Kuupuu is a bit like a Finnish Grouper, her songs are murky and mysterious, the sounds feel disembodied and otherworldly, her vocals are ghostlike and gauzy, but those Grouper-like sounds are filtered through her Finnish folk filter, having spent time in Avarus, Anaksimandros and a handful of other big time aQ faves. Nearly half the record is made up of hushed intimate lo-fi ballads, muted and muddy and almost underwater sounding, her voice and musical accompaniment bleeding into each other until it's sometimes almost impossible to tell which is which, but those stretches of bleary eyed balladic drift and muffled shimmery dreamdrone are peppered with chucks of weird soft noise, abstract rhythmic workouts and some strange very Finnish sounding bursts of what-the-fuck chaos: plenty of clattery tribal percussion, detuned guitars, demented music box melodies, field recordings and found sounds, tape manipulation, gongs and bells and birdcalls, looped acoustic guitars, super lo-fi tape recorded voices, swooping backwards melodies, and the occasional jagged shard of feedback or streak of fractured crunch, but somehow Kuupuu manages to tie it all together into something much more cohesive and lovely than you might imagine.
Definitely for fans of all things Finnish and foresty and folky and freaky: Avarus, Islaja, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat, Kiila, Shogun Kunitoki, Es, etc. And adventurous fans of Grouper might give this a try, if they're not averse to some weirdo noisemaking with their moody melancholia.
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.
Earlier this year, we reviewed a super limited avant outsider blackened doom record called A Million Dead Beneath The Ice, by a duo called Light. Which was anything but light, in fact, it was one of the darkest and most harrowing discs we'd heard in a long time, a slow motion drone drenched funereal crawl, with a lush almost orchestrated feel that definitely reminded us of Skepticism. And if anything, record number two, the awesomely titled Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever is even more! More black, more doomy, more droney, more beautiful, more harsh and more bizarre.
One long hour long track, which begins with a slowly cycling piano figure, draped over a wash of reverbed tones, distant rumbles, the sound gorgeous, slightly atonal, ominous and sinister, and then there are the vocals, a nearly impossible to describe high pitched shriek, that almost sounds like someone screaming as they breathe in, a twisted strangled howl, totally at odds with the music underneath, reminding us a bit of Tomb Of..., who also paired up piano and black metal vokills, but Light seems borne more of a free noise aesthetic. Minus the vocals, the sound on Life Is Meaningless, is a sort of abstract slowcore crawl, a little post rocky, a little doomy, a bit of black ambient drift, but the vocals are just SOOOO creepy, it definitely pushes it into a whole other realm. And suddenly what could have been something darkly pretty, becomes something fucked up and grimly gorgeous.
Like the first release (which is long out of print so don't ask), the packaging is a hand folded, hand assembled, plain grey origami style sleeve, with a Japanese style obi, and an extra inner sleeve, as well as a hand written insert, and again crazy limited to less than 50 COPIES!!
Ah, the second release from the Mimaroglu Music Sale sponsored "No Label" which probably will stick as a name, when it really was meant to be a private imprint with the absence of a label name. No matter, though as this split LP from Mark Lord (the pseudonym of Christopher Forgues) and Morgan Egg (who we know next to nothing about). Forgues has previous work under the Whitehouse inspired project Kites with blistering pierced noise surrounded by shock-horror tactics; and that sensibility has been tempered under the Mark Lord moniker. The only semblance of that former self appears in an appropriated dialogue of a '70s porn, buttressed by some fantastic retro-garde / minimal wave electronics. These looping synth modulations arppegiate and expand along linear pulsations dappled by circuit bent twiddle and scrags of cheap noise. Sort of like a more progressive take on the Units without so much of the punk overdrive. The final cut "Warpath" tops the drum machine propulsion with an almost charmingly playful melody to the counter the insistent synth bass pulse. Really great stuff!
Morgan Egg's snarled drone tempests declares their influences from the classic Italian industrial work by Maurizio Bianchi and Giancarlo Toniutti. Washes of grey static and revolving chunks of leaden distortion meld into the grim atmospheres that Egg laces with oscillating electronics and curiously languid bell tones. Quite a departure from the Mark Lord side, but just as incredible.
This small pressing is less than 300 copies, of which we have less than a dozen. Who knows if more will be in our future.
For the life of us, we can not understand why this record didn't become a huge hit when it came out originally in 1968. It always seems so arbitrary as far as to which artists or records get hugely popular and which fall through the cracks into obscurity. Luckily, Water knew what was what, and is giving this true soul classic another shot!
Barbara Lynn possessed not only one of those totally melty soulful voices, but she was also quite an accomplished (left-handed) guitar player. Bittersweet and heart wrenching, Lynn's voice just nails every emotion and conveys so much passion and pathos, we're reminded a lot of Irma Thomas, and many of the more uptempo exquisitely crafted tracks here make us think of The Supremes as well. And heck, somewhere between Irma Thomas and The Supremes is a pretty damn great place to be, and Here is Barbara Lynn is a damn great record. Any fan of the golden age of soul absolutely needs this as it's given our ears such a great and lasting ride. Highly recommended!
All right! Moon Duo returns with another hazed out transmission from some lost dimension (otherwise known as San Francisco), this one courtesy of the always cool Sacred Bones label. The duo (obviously) features Ripley Johnson from local heroes Wooden Shjips, and their sound is not too far removed from Ripley's main band, maybe a little more ethereal and not quite as overtly "rocking", but definitely following a similar path of hypnotic, fuzzy repetition that we can't get enough of.
Moon Duo are capable of creating powerful songs from very little and they obviously understand the power of simplicity. Each of the four songs on this ep utilize the same hypnotic drum machine groove, altered to various pitches and speeds to accommodate each individual song. The result is like a mechanical heartbeat, throbbing relentlessly with krauty precision, and almost serving as some sort of chain to link each of the songs together. The record begins with "Killing Time", which sounds a bit like a Joy Division part looped forever as the soft, distorted vocals lurk beneath melodic guitars and fuzzy background static. With its buzzing organ and controlled feedback, "Speed" rocks a bit like Suicide augmented by shrieking guitar pulses and, uh, harmonica? Maybe. The cool thing here is how sounds blend together in a cyclone of warm, pulsating analog goodness. At times you are unaware of what you're hearing, and even though it gets noisy and overblown, the results are always catchy and super melodic.
Side 2 begins with "Dead West", which has a cool underwater feel. The song fucks with your perception of time and place, as it could have been recorded 40 years ago or 40 years from now. Sonically, it is a bit reminiscent of fellow California space travelers Sun Araw with its percussive guitar strumming and shimmering psychedelic feel, as a little keyboard melody stands at the center of things while the rest of the sounds oscillate all over the place. "Ripples" gives off a Spacemen 3 vibe as the drumbeat is slowed significantly. The guitars have a nice bit of twang to them, and the sounds once again appear to get caught in some sort of musical whirlpool as they merge together before a cool fadeout.
Picking up where the last ep left off, Killing Time finds Moon Duo descending even deeper into a state of super rhythmic, dreamy psychedelia. Just the way we like it.
Sometimes it really is strange to contrast the Mountain Goats of today with the Mountain Goats of old. It's not really that strange for bands to develop and grow, to explore and expand their sonic palette, but for YEARS, the Mountain Goats WAS John Darnielle, a super aggressively strummed acoustic guitar, and his nasally whine, belted out at full volume, but it wasn't that simple, the songs, as bare bones as they may have appeared on the surface, were incredible, catchy and deep, melodic and super rocking (for an acoustic guitars), and the lyrics, by turns clever and bitter and funny and literate, all still totally punk rock, recorded on boomboxes, released on lo-fi mainstay Shrimper. Never in a million years would we have expected Darnielle and his Mountain Goats to end up on 4AD, nor would we have imagined the sound of the Mountain Goats could change so dramatically. But it did, and we've made our peace with it, those lo-fi days are long gone, which in some ways, makes us a little sad, but we would never have glimpsed this other side of Darnielle, which would have been a damn shame, as he's proven himself to be quite a songwriter and arranger, the NEW Mountain Goats, a whole new proposition, still with brief glimpses of the MG's of old, but for the most part, a proper band, sometimes rocking, other times brooding, always a little dark, the lyrics still awesome, so much so you sometimes wonder how Darnielle became a musician and not a writer, but the combination of super literate lyrics and more traditional rock arrangements still hits the spot.
Life Of The World To Come is a dark record, even by MG's standards, every track named for a verse of the Bible, although the lyrical content is not explicitly connected to said verses, at least not on the surface. The sound is lovely, lush and moody and dark and a bit mournful, the opening track is hushed and intimate, Darnielle's vocals restrained, the guitars muted, muffled percussion, everything murky and mysterious. The second track is much more 'rocking', with Darnielle slipping into his old vocal style, which is a good match for the chugging riffs, and pounding drums.
The record explores lots of stylistic territory, but the finest moments (much of the record in fact) find Darnielle abandoning the guitar for piano, the dark chords ominous and lush, backed by strings sometimes, getting a little chamber, which sounds fantastic, it's deeply moving, haunting and emotional. A couple of the more rocking numbers are a bit lite, and sound a tad mainstream, but invariably, they lead right back to something much darker, and ominously lovely.
