Long gone are the days when you could pigeon hole or easily predict the sound of a release on Kompakt. While they made their name with their trademark releases of minimal techno and pop ambient gems, the label has proven to be a wide ranging force in innovative electronic music of all shapes, colors and styles. We had heard previous releases by Matias Aguayo as well as with his collective Closer Musik, but we either weren't paying close enough attention or he has totally upped his game because Ay Ay Ay is by far one of the most colorful, immediate and rewarding electronic records of the year! Imagine some amazing combination of the hypnotic repetitive beats of Ricardo Villalobos fused with the more dance minded stylings of folks like Swayzek and Herbert, topped off with a nice backdrop of Aguayo's Chilean South American roots and you have all the ingredients for total party record of the year!
But what makes Ay Ay Ay so great is that it's not at all a disposable party record, instead it's immaculately crafted so it's the kind of record that satisfies whether you listen to it alone on headphones and get lost in its sonic swirlings or if you blast it out loud with good folks around as you shake your stuff.
Not to be confused with Anvil! Though, right now, maybe they'd like to be. This Bay Area metal band, is another from the '80s that had even less success than those now famous Canucks. Much less. Back in the day, Anvil Chorus never managed to get signed, and released only demos and singles, never an album - until now. It wasn't 'cause they weren't good, in fact, they were commonly known as "the Bay Area's best unsigned metal band". It was more due to mere bad luck. And maybe 'cause their music crossed too many genre lines, from NWOBHM power, to party time LA pop metal, to progressive wank, to speed metal tech. Who knows. But it's cool that they got back together, got back in the studio, and FINALLY have released their debut album, via the Rockadrome label (who've been blessing us with some awesome proto-metal reissues lately, you should recall). Anyone who digs '80s metal ought to check this out. There's certainly plenty of shred. And don't worry, most of these songs are ones demoed back in the day thus and have that "only in the '80s" authenticity to 'em, although they're newly recorded.
Criticisms? Well, Anvil Chorus do have a tendency to a bit of cheesiness, mainly due to overuse of keyboards, that's their weak spot taste-wise. And they've probably only grown in "adulthood", towards such prog-metal pitfalls, also evinced by the awful album cover. Cheesy, yeah. Still, even their cheese can be kinda enjoyable, so this is just a warning to those who can't handle a whiff of it. Their song "European" for instance, might be too poppy for some, but it's ultimately pretty good, a classy track, though we prefer it when they're killing us with the equally classy "Deadly Weapons"! Anyway, among the 12 songs here there's lots to make folks into heavy, riffy, rippin' bands like Riot, Armored Saint, and Metal Church happy... along with pleasing the Queensryche fans that their cheesier prog side indulges. So check it out, it's some Bay Area heavy metal history come back to life (they even played a show the other night!). Oh, and making amends for the cover art, the cd booklet includes lyrics, vintage photos of the band in action in the '80s, and a band history/appreciation by local metal celeb Ron Quintana.
Last year's killer Antikosmos was probably one of the best black metal records of 2008, and here we are only a year later with a brand new Arckanum, and once again, this too is poised to be one of this year's best. From its unpronouncable all p'd title (meant to be runes we think), to it's scrawled heavy metal binder cover art, to the amazing raw melodic blackness within, we'd have to agree, gonna be tough to top PPPPPPPPPPP.
Very little has changed since Antikosmos, but then why change what is already working so well, the sound is pretty polished for sure, and still a bit punky, but here maybe even more melodic and stripped down. There are still plenty of blown out black blasts, lots of twisted dissonant riffage, but there's some serious poppiness going on, as well as some surprisingly killer leads, super melodic and a bit NWOBHM, the overall vibe epic and majestic, and a bit crusty, yet even when things are black as pitch, the sound is still infused with a fair amount of melody. Not really all that raw and grim, instead super rocking and so so melodic, the vocals as always are howled and punkish which helps things from getting too clean, but the production is so slick, and these songs are so good, it seems inevitable that things would veer toward the less grim and kvlt side of the black metal spectrum.
Perhaps we're painting to un-grim a picture, PPPPPPPPPPP is still plenty black and buzzy and blasting, but there's no way to ignore how catchy and melodic and classic metal sounding much of this is, and we're not complaining, it sounds awesome, and we've been playing this over and over, just didn't want to scare off all you troo grim metalheads, cuz it would be a shame to let any sort of dopey grim metal pride get in the way of digging into a record this rad...
