal sci-fi throb, haunting and harrowing, a caustic cloud that slowly dissipates, leaving vapor trails of soft streaked FX flecked buzz and a stretch of skeletal rhythm, slowly fading out into a horzion of minimal muted high end shimmer.
THE CD-R IS LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! THE TAPE IS PROBABLY MORE LIMITED THAN THAT! Housed in cool red sleeves printed in gold metallic ink!
Flower Man is the work of Chris Bush from the Kentucky based electron revivalist ensemble Caboladies. While we've failed to hear any of his work from that outfit, the constant comparisons to Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never was more than enough to pique our interest. As Flower Man, Bush doesn't stray too far from what we would assume Caboladies to sound like, squiggling and squirming around his analogue synths and some pretty murky tape production that triangulates his sound somewhere between Grouper, a really druggy Bruce Haack, and a happy-go-lucky Omit. With its clunky Ikue Mori-styled drum-kit leaden dance around the rhythm, the opening track laces itself around two harmonized '80s / sci-fi melodies that fragment into squelchy percolations and lazer beam vibrations. The next batch of tracks could easily originate in any number of BBC Radiophonic projects with playful yet somewhat detached bleepity-blooping interwoven with some of those spooky synth sounds that Richard D. James mustered on his really early Aphex Twin tracks from Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1. Bush slows everything down to a turgid crawl of introspection through a lonesome, moping piece of bedroom electronics on the suitably titled track "Swirling" coming across as Delia Derbyshire on Quaaludes; and then makes a quick turnabout with some spasmodic electroid flashes which dissipate into nothingness as if sucked in various directions into outer space.
It makes perfect sense that Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) would release this on his newly launched CD-R imprint Upstairs. Limited to 75 copies, and already sold out at the label!
By the time we had finally heard the Fresh & Onlys, there was already some sort of mania for them going on, that we found ourselves in the midst of, all their records were sold out, we couldn't get more, out of print 7"s were popping up on eBay, the sort of thing that we might expect to happen with super popular ultra hip bands, but this local band who only had a couple 7"s?? We were skeptical, until we heard 'em, then it all made sense. These guys rule. And rock. They have sort of fallen in with the new breed of noise pop lo-fi tweakers, but the Fresh & Onlys are way more about classic pop songs, their sound channeling vintage sixties pop, the early eighties LA sound, classic power pop, garage rock. The production is most definitely not lo-fi, the guitars are thick and loud and ring out, the bass throbs, the drums are simple and understated, the vocals are down in the mix, but not buried, there are plenty of harmonies, falsettos, cool little spidery guitar leads, the overall sound is just a tiny bit fuzzed out. We never noticed it before, but the band that we're most reminded of is the Leaving Trains, easily one of our favorite bands ever, criminally under appreciated for sure (Kill Tunes and Fuck are two all time stone cold classics). Tim Cohen's vocals are a dead ringer for the Leaving Trains' Falling James, and the sound too has that sort of punk rock morphed into fuzz pop sound. They also share lots of sonic elements with local pals Thee Oh Sees, that sort of washed out wall of sound classic Spector sound, plenty of fuzzy organs, strummed steel string guitars, reverby girl group back up vox, as well as some seriously garage guitar crunch all over the place. We dig BIGTIME!
It's been a while since a San Francisco pop band has gotten the kind of national attention that Girls are receiving although in the case of Girls, we have to say it's totally well deserved! The timing couldn't be more perfect for some totally unabashed romantic, wide eyed soaring pop. Recently most of the pop we've been digging on is so much about its lo-fi aesthetic and somewhat detached disposition, so it's super refreshing to hear a band who really understand the power of a song, and who also display a really nice sonic range that turns and flows so perfectly throughout their record. Girls kind of make you want to be a twenty something dreamer for the rest of your life. They conjure images of running through the streets at night with a bottle of wine and no cares, a ratty old shirt, a tattered heart but an unrelenting smile plastered on your face. No doubt many of the songs here will conjure images of those early Elvis Costello records that are so undeniable in their universal appeal.