Available both on cd and super deluxe double black vinyl. There were some purple copies, but those colored vinyl versions are long gone... plus black vinyl does sound better anyway!
We love super limited collectable releases as much as the next person, but it really does seem to be getting out of hand. Cd-r's, tapes, vinyl, limited to 1000, to 500, to 50, 33, even 12 in some cases. Sure it makes sense that there is a limited audience for a lot of music, so maybe 12 or 33 or 50 is enough, but once it's obvious that you've moved beyond such a limited fanbase, it's time to ramp it up. A band who routinely sells thousands of records, can not (or at least SHOULD not) release a record limited to 100 copies. All it does is piss off all the fans who love your music. And by the same token, bands who DO release ultra limited releases, well, when those releases begin to sell out in a matter of hours, or minutes, or if those releases end up on eBay the next day and sell for hundreds of bucks, well, then similarly, it's time to give up on the limited release. It's partially the listeners' fault, clamoring for ANYTHING limited, sometimes it seems like how limited something is, is vastly more important to folks than what it sounds like.
But why discuss this here, in a review of dynamic drone duo Natural Snow Buildings? Well, because these guys have LONG surpassed the point at which they should be doing pressings any smaller than 500, heck, any smaller than 1000. So far, every NSB record or NSB sideproject record we've gotten, has been so limited that A. We were not able to get as many as we wanted. B. They all were practically out of print by the time they landed at aQ, and worst of all, C. Loads of folks who wanted the music and could care less about collectability and were just big fans of the band ended up shit out of luck, and had to buy it on eBay for some crazy amount of money, if they wanted to hear it at all.
Shadow Kingdom is not as limited as many of the past NSB jams, but is still limited enough that we could only manage a smallish chunk, and it's yet to be determined if we can get more once these sell out, but we'll for sure try.
Which when you break it down is really a bummer, cuz music this good, sounds this dark and intense and incredible need to be heard by as many people as possible. Shadow Kingdom is at its core, a drone record, but NSB's take on the drone is so lush and expansive and epic, slow burning, but burning bright, effulgent and incendiary, guitars blurred into thick glimmering streaks, the various layers, pulse and throb and undulate, and those drones are shot through with flecks of folk, bits of twang, dreamy vocals, buzzing sitar, shimmering ambience, and those epic swaths of dronemusic are set amidst more song based sounds, the record slipping from nearly half hour walls of drone, to delicate fluttery folky ambience, to skittery sun dappled free folk, to washed out new age whir, to warm gauzy dream pop, all of those various permutations constantly drifting into one another, overlapping, intertwining, changing shape, melodies bleeding into other melodies, tones and chords drifting and whirling, it's all very otherworldly, and mesmerizing, meditative and so so so dreamy. A double cd is perfect for NSB, as they can indulge themselves, letting pop songs sprawl into disembodied hazy space-y anti-pop, allowing warm bits of forest folk, to blossom into ever expanding fields of flickering fluttery sonic shimmer. It's hard to listen to music this beautiful, and emotional, and exquisitely crafted, and imagine it only being heard by a handful of people. So yeah, another fantastic disc of drone folk loveliness from this French duo, grab one if you can, and c'mon guys, make as many copies as there are people who want to hear it, at the very least, someone should gather up all the out of print tapes and lps and cds and assemble a massive bargain priced boxset, for all the fans who missed out on so much music from a band they love. So gorgeous, and in case you hadn't figured it out by now, very, very, very limited.
A highly obscure Afro-beat document from the seventies, this is a little heard recording by Fela Kuti sideman, Nicholas Addo Nettey. Recorded in Lagos at the same Ginger Baker-run studio that Kuti cut many of his famous albums, this feels like a rawer more stripped down Fela Kuti album just without Fela Kuti, with more chicken scratch organ than funk horns. Four songs, 2 long-form politically charged call and response hypnotic jams with 2 shorter soul grooving instrumentals. Daptone does quite a service uncovering this beast! No Afro-beat collection should be without it!
It's hard to not love a band that sounds like some unholy spawn of Deathspell Omega and SUNNO))), a blackened ritualistic blend of furious black metal and epic doomdrone, and while that combination in and of itself is not outrageously novel, since lots of BM record incorporate ambience and drones, it's all in the execution, and Nihill have managed to spin a sinister black web of sound that while familiar in some ways, is truly unlike anything we've heard before.
The first in a supposedly already completed trilogy of albums, Krach is a droning black beast, that begins with a short intro, a barely there bit of dark ambience, before exploding into�blasting chaotic, almost industrial black metal, so intense and blown out it basically ceases being black metal and becomes some droning buzzing black noisescape, the relentless blast beats the only thing holding everything together, huge swaths of ugly buzz and furious tangled black riffing. About part�way through the brutality abates, leaving a fuzzy free floating tangle of�strange voices, and circusy guitar melodies, whirring drones and abstract ambience, before a black blast shatters the tranquility and we're sucked right back down into Nihill's fuzzed out hellish sonic abyss.
The rest of the record is primarily the epic, three part, 42 minute�Gnosis song suite. Each movement a cinematic slab of black doomdronedrift,�huge ultra distorted swells of chordal crunch, over�haunting plodding percussion that sounds like it was recorded in some massive underground cathedral, these�glacial sonic shifts lumber beastlike through sprawling black hole soundscapes, the various layers and drones shifting from hateful industrial pummel to gorgeous ambient shimmer and back again. Imagine a more druggy SUNNO))) but with actual percussion, some demonic propulsion driving this epic's 16 rpm engine. The trilogy is broken up by another burst of DSO style blackened chaos, a completely deranged off kilter sonic assault, but the last two movements follow, one right after the other, finishing off the record with a nearly half hour of glacial, suffocating, brutal black drift.�
Any one remotely into any of the following bands absolutely NEEDS this: SUNNO))), Deathspell Omega, Moss, Khanate, Bunkur, S.V.E.S.T., Trollmann, Tenhornedbeast, Monument Of Urns, Marzuraan, Black Boned Angel... we could go on and on and on. A new deathdoomdronedrift favorite, with the added bonus of some seriously buzzing blackness.�
And we're already dying for the rest of the trilogy....
John Dwyer, one of the most prolific performers in recent memory, returns with yet another new record by his band Thee Oh Sees. And by "his band" we are not discounting the contributions of the other members because on Dog Poison, all the instruments are played by J.P.D. all by himself! Percussion, guitars, vocals, keyboards, even a flute on a few of the tracks. Though definitely more fuzzed out and raucous than Help, the last Oh Sees full-length, Dog Poison draws on similar veins of '60s pop and proto-punk, sculpting songs only one of which is over three minutes (and that just barely). Way more loud and rocking than other releases that were all Dwyer, it makes sense that Dog Poison is ostensibly by "Thee Oh Sees" rather than "OCS" or some other variation on that theme. It's like the old OCS is emulating what has become Thee new Oh Sees.
Those of you who think you might miss the boy/girl vocals of other Oh Sees releases, do not despair. There are multiple vocal layers on almost all of the tracks, most using "regular" singing and falsetto that echoes the perfect combination John and Brigid have found on other recordings. Sometimes, as on "The Sun Goes All Around", the lead falsetto vocals are backed up by (believe it) even higher falsetto backing vocals.
Clocking in at just under 25 minutes, these 10 songs will have you on the dance floor in no time.
Here it is, the first post-Chris Hakius Om studio record. And there sure has been a lot of whining. "How could Al Cisneros continue when half the group (Om being a duo) left?" "The new guy doesn't hit as hard," "It's on Drag City," blah blah blah. Fuck all that. If people cannot understand that music should be about progression and taking new risks, then they should stick to the old records and leave it at that. That said, there will be no mistaking this for anyone other than Om. The template hasn't changed drastically, but new drummer Emil Amos (who also pounds the skins for Grails and has a kick ass project of his own, Holy Sons) has certainly brought something new and fresh to the table. His drumming is more meditative, less pounding than Hakius' style and at times a little, ahem, "jazzy", and it honestly suits the direction Om had been heading in perfectly. And when the band does kick into its trademark fuzzed out monolithic jams, the changes come off as more dynamic and drastic. So, if you loved what Om has done before, chances are God Is Good will not disappoint.