A pretty perfect matchup, Aidan Baker, 1/2 of doom drone duo Nadja, and avant-drone guitarist / filmmaker Sarah Lipstate aka Noveller, who both offer up some of their prettiest sounds for this collection of Colorful Disturbances.
Lipstate starts things off with a gorgeous smoldering driftscape, a sea of tinkling chiming high end melodies draped over soft swells of buzz and crunch, while within a pulsing blur holds it all together. Dreamy and divine, definitely the sort of track that could have been double or triple the length. Her second contribution is just as good, a bit more minimal, slightly glitchier and buzzier, but still serene and dreamlike, with a slightly ominous vibe, reverbed guitars are left to float in a constantly swirling cloud of sonic grit and soft focus hiss, that hiss constantly changing shapes and revealing partially obscured sounds and voices and melodies. So nice, this too could have filled up the whole side and we would have been perfectly happy.
Baker contributes a single 20 minute sidelong drift, all washed out glimmery tones, long and blurred and smeary and indistinct, creating a slow shifting layered landscape of gauzy soft focus colors, sun dappled and prismatic, warm and muted and totally lovely. Easily one of the prettiest tracks we've heard from AB for sure. Like we said, a perfect match!
Vinyl only and limited, so grab one before they disappear...
By this point people seem to have really strong feelings one way or another about Devendra Banhart, ourselves included. We've been big fans of him from his first ultra personal other worldly creations and then as he transitioned his approach into a more fleshed out sound, and we really do appreciate the twists and turns his music has taken over the years and his willingness to play with different sounds and approaches, even when not entirely successful. Perhaps especially then!
Because the thing about Banhart's music is that for every slight slip up or overly feel-good goofy song that might make it on a record (and there are a couple here) there are so many intense and heartfelt, emotional and flat out incredible songs that help balance his uniquely skewed musical vision.
Despite all the hype and hoopla that's surrounded Banhart over the years, the truth is he might just be one of the best songwriters of the last decade. What Will We Be? fits very nicely alongside his recent outings Cripple Crow and Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Mountain, with some all out rocking and even glam moments ("16th Street & Valencia Roxy Music", "Rats") as well as a handful of tropical excursions, but it's the more slow and dreamy songs that really remind us why we love this guy so much. What Will We Be? is a record that requires multiple listens, as there are golden tracks throughout, which only really seep through after multiple plays. The cd comes with a beautiful booklet with the lyrics to each songs along with Banhart's wonderful drawings.
Another weird one from The Tapeworm, a UK tape only label, who specialize in, well, it's hard to say what they specialize in. Past releases gave included tapes from Philip Jeck, Simon Fisher Turner, a recording of interviews with Derek Jarman, some amazing psych jazz from a group called the Van Patterson Quartet among other strange offerings. So considering all of those, this record from Baraclough, a London trio of abstract noisemakers, sounds right at home.
Described by the label as being made up of a "classically trained musician, a self taught musician and a non musician", the trio exist somewhere between abstract minimal drone music, and the sort of stumbling anti-folk of No Neck or Sunburned Hand, but doused in electronics and a healthy bit of Nurse With Wound style industrial noise. Simple delicate melodies and bursts of percussion, drift dreamily over a caustic sea of black buzz, roiling and crumbling in a cloud of blurred distortion, squalls of grinding electronic glitch throb and envelop hushed vocals, and splatters of minimal looped percussion, sometimes locking into an almost This Heat sounding mesmer, the sound slipping from rhythmic hypno-lurch to blown out crumbling murmur, to delicate shimmery smearscape.
Unlike much of what comes out on The Tapeworm, these guys are a going concern, with actual records on other labels, and after hearing this, odds are you're gonna want to track those down too.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!
When we first heard Baroness, we described them as Electric Wizard meets the Fucking Champs metal stoner sludge crush, which was pretty accurate, throw in some Iron Maiden guitar harmonies, some Carcass, some Jesus Lizard, and of course some Sabbath, and we were pretty much talking about our new favorite band. That metal / post rock hybrid we love, but heavy on the Sabbathy stoner sludge. And pretty much every record since followed a similar pattern, and thus we dug BIG TIME.