While so many records have been made in tribute, love, admiration and under the influence of New York City, it's so nice for those of us here in San Francisco to get a record that really does feel like an absolute product of the city we live in. Laying in the grass in Dolores Park, taking that special someone to the top of Bernal Heights, getting lost in the fog of the Outer Sunset... We've listened to this record so much as we ride the bus and walk the streets and hills of SF and we just can't think of a better soundtrack to remind us of how magical this city really is. But not to fear, no matter where you live, this is an album that gives so much as it taps into universal feelings of yearning and bittersweet triumph with such ease and undying conviction. Get with Girls!
That old adage about what happens when you assume, couldn't be more true than with how we had approached Grass Widow. We had seen their flyers and even some records of theirs over the last couple years, but we just kind of assumed they were another Nevada City inspired folk outfit and being a bit burnt on that scene we just didn't pay much attention. Well now we are the asses of that adage because that's not what Grass Widow is about at all! In fact Grass Widow create songs in a terrain that we can never seem to grow tired of. Coming out of the tradition of Young Marble Giants, Vaselines, Shop Assistants, Beat Happening, The Swirlies, etc. Their songs have a bare bones approach yet hit with such deep impact. They fit very nicely next to modern day kindred spirits like Brilliant Colors, Vivian Girls, The Splinters, etc. Yet there is something a bit more rustic, poetic and nuanced in their delivery. Not only is this 12" on constant rotation for us right now it also helped re-teach us that valuable lesson of never judging a band before you've actually heard them! So glad our preconceived ideas about this band were completely wrong as Grass Widow has fast becoming one of our favorite newer bands around, so good!
As summer comes to an end, we're left with those lingering nights that offer up so much room for wandering reflection, and early mornings where all you want to do is gaze out the window and watch birds and butterflies fly free in the sky. This new outing from Green Blossoms is proving to be the absolute perfect soundtrack for those days of hazy daydreams, letting your memory and imagination flow so easily. The Green Blossoms' sound and aesthetic explores similar pastoral bliss as equally delicate and rewarding music makers like Tenniscoats, Eddie Marcon, Miko, Ethan Rose, Nagisa Ni Te, crafting a sound that has us imagining Mum, if they ditched the electronics and found a path to organic pastoral bliss.
Many wonderful sparse yet finely textured instrumentals here as well as a few stunningly beautiful tracks with Aiko Koga's vocals, that even those of us who don't understand Japanese can still totally understand, emotional and passionate, evoking the simple themes and understanding of nature and the life around us. The music of Green Blossoms is such a great reminder that sometimes the most powerful moments are conjured by the most delicate and quiet of creators. Beyond lovely! And rife with a richness that keeps us turning to this album for early afternoon naps in the park, the kind we wish we could have every single day of forever...
Took some close listening, with some serious headphones, to actually discern the black metal happening on this double vinyl epic from the mysterious Grief No Absolution, who traffic in their own brand of 'bleak metal', which to these ears, at least at first sounded less like metal and more like noise, but cool noise for sure, but after a few listens, the blackened underbelly began to reveal itself, this one is definitely gonna hit the spot for folks into black metal noise hybridists like WOLD or Nekrasov, people who like their blast and buzz obscured by hiss and crunch and rumble and skree.
The 7" is the noisier component of this twofer. Psychedelic squall, a buzzing organic fog of sheer white noise shot through with shards of melody, and jagged sheets of processed feedback, layers of grinding fuzz collapsing in a swirling black hole of sound, but every once in a while, a streak of Merzbowian crunch will become a howling vokill, or a smear of caustic hiss will morph into an icy bit of riffage, but never for long, always quickly swallowed up by the roiling blacknoise nipping at its heels.
The 10" component is the darker dronier of the two, and is all about the slooow and looow, deep rumbling tones, SUNNO)))-y swells of slow motion riffage, so slow it's rendered ambient, a gorgeous drifting doomdrone, soft edged buzz, swirling and blurring into lush expanses of blackened shimmer. Abstract, skeletal, deep and minimal, ambient and atmospheric, but still plenty grim and blackened.
From the Flingco label who last list brought us The Black Box. Cool packaging as always, black on black printed sleeve, with a printed Japanese style obi, inside, a white on white printed insert, and it comes with a download card as well!