The album kicks off with "Thebes," a 19 minute monster that begins life as a subdued sitar drone. The band jams it out for a while with clean bass and focused drumming, and of course, Al's amazing and totally out there stoner lyrics, before switching gears into the musical theme they have been exploring since, uh, Variations On A Theme. The best part is how it recalls the foundation from which Om was born while still showing the progression they have made since Amos' arrival. And it's fucking perfect. With Steve Albini once again at the recording console, you can safely bet that it sounds incredible, spacious yet controlled, with every nuance of Om's minimal but super amplified approach coming out nice and clear. Following an epic fadeout comes the second song, "Meditation Is The Practice Of Death", which is carried forward by a snaky, Middle Eastern styled bass groove as Amos provides some awesome drum work heavy on the cymbals and toms. The droniness just feels so great, with Al's monotone voice maintaining its steadiness over production that seems to show off a heavy dub influence. Probably weren't expecting that the first time you heard these guys, were you? But it actually makes total sense. Towards the end, there is a killer FLUTE solo, and its awesomeness should be enough to silence any of the non believers out there. This is still Om, but believe it or not, they are taking things into new realms, which is made even clearer on the next track, a two part song called "Cremation Ghat". Perhaps the fastest and busiest Om song to date, the song begins with a highly focused cyclical bass groove and percussion accented by hand claps playing out over a steady pound and a serpentine vocal chant. It's actually a bit reminiscent of Circle, but then Part II goes into a slow burning groove with the same sitar loop from "Thebes" entering the picture over more Middle Eastern inspired melodies. The album ends as it began, with the sitar loop urging you to press play once again. This is seriously great stuff.
So yeah, God Is Good is good, and we can only wonder where Om will venture after this. Luckily, it will probably still include 19 minute songs, thundering bass, hypnotic drumming, and totally stoned shamanic incantations, so really what's to complain about?
Oh Yoko! After all these years and all you've gone through, you still manage to have such dynamic energy and such a magnetic spirit. Who else at 76 years of age could make a record that pretty much blows away all the stuff made by folks in the supposed 'prime' of their lives.
With Between My Head And The Sky, Ono has done just that, this is maybe one of the most rewarding, immediate and satisfying albums in her expansive back catalog. Sounding so totally modern yet so totally Yoko at the same time. With an awesome band behind her featuring Cornelius (!) and the amazing drummer from his band Yuko Araki, as well as cellist Erik Friedlander, saxophonist Daniel Carter, Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto, Yoko's son Sean Lennon, and a few other great musical minds.
While they all help to create beautiful layers of sound and incredible grooves to each of these songs, it's Yoko's compositions and of course idiosyncratic delivery that pushes these songs into another realm. This is a record that perfectly blends Ono's more "out" and cosmic tendencies with her astute awareness of presence and nature and our surroundings, ranging from the charged and manic to the sweet and organic.
We know that folks tend to have quite strong opinions of Ono, with some of us at the store falling decidedly and staunchly on both sides of that divide, but a true testament to how great this record is, was when we were playing it in the store the other day, a customer asked what it was, when we told him he looked so surprised and told us he always assumed he didn't like her music, but that this was in fact a disc he would end up listening to over and over. For those of us here who are way way in the pro/in-love-with Yoko side of the equation, this is simply an amazing reconfirmation of why she is one of the most striking, sincere and creative forces of nature to live in our lifetime. Along with folks like Ornette Coleman and Asha Bhosle she is a constant reminder that growing old has nothing to do with losing spirit or soul, quite the opposite. So what will you be doing when you're 76??!!
Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are responsible for one of our favorite albums of the year! Their debut full length which came out right at the beginning of 2009, was the sort of refreshing slab of pure pop bliss that we had been so starved for. It's a record that we still listen to with as much excitement and frequency as we did all those months ago. The way they are able to tap into that great dreamy '80s state of pop while still sounding so fresh and original has made it a record that's going to be on many of our year end favorite lists for sure.
So of course we were super excited to get a new ep from the Pains, they really are one of those rare bands that have made such an impact on us that just getting a handful of new songs from them is so damn exciting. What's even more exciting is that these songs are some of the best and most infectious they have written so far.
Influenced by that Sara records sound, Pains create songs that soar with such ease reminding you of being in the backseat of your best friends car with the window's down as you heard The Smiths playing for the first time. With the recent passing of John Hughes, these are the kind of songs you know he would have wanted to be on the soundtrack for a movie like The Breakfast Club or Pretty In Pink if they they been made today. So romantic and yearning and with a distinctly daydream spirit we've already fallen head over heels for. Another amazing set of songs from one of our favorite new bands!
The cd version comes with an extra track not on the vinyl which is a really cool remix of the title track by Saint Etienne.
If you're looking to get to dreamboat island there really is no better way than to go with the Pastels & Tenniscoats as your dreamy and breezy ship captains. We're not sure how Glasgow legends Pastels and Tokyo's Tenniscoats linked up but it makes complete perfect sense as they each have perfected soft and soothing twee escapades like no one else. Pastels have been around the block, beginning in the 1980's where they helped usher in a new refreshing sound that would influence folks across the globe and plant the seeds for labels like K records. Tenniscoats have been around for the last few years and ever since we heard their pastoral and blissful take on hushed pop we became big fans. Our love of them only increased when their singer Saya performed at an instore here at AQ with Satomi of Deerhoof in their side project OneOne. This is truly a collaborative effort with members from both bands playing on every track and vocals trade off quite nicely and equally between each group, but all together the sounds of each band mesh with each other so well and with such ease that nothing feels forced about the combination of these two groups. So perfect that the artwork inside features a picture of the groups together sitting on such lush green grass, as we always want to be laying in some scenic peaceful park starring into the sky when we hear the dreamy sounds these groups create. Dreamboat island, we have arrived!
This SF songstress (aka Jessica Peter) continues to make the sweetest of pop music that never topples overboard into the sugar bowl. Her graceful, bubbly piano and lovely voice draws the immediate attention. She can belt it out, or coo in a crystal clarity, or murmur out the merest whispery breath of a vocal. Check out the aching "You Are Perfect". Indeed unlike the dreamy airiness of her previous recordings, here she treads on somewhat darker terrain especially on the sumptuous instrumental interlude "Dark Woods". If you dig other awesome, crafty female singer/songwriters like Mirah or Mary Timony, take note!
Pure Ecstacy comes from the same home-grown Austin scene as Yellow Fever, Silent Land Time Machine and Smokey Emery, and includes members of Silver Pines. This is their first self-released 7" of lackadaisical lo-fi stoner rock, taking its time to unfurl through hypnotic washes of wah'd and delayed guitar and low-key vocals that slowly build, reminding us a bit of Ducktails on a breezy roadtrip through the American heartland. Only 50 copies of this 7" were made with hand assembled spraypainted covers. We only have a handful, may not get more, so you know the drill!
Israel Quellet's 2nd album for Sub Rosa is not the unexpected surprise from an unknown artist that this Swiss sound-maker's debut disc was (for both us, and the label, read our review of it to see what we mean, we started off by saying "who the heck is Israel Quellet?"). But, that's because THIS time 'round, when we saw Quellet's had a new recording coming out, we were already eager to hear it. Much like its excellent predecessor, it's about compositions (improvisations? explorations?) limited to specific sound sources, each track featuring the use/abuse of a certain instrument or two, or perhaps a non-instrument, and to Quellet, his methods are his music, this is the focus, to the extent that the tracks are identified thusly... For example, track 1 is "for organ and percussion". Track 3 is "for fitness rower". Track 7 is "for footsteps and knocks on stairs, and vented carbon dioxide". He makes use of organ on here quite a bit, as well as percussion and less frequently voice, electronically treated (and in French). Actually much of this seems electronically treated, or in some way distorted, with "saturation" factoring into several of his pieces, occasionally achieving Merzbowian levels of noise (on track 6, "for percussions and saturation" especially!). All in all, this disc can be heard as one man's playful but moody, quasi-industrial homebrewed take on 20th (now 21st) century classical music. With so much somber organ and repetitive thunderous percussion, many of these tracks seem quite ominous, you can start imagining DIY Nitsch-style "aktions" happening in Quellet's backyard.
As with Quellet's prior album, this is varied and fascinating throughout, and surprisingly listenable. Truly experimental (and successfully so) music for curious ears made by someone with curious ears too. Recommended!!
Oh, and by the way, on our list this week there IS a cool Sub Rosa disc from a hitherto unknown (to us) artist, look for Pierre Berthet's Extended Loudspeakers, it's also AQ recommended.
Back in 1970, Eliane Radigue ran off ten copies of her final composition for feedback on magnetic tape, each of which included a small handwritten note. She intended for the piece to be played back at any speed and at any duration and either backwards or forwards. Given the smooth polish to her sustained drones that could easily blur into infinity, such instructions to her audience of ten seems quite reasonable, even if the tiny edition of 10 is far from a reasonable amount. Fortunately, the French sound artist Manu Holterbach (whose minimalist work is awe-inspiring in its own right) has been sifting through Radigue's archives and came across this incredibly rare document which Radigue originally released for the Lara Vincy Gallery in Paris as part of a group sound exhibition. For the cd repackaging of this lone composition, Holterbach curated a double disc of various mixes of the original recordings. The first disc being the straight versions of the composition, played back at the four standard speeds of a reel-to-reel tape deck; and the second disc being backwards versions, also played back at those four speeds. The longest version is a little over 13 minutes long, with the shortest being a bit under 3 minutes; and all four mixes exhibit variations in tonal colors and slight oscillating modulations not heard on previous mixes. The first mix is the longest, slowest, and thus deepest plunge into the Radigue drone, which balances an asymmetrical undulation of low end against a static vibration which sits a couple octaves higher than the super-low rumble and pushes a little farther into the distance. As the track develops, Radigue seems to be gradually increasing the tension of these pieces, as if tension were just a knob she were effortlessly twisting, but in fact she's deftly controlling all of the parameters of her feedback loop to cause such effects. The second piece clocks in under a brisk 9 minutes with that irregular hovering sounds more pronounced. The next two pieces are a bit over four and two minutes respectively, each brightening vibrations to a sharp resolution on the finale. Both discs exhibit essentially the same sounds, which might be accentuated if you were to play both discs at the exact same time. A peculiar excerpt, yes, but a wonderful record for sure from one of the finest authors of 20th Century minimalism.
