Maybe some of you remember the awesome Primitive North split lp between Nadja and A Storm Of Light, the newish project of Josh Graham (Red Sparrows, Blood And Time, Neurosis visuals dude). Some of us neglected to take note of A Storm Of Light's debut, which we're now kicking ourselves over, because the band's latest, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, is certainly satisfying our sweet tooth for epic, metallic post rock grandiosity with a healthy dose of DOOM. Like Neurosis, ASoL takes things into sprawling psychedelic territory, but Graham's clear and powerful vocals may actually be enough for this to appeal to the non-metalheads as well. The sound here is absolutely HUGE, and the awesome/ridiculous artwork, with its collection of discarded objects, animals, and massive landforms, should give you a pretty good indication of the surreal, dreamlike qualities represented on this disc. It's pretty refreshing hearing a band bring such crushingly heavy sounds into a realm that is also very tuneful, catchy, and triumphant. Thematically, the album seems to revolve around some sort of post-industrial collapse - you know, like the one just around the corner - perfectly represented on the opening track, which features a chilling spoken word piece by Lydia Lunch accompanied by a... banjo? Yep, the "almost sea shanty-ish" arrangements we described on Primitive North prevail here as well, not that you'll be thinking of pirates (or maybe you will), it's just that the songs take on a massive, back and forth sort of sway like they are being controlled by the elements.
So yeah, maybe it took us a while to take note of these guys, but we're sure glad we did. Better late than never.
A few years ago when we saw Air play live we realized that these guys weren't just some studio creation, they are in fact totally a real live band! While they initially made their mark with Moon Safari, a record that became a sonic touchstone of the electronic music revolution of the '90s, over the ensuing decade plus, Air have continued to evolve, experiment and transform into incredible music makers, whose exquisitely varied tastes help push their sound way beyond 'electronica', a sound that manages to be lush and intoxicating, catchy and so damn satisfying.
With Love 2, Air continue to expand their sonic scope even further, introducing (or re-introducing) elements of prog, French pop, psych, soundtracks, library music, and even some slight hints of krautrock, all those disparate sounds seductively seeping into their music, their vintage gear infusing the sounds with a classic warmth and timeless vibe. They're like a modern day version of Franco Battiato or Lucio Battisti, the way they conjure up such rich and lush sounds that twist and turn deliciously. Or imagine a collaboration between Ennio Morricone and Serge Gainsbourg!!
Even folks who never though of themselves as big Air fans have been totally smitten by this record whenever we play it in the store.
A few things you might want to know about Armageddon (this band/album, not the Biblical battlefield of the Apocalypse described in the Book Of Revelations, and presumably depicted on the album cover, with the longhaired band lounging about smoking cigarettes in the foreground):
1) Despite the name, it's not a really heavy metal. Recorded in 1974, you could certainly call it "proto-metal", though, as well as "heavy progressive".
2) Don't confuse 'em with the other proto-metal band with more-or-less the same name. That band spells their name with two g's and one d. This band spells their name with one g and two d's. That Armaggedon were from Germany's krautrock scene, this Armageddon were a UK-USA sorta supergroup.
3) Their singer was Keith Relf, originally of The Yardbirds and later Renaissance, and this was his last recorded project before his tragic death from electrocution whilst practicing guitar in '76.
4) On drums, was Bobby Caldwell of Captain Beyond. There's some extra proto-metal cred!
5) And perhaps most importantly, this band included 2 ex-members of British bluesrock act Steamhammer, guitarist Martin Pugh and bassist Louis Cennamo. Steamhammer's best and proggiest album, Speech, is a long-time AQ fave in the heavy prog / proto-metal genre, recently reissued and relisted here not long ago. If you dig Speech, you'll also want to hear Armageddon, in fact, they open up here with a completely rippin' song, "Buzzard", that's adapted from a track on Speech.
6) According to the sleeve, Cennamo claimed to be the "originator of the electric bowed bass guitar".
7) Armageddon's sole, self-titled album has been newly reissued on cd by the Esoteric label, superseding the previous (and hard to find) Repertoire edition, with nicer packaging.
8) Oh yeah, it totally kicks ass and rocks hard, while maintaining an aura of psychedelic hippie higher-minded mysticism. We mentioned speedster "Buzzard", then there's "Silver Tightrope" and "Paths And Planes And Future Gains", both of which sound kinda like a combination of Yes and Captain Beyond, in different and complex ways. "Last Stand Before" is a rollickin', almost funky one too, and then the album wraps up with the four-part epic "Basking In The White Of The Midnight Sun", full of fierce fuzz, percussive bombardment, and some of the heaviest harmonica soloing this side of Sabbath's "The Wizard". What with their pedigree, Armageddon had a knack for breakneck (and quite catchy!) bluesrock riffage, like we said rippin' from the get-go of "Buzzard" through to the finale of "Basking", energetic and exuberant throughout but for the occasional calmer bit of reverie (like on "Silver Tightrope") wherein Relf takes the listener for some lovely astral trippin'.
9) We recommend it, especially to all proto-metal, heavy prog fiends! You know who you are, if you like Captain Beyond, Steamhammer, early Wishbone Ash, Wild Turkey, Tarkus, Toad, early Deep Purple, etc...
That's it. If you want to know more, there's always the liner notes, so buy the disc!! Then you'll get to hear the whole thing too.
With this new Atlas Sound release, it's getting harder to distinguish the dividing line between this project and Bradford Cox's main band, Deerhunter. With Atlas Sound's debut, it was obvious that the project was designed to be a more experimental testing ground for more introspective ideas that wouldn't fly so easily in Deerhunter. But after Deerhunter's epic double release last year and follow-up ep this year, expecting a big sway in a different direction from Atlas Sound is perhaps too much to expect. Not that there aren't good songs here, but we wish he pushed the experimental side further instead of keeping the songs in their signature hazy structures. The farthest out and best songs here are where he collaborates with Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) and Laetitia Sadier from Stereolab, though they sound more like great Panda Bear and Stereolab tracks than Atlas Sound songs. Overall, not a bad release, just not what we were hoping for.
Bachelorette is responsible for one of our favorite new albums, My Electric Family has been in constant rotation here for months now. It's proven to be on of those rare records that only gets better and sinks in deeper with repeated listens.
So two brand new tracks from this New Zealand songstress was bound to make us (and you) way happy, especially since they are such great songs and not just some random throwaway jams. The A-side "Do The Circuit" kind of sums up all that we love about Bachelorette, such great use of electronics, the swaying, sexy and hypnotic vocals and swirling melodies, all making for one of those perfect play over and over again 7" songs. The B-side "I Want To Be Your Girlfriend" is fueled by a rad primitive sounding drum machine, crunchy guitars and really awesome lyrics about Bachelorette wanting to be someone's, you guessed it, girlfriend. It has this awesome bubblegum new wave vibe that sounds a bit like Bjork covering Gary Numan!
Another killer release From Universal Tongue, and the first Aidan Baker / Nadja release in THREE New Arrivals lists! That might be a record, hope nobody was going through withdrawals! And fear not, we should be back on our biweekly schedule of Nadja and/or Baker releases, we'll have the Nadja collaboration with Pyramids on the next list, and now, we have this super limited Aidan Baker jam, another collaboration, this one with drummer Brandon Valdivia, a way spacier jazzier direction that most of what we've heard from Baker, but still blissed out and dreamy enough to appeal to folks who dig the usual Baker action.
The drums here shuffle and skitter, lots of sizzling cymbals, the guitars moan, the thrum, drift and shimmer, the single minute track here, recorded live in 2008 at a festival in Germany, twists and turns, going from minimal bliss out, to gnarled jazzy crunch, to moaning abstract drift to heavy avant pound. Cool stuff for sure.
This one is a proper cd, NOT a cd-r, but still limited to only 323 copies. Like the other UT releases, packaged in a cool 5" mini dvd case, with a full color cover/insert, with artwork by Mories aka Gnaw Their Tongues!!
First long player from Bare Wires, a band best known around these parts for being the OTHER band of the guy from Snake Flower 2, whose recent full length knocked us on our asses with it's wild hybrid of distorted garage rock and drone-y druggy FX drenched space rock. Bare Wires are a whole different beast, less heavy, less spacey, but way more poppy, and garage-y, and thankfully equally as catchy. Where SF2 reminded us of a garage rock Hawkwind or Monster Magnet, Bare Wires are all classic garage and power pop, but with just enough of that modern warp-age to keep it interesting.
Record opener "Artificial Clouds" pretty much sets the tone, and in the process, sets itself up as another contender for jam of the year, total tripped out effects wrapped around some seriously rocking lo-fi twisted garage noise pop, with some incredible guitar parts and a main hook to die for. A record full of tracks like this should have Thee Oh Sees, the Fresh & Onlys and the rest of that crowd sweating it big time. And that's exactly what this is, hooky, jangly, melodic, frenetic, catchy as fuck, a little spacey and druggy for sure, but way more heavy on the classic power pop and sixties garage jangle, which is just fine by us!
We all went so totally crazy for Snake Flower 2, so we were psyched to discover that the dude from SF2 had another band, a more old school garage rock combo called Bare Wires, which as we might have expected, is just as kick ass. Imagine SF2 with less of a Hawkwind / Monster Magnet vibe, and more of a Lyres / Gories sort of sixties garage vibe. Jangly, lo-fi garage punk with lots of jangle guitars, reverbed snotty vox, simple stripped down rhythms, and best of all some super blown out, in-the-red psychedelic leads, so loud they nearly blot out the rest of the song.