Health just keep getting weirder and weirder, and thus better and better. This is record number three, and all the elements that made us fall in love with these guys are still present, feral jittery rhythms, sharp angular guitars, wild chaotic drumming, spaced out effects, a sort of fractured no wave new wave dancefloor destroying post punk, and here, on Get Color, they've reigned in their propensity for freakouts, and expanded their sound dramatically, whereas before, they were more about energy and sound and mood and texture, about beats and cool effects, and while there were pop songs buried in there, or at least fragments of pop songs, they were often pretty hard to separate from the chaos around them.
Get Color is indeed still plenty chaotic and frantic, but there definitely seems to be more of a focus on songs. Opener "In Health" is a sub two minute introductory blast, but even then the song opens up revealing some dreamy vocals and some subtle hooks. But "Die Slow" is a killer rhythmic psych pop dance jam, equal parts the Boredoms, Fischerspooner and Gang Gang Dance, super melodic, and in some alternate universe this would be as big as LCD Soundsystem. "Nice Girls", is all drum driven, with more ethereal vocals, burst of jagged crunch and squalls of effected percussion, the whole thing woozy and dreamy and super hypnotic. Some of the tracks get all new wave, with low slung Joy Division basslines jacked up and distorted, with angular post punk guitars, but still all wrapped around those frenetic beats, while others are just totally far out, like record closer "In Violet" a strange soundscape of looped, chopped, clipped synth tones, swirling shimmering high end streaks, more hushed wispy vocals, the rhythm, and the whole song really constructed from digital skips and strange glitches. So awesome, dance music for only those with a super abstract idea of what dance music is, for the rest of us, total head spinning headphone bliss!
The cd (not the vinyl, sorry) might just include one of 66 handmade tickets, each redeemable for some sort of prize, the grand prize is a three night trip to LA to hang with Health, but other prizes include care packages, posters, baby photos, crank calls, knitted scarfs, astrological readings, test pressings and who knows what else. A regular post punk new wave Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Good luck!
The '80s aren't the first decade most people think of when it comes to rich, deep and spiritual jazz. But Khan Jamal is one of those special artists who has kept his integrity fully intact from his beginnings in the early '60s, playing vibes for Byard Lancaster, as well as creating a free-jazz masterpiece called Drumdance To The Motherland in 1973, with his Creative Arts Ensemble, which was finally given a proper release a couple years back after being a private press only LP. Through the years, he's also played with folks like Sunny Murray and Frank Wright, his mighty vibes often defining the sound as much as that of the band leaders themselves.
This newly reissued 1989 album finds Jamal in top form, again, behind the vibes, performing with dizzying perfection in a quartet that also features cello, bass and drums. There is a sonic breadth displayed on Cool, from blistering fast flurries to the more slow and spiritual and even moments that almost sound like proto-Stereolab, as well as some amazing brooding almost Klezmer that would be right at home on Tzadik! One of those albums that jazz freeks for sure will enjoy, but even those who aren't usually down for jazz, there's much to latch onto in these sounds. So many sounds and samples that we think J Dilla would have loved to plunder and that Flying Lotus just might incorporate into future outings. These grooves have the most amazing vibes (pun most definitely intended!).
We were very excited to see the arrival of a new full length from this Montreal based songstress! This is album number 3 for Ms Lhasa De Sela, and all of the adjectives we've showered upon her previous two albums do still apply here (2004's The Living Road and 1997's La Llorona were both highly recommended, beautiful, sultry wonders, please see our reviews for the detailed descriptions!). However, some might find this one to be perhaps a bit more (or too) 'Lilith Fair' and AOR-ish at times. 'Twas a bit disappointing in that regard. Although her voice is as amazing as ever, these recordings didn't floor us immediately like the previous ones did. The overall tone weighs heavier on melancholia and less on darkly whimsical enchantment. Actually, it draws easy comparisons to Norah Jones' last album Not Too Late, and conjured imaginings of Chan Marshall as a smoky lounge singer too. So, while we still wholeheartedly embrace her first two albums to one and all, this one might be destined for a different audience.