South London's daydreaming guitar trio are back with a brand new offering of gorgeous electric guitar wash and hazy ambient epiphany, this time on everyone's favorite big time of the small time label, Type. I Could Not Love You More finds Rameses III perfecting their regal, monolithic sound, and we couldn't be more thrilled! Majestic chords and metallic shimmer rise from the blurring horizon, heart-wrenching melody and cinematic richness pour into the sky with a radiant ooze. Pastoral soundtracks stretched out and slowed down into time-lapsed images of rising tides and exploding stars, blissfully huge and epic while always grasping on to a forward moving narrative, through quiet grasslands of fingerpicked, Takoma style acoustic guitar to swelling waves of glistening tones that grow and radiate on the verge of feedback.
While even some of our favorite modern ambient music relies on layers and layers of digital processing, Rameses III maintains a certain acoustic integrity by layering strictly live instruments. Electric guitars, electric pianos, and mellotrons produce a warm, ethereal wash that brings an otherworldly depth to their sound, a depth that digital processing could never recreate.
Ghostly and melodic, mysterious and heavy, ambient and thoughtful, I Could Not Love You More is no doubt the trio's finest work and a perfect addition to the Type catalogue, highly recommended!
Before Cat Power, Beach House, Grouper, Edith Frost, Christina Carter, Valet, Marissa Nadler, Tara Jane O'Neil, El Perro Del Mar, Isobel Campbell, Brightblack Morning Light, etc.... there was Hope Sandoval.
Beginning with her work in seminal and influential slowcore dream pop legends Mazzy Star, Sandoval's trademark dazed and hazy vocals have inspired countless other bands and performers, her gorgeous languid purr and the dark swirling sounds surrounding it were no doubt an intoxicating influence, and as fantastic as so many of those Mazzy acolytes are, there is just something so magical, otherworldly and trance inducing about the original. After Mazzy Star called it quits, Sandoval released both an ep and a full length under her own name, that full length, Bavarian Fruit Bread, was easily as dreamy, seductive and enchanting as anything that Mazzy Star had ever created.
It's been over 8 years since that album came out and we've heard very little from the elusive and mysterious chanteuse (other than rumors of a proposed Codeine reunion, with Sandoval on vocals, how amazing would that have been!!). She lives right here in the Bay Area, and performs now and again, sometimes with like minded music makers, sometimes on her own, she even made an appearance a while back on Vetiver's great debut record. Now finally, almost a decade since her last proper record, we have this completely chilling and utterly beautiful record, that proves it was well worth the wait, the record at once immediate and intimate, but also with the feel of something meticulously crafted over many long dark nights.
Immaculate, lush, warm, melancholy, seductive, sensual, sexy, smoky... words only begin to scratch the surface when describing the intensity and emotion, the depth and and delicate beauty of Through The Devil Softly.
The music here is again, a perfect match for Sandoval's gorgeous vocals, dark and lush and seductive and hypnotic, which comes as no surprise since her band The Warm inventions is comprised of some incredible players, including her main musical coconspirator, Colin O Ciosoig of My Bloody Valentine, who co-wrote several of the songs as well as being the Inventions' drummer.
Through The Devil Softly is a record that even on first listen sounds timeless, and ageless, a record that will no doubt seep into your heart, and soul, and play on and on, a constant companion, a musical balm that will soothe and comfort, ease you when you are uneasy, wrap you in warmth as you dream the day away, and lift you into the air as millions of memories, thoughts and desires infuse your body and mind. Simply breathtaking!
Lately some of our favorite Bay Area music makers have added record label head honcho to their resumes. John Dwyer (Thee Oh Sees) started his label Castle Face a few years ago, and Kelley Stoltz started Chuffed last year and now Marc Dantona of Conspiracy Of Beards and the now sadly defunct Pillars Of Silence has just launched his own label, Turn Up. The Sandwitches are the perfect band to be the first release on the label, as their smart approach to wide spanning pop shows what happens when folk minded musicians take it to the garage. The three ladies in the band have done time in great San Francisco bands like Brilliant Colors, The Fresh & Onlys, Pillars Of Silence and it is kind of cool how if you did put all three of those bands in a blender the sound of the Sandwitches can really be imagined. So many bands of late seem to be so dialed into such a narrow and small palette of sounds so it's really refreshing to hear a band who are no one trick pony, but instead cover lots of musical ground but do so with a cohesiveness that is often really tricky to pull off like The Sandwitches do on this debut. In lots of ways the record makes us think of what it would sound like for a band on Woodsist to cover Fleetwood Mac's amazing record Tusk.
There is also something so honest and sincere about their delivery that you get the feeling they would play these songs with as much conviction and emotion in their living room filled with a few friends as much as they would on stage at a packed venue. Can't wait to hear what Turn Up unleash in the future and if this debut release is any indication this is going to be a label to keep your eyes on!
Also available on (import only) vinyl!
It's pretty obvious why the folks at B-music (like DJs Andy Votel and Dom Thomas) dig these particular collectible exploito obscurities so much, and why they're so excited to be reissuing 'em in their new "Germanic Miner" series dedicated to "krautsider music"! What could be more B-musical than these two faux soundtracks concocted in the late sixties by a couple of creative German producers, operating at the weird, wacked out intersection of kitschy library music and freaky krautrock? One's a slice of slinky, sorta-scary "horrotica", the other a spaced out sci-fi fest for the Barbarella set. Both are delirious, demented party-pleasers.
The Vampires Of Dartmoore and their Dracula's Music Cabinet conjures a sexy frightmare of hip swinging, bloodsucking sounds. "Mord Im Ohio Express (Murder In The Ohio Express)" seems kinda surfy, but mostly this is about groovy porno lounge music, with smoky horns and jazzy percussion, interwoven with screams and creepy sound effects, moaning and groaning, dogs barking and something going boing boing boing... It's a very NON-academic application of musique concrete technique, noises worked into the songs, such as the rumbling explosions that punctuate "Eine Handvoll Nitro (A Handful Of Nitro)". The mix is fairly chaotic, stuff fading in and out, levels up and down. If this WAS a movie soundtrack, it would have been a pretty crazy movie. Tracks reference Hitchcock, Dr. Caligari, and Frankenstein's monster. And sex. Definitely sex.
Equally bizarre, if less R-rated, is the Science Fiction Dance Party. Again, it's groovy, jazzy, sometimes fuzzy "instro-hipster" style stuff, laced with loads of goofy outer space sound effects and rocketship radio drama theatrics. It sounds like music for a cocktail party and/or acid test on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. You can imagine Robbie the Robot getting down to this. Distorted alien and/or computer voices abound, song titles include "Visitors Of A.D. 2022", "The Whistling Astronaut", and "Hit Parade In The Light Year 25" (which doesn't even make sense, don't they know that light years are a measure of distance?). As well as whistling, there's some screams here too, as spacemen are presumably being zapped with rayguns, but the music remains jaunty. Even the song "Death Rays Out Of The Universe" is inexplicably upbeat. So, it's all very silly, but a lot of fun.
Both albums feature bonus tracks (2 previously unreleased "Petting Party" jams on Vampires, 4 extra tracks on Science Fiction that come back to earth to delve into disco and Eastern exotica instead). The slipcased cds of these are now domestic releases (we waited instead of getting the expensive imports) but the LP versions remain imports.
This is a hard one for us. On one hand we want to gush endlessly and write long paragraphs on how great this cd-r is, but on the other hand, this is a late discovery for us and we're not sure the band will be making any more copies of this. We got the last ten!!!!!! We don't really know too much about this band except they were local and recently relocated to Austin, and they revel in a sound that can be best described as shoegazey stoner country-rock. Thick, warm and gauzy with lots of reverbed slide guitar and heavy psych amp fuzz underscoring the female singer's pretty heavy-lidded and drawling vocals, the songs on Forces remind us of smoky perfumed parlors from a forgotten age. Reminiscent of a fuzzier Mazzy Star or a more heavier slow-rocking Beach House, Silver Pines has taken us all quite by surprise by their majestic grace and atmospheric beauty. So good!! Hopefully this won't be the last we hear from this band. Each cd-r hand silkscreened and colored. We only have ten! and we're not sure we can get more! You have been warned!
Not sure why, but it's been SO impossible to get enough of these to list, which is a huge bummer, cuz it's definitely turned into one of our favorite records of the year (and yeah, we know it didn't come out this year, but so what!). Our distros never have it, emails to the label never get returned, so fuck it, we decided to just list it with the 10 or so copies we have. So at least a few of you can check this out.