The flipside is way more poppy, a sweet slice of classic AM radio power pop jangle, lo-fi, and sing songy, catchy as hell, still stripped down, but less distorted and more melodic. Folks into current garage rock revival weirdos like Thee Oh Sees and the Fresh & Onlys will definitely dig this, same overall sonic vibe, just way more fuzzed out and retro and genuinely garage-y.
When it comes to modern day dance music it just doesn't get a whole lot more colorful, joyful and F.U.N. then the Basement Jaxx. What's always set them apart from so many of their peers is that while most good dance minded outfits tend to rely so heavily on retro influences, Basement Jazz, who for sure have absorbed the best in dance music of the last few decades from disco to house, electro and hip-hop, instead take those sounds and warp and personalize and modernize, creating their own distinct vision and sound. Scars is ranking right next to Rooty, one of our other favorite Basement Jazz jams, so full of such infectious songs that not only totally make you shake it, but they also have a really nice wide range of emotions and an incredibly lush sonic palette, with guest vocalists like Yoko Ono, Sam Sparro, Santogold, Kelis, Yo Majesty, etc. bringing their own distinct flavor to the mix. Scars is the kind of record that will get you moving AND get stuck in your head, we've already listened to it so many times and it's holding up so well on repeated listens. Who knows when Daft Punk will ever release a new album, but until then, the other major titan in modern dance brilliance will keep our bootys shaking!
First solo release from Mike Bong, and no Bong's not his last name (at least we don't think so), we're talking about Mike from UK spacedronedruglords Bong, who have become fast favorites around these parts, and it's obvious why. A. They're called Bong. B. They traffic in spaced out doom drone sludge. And C. They rule.
So we were psyched to discover one of the Bong dudes had a solo record, we grabbed nearly a quarter of the whole pressing, but odds are that's probably still not enough, so Bong fans act fast, cuz this disc is pretty excellent. We weren't sure what to expect, something maybe Bonglike, and Sealed Temple sort of is, but it's also pretty different. Imagine a single riff, played over and over into a Dictaphone, and played back on a busted old VCR, and you'd be getting close, or imagine a Bong / Skaters mash up, super lo-fi, looped and mantric, just guitar, all wreathed in haze and buzz and tape hiss, sorta like old Earth records, but way more brittle and low fidelity. That's just the first track.
The follow up is a bit more lush, still lo-fi, but drone out and fuzzy, tinkling guitar parts drift amidst the looped buzz and warbly low end whir. A sort of stripped down abstract shoegaze drone, super minimal and hypnotic. The final track is like a mix of the two, a warped slowcore crawl, slowly unfurling riffs over slithery low end rumbles, all tangled seasick melody and soft focus drift, like a woozy, drug addles Sunroof! playing at 16 rpm. Cool!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have 20 or so, and it's already out of print, so these are the only copies we'll ever have...
Chicago's formation Flying V pilots Bible Of The Devil fight in the skies on this split 7" with another band of metal maniacs, Louisville's Blade Of The Ripper (featuring one of the dudes from Nashville Pussy and The Hookers, letting his Venom fandom come to the fore). The 33 rpm Side A is BOTD's "Hot Deth", and it harks back a bit to their more Hellacopters-ish garagey rawk early stylings while staying as metal as their spelling of "deth" would suggest. On the flip (which is supposed to spin at 45, 'cause they're fucking with you or something), BOTR offer up "Cast Me In The Fire", maybe even more vicious and raw and metallically evil than the A-side, though you do have the option of speeding "Hot Deth" up to 45 if you want to hear something faster (and more ridiculous), to which "Cast Me In The Fire" can't respond unless you've got a turntable that plays at 78 too. We're big BOTD fans already, but this makes us want to check out more BOTR also. Limited edition, Italian import, we have but a fistful.
Lo previously brought us the most excellent, very much of the retro moment Black Devil Disco Club disc entitled 28 After, which was (supposedly) an archival document of the late '70s Parisian answer to Italo-Disco and Giorgio Moroder. We say supposedly 'cause the whole BDDC thing is intentionally shrouded in mystery, and it's been postulated that the contents of that disc are probably partly old and partly new. It's conclusively the case, though, that the man behind BDDC, one Bernard Fevre, WAS indeed active making music in the '70s. And now under the BDDC name, Lo has re-released Fevre's 1975 "library music" album, The Strange World Of Bernard Fevre. Sort of, that is. Being BDDC, things aren't that straightforward. First off, note that this cd is titled The Strange NEW World of Bernard Fevre, and features obviously all-new cover art. Furthermore, some research reveals that 7 of the 14 tracks on here appeared on the authentic, original LP, but 7 didn't... likewise, an equal number of tracks from the 1975 record don't show up on this disc (we're disappointed not to get to hear the likes of "Hell Ride" ferinstance). But not THAT disappointed, since what we have here, whenever and wherever it's from, is pretty neat!!
Super groovy and super moody, these rhythmic instrumentals are laced with sinister synth, driven by tick-tock drum machines and thick bass lines. Eerie Goblin-y atmospheres meet the icy electro robotics of Kraftwerk. Or imagine John Carpenter gone disco. With plenty of entrancing, elegant melody to make this a good at home in the evening listen.
Regardless of whether all these tracks were composed/recorded at the same time (the ones not from the original Strange World Of Bernard Fevre could be outtakes from that LP, or other unreleased material from the era, OR they could have been produced on vintage analog equipment just yesterday, we don't know, and for that matter we're not really sure if everything has been remixed or rerecorded recently), they certainly all SOUND like they all belong together. Anyone into minimal wave, or Italo-disco, or that "So Young But So Cold" comp of French synthwerks circa '77-'82, that sort of thing, should find themselves getting all tingly over this. Furthermore, if the slinky tempos were sped up just a bit, and you did some choppy edits and/or dropped in some glitchery, you'd practically have skweee!
Remember when the Black Heart Procession used to be good? Well, it's not hard because that time is NOW! After the universally acknowledged disappointment that was The Spell, TBHP has returned to form beautifully with Six. There's lots of piano and strings and organs and maracas and moodiness and drama and WAY less guitar.
After the slow opening number "When You Finish Me", comprised mainly of the abovementioned piano and strings, there's "Wasteland", a catchy bass-and-vocals driven dirge. And although in their live shows it's obvious frontman Pall Jenkins' voice has not held up as well as one might have hoped, on record it still sounds great, especially in the slower, more spoken / less sung pieces. When the third song, "Witching Stone", opens with a catchy guitar riff and you think to yourself, "Oh no, not more guitar!" fear not, noble listeners, for once the guitar has served its purpose, it soon fades in the mix and is replaced by organs and extra percussion.
On the whole, the tone of the record seems somewhere between Three and Amore del Tropico. Six is occasionally moody and sparse like Three, but usually full and flushed out like Amore. Flashes of Latin rhythms pop up like skeletons of old friends. Also, bass guitar is an essential element to almost every song, whereas TBHP used to rely more on the low end of the piano.
Further on in the record we find "Suicide", probably the noisiest and most varied track on the record, one that definitely should be listened to on headphones. Building up in layers, a maraca here, an organ there, after a minute and a half, it explodes into a (gasp!) booty-shaking chorus filled with screaming synths and guitars that abruptly cuts off, only to be built back up again. Excellent.
Where TBHP really shine, though, is in their slow songs; they master a certain space that few bands can even enter. One of the best songs on the record, "Drugs", is also the shortest: a concise yet mind-expanding piano-and-strings ballad about, you guessed it, drugs.
The album comes on three formats, each slightly different from the others. The double lp comes on three-sided vinyl (the fourth side is etched artwork) and features different (and better) cover art than the cd. For you collectors, there is also a limited edition heart-shaped flash drive necklace that comes in a heart-shaped etched metal box. It contains the full album, a digital copy of the booklet & artwork and also a music video for the song "Witching Stone".
You gotta respect a band when they thank their friends AND their enemies for inspiration. Certainly when it's a black metal band, because Sweden's Bloodline - featuring alumni from Naglfar, Shining, and Ondskapt - have channeled a good deal of misanthropy and concentrated hatred to produce an album of plodding, doomridden black metal with a couple extra heapings of all out negativity. The guitars are like napalm, the singer's got a great classic black metal scream, and even though they might hate to hear it, these songs are just plain catchy, filled with awesome riffs and moments of soaring guitar leads that stick in your head. Every once in a while, they will bring in some disturbing soundclips and whispy synths, which provide a nice contrast to the evil sound that defines most of Hate Procession. There are also moments of cold, windy ambience that make you pretty much want to curl up in a fetal position and die in the nearest snowbank. The tempos never reach the lightning fast speed that so many black metal bands go for, with the band instead focusing their energy on establishing a steady pound that helps bring out a quality many bands neglect - TRUE HEAVINESS. These songs are burly as fuck, and the steady beat in "Jerusalem Addio" and the industrial, stuttering rhythm of "Day Of The Vulture" are all Bloodline needs to put the posers in their place.
If the songs themselves weren't enough to fill you in on Bloodline's nihilistic m.o., the plethora of disturbing images should help to explain everything. Maybe a bit too extreme in certain parts for the casual observer, but those who like their metal mean will certainly find this much to their liking.
It's been almost two years since the last Disrupt record, 1997's Foundation Bit, a killer head spinning mix of old school 8-bit Atari sounds and bass heavy dub and dubstep. A pretty potent combo for sure, and that record still gets lots of play, so we were pretty psyched to discover there were not one, but TWO new Disrupt discs, the other one, The Bass Has Left The Building, we'll review on a future list, but this one is the one that has been driving us nuts, forcing us to listen to it over and over and over. The MO is pretty much the same, but somehow, the dub is even deeper and bassier, and the video game sounds are way more pronounced, which makes for some seriously fun and funky shit.