Second missive from black metal weirdo Lonesummer, whose What We Were cd-r from last list was a huge hit around here. A twisted blend of strange samples, totally blown out black metal buzz, and weird sun dappled melodic pop, all wound into a massively confusional, incredibly fucked up bit of blackened avant noise pop, or something, tough to know exactly how to describe this. We have to imagine that most black metallers would find Lonesummer just way too damaged and freaky, but for us, it's exactly the sort of weirdness we've been dying for.
The opening track sums it up pretty nicely, beginning with some sample conversations, street noise, a hushed minimal drone, which explodes into a crumbling in-the-red almost white noise blow out, the sound so saturated, it's impossible to pick out instruments, the sound just a thick cloud of swirling buzz and skree, as the track progresses, riffs seem to materialize out of the ether, but instead of taking the form of a proper BM jam, it seems more than anything to add a sense of rhythm, creating a fucked up, looped bit of buzz drenched mesmer, before, the buzz fades out, leaving some sampled African music, which eventually fades out. Phew. The next song is just s far out, beginning with some new age swoosh, some sampled wind (or is it tape hiss), a delicate chiming melody, before a tiny bit of drum skitter leads into another explosion of impossibly distorted, but weirdly pretty and shoegaze-y blacknoise. 4 tracks total from Lonesummer, and goddamn we already want more!!!
Lonesummer are paired up here with Marsh, a one man band from Minneapolis, whose take on black metal is much more primitive and raw, a bit punky, with a definite D-beat vibe, so folks into Akitsa, Malveillance, Bone Awl, this is definitely your cup of tea, but Marsh manage to infuse their own vibe, the repetitive almost looped sounding arrangements, the cool hazy washed out production, loads of effects and like Lonesummer, a weirdly off kilter pop element too. Need to hear more from these guys as well.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES, we got about half, but they won't last long, so grab one while you can. They come housed in hand sewn, African fabric, drawstring pouches, with two photocopied inserts.
Lordy. From the same label that brought us Lord Vicar, comes another doom metal act with Lord in the name, Lord Of The Grave! They like their Lords over there at The Church Within.
So yeah, of course this is some doomy stuff. This Swiss power trio plays raw doom metal along the lines of Sleep, Electric Wizard, and Eyehategod. Slow and low, but not quite glacially ultradoomic, though definitely on the sludgy side of Sabbath, with swinging, swaying, repetitive riffs pounding themselves pleasantly into your (possibly) stoned skull. Simple but effective! The relentless blown-out riffage sometimes segues into spacey, nod-scene atmospherics (where they really begin to sound like Om, approaching that style of psychedelic metal minimalism).
There's five tracks here, none of 'em short, most around 7-10 minutes long and the final number clocking in at 17:33 (a track long enough, and with enough tripped out guitar soloing, to draw comparisons to Earthless). Any one of 'em though seems like they could (or should, or maybe even do) go on forever, lumbering along heavily and hypnotically. Adding to the mesmeric vibe are the rhyming incantations of the singer, his voice a hoarse holler, or sometimes a spoken-sung stoned mumble, buried in the mix. Again, we're reminded of Sleep/Om.
Not much else to say, you either like this sort of stuff or you don't. And if you do, we probably don't even need to mention that the first track is entitled "Holy Vitus", do we?
Supergroup - or as Julian Cope would put it, stuporgroup - doom action here folks! Even before we heard it, we were chuffed about Lord Vicar's debut full length. We'd already had a taste of the Vicar via their 7" last year on I Hate Records, and so as soon as we heard there was an album out we HAD to have it... we made contact with the label in Germany directly, and now some weeks later here they are. Even if we hadn't heard that 7", this is a no-brainer for anyone (like us) into traditional doom metal, just based on the heavyweight pedigree of the band's members. From Sweden, singer Christian Lindersson aka Lord Chritus, former frontman for Count Raven, Terra Firma, and (on the album after Wino left the band) the legendary Saint Vitus! From Finland, guitarist Peter Inverted formerly Peter Vicar, of Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P.) as well as VDGGish progsters Orne. From England, drummer Gareth Milsted of Centurion's Ghost. Also from Finland, there's bassist Jussi "Iron Hammer" Myllykoski who is not from any band we know of, but makes up for it by having a cool nickname. And then, giving this even more cult cred, there's a guest guitar solo on one song by Don Angelo Tringali of Slough Feg and Cold Mourning from the USA.