So before the Blue Record was even released, it started getting tons of hype, we didn't understand why, not because they didn't deserve it, but because every record was great, and they kept slipping below the radar, so why would this one be any different? Well, once we got it, and heard it, we understood exactly why.
For the most part, gone is the sludgey Southern stoner sound, and in its place an insanely catchy, super poppy prog metal, that sounds alternately like Torche with Brian May guitars or Queens Of The Stoneage mixed with Mastodon. Or something. The poppiness is so undeniable, and we love it. So much so that we were sort of shocked that the rest of the world felt the same. Cuz usually if something is weird and poppy and we get all obsessed, the mainstream barely notices, but not this time.
So yeah, Torche is the closest comparison, especially in the vocal department, enough that if we had been played this in one of those Invisible Jukebox things, we definitely would have guessed Torche, so if you ever wished Torche was less downtuned and sludgey, and more super rocking and proggy and epic and straight up poppy, then the Blue Record is definitely for you. But where Torche is pretty simple and stripped down, like a modern day metal version of Nirvana's Bleach, Baroness have much grander aspirations, setting their metallic power pop amidst all sorts of unlikely progisms, the guitars, all Queen-y as we mentioned before, are psychedelic and tangled, soaring and howling and buzzing and chugging, the band occasionally slip into haunting acoustic interludes, before launching into convoluted pop prog epics, so weird, and wonderful. Definitely their least heavy record, but it hardly matters, it seems like a fair trade, since it's also definitely their most epic and majestic and proggy and catchy and poppy and far out recording to date, and hell it's still pretty dang heavy to boot.
Want to get lost in hazy, shimmering sounds that would sound perfect in the pristine church of 4AD worship? Sounds pretty great right, well, the sounds of Julianna Barwick deliver just that. With her looped ethereal vocals she creates such hypnotizing sounds that really evoke a more tripped out Lisa Gerard (Dead Can Dance) or Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), a sound that is totally perfect for the crisp and cold days we've been experiencing as of late, each track a gorgeous soundtrack for bundled up evening strolls when you can see your breath in the air. Barwick has been crafting her own multi-layered, hazy and hypnotic sounds for several years now, in fact her self released debut, Sanguine, from over three years ago was a big favorite here in town at our local radio station KUSF and we're happy to have gotten that in as well which we'll most likely be gushing about on a future list. In fact that record came out just shortly after Grouper's wonderful debut Way Their Crept and the two definitely share a swirling and surreal sonic spirit.
It's tough to ignore talk of a 'Portishead side project', and it's even tougher to imagine what that project might sound like. Thankfully no need to wonder, it's called Beak> (and yeah, that little beak shape is part of the name), and it's a trio fronted by Portishead mastermind Geoff Barrow, but don't be expecting Portishead 2, there are some similarities, but it's mostly tone and vibe, the music is something else entirely, more krautrock, minimal, space-y, hints of Stereolab (which is basically krautrock when you think about it). Recorded live, with no overdubs, the arrangements were created using edits, so one can imagine these guys jamming out on single parts, and then later chopping them up and assembling them into songs. Which helps explain why the sound of Beak> is so hypnotic and looped and cyclical sounding. Stereolab obviously, but also Circle, Cave, a definite hypnorock / krautrock thing going on. The drumming super simple and motorik, the bass driving the whole thing, and the synths offering up the melody, usually locking into whirling swirling loops over the top. The band get into long stretches of hushed almost nothing, whispery drifts of softly pulsing drone, but invariably the shift gears and launch into another loping hypnotic dubby rhythm, and with all this talk of rhythm, you can bet there are lots of moments that reminds us of This Heat, which is NEVER a bad thing. There are vocals too, but they're minimal, and are often in the background, wordless croons, adding just another layer of texture to the proceedings. Fourtet, Tortoise, Add N To (X), Fridge, Necks, even some of the modern spacerock stuff like Wooden Shjips, that sort of endlessly looping dronerock, Beak> would definitely hit the spot if you dig any or all of that.
This record is super addictive, we threw it on when it first came in, and we ended up listening to it 3 times in a row, and ever since, we find ourselves throwing it on all the time, which says a lot. Definitely a new fave!