Album opener "Bauhelm Tracker" sounds like a video game soundtrack remixed by some dub sound system, before the follow up track which is a straight dub version, complete with soulful vocals, groovy and dark and smoldering, which leads right into the dub version, which is awesomely spaced out and druggy, snare cracks careening all over the place, effects swirling and swooping, head spinning and so good.
And the rest of the record follows a similar pattern, with the 'tracker' version being the eighties video game soundtrack version, then the straight up vocal version, and sometimes a super spaced out dub version. Thankfully, Disrupt and Marley are loose enough to let diverge from that pattern whenever the mood strikes them, so a dub version will be laced with some bloops and bleeps, or a video game jam will get all dubby.
Such an incredible palette of sounds, and these two have such a deft hand at arranging, that things never sound cheesy or silly, playful maybe, fun and a little ridiculous here and there for sure, but overall these are just some seriously deep dubby grooves, that just so happen to be laced with some 8-bit bleep, which as far as we're concerned is not a bad thing at all.
A few lists back we reviewed Dock Boggs' False Hearted Lovers on the ever reliable Monk reissue label. That slab focused on Boggs' initial recordings on the Brunswick label dating back to the late 1920s. In the ensuing years, the financial setbacks of the Great Depression forced Boggs to retire from music, and most of the world failed to take note of his work. With the growing interest in folk music in the '50s and '60s (Boggs was included on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music back in 1951), Boggs was rediscovered by Mike Seeger in 1963 and given another chance to show people a thing or two. These recordings were first released in 1964 by Smithsonian Folkways, who have thankfully re-released them on vinyl (definitely the most appropriate format for this kind of thing) for a new generation of music obsessives. By this point, Boggs was an old man, but it's more than apparent that he's still got it. Though Boggs' voice obviously shows signs of age, his nasally croak is still full of energy, passion, and humor, and the songs here, including reworked versions of classics like "Oh Death" and "Pretty Polly", are the work of a man who grew wise with age and had no difficulty maintaining his remarkable style of banjo playing. The songs display a nice hillbilly sort of sound, a raw and no frills approach that Boggs delivers with everything he's got. The recordings are clear and powerful, and even though the songs themselves are relatively simple - after all, it's just an old man and a banjo - they take on a higher level of intensity than anyone would expect.
This handsome reissue comes with a cool pasted on image of Boggs in his early days and includes detailed liner notes with explanations for the songs and even some banjo tunings!
It's pretty cool how the roles are reversed on this latest BPB single. Susanna K. Wallumrod aka Susanna & The Magical Orchestra has become well known for her breathtaking covers of everyone from Tom Petty, Roy Harper, Joy Division, Thin Lizzy, Prince, etc. She has also covered Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy, so it's awesome to see him return the favor covering two of HER songs on this brand new 7". Both tracks give BPB the opportunity to return to a much more stark and stripped down aesthetic, eschewing the more lush and fleshed out sound of his more recent recordings. We kind of love when he strips away lots of those layers, as it's the haunting quality of his playing and vocals and delivery that really made so many of us fall in love with his music in the first place. If you like your Will Oldham stark and rustic then this 7" has your name all over it!
It's that time again. When AQ regulars start coming in every day like junkies looking for a fix, "Do you have it yet? C'mon man, when are you gonna get it?" And in fact, they are junkies, only they're looking for their HEAVINESS fix. That fix that only Japanese sludge/doom gods Boris can provide. We were pretty into Boris' recent Akuma No Uta cd ep, that added all sorts of sonic weirdness to their new found super-charged Stooges, stoner rock sound (a la Heavy Rocks). But some of us were still longing for a return to the glacial, slow motion doom/drone days of old: Amplifier Worship, Absolutego (sadly now out of print) even the comparatively serene Flood (Allan's favorite). And while we can't tell you this is entirely that return, it's darn close, and we'd say it's easily one of their best records yet. At Last (aka Feedbacker) is a breathtaking, 50 minute epic, split into five movements. Things start with a slow slow build, drones and rumbles and huge sheets of distorted guitars, weaving a heaving tapestry of sonic unrest, a static buzz that towers over you like an ancient stone wall, threatening to heave forward, bricks of sonic sludge crushing you beneath their suffocating weight. The big surprise though comes in the second movement as the wall of sludge dissipates into the ether, leaving a smoky hazy gauze, through which Boris emerge, as an almost-pop band, simple spare drumming, heavily reverbed shimmery chords, subtle muted wah guitar with a distant swirling backdrop of wind tunnel effects and howling feedback. Then vocalist Takeshi joins the fray with mumbled, keening sad boy vocals reminding us of Greg Dulli in his Afghan Whigs days, and then drums get all dubbed out, and suddenly everything is druggy and trippy, like the whole record was soaked in cough syrup. All the while Boris' guitar goddess Wata spits out super distorted leads, all melancholy and emotional, strings bending, feedback threatening to overwhelm the notes. The mellow parts definitely remind us of Codeine, which is a VERY good thing. Also, Windy and Carl, the Wipers a little, and even that eighties Homestead records sound. But it wouldn't be Boris if things didn't get HEAVY. And they do. Really heavy. The rest of the record is an aural tug of war between Boris' Earth/Sunn 0))) doom tendencies and their gorgeous, shimmery, druggy psychedelia. Imagine Godspeed You Black Emperor, raised on doom metal and seventies psych, and fronted by a female Hendrix! It's that fucking amazing.
Second volume in the Japanese Heavy Rock Hits series from long beloved Japanese heavy rockers Boris. Whereas the first volume was all over the map, with the trio exploring shoegaze-y bliss rock on one side, and some murky Ariel Pink-ish anti pop on the other, Volume 2 finds the band back in more recognizably Boris territory. Sort of.
The A side, "Heavy Metal Addict" falls somewhere between true metal tribute, and goofball taking-the-piss fucking around, with a bad ass meaty main riff, some soaring reverbed vocals, but then some weird Gary Glitter sing along / handclapping, and some really fucked up production, which at the beginning sounds like two records playing at once. The result is a bit loose, and sounds a bit like the band messing around at practice, but it's still fun, and a cool Pink era sounding metal jam. And check out the video online, which features Japanese glam band Sex Virgin Killer, a rad visual kei band (look it up!) rocking out, practicing, smashing stuff, and holy shit are they awesome looking, with some of the BIGGEST, wildest hair you'll ever see. Weird that Boris just basically dubbed their music over another band's video, but it did get us all excited to track down some Sex Virgin Killer music....
Flip the record over, and stuff gets all weird again, with the band hauling out the drum machine, and getting all lo-fi pop / eighties new wave, with angular guitars, stuttery rhythms, and breathless soft focus vox. Pretty cool. Sure a lot of folks are wondering 'what the fuck', but Boris have always been the sort of band to defy and confound, and while we may yearn for the days of Flood and Amplifier Worship, we're way digging this new wave thing Boris have going on now.
Garish glamor shot cover art, looks like each member will get the cover of one single, saving Wata for last of course, this one features the drummer, we think, with big teased hair, and unzipped jeans revealing his pink tie dyed briefs, all beneath a haze of Stephen O'Malley geometric graphic design. Weird.
Like the first volume, and the forthcoming third, super limited, and it would be a drag not not have the whole set, so hop to it!
Califone have always been a tough band to pin down, with roots in mighty alt country indie legends Red Red Meat, Califone took RRM's brood and twang, and updated it a bit, expanding the instrumentation, adding loops, electronics, studio trickery, even soul and funk on past records.
All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, like past installments of Califone's ongoing and ever mutating musical saga, conjures up a gorgeous darkness, a softly brooding twang flecked creep, with a definite nod to the modern. At some points it almost evokes how we might imagine an alt country Portishead might sound. But RRM frontman Tim Rutili still has one of the most gorgeous voices, weathered and worn, definitely a case of one of those voices that could sing the phonebook, and the minute he sings, especially over a ragged steel string guitar, it's totally transformative, gives us the same sort of feeling when we hear one of those classic Uncle Tupelo tracks, or again, any of those timeless Red Red Meat jams.
While there are plenty of experimental moments, All My Friends might just be the most old school and classic sounding Califone record in a while, lots of acoustic guitar, plenty of stripped down countrified grooves, and those vocals... So great. Been listening to this like crazy!
One of two discs vying for our personal dubstep disc of the year. The other is the recent Mordant Music disc, which we'll try to review next time, an unlikely collaboration between Mordant and the Skull Disco crew, and this, the first full length from mysterious atmospheric dubstep soundscaper Clubroot.
We know nothing about this guy (or these guys?), other than he takes that dubbed out skitter we love so much and sets it in expansive fields of swirling ambience, creeped out dronescapes and all manner of super evocative and gorgeously textural soundworlds. Where as most dubstep is super spare and stripped down, skeletal even, the sound here is lush and sprawling. Thick layers of synths whir and shimmer and buzz, deep swells throbbing and pulsing, everything hazy and gauzy and washed out, every song some sort of otherworldy dreamscape, shot through with some super bad ass bit of pounding churning dubstep stutter. The massive basslines and fluctuating synth buzz that usually adds texture to typical dubstep, here just becomes another element in Clubroot's mysterious mist shrouded sonic landscape.
The cover features a lonely tree, set atop a rocky outcropping, the sky dense with clouds, the picture all misty and hauntingly lonely seeming, which perfectly reflects the mood of the music here. Strip away the beats, and you'd still be left with an incredible bit of blackened new age swirl, of abstract kosmiche krautdrone, but add the beats, and these sounds become something entirely other. This is definitely not dancemusic, this is mind expansion music. Late night, lights off, starting at the stars drifting off, other dimension, spaced out, dream dub music.