If any of these names mean anything to you, you know you're gonna be well and truly doomed when you put this on. There's slo-mo, mouldering witchburning riffs played on loud, fuzzed out axes, hand in cloven hoof with the weepy, whiney, sometimes effected and always affecting vox of Lord Chritus, extremely Ozzy-esque yet utterly distinctive. Anything with these guys is gonna be steeped in Sabbath-iness. And as Peter Inverted's post-Reverend Bizarre project, this basically sounds a lot like his old band (and thus also like Sabbath, and Sleep, and Cathedral...) but with a few new wrinkles. The songs on Fear No Pain range from the super sludgy to a plodding swing to even more uptempo ("The Last Of The Templars" is in the rockin' mode of "Cromwell" by RB for sure). In addition there's some morosely folky parts that also remind us of Witchcraft, Lord Vicar certainly having supped from the same '70s folk-prog nectar-filled chalice as those Swedish retro doom sensations. Especially on this album's last track, the truly epic 14 and a half minute "The Funeral Pyre" which begins all acoustic-guitary before eventually unleashing monumental riffage (echoing Sabbath's "Lord Of This World" perhaps), all of which is graced by Chritus's most raw and lachrymose performance, almost a la Paternoster, ending this album with a heavy '70s prog vibe indeed...
For fans of all the bands abovementioned, no doubt, also the likes of Witchfinder General, Electric Wizard, Solstice... heck you get the idea. Highly recommended to all doomhounds.
Long awaited full length debut from these local purveyors of druggy jangly psych pop after two super limited and now out of print ep jams, this new one though is by far the best sounding and most fully realized of the three. Falling somewhere beteen the current crop of lo-fi garage pop weirdos, and more classic space jammers, the Mantles create blissed out grooves, wrapped in tons of hazy reverb, the drums are a simple pound, the vocals a weary shadow, the guitars though, they drive these songs, they're thick, and crunchy, sometimes angular and jagged, sometimes shimmery and melodic, there's some warm whirring organ here and there, a classic rock vibe infuses the whole thing, the Velvets of course, the Doors (in the way the Shjips channel the Doors), as well as eighties New Zealand pop, nineties college rock slouch and jangle a la Sebadoh, catchy and groovy and psychedelic, not fucked up or far out, just propuslive and intense, and as the record progresses, the songs seem to get more and more ragged, often erupting into full on garage psych jams. These guys play all the time with bands like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall and those sorts of cats, so odds are if you dig that stuff, you'll dig these guys too.
Comes with a printed lyric sheet and a digital download card.
The indie pop garden continues to blossom in the Bay Area! The Matinees' sophomore full length catches a ride on the fleeting warm sunbeams that visit SF around this time of year. Bask with us in some really good girl/boy sung tunes. On songs such as "Mission Beach" they're very much in the vein of Quasi, and take a more reeling whimsical spin more akin to Fiery Furnaces on "Fair Weather Friend". As for their drowsy pop rendition of David Bowie's "Modern Love"... well, we're not quite sure how we feel about that, but the rest of the album sure sounds sweet. Much more polished and composed than 2007's Sleepy Seeds. The album was recorded and co-produced by Greg Ashley, and features guests from local pals Love Is Chemical, Scrabbel, Invisible Cities, and Agent Ribbons.
Just when we thought all the weird dusty corners of strange and magical sounds had been uncovered from the vast archives of the ESP label, something new to us, shiny and unbelievably wonderful gets unearthed. MIJ is the strangely cryptic moniker of Jim Holberg, (or on second thought not so strange as we just realized, it's his name spelled backwards!) who was discovered in Washington Square Park on a hot summer day in 1969 yodeling and playing guitar by ESP label head Bernard Stoller. But this wasn't any country western or Swiss Alps yodeling, this was some freaked out high-keening spacey Martian kind of yodeling. The kind that cuts through time and space and penetrates your subconscious. Blown away by his street performance, Stoller invited Holberg into the studio the next day to record a full length album and in just three hours with an array of echo effects and a patient and agreeable engineer, the Yodeling Astrologer was born. Apparently Holberg had explained to Stoller that after being injured in an auto-accident that had fractured his skull and impaired his hearing, his perceptions became altered and he began to do things musically that he couldn't comprehend but they somehow worked, and indeed they do. With both voice and guitar reverbed to the nth degree, this is some Donovan meet Dreamies meets Curt Boetchner of The Millenium psych-folk magic. So awesome and beautiful, weird and dreamy, with well-written songs and just enough freaky yodeling that won't scare off the folks who might be put off by the concept of, well, freaky yodeling. We've been playing this nearly everyday, it's so good. So Highly Recommended!