Utter obsession with a particular artist or style of music is, of course, something we're familiar with... and fully in favor of. In the case of the oft-praised by us Holy Mountain label, such obsession has lead to some quite amazing discoveries and reissues in the field of Japanese psychedelia, for instance, among other Holy Mountain specialties. This release, too, is the result of obsession, and it's been 10 years in the making. We remember way back, when Holy Mountain head honcho JW, before he had his label (he used to work at one of our suppliers), would rave about the vinyl-only 12"s of French "shuffletime" techno producer Fred Bigot (pronounced Bee-joe we assume). According to JW, Bigot's electronic tracks were in fact utterly psychedelic. And they were. Fuzzed out, raw and repetitive, hypnotic with their shuffle (schaffel) rhythms. We never forgot 'em, and neither did JW/Holy Mountain, who now finally presents the 4 cuts from Bigot's two 12" singles circa 1999 and 2000 on compact disc, along with 4 more tracks, one of 'em from a 2001 comp, the other 3 presumably previously unreleased. Definitely a bit of a 'dream come true' for Holy Mountain.
You may also know Bigot in his -other- guise of Electronicat, who has put out a lot of records we also like. But while Electronicat provides a playful dose of T-Rex style glam and glitter, and even rockabilly, with campy vocals and wah-wah guitars making appearances, upping the glam angle immensely, in comparison these tracks under Bigot's own name are stripped down, minimalistic, and without the more bubblegum elements. Imagine instead Pan Sonic, but with more of the synth-psych spirit of Christine 23 Onna. On the original 12" cuts, it's all about the mesmeric shuffle throb, the distorted crunch and scrunch, the almost drone-like repetition. (We like repetition. We've said it before, we'll say it again.) Definitely good headphone listening, or to be cranked LOUD on your home stereo. And then some of the tracks here, not from the 12"s, aren't even beat-oriented at all.
For starters, there's the intro sine-whine of opener "Chant", pretty abstract and clinical. Then, it's shuffle time, as that's followed by the one-two punch "Mono" and "Stereo" from Bigot's first 12", both tracks crude 8+ minute throb-a-thons, like followed by the equally effective cuts from his second 12", "Binary" and "Ternary", which adds glammy handclap sounds into the mix. Seeing as how getting those two crucial 12"s on cd is worth the price of admission alone, hitting repeat and playing those four tracks over and over again is certainly an option, but when you do continue on with the disc, there's further treats to be found. Next up, a change of pace with the void-ian atmospheres of the windily desolate "Extinction", full of spacey rumble. Then, bang, "Lr-Yz" is another monomaniacal, mesmeric cruncher in the tradition of the 12"s. Following that is "Outside", a 10 minute track suggestive of field recordings, with electronic sounds like crickets chirping, something like Ryoji Ikeda conducting a nighttime nature sounds symphony, but one that speeds up nervously if that's wasn't enough. And then, "Symmetriad" ends the disc, combining the distorted throb of the 12" cuts with the more haunted ambience of the likes of "Extinction" and "Outside". So it all kind of appropriately comes together, and for a collection of tracks not originally intended as an album, this actually adds up into one surprisingly well, a unified vision with a bit of variety. Maybe 'cause all the tracks, recorded in Paris and Berlin, were made with the following only: "Roland TR808 + Rat distortion + Waldorf filter + Sherman filter + Lexicon Jamman". We don't know... but we do like it, can't get enuff. Big ups to Holy Mountain for bringing these Bigot tracks back!! That old obsession never let go we guess, and pays off for all of us now.
Long rumored, long awaited, Bohren and Der Club Of Gore's installment in Southern UK's limited edition Latitudes series is, finally, here!! While the Latitudes series has included a disparate selection of interesting artists, including AQ faves like Circle, Shit & Shine, Grails, and now Bohren. You'd think they were asking US who they should put out! Certainly if they HAD asked us, we'd have said Bohren, we're (as you probably know) huge fans, we're still in awe of the live show they played in San Francisco a few months back, also something that we didn't ever think we'd see. The stage was in total darkness except for small lights shining from directly above each musician, one bassist, one keyboardist, and another who played keys, bass, and sax as necessary. And while it was unfortunate that there was no drummer (for some reason he couldn't travel with the band) their usual slow tempo meant that the keyboardist could "play" sampled drums fairly effectively, though doubtless it would probably have been even better had the actual drummer been there (however, one of our friends who was at the show didn't even realize there was no live drummer present, due to the darkness, and the fact that the glowing Bohren skull-head logo in the center of the stage looked like it was on a bass drum head!). Their music was so beautiful, and sooooo heavy. Literally one of the HEAVIEST performances we've ever witnessed, SO MUCH BASS it was insane. And remember, they're essentially a jazz group.