Clubroot taps into the same darkside as Burial, and Kode9, and the more atmospheric beatmakers, but where those guys pull back before the fog grows to thick, Clubroot pushes forward, traveling through the dark forest, into some forbidden zone, some land lost in time, lost from time, a massive emptiness, as beautiful as it is lonely and ominous, and this is the soundtrack to that lost world. So intense and haunting and unlike any other dubstep, or electronic music even, that we've heard before. The rare sort of record that lets even the most jaded and heard-it-all listener get totally, and fantastically lost.
And if you need more than our effusive gushing praise, look no further than Fenriz, 1/2 of legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, a long time lover of techno and electronic music, who has this to say about Clubroot:
"This is the sort of soaring dubstep I'd never expect to come out of the US! I just transferred the adorable "Embryo" track to my MP3 player FAVES 09 list, as I am going tenting and swimming in a forest lake tomorrow with some connoiceur-friends [sic]. It's sleek and not nasty, the melodic kind and not the grimy. But wait a minute, it seems like the newest tracks are on first, as the last songs drift into some de-tranced balearic style, even with vocals stabs and 90s synths! Blimey."
And if you can't trust Fenriz on matters of dubstep, then who can you trust? WAY recommended. And quite possibly dubstep record of the year!
Whoa!!!! There is really no other way to begin a review of this mind blowing collection of carnival music from Eastern Cuba. The World Audio Foundation, an offshoot of the always awesome Soul Jazz label, seems to be on a tear lately as we are still listening to the Anchiskhati Choir (the only other release on the label so far, currently being repressed or something) all the time, although we have to say Conga De Los Hoyos takes it all to another level.
Take any preconceived notions of what you think carnival music from Cuba might sound like because this blasts into some other sonic plane as the music here pulsates with the raging sounds of the Chinese trumpet (?), along with over 50 percussionists playing everything from hubcaps to car brake drums to congas and more. This amazing and gorgeous cacophony has us thinking of some charged melding of the intense zorna sounds of Zadik Zecharia with the relentless momentum of Konono No.1, or maybe Pharoah Sanders and the Master Musicians of Joujuka taking to the streets to create the kind of wild street party we wish was happenin' on OUR street.
The fact that all these sounds come from the Los Hoyos neighborhood of Santiago, in a tradition that's been going strong since 1902 only makes this more mind boggling, and is another reminder that in almost every nook, corner and neighborhood of the world, people have found a way to use music to communicate in a way that's truly universal and in this case totally transcendent!
Some bands mellow with age. That's just the way it is... sometimes. Converge is definitely NOT one of those bands, and almost two decades into their career, they're still just as furious as ever and showing no signs of age (though they were only teenagers when they started, it's not like they're a bunch of old dudes). It's almost unbelievable to think how a band like this could maintain such an insane amount of energy, but we're happy to report that things don't appear to be slowing down by any measure. There's tons of crazy guitar leads, super aggressive bass playing that holds things down like an anchor, tight as fuck drumming, and of course, frontman Jacob Bannon's throat-ripping banshee screams.
Axe To Fall, like the other post-Jane Doe Converge records, retains the unfathomable brutality of that definitive record and adds an approach that, as weird as it may sound, seems to exude a heavy rock n' roll influence. There's really no other way to put it: this shit rocks hard. Perhaps the best thing about Converge is, even in the moments of sheer metallic evil (which is most of them), they are still highly musical and catchy, and the band's incredible musicianship allows them to take things where few other hardcore groups are capable of going. Yep, nothing quite hits the spot like Converge. Featuring contributions from an assortment of noteworthy heavies, including dudes from Cave In, Entombed/Disfear (the awesomely monickered Ufe Cederlund), Himsa, Neurosis, Genghis Tron, and probably some others. Awesome stuff.
We've been hearing about these guys for a while now, often mentioned in the same breath as other hyped underground groups like Natural Snow Buildings, King Kong Ding Dong, Barn Owl, etc. But this is the first time we've actually heard them, and we have to say it does live up to the hype. Although in many ways it reminds us way more of the Finnish forest folk(s), sort of abstract, meandery, a little clattery, spacious and skeletal, haunting and otherworldly. Another record it reminds us of a little bit is Smog's Julius Caesar, although this is way more abstract and deconstructed, but it has the same sort of barebones lo-fi songsmithery. The guitars creak and groan, the vocals are moaned and crooned, effects swirl, flutes flutter, all spread out in a slow shifting, dreamily drifting psych folk, that should definitely appeal to fans of Six Organs, Avarus, Steven R Smith and the like. But Cursillistas can be dark and noisy too, some of the songs building to sinister climaxes, plenty of careening FX, some WAY up in the mix, while others continue on lilting gently, vocals always distorted, but they still creak and crack with emotion, hand drums crank out tribal rhythms, bells chime, everything hazy and washed out and dreamy. A few tracks get all back porchy and twangy, reminding us of Red Red Meat or Souled American, while others get all droned out and effects drenched, twisting tangled stretches of overlapping tones, tweaked effects, garbled vox, and blurred melodies.
Beautiful hand screened sleeves, with printed vellum inserts. NICE.
We LOVE this album, and have for a long time. We first reviewed a reissue of this "exotic" 1967 garage-fuzz gem back in 2001, in fact making it a Record Of The Week. That reissue was a somewhat odd 2-fer-1 deal that included an album by another, pretty much utterly unrelated '60s psych band, The Freak Scene, kinda cool but not Middle Eastern styled like The Devil's Anvil. And it was The Devil's Anvil that was the real treasure on that disc, as far as we were concerned. If you haven't heard it yet, you're in luck, 'cause it's just been reissued again, getting a disc all to itself this time, courtesy of vintage rock specialists Rev-Ola, who do their usual nice job with the packaging and all.
The cover art shows the band hangin' in the desert in front of the pyramids of Egypt - but don't be fooled, they were actually mostly Arab-AMERICANS, based in New York City. Still, their rock n' roll was as authentically "Middle Eastern" as their Turkish contemporaries. They could have held their own with the likes of Erkin Koray and Mogollar.
The Devil's Anvil got together in the happenin' mid sixties Greenwich Village scene, playing their Middle Eastern influenced music at folk cafes and rock clubs. Eventually they hooked up with classical musician-turned-rocker Felix Pappalardi (producer of Cream's Disraeli Gears, later to play alongside Leslie West in Mountain). He began playing bass with the band and eventually scored the group a record deal. The resulting album was truly one-of-a-kind and would certainly made greater impact had it not been released on the very eve of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. Thus, we're told no New York radio stations would play it and unfortunately the album has remained an expensive collector's find until its cd reissue.
The rock contained herein is absolutely kick ass, with bluesy and impassioned Arabic vocals, electric (or at least amplified) oud, bouzouki, tamboura, durbeki as well as the usual rock suspects of (fuzz!) guitar, bass and drums. The majority of the tracks here are either rock arrangements of traditional Middle Eastern and Greek numbers or original compositions, but a couple are actually straight traditional numbers with no western instruments at all. Plus there's an excellent Middle Eastern-esque rock arangement of surf classic "Misirlou" (of course, a song with its roots originally in Greek rembetika) that's perhaps the best version ever recorded, in our humble opinion. And the record ends with a Devil's Anvil original that kinda reminds us of one of the Beatles' more Eastern-influenced tunes. This is about as good as it gets. Very, very highly recommended! Nay, ESSENTIAL.
The cd booklet of this new reish includes original album graphics along with brand new liner notes from one of the writers at Shindig magazine, and a blurb on the back that just might have been parapharased from -our- Record Of The Week review of this album.
On their latest release, Canadian post-rockers Do Make Say Think deliver four splendid instrumentals that differ starkly in mood and atmosphere, and that follow a defined dynamic arc. The first kicks things off with a driving tempo, and a somewhat more gritty-raw approach than on their last album 2007's You, You're A History In Rust. It brings to mind the old school Chicago post-rock from the '90s. The second draws the listener in with a comparatively subdued chant and lulling rhythm that eventually is swept up and away into the stormy dramatics we've come to know and love from this band and their Montreal comrades. The third continues along in that vein, and the fourth brings the 43 minutes to a sunset gazing, drowsy close with lanky sliding guitar lines and hushed brush-on-snare drumming. Nice.
When Andee and Allan were in Austin last spring for SXSW, they stumbled into a record store (the very cool End Of An Ear) only to be unexpectedly pummelled by two scruffy dudes set up in the corner, guitar and drums, kicking up a head splitting ear shredding low end racket, that was so powerful it almost made record shopping impossible, but then who wants to record shop when you can immerse yourself in an avalanche of sound so thick and viscous that it was almost a physical presence in the room? The guy with the axe seemed familiar too, and it wasn't until afterwards that we realized it was Gentry Densley of Iceburn fame, and we had just witnessed a live performance by his new duo project, Eagle Twin!
So, here we have the full length, and it's just as dark, and heavy and sprawling as it was live, not nearly as terrifying or ear drum destroying but records rarely are. What it is, though, is HEAVY AS FUCK, downtuned and massive, if we didn't know Densley was guitar player we would have almost assumed this was another one of those rhythm section only bands (a la Om).
Not sure if we're hearing too much Iceburn in Eagle Twin, it's definitely twisted and proggy, with lurching abstract arrangements, so in that it's similar, but this is more of the new slow n' low school, a la SUNNO))), Earth, Corrupted, Moss, Bunkur, etc.