Arctic Monkeys on the cover of this month's Mojo, while inside:Sky Saxon, Beastie Boys Comus, Billy Childish, an interview with David Sylvian, White Denim, Queen photgrapher Peter Hince, J.J. Cale, Michael Jackson, The Housemartins plus reviews galore, as well as a cover mounted cd featuring a killer collection of "essential mindblowing summer grooves", from Tinariwen, Tony Allan, Ali Farka Toure, Konono No.1 and more...
If you've ever heard anyone speaking about Israeli trio Monotonix, you've no doubt heard one main detail: the band is fucking INSANE live. There's not even enough hyperbole that could accurately describe the sensation of seeing these three hairy, scantily clad, mustachioed dudes chugging Red Bull (no, really, there wasn't a beer in sight, just... Red Bull... and lots of it) and rocking their balls off like, well, no one else. Their super stripped down approach, consisting of guitar, drums, and a singer decked out in nothing but a pair of short shorts, is sure to appeal to fans of sleazy, sweaty rock in the vein of the Estrus Records roster, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Royal Trux. The band's unhinged live performances have certainly set the bar pretty high and sort of jinxed any attempts to review their albums, because no one - NO ONE - could ever capture that kind of energy in the studio. And even still, Monotonix know how to bring it, and their albums are a perfect lesson in relentlessly wild, bloozey fun. While the sound is not exactly "tight", the band has mastered the art of holding it together in their own way, never missing a beat in the process. The sound of Monotonix is relatively simple, but very effective: Super thick, octaved guitars, heavily accented wildman vocals, and drumming that is even more impressive when you see the guy being hoisted up on his bass drum while audience members hold the snare and the hi-hat and pass him through the crowd. All in all, Monotonix make ridiculously fun music, giving you the freedom to get drunker than drunk while they do all the hard work. Instant party. 'Nuff said.
Not sure of what the connection is between aQ faves Shackleton, the Skull Disco label, and Mordant music really, they seem somehow interconnected, Shackleton having been a part of Mordant Music at some point maybe, doesn't really matter, all you need to know is that this disc collects all the Shackleton related releases from this era (the Mordant era?), all WAY out of print, and all seriously kick ass. In fact we've been trying to get these for ages, the first time we heard it we freaked out, proclaiming it the electronic music record of the year, or weirdo dubstap jam of the year, or some similar rave, and thus, needless to say, this disc blows us away. It has been out for a while, but we only just now managed to get enough to list. Which also means when we run out, we very ell may not be able to get more, so consider yourself warned.
So yeah, these tracks are dark and spacey, and dense and weirdly funky and groovy, the core of most of these tracks is definitely dubstep, moreso on the Shackleton tracks proper than the others. "Stalker" is spare and skeletal, with woozy synths, plenty of skittery rhythms, and some awesome rubbery squlechy bass wobble, easily a classic dubstep jam if there ever was one. "I Want To Eat You" takes the same sound and blisses it out a bit, adding a Middle Eastern tinge, channeling Muslimgauze through effects laden abstract dub. "El Din" and "El Din 2" offer up more of the same, exotic and mysterious, moody and minimal, shifting from Eastern shuffle to dark Chain Reactiony pulse and back again.
Then there are the Mordant Music tracks, which are way more techno sounding, more beat-y with chopped up melodies and soaring synths, some with thick throbbing bass warble, one with creepy electronic buzz woven into the sklittery shuffle, and then there's the record closer, "Marston Moor", a super noisy noise drenched creepfest, complete with shriekd black metal vocals buried in the mix, swirling and chaotic, with what sound like processed horns, would kill to hear a whole record of this stuff.