The weird thing is we were expecting something much more generic and garagey and run of the mill, but from the first song (a definite contender for jam of the year) we knew this was something WAY more. Fuzzy, and buzzy, and stoney and groovy and spaced out, crunchy guitars busy burbling basslines, some bad ass drumming, and some super wicked scowly vox, somewhere between the Lyres, Monster Magnet and the White Stripes.
"Flight Of The Navigator", the aforementioned jam, encapsulates pretty much everything we love about these guys and gal. A sharp jagged jangly main riff, with a killer stop start descending verse, a woozy soaring chorus, and then a total Monster Magnet bridge with weird processed vocals, and the guitars all space-y and stretched out. Some wild leads here and there, and HOOKS THAT KILL. We literally listened to this first track so many times, that it was weeks before we got any further into the record, but when we did, we discovered that the rest of the record was pretty much just as bad ass. The Lyres vibe can't be underestimated, but Monster Magnet is all over these tracks, as is Hawkwind, plenty of fuzzy poppiness too, classic garage infuses everything here, but it's way more poppy, and space-y and heavy and hooky. We could go on and on and on and on, but since the availability of this record is a bit up in the air, we'll just sum it up by saying this kicks ass big time, and if favorite records were indeed judged entirely and soley on how many times and how often it gets listened to, then we're pretty sure there's no other record this year that would even come close (if you ask Andee).
It's been almost 3 years since we last heard from Snowblood, who at the time were super hyped to us as being a "metal Mogwai", which makes sense as they are Scottish, they write epic slow burning metallic post rock jams, and they manages to fuse extreme heaviness with super melodic rock, but unlike Mogwai, these guys get very VERY metal, as in ULTRA heavy, sometimes sludgey and crushing, other times frenzied and thrashy, incorporating howling black metal vokills, even blast beats.
This long in the works new album, finds the band refining their sound, the prettier melodic parts are a bit crunchier, a little more krautrocky, loping and hypnotic, and the heavy parts, well, the band have really outdone themselves, kicking out the metallic jams big time, exploding into bursts of Coalesce / Converge chaotic fury before stumbling into lurching epic metallic doom sludge, the vocals even more harsh and hellish than before, the band sometime slowing it way down and dipping into full on Eyehategod territory.
Four long tracks, none shorter than 10 minutes, the longest a sprawling 18:31, each one a meandering journey from drift and strum and jangle to pummel and crush and crumble. The second track is all washed out and shoegazey with what sounds like accordions or strings, adding a layer of woozy buzz, until the band explodes into another bout of brutality, at which point those accordions or strings get all super distorted and sound almost like a metal kazoo, the effect is not as goofy as it sounds, especially considering the band lock into a seriously intense minor key mournful doom metal dirge. The third trajectory is the mathiest of the bunch, and never quite gets full metallized, although the vocals get pretty harsh, but the music gets more loud / epic Mogwai style, a Godspeed like flourish before settling back into a drifty post rocky fade out.
The final track mixes it up and starts out all metal, a huge churning chug, with a soaring main melody, those killer vox, before breaking down into a cool abstract drift, with jagged shards of droneguitar, fractured fragmented riffs, a downtuned crumbling chug way off in the distance, all woven around a woozy minor key melody, before exploding into another stretch of churning riffage and intense drum pound, finally finishing off with a thick wall of guitar hum and hiss. Awesome stuff. Seems like these guys should be massive, touring with Isis and Neurosis and Baroness and all those sorts of heavy hitters, maybe they do on the other side of the ocean, but it seems like over here they're way more under the radar, metalheads and post rockers over here need to get hip to these guys, lots of folks just might find themselves with a new favorite band.
Killer packaging, housed in a gorgeous silkscreened cardstock sleeve, with a fancy fold out printed insert.
- MPEG stream: I
- MPEG stream: IV
Volume eight in the ongoing HP Lovecraft 3"cd-r series, each a unique tribute to the writer and his works, past installments included discs from Caina, Brown Jenkins, Sapthuran, Smohalla, Frostmoon Eclipse, LVTHN and Harvist, all of them WAY out of print, since each one is limited to a mere 100 copies. Out of each batch of 100 we get 20 copies, so by now you should know exactly what that means...
Stroszek is the solo project of Claudio of Frostmoon Eclipse, and is, wait for it, ALL ACOUSTIC. Yeah, we know, we're very cautious when it comes to acoustic solo folky projects from grim black metallers, but as we discussed at length in the review of the most recent Stroszek full length, Songs For Remorse, which itself wasn't strictly acoustic, somehow even in Frostmoon, this guy has such a way with melody and arrangement, that even without distortion or blast beats or drums at all, he's able to conjure up dark spirits, evoke dreamlike memories and call forth all manner of ancient mystery. But this, this is definitely not even remotely black metal, instead, this is some gorgeous dark acoustic folk, solo acoustic guitar, and nothing else,moody and brooding, minor key and melancholic, a little bit Appalachia, but more simple and stripped down, no furious flurries of notes or slippery slide, this is all about melody and ambience, these skeletal minimal acoustic guitarscapes are delicate and dark and so lovely. There are vocals, but they are nearly whispered and only surface occasionally. leaving the guitar to unfurl crystalline notes and gently line them up into shimmery melodies, the whole thing darkly intimate, and really quite beautiful.
Metal fans may want this to round out the series, but only the most open minded metalhead will dig this, instead, we'd recommend this to fans of free folk and dark folk other delicate six stringery, Six Organs Of Admittance, Steven R. Smith, Ilyas Ahmed, James Blackshaw, Jack Rose, that sort of thing.
Again, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. We got only TWENTY! Packaged in a normal slimline cd case, with sepia toned covers, and a sepia printed cardstock insert with a photo and a brief biography of Lovecraft.
This dynamic Bay Area duo continue onwards and upwards into the stratosphere of terrific music making with their latest release, Nests Of Waves And Wire. After 2006's Us Upon Buildings Upon Us left our ears wonderfully tangled in its wild mathiness and quick twists, we still have to admit we're a bit happy to hear Tartufi bringing back some of their earlier poppiness. This is really really good! Just as ambitious as its predecessor and perhaps even more fully realized. Lynne Angel and Brian Gorman really let their creative juices flow. Each of the seven tracks are impressively multilayered and detailed musical journeys incorporating elements of prog, post-rock, psych (yup, all the good stuff!) - particularly the almost thirteen minute long awesome third track "Engineering" and the final "Hole Or Space". Most are feverishly propulsive and highly rhythmic with vocals chanted and howled in hypnotic cycles. That said, the fifth song "System Folds" does brings a bit of calm to the otherwise breathless proceedings! Recommended.
Finally. Finally. FINALLY! If ever there was a more anticipated (around here at least) or a more criminally overdue reissue, it's this one right here. A mind blowing three-fer from should-have-been-massive blissed out fractured psych pop masters Teenage Filmstars, fronted by the inimitable Ed Ball, whom as we mentioned in our review of Star, TF's genius debut, was once described by My Bloody Valentine mainman Kevin Shields as "A sensitive soul from another planet. A modernist musical alchemist". Shield also had this to say about Ball: "Where other people struggle, Ed Ball plays what we're thinking." Which coming from the man behind My Bloody Valentine means a lot. Especially when considering Teenage Filmstars, who employ a sonic palette not all that far removed from MBV's. BUT, and a very big but at that, minus the explosive bursts of caustic noise, MBV hewed more to a traditional pop sensibility than Teenage Filmstars. Where as Loveless, even for all its amazing wall of guitar heaviness, and effects drenched dreaminess, was still anchored to a verse chorus verse framework, with Teenage Filmstars, those conventions are tossed aside, or at the very least, flipped over, doused in effects, chopped up and played backwards. Which is why once again, we must proclaim, that in the landscape of (not so) popular music, TEENAGE FILMSTARS ARE BETTER THAN MY BLOODY VALENTINE. And don't get us wrong, we LOVE LOVE LOVE My Bloody Valentine, but imagine an alternate universe MBV, where for some reason, Shields' guitars played backwards, effects boxes grew sentient and demanded as much space as the instruments and voices, imagine viewing all of those sounds, already twisted and skewed, through a fractured funhouse mirror, and then, if you can, imagine some musical wizard, who is able to reign in all of those sounds, and somehow shape them into some of the most perfect UNpop you've ever heard.
Which brings us to Rocket Charms, record number two from Teenage Filmstars, which finds all the sounds on Star, pushed even farther out, the backwards sounds are more backwards (and there are more of them), the guitars are crunchier and more crumbly, the melodies are more catchy, the murk and shimmer are both murkier and shimmerier, and the production, is even more hazy and spaced out and lysergic and psychedelic and fucking head spinning. And yet somehow, Rocket Charms is a pop record, hooky and catchy, lilting and melodic. Opener "Pressure" is an immediate 'hit' if there ever was one, processed falsetto vox over swooping backwards rhythms and washed out guitar haze, a sort of druggy backwards Beach Boys pop ambience. And it just goes on from there, every song, a gorgeous slab of outsider twisted pop, on the surface a whirling sonic dervish, but within drift all manner of classic pop tropes, in the able hands of Ed Ball, subverted and turned inside out, wreathed in hiss and sparkle, and rendered, well, Teenage.