The album begins by confusing the hell out of you. Opener "In The Beginning Was The Scream" sounds like some strange doom/free jazz hybrid, or maybe like a metal version of the Stooges song "LA Blues". You might notice that the vocals flow with a similar eccentricity to someone like Attila Csihar, but more than likely, you'll be blown away by what you soon realize is Tuvan throat singing and tons of gong-laden percussion. This is some weird and intense stuff for sure, and there is a peculiar aggressiveness to the instrumentation that many doom bands unintentionally eschew by trying to be slower than everyone else. Eagle Twin understand the power of built up tension and negative space, while never neglecting to utilize a heavy groove when necessary. The subsonic distortion and raspy spoken vocals on songs like "Storytelling Of Ravens" stir up plenty of blackened negative vibes for sure, but elsewhere, like on "Crow Hymns", Eagle Twin actually rock out pretty hard with boatloads of fuzzed out harmonic distortion and some awesome tom-heavy drumming. Densley's raspy voice, which at times carries a bit of a country drawl, works perfectly on "Carry On, King Of Carrion", which blends the sounds of both early and modern day Earth with doomed out Southern rock riffage.
The vocals sort of sound like dude in Scissorfight (if anyone gives a shit), or even like Wino, the songs are surprisingly catchy at times, Southern rock sounding even here and there, but then there's also all kinds of weird exotic shit and definitely some themes that show an Eastern influence, and some incredible riffing, as Densley is a fucking shredder, and even in downtuned minimal mode, he SLAYS. This is definitely about the heaviest record you may here all year, and totally puts to shame pretty much every other heavy duo we can think of, except maybe early godheadSilo...
We've been trying to get ANYTHING by this band, this GUY actually. A seriously sick drummer (he's been featured on SickDrummer.Com multiple times), the awesomely monickered Bornyhake, not only drums up a fucking storm, he also handles all the other instruments as well. Enoid is his one man band, but so is Borgne, and beyond that, he plays in 5 or 6 other bands, from doom to grind, but it's extreme blackness where he really excels. We'll keep trying to get some Borgne for the store, but for now at least we can extol the radness that is Enoid.
Right out of the gate, Ataraxiis explodes in a frenzy of blizzardy beastliness, furious and frenzied and frantic, soaring melodies, drumming so fast, we're thinking it might even have to be a drum machine, or he really IS a sick drummer, and while he may be Swiss, the sound is definitely Nordic, or Swedish, think 1349, or Marduk, Immortal or Satyricon even, this is super intense frostbitten blackness, relentless, sometimes the tracks breakdown into lurching grooves or pounding doom, but those moments are fleeting, it's never long before Enoid launches back into more seriously blasting black grimness. Brutal and kult, soul flaying heaviness that is definitely not for the meek. If you like it frosty and fast, grim and black, you probably can't do much better (or blacker) than this!
It's been over three years since we've heard from this awesome Philadelphia collective, but that doesn't mean they haven't been busy. What with scoring and touring the Valerie Project (the re-imagined soundtrack to Jaromil Jires' Valerie And Her Week of Wonders), solo projects and collaborations from members Meg Baird and Helena Espvall, and focussing on Greg Weeks' psych-folk label, Language of Stone, it's amazing the band found any time to record. But they have and what's even more amazing is how great it sounds, releasing perhaps our favorite of their records. While the last record, II expanded upon the acid folk of their debut into a gauzy nocturnal medieval acid-psych, the songs on III return to sun-dappled realms, without losing any of their dark majesty. There's still a heavy British folk vibe, and Week's soaring guitar lines have lost none of their power, but the mood is more relaxed and warmer, allowing moments of seventies west-coast psych to seep through and mellow the proceedings a bit. But that doesn't mean there aren't any shadows, as Espers know how to work those magically dark undercurrents into even the brightest of songs. This is the band at the height of their power, lets hope it keeps going higher!
What more can we say about these guys that we haven't already. Masters of divine sci-fi spacekraut dronemusic, sprawling epics that drift heavenward, guitars swirl and pulse, bass throbs and rumbles, rhythms don't pound or shuffle as much as pulse, a gloriously cosmic ur-rock that is not about rocking at all, but instead about sitting back and drifting off, letting the music lull you into a state of suspended animation, moving inward before moving outward, expanding like a new universe being born. All of the above imagery is especially apt to describe Mother Universe Has Birthed Her Last Cosmos, a one track, 20 minute space drone kraut jam from our beloved Expo 70. The main guitar part is surprisingly active, as is the bass, there's a definite groove here, the song has propulsion, and moves with purpose, the sound of a timelapse camera capturing the stars blinking out one at a time, viewed through a capsule full of bong smoke. Dreamy druggy and divine.
But it's not all drift here, about 8 or 9 minutes in, an old drum machine rears up and unfurls a looped beat, the guitars lock in, and suddenly this is some sort of transcendent drugged out hypnospace loop, which almost sounds like a skipping Hawkwind record, so completely mesmerizing and AWESOME. Eventually the drums drift off, and leave the throbbing bass and shimmering guitars to complete the journey on their own.
LIMITED TO 111 COPIES! We got 40 of those, and won't be able to get more. So get while the getting's good. And like all Universal Tongue releases, the packaging is super cool, full color inserts in little mini 5" high clear dvd sleeves, each one hand numbered.
Okay, we love the Flaming Lips. We have for ages. We recently revisited In A Priest Driven Ambulance, Oh My Gawd!, Telepathic Surgery, and Hear It Is, and we were struck by just how awesome those records still sound, and how amazingly and brilliantly fucked up that band was, and basically still are. Every record, we were just waiting, dying to see what the band would do next, what kind of skewed pop brilliance they would cook up, or what sort of deafening noise weirdness they might smother perfect pop songs with. Live was even better. One of their early shows here, involved more Christmas lights than we had ever seen, then there was the whole Zaireeka unmixed 4cd set meant to be played simultaneously. Who would have thought that a band like that would achieve mainstream success. Who would headline Lollapalooza, Treasure Island, that they would be the kind of band your PARENTS WOULD LIKE. But they did, and we were cool with it. The Soft Bulletin was a genius record, and with the release of that record, they moved up and on. And everything they got they deserved and THEN SOME. But then a weird thing happened, they stopped experimenting so much. Sure they had strings, and unique production techniques, and live they had the big plastic ball and people in furry suits, but the records began to run together and sound the same. Still great, and by modern pop standards, plenty strange, but by FLAMING LIPS standards, they were getting closer and closer to becoming one of those bands that required the word 'old' when describing them as a band you dug. "Yeah, I was pretty into OLD Flaming Lips".
So we weren't all that hopeful about this new record, even when we heard rumblings of how weird it was, we figured it was just mainstream pop weird, not Flaming Lips weird. But whattayaknow? It is weird. FLAMING LIPS WEIRD! And wonderful, and twisted, still poppy and sort of catchy, but way more NOT. In some ways, it seems like commercial suicide. A band that popular, purposefully making a record, that most normal festival goers would NEVER blast in their SUV on the way to Whole Foods. But fuck it, if anyone can pull it off, and come out the other side smelling like roses, it's the Lips. Listening to Embryonic, it's exciting to think about these obtuse fractured jams blasting through the same PA as Kanye or Lady GaGa. And obtuse and fractured they are. Tripped out, druggy, psychedelic, rhythmic and layered. effects everywhere, sounds careening all over the stereo field, vocals distorted, guitars twisted and mangled, chiming and screaming and buzzing, the vocals more mantra like than ever. Sure it's not like the old OLD record, but hell c'mon, these guys are in their 40s and 50s, and their making some seriously challenging freaky avant space rock drone pop what-the-fuck.
But don't get us wrong, there's plenty of prettiness, lovely melodies, lilting vocals, warm whirring instrumentation, but it's surrounded on all sides, by strange samples, fuzzed out bass lines, warbly synths, long stretches of staticky drift, super distorted drums, wild psychedelic guitar freakouts, it's the kind of record, that will most likely deter plenty of casual listeners, but those who dig deep. let the sounds wash over them, who get lost with the band, in whatever fucked up mysterious world music like this exists in, well, then, those folks are the chosen ones, and will discover something magical, melodic and fucking genius.
The first Fuck Buttons record, Street Horrrsing, was a bright colorful explosion of sound, we described it as "massive super distorted heavy electronic drone fuzz pop" and "energetically exotic and hypnotically repetitive and just chock full of sheer noise fuzz bliss, bulldozering over buried melodies, tribal weirdness, and equally distorted screaming vocals". Basically it was a noisy fucked up head spinning chunk of noise rock bliss pop infused with all manner of electronics.
On Tarot Sport, the equation has been flipped, if anything this is an electronic record, heck, a techno record, that just so happens to be filtered through some twisted noise rock, lo-fi punk rock lens. Like Daft Punk for the noise rock set, these extended jams sound like some unholy collision between the Boredoms, Gang Gang Dance, Black Dice and the Basement Jaxx, the synths are throbbing and thick and buzzy, the beats bounce and pound and skitter and slip from lurching stutter to house-y pound to groovy lope, while all around these various sounds is wrapped a warm gauzy layer of M83 like fuzz, giving the whole record a super dreamlike almost eighties feel. "Space Mountain" sounds like M83 gone techno and then nabbed for a crucial scene in a remake of Sixteen Candles, "Flight Of The Feathered Serpent" is another one that has futuristic eighties jam written all over it, hazy and druggy, washed out and shimmery, the beats big and block rockin', with a gorgeously almost Jesu sounding second half, albeit way poppier.
The first half of the record though, starting with the single "Surf Solar" is more on the Daft Punk side of things, still fuzzy and noisy and blissed out but way more techno. "Rough Steez" might be the weirdest of the bunch, with its super buzzy jagged fuzz bass, stuttery clipped rhythms, and squealing glitchy electronics, although there's plenty of fuzzy dreaminess creeping in already.