Finally there's two tracks from Vindicatrix, one a tripped out druggy FX-fest, vocals doused in delay and sent spinning into the ether, super minimal beats and rumbling low end buzz, a weird sort of post industrial glitchscape, while the second is a murky chunk of minimal techno dub, with haunting processed female vocals, creepy Goblin-y synths, all draped in a blurred grime-y eighties haze.
Require listening for fans of tripped out electronica, weird abstract dub(step) and damaged glitch beat minimalism.
Brand new double disc from prolific drone doom duo Nadja, each disc a whole record unto itself one crushing and heavy, the other blissed out and shimmery, but both discs meant to be played together simultaneously, Zaireeka style, if you're so inclined (and equipped).
Both discs sound a bit clearer on their own, the doomier disc is spacious and spaced out, bass driven with simple programmed drums, hushed vocals, lots more tripped out effects than usual, a dizzying cloud of glimmers and chimes, swoops and bleeps, all wrapped around simple lumbering crush and heaving swells of lush heaviness, very Godfleshy sounding actually, pretty stripped down, long stretches of low end rumble and drum pound. One track is all ambient, washed out and hushed, some woozy slowcore drift, that gives way to a final track that is gorgeously caustic, blown and and sun baked, heavy heavy heavy, the weird thing is that without the second disc, it definitely sounds less lush, more murky, which for Nadja is not actually a bad thing. Probably most folks don't have a way of listening to both discs simultaneously, so know that the first disc is a killer blast of sludgy Nadja doomdrone that sounds great as it is.
The second disc is a much more abstract affair, obviously as it's meant to add texture and depth to the original, but it actually sounds pretty amazing on its own, all looped and hazy and gauzy, very Philip Jeck sounding in places, and in fact, this second disc has becomes a great late night drifting off record, with only one track that gets loud, and even then it's a soft cacophony of tones and blurred melodies, like a timestretched gamelan broadcast through a kaleidoscope.
So together, it's a little difficult to get the balance right, but when you do, it sounds pretty neat, the slower prettier numbers seem to work better, as the two tranquil drones have an easier time blending, the heavier jams get pretty chaotic, but listening to the final super heavy track, with both discs blasting, it is pretty transcendent, if there was some way to run both these through headphones at the same time, it might just send you spinning into some other dimension, certainly it'll probably invoke some sort of spontaneous hallucinations. Heavy, and pretty, and together, way dense and psychedelic!
And the packaging, wow! A huge hardcover book-like digipak with full color fold out panels, inside two printed inner sleeves (the only bummer being that their are no pockets, so the sleeves just sort of fall out when you open it), super striking for sure, and super limited too we're pretty sure.
G. Lucas Crane is the man behind the dead-eyed tape excursions he broadcasts as Nonhorse; and he's the same G. Lucas Crane who can also be found in the equally as psychedelic, but far less grim projects Woods and Vanishing Voice. It's all about the cassette for Nonhorse, how the hiss accumulates over multiple dubbings, how crappy tape heads can fuck up the sound, how the machines start, stop, rewind, and fast-forward against the tape itself. The door creaking loop that begins Shadow World is a very low-tech translation of Philip Jeck's equally low-tech turntable rhythms; and the crawling synth rhythm takes this somewhere way more phantasmagoric than anything Jeck has produced. Floating monastic vocals spiral against the agitated delivery of shortwave radio transmissions from a Christian evangelist. These kaleidoscopic revolutions haphazardly tumble in and out of the simple overlapping structures, eventually mutating into a thumbing mess of pre-recorded tinklings from synthetic bells while clarinets tumble about some drill 'n' bass breaks appropriated from Hrvatski's missing-in-action Oiseaux 96-98 album, all of which is augmented through start-and-stop strategies on the tape decks, through a chain-linked fence of delay and reverb. As a willfully confused collage of warped hiss, toxic noise, and corroded found sound, Shadow World is a throw-back to the tape-trading heyday of cassette culture permeated by the likes of Solid Eye, Blackhumour, AMK, and Premature Ejaculation. You don't see this type of stuff kicking around much these days, that's for sure!
Released in several tiny editions through Upstairs, which has already sold out of all of their copies, meaning these few copies are all we will ever get!