But then amidst all this deconstructed shoegazey noise pop (or pop noise), comes the track "Alone", quite possible our favorite jam on Rocket Charms, a slow brooding dirge, all skittery Stone Roses-y drums, thick distorted bass, disembodied voices, swirling ominous dark ambience, and a main melody that just might be the catchiest bit on the record, sounding like a slowed down twisted take on the Cure's "Close To You", but via Pop Will Eat Itself or some other warped UK grebo combo.
The crazy thing is, Rocket Charms for being as fantastic and over the top and incredible, isn't even our favorite Teenage Filmstars record. That honor belongs to the awesomely titled Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness, which takes all of the songs and sounds from Rocket Charms and Star, and makes them WAY HEAVIER, WAY MORE FUCKED UP, the processed guitars and backwards guitars and vocals have gone haywire, the songs are less songs here and more fucked up fragmented pop experiments, but again, Ball has such a deft hand that he manages to take all these totally freaked out elements, and gets them to work, and sound like pop songs, albeit, totally dizzying and abstract, psychedelic and almost metallic at times. The record's defining moment is the opener "Physical Graffiti", not a Zeppelin cover, but hell, it sounds like it could be some sort of insane My Bloody Valentine / Led Zeppelin mash up maybe, but one that had been totally tweaked, chopped and screwed, then sped up and flipped reverse again, listening to it, it's hard to imagine how anyone could envision music like this, let alone actually make it. The guitars swoop all over the stereo field, stuttering, blurring into huge backwards swells, the drums are chaotic, the vocals sound backwards too, but not overtly, the melodies so memorable and catchy, at one point the whole track begins to stutter, almost as if your cd player is skipping, but it soon swoops back into the dreamlike psychedelic swirl.
Not all of Support Our Sickness is as heavy and crunchy, many of the tracks begin as classic sixties sounding pop, but as they progress, the effects seem to slowly take over, often one or more of the instruments flipping backwards and erupting into a squall of psychedelic freakout, but just as often, sprawling into a woozy almost balladic bit of slithery backwards slowcore. But even at its prettiest, the sounds are slightly tweaked, the vibe is subtly menacing, laced with bits of sunshiney jangle for sure, but this is some seriously drugged out dream pop damage, and remains to this day, one of the most amazing, and unlikely genius pop records EVER.
The first disc features 5 bonus tracks, two from the Support Our Sickness sessions, as well as three other unreleased jams, none quite as twisted, but still awesome, and in fact, they almost sound like they were rough drafts, just waiting to get the Ed Ball mad scientist backwards fucked up FX makeover. So that's it, BUY IT, you won't be sorry, this is easily some of the most forward thinking pop music ever, heavy and psychedelic, druggy and delirious, catchy and crazy and bafflingly brilliant.
But wait, what's this, a THIRD record? Teenage Filmstars final missive, and a pretty bizarre sonic sea change, in fact, it sounds like a totally different band. To be honest, we're not into it at all, Bring Back The Cartel found the band doing some sort of skittery smooth jazz electronic mood music, it makes very little sense that this one would get tacked on with the other two, when we first ordered this we actually thought it WAS just those other two, but maybe some folks will dig Bring Back The Cartel, there are some moments, here and there, but it doesn't at all approach the sheer brilliance of Rocket Charms or Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness, so our advice would be probably to just give it a spin, and if you dig it, cool, if not, just ignore it, pretend it's not there, and immerse yourself in those first two, let the sounds twist you inside out and carry you off, play it over and over and over and over, forever and ever and ever and ever. Totally fucking incredible, and not just worthy of Record Of The Week honors, definitely something more, like how about Record of FOREVER!?!?
Would've loved to have had Mr. Linnell and Mr. Flansburgh for elementary music teachers, wouldn't you? The learning process would've been so much fun. So much better than Barney and so much cooler than Sharon, Lois and Bram. Over the years, they've proven that they're just as skilled at schooling kids of all ages on other subjects too - the alphabet (2005's Here Comes The ABCs), arithmetic (2008's Here Come The 123s), history (well, sort of on 1990's "James K. Polk"), geography (well, sort of on 2005's Venue Songs) and now science! Here they succinctly and catchily cover topics such as speed and velocity, the color spectrum, the planets, the elements, the environment, photosynthesis, evolution, thought processes, biology and more. 19 smart, engaging pop tunes that bounce along at a sprightly pace, planting little seeds of learning. For the most part this stands up to repeat listens without completely driving the grown-ups nuts... unless you happen to have an aversion to TMBG's trademark nasality which we understand some folks do. That said, we should note that there are a few more singing voices than usual including that of Mrs. Flansburgh. Heck, though this is definitely for youngsters, older listeners might learn something too! Sounds like the Johns have recycled a few melodic lines from their old songs which might make this ring warmly familiar to those parents who cherish their early TMBG albums. They've even reprised "Why Does The Sun Shine?" from 1994. Plus you also get a terrific dvd that's filled with playful candy colored animated video clips for each song which can be viewed individually in alphabetical order, or altogether as a program hosted by the Johns. With this delightful set, we'd say they're really giving Sesame Street a run for their money!
The kings (and queen) of shitgaze return once again, to prove once again, that none of those wannabe noiseniks can even come close. It's not about your shitty 4-track, or your busted ass equipment, or recording onto a boombox in Mom's basement, it's about songs and hooks, the riffs and the melodies, and TNV have it all covered. The songs rule, impossibly catchy, with weary drawled indie sad boy vocals all tangled up with dreamy girl group la la la girl vocals, the guitars are crunchy and angular, the drums are blown out, in-the-red basement crunch, the keyboard is warm and warbly and wheezy, not sure if there's an actual bass, it's hard to tell since most of these tracks lean toward the trebly, and the production varies, from surprisingly clean and shimmery (on "Martin Luther King Day"), to crumbling and distorted almost everywhere else.
But again, that's all incidental to the songs, which manage to be sort of pop, sort of punk, a little new wave, a bit crusty, all wrapped around unlikely, but irresistible hooks, a few songs get super jagged and no wave-y, and the sound totally suits them, but then there are jams like "Martin Luther King Day" which sound like classic nineties indie rock, albeit a bit rougher around the edges. And the rest of the tracks fall somewhere in between, raw, blown out garage-y new wave-y pop, that easily outshines all the other shitgaze combos, as well as positioning TNV comfortably amidst a similar but parallel scene, the weirdo lo-fi new wave garage pop scene that Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps, The Fresh & Onlys, Ty Segall and Tyvek all call home.
We LOVE this band!
Sometimes a pedigree can tell you a lot about a band. For instance, take Transitional. Here's a list of bands the various members have been a part of: Novatron, Head Of David, Jesu, Grey Machine, God, Fear Falls Burning, and if you include the guy who mastered the record, add to the list: Jesu, Godflesh, Final, Ice, Techno Animal, Sidewinder and Napalm Death. Phew! You probably nailed that last one as Justin Broadrick, who does indeed master this second disc from Transitional, and the group does not stray too far from this sonic lineage, as Stomach Of The Sun is indeed intense, drone-y, grim, ominous, noisy, distorted, rhythmic, blackened, atmospheric, hypnotic and HEAVY. Fans of any or all of the above mentioned bands will most likely find this much to their liking.
The record begins with a 13+ minute slow burn guitardrone, that builds and builds, growing ever more intense and caustic, but somehow remaining warm and lush, before stumbling into a lurching industrial Godflesh-ed pound, dirgey and dense, but with a bit of a melodic element, a feedbacky melody draped over Transitional's tarpit plod, totally brings us back to the early Earache / Pathological days, but with a slightly more modern sheen. "In My Collapse" follows up with more rhythmic metallic crunch, this time a bit more dubbed out, a little space-y, like a Godflesh ballad if there could ever be such a thing, which leads directly into "Drowning", a gorgeously washed out doomic drift, spare drums, swirling effects, and lots of streaked longform tones, hypnotic and dreamy. The rest of the record pretty much shifts between those sounds, the more Jesu-y metalgaze drift, the post industrial metallic plod and the dreamlike ambient shimmer, the three sounds rarely remaining totally distinct, instead, constantly blending and mixing, creating gorgeous hybrids, sometimes dense and ominous, othertimes soft focus and otherworldly. "Hideaway" is the best song Jesu never recorded, the title track begins all spaced out and dubby, before introducing one of the most crushing (and weirdly processed) riffs ever, and the record closes with an epic swath of noise drenched free form ambient soft noise drift, that manages to be soothing and serene, as well as intense and haunting at the same time.
Seriously awesome stuff, not sure how we missed out on their debut, but this one is so good we're definitely gonna have to track that one down as well... On limited (naturally) vinyl and cd.