This is one of those rare records that pretty much everybody here loves, it's groovy, noisy, fuzzy, druggy, the beats are bad ass, the atmosphere is hazy and eighties, and it's all wrapped up into one practically perfect set of future summer retro noise rock techno electronic jams. This is quickly turning into one of our new favorites...
Smoking new ep from one of our favorite strong and saucy songstresses Holy Golightly along with The Brokeoffs, her backup band who joined forces with her a couple years ago, and are proving to have the same kind of spicy demeanor as her former co-conspirator Billy Childish. Deliciously twangy, sassy and packing a serious wallop, Devil Do is reminding us all over again why we fell so hard for Miss Golightly all those years ago. Each of the four tracks here are totally great but the real stand out and wonderful oddball of the bunch is the dark and brooding closer "Whoopie Ti Yi Yo" which almost sounds like what might happen if Golightly lent her voice to a record by Earth! We are keeping are fingers crossed for more songs in this direction, but truly whatever Holly does it's always damn fine!
Yet another awesome vinyl-only document from the mighty Sublime Frequencies, this one a continuation of sorts, again exploring the world of Tuareg guitar music from Agadez in Niger, first explored on the amazing Group Inerane release a while back. And strangely enough, both band share members, so folks who loved the Group Inerane will likely love this too.
The music scene in Agadez is unique in many ways, but perhaps the strangest element is the fact that none of the bands can afford to own their own instruments, there is one PA and one set of amps that get passed from show to show, and guitars are borrowed and lent out, as are band members, with musicians joining different groups as they are available. Remarkably, while the sounds are indeed similar, they are also quite unique.
Group Bombino is headed up by 28 year old Oumara Almoctar, aka Bombino, who was inspired by more well known Tuareg musicians like Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure to create his own music and to continue to spread the sounds and spirit of Tuareg and Agadez.
So here we have the first proper worldwide release by Bombino and his group, and it's gorgeous. Two distinct sides, the A side features Bombino's "dry" guitar sound, sort of acoustic, the guitars, spidery and slinky, the percussion simple and spare, hand claps, hand drums, the vocals lilting and emotional, all very repetitive and hypnotic, the vocals chantlike over the propulsive rhythms and the almost looped sounding guitar parts.
The flip side features Group Bombino plugging in and letting loose, the root sound is quite similar, but the guitars buzz and wail, chugging out those hypnotic riffs, but also spiralling out into wild leads, tangled melodies, the drums a bit hard, the vocals sitting further back in the mix, ebullient and joyous, but not without tension and emotion and some subtle sorrow and anger, this is after all the sounds or rebellion and revolution, an outlet for the frustration at the unrest and upheaval in Niger and Agadez. So fantastic.
As with pretty much everything Sublime Frequencies, ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED, and for sure, anyone who dug the Group Inerane (a past Record Of The Week), will go crazy for Group Bombino as well!
Treeg Salaam came out on vinyl a while back, but disappeared so quickly, we never had enough to review, and before we knew it, it was out of print. So we waited and waited patiently, hoping, fingers crossed, that this too would get released as a cd and we're happy to report it finally has!
If you remember, last year we made Group Doueh's Guitar Music From The Western Sahara our Record Of The Week, and folks went crazy for it, ourselves included. A dizzying blast of lo-fi electric guitar driven rhythmic African folk, clattery homemade percussion, jubilant vocalizing, repetitive and melodic and hypnotic, and super rocking.
This latest collection is culled from the group's personal cassette archive, and definitely displays all the sides of this versatile group.
The record opener is all simple percussion, warbly wah guitar, keening vocals, group background harmonies that follow the guitar melody, mantra like and completely mesmerizing. But it's the second track where the group lets loose, with super distorted tinny guitar, whipping up a wild buzzy squall, the rhythms relentless and intense, the vocals a wild smattering of hoots and hollers, the guitar part super crunchy, growing ever more intense as the track builds to a frenzied coda before finally fading out.
The next track features some incredible, strangely effected guitar lines, all woozy and warped, super fast picking creates a twisted tremolo sound, male and female vocals intertwined into haunting harmonies, very intense and emotional, draped over that main minor key guitar part. The next track is another heavy guitar jam, the vocals nearly buried by the chunky effected riffing, all muffled and murky, but super driving and intense and wild and kick ass, with a bad ass female vocal breakdown about halfway through, totally soaring and soulful. Group Doueh must be the ultimate party band, these recordings sound incredible, and we can only imagine it sounded even better being there.
Finally, the record closes with the nearly 20 minute "Tazit Kalifa" which begins very raga like, with mumbled electric guitar, over buzzing one string drones, the vocals minimal, almost spoken, simple drums surface part way through, giving the track a little groove, but the guitars continue to buzz and drone, the vocals chanting right along, absolute African raga drone bliss. So great! And once again absolutely and utterly recommended.
What do you think, is it about time for another Turkish psych sensation 'round these parts? Hardal fits right in with Shadoks' previous reissues of Istanbul-based "Anatolian rock" bands we've loved, like Bunalim and Edip Akbayram, even though the date on this is a bit later than those. Hardal (featuring members of Erkin Koray's Underground 4 band) formed in 1976, releasing this, their debut album, in 1980. Maybe a little disco has infiltrated their sound, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Kitschy '70s cop show synths, acid rock guitar solos, and '60s psych-pop catchiness are all also in the mix.
Just listen to the first track, the super groovy, yet poppy "Bir Yagmur Masali" and tell us you're not hooked. It's impossible to resist that groove! They should have added this to the Psych Funk 101 curriculum (that comp we reviewed last list)! Reminds us a bit of South Korea's great San Ul Lim, who were of similar style, and vintage.
Soulful male vocals are contrasted with fuzzed out, funky bass. Whistling synth lines and cinematically wordless female vocals also adorn these songs. Hardal definitely have a typically romantic vibe derived from the traditional folk music of their homeland, but even at its mellowest, some tasty fuzz or badass groove is never that far away.
We don't know what Hardal means, but the album title Nasil? Ne Zaman? apparently translates as How? When? If the question involves getting down to some killer Turkish tuneage, the answer is: this is how, and the time is now!!
And as usual with Shadoks, the cd booklet provides informative liner notes, color photos, and press clippings.
Well, it's about time that this artifact showed itself again, what with all the Cluster, Kluster, Michael Rother, Kraftwerk, and Fripp & Eno reissues popping up all over the place, finally we have this last piece of the Harmonia puzzle, and it's never sounded better! Tracks and Traces is one of those curious krautrock documents, mainly because it was recorded in 1976, but never released until the late nineties. Its late release was always rather inexplicable, as there were no liner notes, but with this new reissue that bookends the original release with three previously unreleased bonus tracks and poetically expository liner notes, its former relegation as an "odds and sods" collection of sketches, can with all confidence be considered now to be one of the great lost krautrock records! If you bought this when it was first released, you may need to buy it again for the extra tracks that change the whole flow and feel of the album considerably.
Harmonia as a group was always meant to be temporary. When Eno went to see them live in 1974, he ended up on stage with them and was invited to come out to Forst to experience Moebius and Roedellius's placid countryside studio first hand. But it took Eno two years to make good on that invitation, and by then Harmonia had essentially disbanded. Michael Rother was working on his first solo material (Flammende Herzen), as was Roedelius (Durch Die Wuste), while Moebius was working on the Liliental sessions. But they were all there in Forst for eleven days, experiencing the wind, river, trees and sun, casually improvising music, but really just treating the sounds they made as a meditation on process and time together without a goal to make a product. Eno was eventually called away by Bowie to work on Low, and the recordings of their time together lay dormant for two decades.
It's easy to think that without the benefit of returning to the original recordings for overdubs, that these might be shrugged off as sketches, but the starker quality of these recordings are really what set them apart from the pastoral sweetness of the Cluster & Eno collaborations, and give them a distinctive expansiveness into the more shadowy and vague corners of their sound. Lots of ideas are explored, from rockish extrapolations, and baroque dirges to sinister and angular abstractions (Eno even sings on one track) but it never feels forced or indulgent. The sound just flows naturally. Essential!
My God, this release has been blowing our minds! A 72 minute solo piano epic by this protege of LaMonte Young and disciple of the late Pandit Pran Nath, Michael Harrison. Michael Harrison is probably not as well known of the second generation minimalist composers after Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Charlemagne Palestine, but his mastery of Indian Classical Musical and his design and invention of the harmonic piano, an extensively modified grand piano with the ability to alternate between two different tunings to play 24 notes per octave on a conventional keyboard, has earned him much respect in new music circles. Revelation is arguably his master work, utilizing the tuning system of 'just intonation' to conjure beautifully melodic and mesmerizing tonal clusters of sound. Just intonation is, on the basic level, any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of whole numbers. While we here are not completely able to wrap our heads around the theory behind the Pythagorean principles of harmonic resonance, the tones in the scales applied here are far from conventional, and the shifting patterns of harmonic overtones as they bounce against each other create oddly-tuned and haunting harmonies. Revelation starts deliberately slow. The first track, "Revealing The Tones" is just that taking the time to visit each note than a pairing of notes, then finally triads. But it's not all just about academics, some tracks evoke the mysteries of night or desert solitude, creating lilting passages of melody similar in feel to Harold Budd's best work. Some use percussive Eastern scales as if the piano was being played as a gamelan. But with each track, the beauty of the tones gains in intensity so that by the finale, it sounds like three pianos are being played in an almost Lubomyr Melnyk-like technique of 'continuous music', which is incredible because in fact no effects or overdubs were used in the recording. It's been a while since we were blown away by a contemporary recording of minimalist composition, and any fans of any of the folks mentioned above, should definitely check this out!
One of the joys of metal records, black metal records in particular, is unravelling the mystery of the logo, because even the most logo savvy among us has stumbled across a label that was just too gnarled to decode. So we were pretty excited by this record, part of the mystery lay in the fact that it was a black logo, on a nearly black background, but the logo itself was also super complex, each letter, a branch spouting hundreds of tiny tendrils, the letterforms mere bulky blurs, only three letters though, so we gave it a try, and seemed to suss it out, but figured it couldn't be right. That's an H, and the next letter looks like an A, and the third and final letter is... a... T? So that spells HAT? This thrashing blackened grim horde spewing this awesome frosty Nordic buzz is called Hat? Then we were imagining a huge corpsepainted creature growling into a microphone "Weeeeeee are calllllled.... HAT". Pretty funny. We're fairly sure Hat must be Norwegian for hate or something similar, and the band probably never thought about the meaning in English, but we can't help but be ticked by a buzzing blast like this being perpetrated by a band called Hat.
Chapeau themed monicker aside, this band is seriously fierce and grim, slipping from total classic old school style Nordic blasting blackness, a la Satyricon, Immortal, Emperor, to more midtempo blackened grooves like Khold. Some of the songs are laced with recordings of clanking chains, trudging footsteps (on the way to the gallows it sounds like), explosions and gunfire, but the music is plenty violent and furious all on its own. The guitar sound is incredible, thick and ultra buzzy, the vocals are sick and harsh and hellish. the drumming simple but powerful, the melodies epic, the song structures not super complex, instead super buzzy and hypnotic. Seriously excellent classic Norwegian blackness, by the grim kvlt horde known simply as... HAT.
Latest eruption of doom-sludge-drone heaviness from UK kill team Hey Colossus, here teamed up with the awesomely named Dethscalator, but more on them in a second.
Hey Colossus continue to expand their epic dirge space rock, with three sprawling slow-jams, that oozes from slow burning drones, to lurching stumbling blackened crush, to metallic krautrock and back again, rumbling drones erupt into looped sounding riff heavy sludge workouts, the vocals a hellish bellow, feedback swirling all over the place, the band a beast, a lumbering sonic juggernaut, downtuned and crushing, but spaced out and psychedelic too. Folks into Shit And Shine might want to give these guys a try, the same sort of noise drenched fucked up mantra like mesmerizing heaviness. Amidst all that heaviness, the band do unwind into hypnotic post/space rock jams, simple and rhythmic, under a haze of murky buzz and jagged skree, but seem to eventually explode into either a squall of melting lysergic effects drenched freakout, or pounding black murk slow motion metal crush. We dig it either way!
Which brings us to Dethscalator, who we liked already, cuz, well, they're called Dethscalator, we're like that. Thankfully the sound lives up to the name, a gnarled blend of Gore like repetitive heaviness, and lo-slung Jesus Lizard like noise rock, the vocals especially, a dead ringer for David Yow, all scowly and sort of sung / spoken, and super distorted, with the band swinging all downtuned and seasick, until they lock into bursts of cyclical riffage, that sound almost looped, occasionally lifting off into some serious space rock territory, before falling back into another stretch of woozy metallic noise rock, culminating in the weird brooding noise rock slowjam that ends the record, murky and washed out and gloomy, weirdly melodic and super dark and creepy. Rad rad rad. Definitely need more Dethscalator in our lives, and heck more Hey Colossus while we're at it!
Features some awesomely fucked up and garish (and badly photoshopped) cover art, one eyed creep and headless biker anyone??
We've been so excited for this one, because when it comes to smart, infectious records that you listen to over and over and memorize every lyric and melody, it doesn't get much better or more rewarding then the Hidden Cameras. Origin: Orphans finds the band with a new level of confidence and definitely displays shows the range they've developed from their trademark peppy and catchy anthem like zingers to more subdued and brooding mopers that unfold with a richness that gives the record a weight and gravitas that we've really been appreciating, borne of song writing and arrangements that are the most fully realized of their career. We're always reminded of John Cale's brilliant album Paris 1919 when we listen to the Hidden Cameras as they tap into the same kind of swirling and infectious melody, which manage to be both sophisticated and so damn pleasing. We also hear nice hints of Arthur Russell, Paul Simon (in a good way!), Magnetic Fields, and Robert Wyatt when he was a young buck back in the day. With all the success Grizzly Bear has received this year, we hope Hidden Cameras get some of that same recognition because they've crafted another of the best pop albums of the year!
And if course, this IS on cd too, but unfortunately our supplier was out of 'em this week, argh. Hopefully we'll have more back on Tuesday, and will list the cd next time around...
On their second outing as a fully realized band (as distinguished from Keith Wood's solo foresty folk experimentalism of their earlier Digitalis releases), Hush Arbors are quickly becoming the band to watch! Produced by J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., their combination of bucolic psych-rock and strong rootsy songs tread a similar path to many of the bands currently on the Sub Pop roster but thankfully avoid all the sensitive dude pitfalls many of those bands suffer. Mascis's presence is definitely felt in the shoegazey guitar work of the final track, "Devil Made You High" but it's Wood's strong falsetto delivery that moves the songs into all the right places. Like a more driving Six Organs, Yankee Reality is just as satisfying as their last self-titled release for Ecstatic Peace. Keep 'em coming!
There couldn't be a more appropriate name for this Swedish duo, as it's unlikely you'll ever hear anything colder or frostier. This is harsh and frostbitten, depressive and miserable black metal. Full length number two, after last year's Veins, Kold takes their monochromatic miserablism a step further, two tracks, two riffs, okay, maybe four at the most, one track twenty seven minutes long, the other nineteen, each one a loping midtempo buzz, the drums a relentless plod, the guitar a buzz so blurry and indistinct it almost sounds like a drone, and the vocals, well, you thought they were weird on Veins, they're even more strangled and bizarre here, somewhere between an Orcish death rattle and some sort of beast vomiting up its last meal, sometimes mumbling in a strange mewling grunt, other times a leather lunged glass throated growl, you can almost feel the blood and spittle. But it's the perfect compliment to the music. Hateful, sorrowful, suicidal, depressive, the sound of Kold is just that, so cold and lonely, emotional and intense. About three quarters of the way through the first track, the distorted guitar drops out leaving just a jangly clean guitar, drums and vocals, which is unexpected for sure, but ends up sounding strangely emotionally charged. Soon the vocals drop out too and it's just drums and clean guitar and it almost sounds like some outsider bedroom indie rock, before the buzz kicks back in and the track unwinds in a Burzumic blaze of frosty buzz.
The second track may be even weirder, a blown out buzzy riff, and even doomier rhythmic plod, and the vocals are completely unhinged, falsetto screams, what sounds like that weird breathing-in-backwards singing, growling and grunting and shrieking and wailing hysterically, all over a surprisingly lilting minor key dirge, buzzing and droning, epic yet surprisingly melodic, with another surprise right at the end, a three minute clean-guitar and drum coda, simple garage-y drumming, sort of shuffling and crashing beneath some truly moody jangly strum.
First full length from Inca Ore since the awesome Birthday Of Bless You (not counting a mess of collaborations and splits), and it's more of what we've come to love about Eva Ore's mysterious world of sound. Like Grouper, Inca Ore is definitely vocal based, a breathless ethereal mumbly croon, often heavily effected, or buried beneath a wash of swirling layered soft noise, but where Grouper is murky, Inca Ore is more noisy, her tools are high end to Grouper's low end, a delicate crystalline drift, all rounded whistle like tones, and whispered vocals, will morph into a swirling squall of crunch and skree, the vocals still dreamy and angelic, but wrapped in strange clattery rhythms, fuzzy distortion, streaks of feedback, and a thick lo-fi haze, only to slip seamlessly back into another stretch of high end shimmer, a soft cacophony of muted music box melodies, chiming and reverberating, the vocals so processed, they blend into the field of bells and tones.
And so it goes, every song a glorious, gauzy world of delicate sparkling glimmer set amidst slowly drifting clouds of buzz and hiss, soft thrumming percussion, hushed thrum, and dreamy, druggy, softly psychedelic drone drift ambient pop. So lovely.
First two records by these UK sludgelords, conveniently bundled together in this bargain priced two-for-one double jewel case slipcover'd box. Crushing shrieking slow motion psychedelic tarpit doom sludge filth, the British answer to the likes of Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Cavity, Grief, etc... which as you might imagine, means MASSIVE riffs, pummeling drum damage, sick throat-shredding vox, and tempos hovering right around glacial, or perhaps funereal, although the band do lock into some serious grooves, albeit seemingly in slow motion, and of course everything is doused in heaping doses of crumbing distortion and dense blackened grit. Killer!
Features members, past and present, of Electric Wizard, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine, Crippled Black Phoenix, Cerebral Fix, Acrimony and more...
Golly, doesn't this album absolutely scream "Iceland"? Albeit in the most hushed fashion. Not a bad thing in our books by any means! Very apropos, of course! Jonsi & Alex aka Jon Por Birgisson and Alex Somers are indeed a duo from Reykjavik, Iceland. The cover artwork for their debut album is a deadringer for any release from Mum or Sigur Ros. Go figure as Jonsi is in fact the singer of Sigur Ros! The muted dark tones shroud blurry mysterious figures like snapshots from a dream. As well, their music has both a familiar sighing wistfulness and expansive grandeur to it. The first track "Happiness" follows a three note melody drawn out on bowed strings in a slowly swelling cycle. It's deceptively powerful in its seeming simplicity, and quite capable of stirring up bittersweet aches from days long past. Riceboy Sleeps is graced with strings by Amiina and choral accompaniment by Kopavogsdottur. And really, the album is just as much theirs as it is Jonsi & Alex. Their performances are breathtaking! Other highlights: "Indian Summer", "All The Big Trees" and "Daniell In The Sea". Recommended!