Actor turned musician Simon Fisher Turner has had a long and illustrious career, TV and film, from punk rock to extreme avant sound making, this latest releases comes in the form of a super limited cassette on the Tapeworm label, number 4 for those of you keeping track, with previous installments from Philip Jeck, Stephen O'Malley, and a recording from a text by Baudrillard. Turner's contribution to the series is an odd one. The A side is a super cool field recording from Spain, the procession of the Virgen Del Carmen, you can hear people talking, laughing, footsteps, various ambient sounds, until the music starts, a swirling festive gypsy big band, horns, snares, strings, peppered with huge booms (fireworks?) and of course the voices of people lining the procession route, wheels on the dirt road, what sounds like distant thunder. Really really nice.
The other side features two solo piano improvisations, recorded in 2003 as a film score, very haunting and atonal, strange angular melodies, lots of space, little flurries of notes, looped and hypnotic sounding, slipping from dark and almost balladic, to more jagged and manic and back again. Cool stuff for sure, not sure how the two sides tie together, but each on its own is a super satisfying listen.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!! And if this one is anything like the other installments in the series, these won't last long at all.
Been looking forward to some new Twilight Sad for a while! You might recall our gushing over this four piece's self titled debut ep back in 2006. Well, we've just gotten in their latest album! What first caught our ears was their ability to draw on key sonic elements of three aQ faves My Bloody Valentine, Interpol and Arab Strap, yet still inhabit their own place in the musical arena. They incorporate densely packed atmospherics a la MBV with the moody brooding swagger of Interpol and the weathered unmistakably Scottish vocals akin to Arab Strap's Malcolm Middleton. Now add in the epic dynamics of Mogwai (whom they played with earlier this year) and the low-slung driving guitar force of Swervedriver, and you have the Twilight Sad of Forget The Night Ahead! In other words, this is a really potent Scottish musical concoction... one we've already been enjoying repeat listens of!
It may not be super obvious from the aQ website, but we've long been champions of Mark Mulcahy, whose band Miracle Legion was and is an all time favorite. All of the Miracle Legion records went out of print long before the aQ list, so we never got a chance to gush adoringly. We also became a bit obsessed with Mulcahy's post Miracle Legion outfit Polaris, who performed the bad ass themes song to the late great kids show Pete And Pete. We have however, highlighted at least two of Mulcahy's solo records, the last of which, In Pursuit Of Your Happiness, still gets played all the time. And features some utterly perfect pop, emotional, clever, jangly and so so catchy.
Apparently we're not alone, judging from this star studded comp, a tribute not just to the amazing songs of Mulcahy, but to his late wife, who passed away last year. The outpouring of musical emotion and support is truly moving, and the redone versions are uniformly fantastic, with some fairly faithful renditions, and some seriously out there takes.
This record is getting TONS of press, mostly due to the inclusion of a Thom Yorke track, and it is great, skittery rhythms, distorted electric guitar, super strange percussion, and some super intense emotional vocals, kind of like a more punk rock, lo-fi take on one of his Eraser tracks. Well worth the price of admission for sure. But that's just the first track. Other bands taking on Mulcahy's genius originals include The National, Dinosaur Jr, Frank Black, Vic Chesnutt, Rocket From The Tombs (whose version is SO twisted, but so great!), Michael Stipe, Mercury Rev, Juliana Hatfield, and on and on. It plays out like a killer classic nineties college rock mix, anchored by Mulcahy's awesome songs. Hopefully it'll get the world to finally discover what an amazing and way under appreciated songwriter Mulcahy really is, and just maybe it'll convince someone somewhere to get all of those Miracle Legion records reissued!
The only bummer about this release is that there's another 20+ songs, not on the cd proper, only available electronically (from iTunes), which is ironic, since Miracle Legion and Mulcahy on his own were embraced by indie record stores first and foremost, who sort of get the shaft as do fans who if they want all of the songs have to shell out another $20 for the bonus tracks, but the download only tracks include jams from AC Newman, Buffalo Tom, Dumptruck, Syd Straw, Laura Veirs, and others. They should have just made it a double cd, but what can you do, worth it either way, and if you like what you hear, you'll probably end up trying to track down every Mulcahy thing ever, and rightfully so...
It's been a while since we've heard from the Trikont label, and we've missed them. In the past, they've brought us some all time aQ faves, the Flashbacks series, Africa Raps, so many amazing compilations: Beyond Istanbul, Doom & Gloom, Creative Outlaws, In Prison, Dope & Glory and of course Ho! Roady Music From Vietnam. Always impeccably curated, with extensive liner notes, tons of photos, and an in-depth history of the music and the performers.
Konkani Songs is a fantastic addition, Music from India, a sort of Indian light and folk music, ballads, big band jazz, torch songs, festive folky dance numbers, all with a hint of Bollywood, as well as plenty of other influences, Western soundtrack music, Morricone, fifties and sixties European pop, but all so distinctly and uniquely Indian.
Anyone into the Sublime Frequencies series will definitely want to grab one of these, sounds both familiar and foreign, far out and classic, groovy Eastern melodies intertwine with Klezmer like accordions, soaring dramatic strings, chiming bells, wild percussion, the sounds slipping from calypso to mariachi, Bollywood to cheesy pop, groovy funk to organ driven sort-of-country, rad groovy surfy garage to dark tango-y waltzes, the sound is uniformly warm and fuzzy, that gorgeous washed out old recording sound. But it's the vocalists that seal the deal, from deep baritones, to sweet songbird croons, some hushed and intimate, some intense and expressive, sometimes a perfect match for the music backing it up, sometimes brilliantly at odds, we've only just begun to dig into the liner notes, there's much to learn about Onkani songs, but based on the songs alone, this could be one of our favorite comps of the year so far.
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!!
After a label collaboration (String of Pearls) and a (sort-of) label fake out (A Orillas Del Magdalena), we now have a genuine Mississippi Records compilation of International selections that feels like the Mississippi Records of old (dig the hand-assembled covers and Chris Johanson drawing adorning the front!). And while we say this about every Mississippi release, we really mean it when we say this one is killer! What we like about it most is its lack of explanatory text, so the only clue to the provenance of the song is through the song title and the name of the singers or groups, and even some of them are unknown. This also makes locating the where's and whens of the song a bit tricky, but it forces us to listen to the songs as they are, and how they relate to and flow into one another. In the spirit of the record, we did no online research to find out where each song came from, so we can't tell you if the song "Danza Mora" by Canajas is Spanish Flamenco or Romanian Gypsy music or if the group called "The Tiger" is Caribbean, Cuban, or African or none of these at all. The Dezurik Sisters' "Arizona Yodeller" seems straightforward enough, until you listen to it and find out it has more in common aurally with the Pygmy sounding Hiran 'Ny Tanoran 'Ny than Ernest Rodgers 1920's (again, guessing) cabaret tale "Willie The [drug-addicted] Chimney Sweeper". Even the blues song, "Honey In The Rock" by Blind Mamie Forehand sounds like it comes from the same plaintive place as the record opener by an unknown female Southeast Asian a capella singer. Add to the mix some tropical island jams, a Mexican chanteuse with an almost punkish delivery and some Cumbia Tipica, and we're immersed in transcendent global sounds without the globe. Mata La Pena roughly translates to "It Kills The Grief", but these lonely sounds also fill the heart. Amazing!
It's hard to argue with this one. Indeed, we're gonna do quite the opposite and make it a Record Of The Week! This collection, the third in the World Psychedelic Classics series on Luaka Bop (David Byrne's "world music" label), after an Os Mutantes collection and that incredible Shuggie Otis album, is further subtitled: "The Funky, Fuzzy Sounds Of West Africa". Stress on the funk we thinks. Yup, authentic '70s West African funk with a 'delic bent. Really really hard stuff not to like.
The dozen tracks here have got it all: Afro-centric chants, polyrhythmic percussion, James Brown style raspy yelps, wicked organ workouts, and even hard wah-wah acid fuzz jams (Ofo & The Black Company's bad-ass "Allah Wakbarr" is about the last word in that department, though we'd like to hear more). Though some come closer to the compilers' stated concept than others, all the tracks are winners, from the moody, marimba-based soundtrack theme of Manu Dibango's "Ceddo End Title" to the Cuban stylings of No. 1 de No. 1's "Guajira Van" to the percolating political space-funk of William Onyeabor's "Better Change Your Mind". And Alison simply says that "Ifa" by Tunji Oyelana and the Benders is her favorite. Probably because it sets itself apart from the other tracks by utilizing a more scrappy electronic sound to back its stripped-down politically-bent Afro-pop-style lyricism.
All the tracks come from the decade of the '70s, and the bands that recorded them hail from the West African countries of Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Benin, and Nigeria (but only two tracks overlap with the now-out-of-print 3cd Nigeria 70 compilation). And we think the compliers did a damn fine job, though it seems any survey of West African psych shoulda included a track by Blo, the closest thing to Cream the continent produced as far as we know. Ah well... we can hope for a second volume someday perhaps. Meanwhile, anyone who digs James Brown, Fela, Funkadelic, Orchestra Baobab, or more recent AQ reviewees Konono No. 1 and Black Merda, for instance, will certainly find that love IS a real thing when it comes to how you're gonna feel about this compilation!!