Another winner from Kompakt, made even more of a winner in that like much of Kompakt's output, it is contributing to the gradual conversion of the techno hating holdouts around here. Trust, the latest disc from Japanese producer Hiroshi Watanabe aka Kaito, takes the trancey house sounds of his past releases, and infuses a bit more of the Pop Ambient the Kompakt is also known for. Lots of swooshing shimmer, with warm waves of lush whirr, draped over lilting piano melodies. Skittery 4/4 rhythms, and hazy streaks of high end M83 style synths wrapped around thumping grooves and tinkling melodies. "Nothing Could Be More Peaceful" might be our favorite, super murky and ultra dreamy and pastoral, a sort of Chain Reaction meets Pop Ambient sound, that slowly builds to something more trancey and propulsive.
This is definitely not a record for folks who don't already dig techno, it's not an ideal gateway record, it's not super weird or avant or abstract, it's pretty housey, definitely trancey, there are some warm warped and murky moments, but the core of the record is something much more sleek and dancefloor ready, and definitely more classically techno. So if you dig that sort of thing, odds are this will hit the spot, and if you're new to all this techno stuff and are looking for a place to start, this would definitely be a good one to try.
So imagine you're a longhaired Japanese hippy freak in the mid-'70s. You've been grooving to the cosmic sounds coming out of Germany on import LPs for the past few years, as well as digging the homegrown stuff too. Taj Mahal Travellers, Foodbrain, Speed Glue & Shinki, Magical Power Mako, yeah. But now you're looking for something even MORE potent. And primitive. And peculiar. Thankfully, on a visit to the Tokyo equivalent of Aquarius Records, you discover this release by a tiny Osaka based record label called Voice. And you, the jaded Japanese hippy, once again your mind is blown!
And thankfully for those of us not lucky enough to be born Japanese hippies in the '70s, this mind-blowingness has now been reissued on cd by Phoenix, joining that label's reissue roster of other crucial Japanese '70s prog/psych like Flower Travellin' Band's Satori and The Far East Family Band's Nipponjin (reviewed here last list). This one, if you're curious, earned the 19th spot on the Top 50 list found in Julian Cope's book Japrocksampler.
It's record by a mysterious outfit known as Karuna Khyal, entitled Alomoni 1985. We're not sure why it's called that, in fact, we're not sure of much about this, not even the year it was first released ('75? '76?), except that it's freakin' far out and totally amazing. And that they're probably the same folks who recorded another awesome album under the name Brast Burn, that we assume Phoenix will also get around to reissuing (they'd both been previously put out on cd some years ago by Paradigm Disc, that's how come we're familiar with them, but those reissues are long gone).
It consists of two side-long tracks, each around 24 minutes of hard to describe insanity. The first one starts off like some sort of krautrock meets Native American pow-wow, stoned vocal chant accompanied by harmonica blowing and slide guitar, flowing into a more murky zone of Can-like groove, with relaxed, rhythmic percolations from hand percussion, caressed by free improv piping. Then about half-way through the track, it takes a plunge into proto-isolationist drones and distortion, with backwards tape manipulations and echoing FX... later still, the throbbing, nodding pulse is adorned by more mumbled Beefheartian blues babble. By the end of the track, it's a looping phantasmagoria of voice, electronics, harmonica, like a backporch Philip Jeck jam! Ok?
Then track two begins. Even further out, in a black void... a beat starts... steady... then it quickens, slows, stops and starts again amidst a sinister swooshing swirl of disembodied voices and electronic detritus. Wow. Weird. Bad trip territory! It builds and builds, with kazoo-like sounds buzzing and blapping over a repetitive martial rhythm violently strummed or drummed on some sort of distended, elastic instrument, a bass heavy chunk-chunk-chunk drilling deep like a trepanist's tool, through your skull into your soon to be free brain. Eventually it morphs into twisted harmonica-blowing jam, hypnotic and disturbed, voices hooting and mewling and laughing and mantrically chanting... The second half of this track is total bedlam, but still utterly hypnotic.
Good grief! We have to assume the Boredoms are familiar with this record. And doubtless Kawabata Makoto would give his left arm, or even his beard, to get his Acid Mothers Temple to sound this far out.
Limited edition of 1000 copies, in a cardstock "wallet" sleeve like the label's other releases.
Washed out, hazy, dreamy, shimmery, warm, droney, otherworldly, gauzy, ethereal, all perfectly describe a microgenre we've come to love, called simply Pop Ambient. A techno subgenre, that essentially removed the beats from electronic music, leaving just the shadows, the outlines, the colors, loosed from the stricture of rhythm (for the most part), those colors and moods and textures are free to seep and bleed and drift and vaporize, into whirring soft focus streaks of blurred, almost new age-y ambience. A sound that various other music makers have definitely referenced, Jeck, Tim Hecker, the Fun Years, anyone creating haunting drone music or textured minimalism, will no doubt find themselves drifting into a certain sort of pop ambience. But it seems, that pop ambience has a certain warmth, not quite sunshine-y, but definitely a glow, the imbues the majority of that music with a dreamlike luminescence. While the other folks traffic in something much darker, and while their sound may touch on pop ambience, it remains in the realm of the black, the grey, the sonic underworld.
Weirdly enough, we do find ourselves wondering about a pop ambience that was, well, less glowing, more ominous, something darker and more sinister, that could somehow remain ambient pop, without slipping into something else, into dronemusic, or some sort of minimal noisemusic. Strange that it would come from Klimek, who is responsible for some of the dreamiest prettiest pop ambient music we've heard, but Movies Is Magic, Klimek's 'film music' record, is in fact that rare beast, a gorgeous slab of pop ambience, that seethes with tension and emotion and drama, sure it shimmers and glistens, but it also creeps and hums ominously, drones are layered and pulled taut, melodies are minor key and are wrapped around looped cycling strings, field recordings, voices, organic instruments, all woven into Klimek's constantly mutating noir soundscape.
Gorgeous and haunting, these tracks evoke everyone from Bohren, to Autechre, Philip Jeck to Pole,�Barry Adamson to Oval, this record would be a perfect fit for Kompakt if it weren't so dark, or Chain Reaction if there were some beats, instead, it exists in some strange rain soaked constant midnight nether region, the pop dialed way back, as is the ambience, this is anything but placid, or calm, this music is alive, crackling with dark energy, tense, and intense, very evocative and textural and moody. The songs are quite varied, but work perfectly together as a whole. Dark moaning horns surface here and there, Bernard Herrmann strings everywhere, the occasional skittery snare, rubbery bass, everything woven and smeared and layered, woozy and dreamlike, a few of the tracks sound all rural, a bit Morricone-ish and Western, subtly twangy with reverbed harmonica, others drift into flute flecked almost Kitaro sounding new age-y flutter, beneath a murmur of rainfall,�disembodied reverbed voices, murky percussion, and hazy looped melodies.
Here and there, the record does get all dubby, with little synth stabs, and careening not-quite beats, all wrapped in whir, and exuding a serious sonic import, sometimes sounding almost sinister, but just as often pulling back into something much more melodic and mysterious, straddling the line between lush drift and blackened beauty.
Movies Is Magic is our new late night chill out drift off soundtrack, and should certainly appeal to folks who like us maybe always fantasized about a little darkness in their ambient drift. And folks into dark drone music, black ambience, and soundtrack music, might find this the perfect gateway to the fuzzy dreamy drifty world of pop ambience.
It's about time. Dusseldorf's most famous export, the Godfathers of electronic pop music, Kraftwerk, finally see their classic albums remastered and reissued for the 21st century (although, unfortunately, not yet their EARLIEST classics, the ones with the traffic cone covers). Given the group's notoriety for demanding nothing but absolute perfection, you can safely bet that these sound AMAZING after years of tireless mixing and mastering in Kling-Klang studios. That's probably the main selling point here, as Kraftwerk was never really a "bonus material" kind of band, and there is none of that here; if it was released, it pretty much meant it was labored upon until being deemed suitable for public exposure. These reissues have also got some pretty fancy expanded artwork, with simple but bold slip covers housing the actual cds. Of course, if you don't already have these albums in some form or another, you should probably do yourself a favor and purchase every single one of them immediately.
Autobahn was originally released in 1974, and it was in most cases the band's introduction to the rest of the world with the surprise hit single of the title track, edited down significantly for airplay. It was also the point where Kraftwerk began to combine a classic pop approach with their intense Teutonic experimentation (which remains considerable here). What was seen by some people in the mid-1970s as somewhat of a novelty (which is total bullshit, but it was the '70s...), however, laid the foundation for one of the most innovative music groups to ever exist. Clocking in at almost 23 minutes, "Autobahn" may be one of the most evocative songs ever, especially considering how minimal it really is. Synthesizers give you the impression of traveling throughout Germany by car, through many different environments and observational states, as the vocal melody classically apes the Beach Boys "Fun, Fun, Fun". The song also marked the beginning of the band's reliance on vocoders and drum machines, which would from this point forward would play an integral role in defining Kraftwerk. The other songs here retain many of the sonic qualities of earlier Kraftwerk, but it's now plainly apparent where things are heading: Pop Immortality!
Oh, and a note to vinyl obsessives, these reissues will be coming out in that format next month, we're told!