The liner notes go on about the psychedelic aspect of these bands, and while this stuff is definitely far out and groovy it's way more James Brown than brown acid. Mention of Haight-Ashbury seems a stretch, and the music of these bands has got as much or more to do with their motherland than, say, the generally more Western-derived psych we've heard from Thailand, Cambodia, or Turkey on various other comps we've carried. Then again, when you look at rock music influencing African music, you've got a full-circle phenomenon to examine. And when we reviewed the (currently unavailable) Love Peace & Poetry: African Psychedelic Music compiliation some months back, the stuff on this new comp is exactly what we felt was missing and should have been included.
In any case, proper psych or not, and with or without much fuzz, this is definitely FUNKY.
The attractive cd booklet includes notes on each track/artist, complete with color album sleeve art where available. Nicely done. Furthermore, this is an "enhanced cd", allowing those with the appropriate computer technology to witness a video of Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou Dahomey's track "Minsato Le, Mi Dayhome".
It's pretty obvious why the folks at B-music (like DJs Andy Votel and Dom Thomas) dig these particular collectible exploito obscurities so much, and why they're so excited to be reissuing 'em in their new "Germanic Miner" series dedicated to "krautsider music"! What could be more B-musical than these two faux soundtracks concocted in the late sixties by a couple of creative German producers, operating at the weird, wacked out intersection of kitschy library music and freaky krautrock? One's a slice of slinky, sorta-scary "horrotica", the other a spaced out sci-fi fest for the Barbarella set. Both are delirious, demented party-pleasers.
The Vampires Of Dartmoore and their Dracula's Music Cabinet conjures a sexy frightmare of hip swinging, bloodsucking sounds. "Mord Im Ohio Express (Murder In The Ohio Express)" seems kinda surfy, but mostly this is about groovy porno lounge music, with smoky horns and jazzy percussion, interwoven with screams and creepy sound effects, moaning and groaning, dogs barking and something going boing boing boing... It's a very NON-academic application of musique concrete technique, noises worked into the songs, such as the rumbling explosions that punctuate "Eine Handvoll Nitro (A Handful Of Nitro)". The mix is fairly chaotic, stuff fading in and out, levels up and down. If this WAS a movie soundtrack, it would have been a pretty crazy movie. Tracks reference Hitchcock, Dr. Caligari, and Frankenstein's monster. And sex. Definitely sex.
Equally bizarre, if less R-rated, is the Science Fiction Dance Party. Again, it's groovy, jazzy, sometimes fuzzy "instro-hipster" style stuff, laced with loads of goofy outer space sound effects and rocketship radio drama theatrics. It sounds like music for a cocktail party and/or acid test on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. You can imagine Robbie the Robot getting down to this. Distorted alien and/or computer voices abound, song titles include "Visitors Of A.D. 2022", "The Whistling Astronaut", and "Hit Parade In The Light Year 25" (which doesn't even make sense, don't they know that light years are a measure of distance?). As well as whistling, there's some screams here too, as spacemen are presumably being zapped with rayguns, but the music remains jaunty. Even the song "Death Rays Out Of The Universe" is inexplicably upbeat. So, it's all very silly, but a lot of fun.
Both albums feature bonus tracks (2 previously unreleased "Petting Party" jams on Vampires, 4 extra tracks on Science Fiction that come back to earth to delve into disco and Eastern exotica instead). The slipcased cds of these are now domestic releases (we waited instead of getting the expensive imports) but the LP versions remain imports.
Riding high on the success of a string of releases, Kurt Vile seems poised to break into the spotlight with his Matador debut, Childish Prodigy. It's hard to imagine that not happening, because this stuff is just so great, recalling at various times everyone from Neil Young to the Stooges to shoegazing giants like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. At the end of the day, however, you could say this sounds like, well, Kurt Vile! The guy masterfully breathes life into sounds others have done and overdone by emphasizing what you love about this kind of thing and avoiding the pitfalls of getting lumped into a specific genre. It's pretty rootsy stuff, but everything is strong enough to avoid being pigeonholed, and while certain elements could be categorized as "retro" or "lo-fi", we would prefer to call it "classic" or "timeless". Kurt Vile is clearly someone who understands the importance of production; instead of half assing things on a cassette 8-track, these songs are not only well written, but recorded with a great attention to detail, making them awesome for late night headphone listening. The sounds are hazy and swirling with the perfect amount of grit, and really Childish Prodigy sounds like it could have been recorded any time within the last 30 years or so. But guess what? It's 2009, and Kurt Vile has ARRIVED.
The album begins with a re-recorded version of "Hunchback", lifting elements from the song "Freeway" off Constant Hitmaker, with some slight chord changes. The song flows with a nice lazy groove, like the Stooges after a couple bongloads, adding some distorted vocals to compliment the perfectly dirty analog sound. Kurt's folkier side is demonstrated on the following track, "Dead Alive", with fingerpicked electric guitar and some badass vocals up in the forefront as a fuzzy analog hiss rides steady in the background. "Overnight Religion" is a nice surprise, with an incessant drum machine beat carrying the song forward for over 7 minutes as the instruments lock in perfectly. "Monkey" is a melodic, slow burning rocker that successfully merges upbeat psych pop with a sound that incorporates elements from folk and shoegaze. And yeah, the guitars sound killer. The album flows really well, and certain melodic themes appear and reappear in different songs, helping to tie everything together perfectly.
It's been a great year for Kurt Vile, and one can only imagine that things will get even better for him now. We can't wait to see where this guy heads next!
Sylvie Walder has been recording the sounds around her since childhood, with piles of tapes, mini-discs, and now digital files amassing her obsession with sound. It's a little unclear as to when Ms. Walder began to manipulate and transform her recordings into artfully slow-burn compositions of ambient wash and darkened piano smear. Sure, we have to wonder what treasures may be lurking in the tapes made by a precocious French kid some 15 years ago; but we're really happy to have discovered this strikingly confident ambient record that could easily find itself on Kranky next to Stars Of The Kid or Gregg Kowalsky.
The piano seems to be the source material for the bulk of this album, as Spartan, deep notes are rendered through digitally tricked effects for a pitchshifted and timestretched mass of reverberating tones which in turn spiral into a darkened atmosphere of shimmer and drone. Eno's Thursday Afternoon and Coleclough's Period would be the nearest landmarks of elongated ambience and melancholy impressionism. Walder's production does harken to some of the Pop Ambient pixel-pushing washes of sound, but always push forward the liminal slippages between forgetting and remembering through her shadowy sounds.
Limited to 130 copies.
Latest blast of modern space psych drone rock from these East Coast spacelords, an ultra limited (only 1000 copies) 12", part of Thrill Jockey's new subscription series, which means these will probably be gone in a flash.
Which is too bad, cuz this is one of the best White Hills jams yet, thankfully, only two of these tracks are exclusive, one is a new version of a track from Heads On Fire, remixed by Julian Cope's drummer, one is a track from the upcoming full length, but two of them are ONLY available here (and the remixed version of "Oceans Of Sound" from Heads On Fire is different enough to make it essentially a new track) so pretty much a must own for the space rock psych drone obsessives out there, which is most likely most of you.
The A side begins with "Dead" which will be on the band's upcoming full length, and it's a doozy, fuzzy, druggy, a little bit lo-fi, looped and hypnotic, with dreamy soft singing, beneath billowing clouds of distorted guitars, all hazy and super space rocky, definitely channeling the spirits of Loop and Spacemen 3, definitely has us chomping at the bit for the new album.
The second track is the remixed "Oceans Of Sound" and is a cool processed guitarscape, swirled FX wrapped around a stuttery tremolo guitar, like a drugged out space rock "How Soon Is Now?", fragmented riffs careen through streaks of buzz and hum, building to a total space pop climax that definitely had us thinking Spiritualized or Teenage Filmstars.
Flip it over, and "Another Coming" explodes out of the speakers, a grinding thick viscous dronescape, very reminiscent of Expo 70, that sort of krautdronespacedrift, with dense looped guitars, stretched out into a churning blur, the whole thing wreathed in hazy effects. The second track, "Red Sun", is all skeletal and dubbed out, almost funky sounding, with minimal guitar, but again loads of effects, thick throbbing bass, and creepy sampled voices.
Super rad. And SUPER LIMITED. ONLY 1000 COPIES, and most likely sold out any minute, we got a whole bunch, but that doesn't mean we won't blow through these. Gorgeous jackets too, matte black with spot UV gloss lettering, and a fancy full color pasted on art card front cover.
This UK band with their dueling male/female vocals really know how to get to evoke a seriously sleek and sexy state of sound. Falling somewhere between The Concretes and The Chromatics, The XX pull from a myriad of influences ranging from post-punk, electronica, RnB and pop to create a sound overflowing with shining hooks and smoky melodies.
In many ways their sound is like a fleshed out Young Marble Giants infused with warm layers of shiny sparkle and a smooth seductive sheen that totally gets under your skin. There is an ease and stripped down sensibility in the way The XX meld electronics into their more organic sounds, that has us imagining Hot Chip, if they took a deep breath and chilled out a bit or if Junior Boys tried their hand at covering Taken By Trees. We haven't heard someone tap into a mellow, sparkling groove like this in quite a while, and it's definitely hitting the spot!