So, we like Bohren. You like Bohren (or if you haven't heard 'em, may we suggest their most recent album, Dolores?). And so we're both excited that this is here. Heck, we've been waiting for it for a while. Apparently the Latitudes folks like to get people all in a tizzy by announcing things YEARS in advance of the actual release. As a result, Bohren fans have been asking about this one, since, well back when Barack Obama was still an unknown community organizer, it seems. We had sorta given up hope of ever actually seeing it come out, assuming it was a figment of someone at Southern's overactive imagination. But then what do you know, out of the blue, with no warning, here they are. We got ALL the copies we're gonna be able to get, and good luck finding it elsewhere. So act fast if you want one.
Here's the lowdown: Like the previous Latitudes volume, from White Magic, this is an ep, just one song in fact, and while Bohren have been known to make some looooong songs, this one is "only" 10 and a half minutes in length. But of course what with Bohren's typical mesmeric glacial pace and soporific atmospheres, when "Mitleid Lady" is playing it's as if time has stopped, anyway... the bass frequencies throbbing gently, the sparse snick...snick...snick of the drummer's high hat, the dulcet liquid tones of electric piano melodically meandering... eventually the merest suggestion of a sweet whisper of smoky saxophone... ahhh the unique slo-mo "jazz" of Bohren is utterly entrancing as usual. This track was recorded back 2006 (we said it was long awaited), after their Geisterfaust record and before the more recent Dolores, and sounds like it could easily have found a place on either album. But having it here on its own disc is actually rather nice, as a "concentrated" (not really) dose of Bohren's special sound to savor.
It's also an attractive collectible artifact, in the usual die-cut, cardboard Latitudes packaging, including an insert with text in German on one side, and a curiously unexpected picture of the mostly all-bald Bohren guys on the other side - all four of them dressed in black, of course, but standing in a grassy park on a sunny day somewhere, three of them wearing shorts, two of 'em in sandals and flipflops!
LIMITED EDITION! 1000 COPIES ONLY! We got less than 100, and that's IT. And don't ask us when the also-announced 12" vinyl version is coming out, we don't know...
Finally, the third and final volume in the Japanese Heavy Rock Hits 7" series from Japanese heavy rockers Boris. Although based solely on this series of singles, one could be forgiven for thinking Boris were anything but heavy rockers. Seems like these singles were a chance for the band to stretch out and try on some different sounds for size, and the results have been pretty great actually.
Each 7" featured a different band member on the cover, and fan boys have been waiting for this one, when lead guitarist and Boris crush Wata takes center stage. Glamorous and bored, or maybe just aloof, Wata poses beneath a flurry of Stephen O'Malley's geometric abstractions on the cover, while inside, on the A side, Wata croons languidly over a simple skeletal drumbeat and washed out clean guitar strum, almost like a way more minimal stripped down sonic youth. Minor key, woozy, melancholy, the vocals front and center, while the band offer a hushed slowcore backdrop, delicate and mopey and a little bit dreamy, with a definite '90s indie rock vibe, with a little Mazzy Star mixed in, but not nearly as shoegazey, just really sad and slow and indie folky.
The flipside however finished things with a band, or more specifically, a wall of crumbling distortion, then a sheet of feedback, and then some slow plodding blissed out mope rock, with crashing drums, crooned vox, epic and mournful, another nod to the indie rock of old, but given a little Nadja / Jesu style sonic makeover. A lilting main vocal melody drifts ethereally over snarls of incendiary guitar, and plodding doomic drums, everything lysergic and staring-into-the-sun heavy. Dizzying and darkly dreamy, a sort of future heavy rock doom-ed blown out ballad. Really cool for sure, but these singles definitely have us wondering what the heck the next Boris full length is gonna sound like... can't wait to find out.
This amazing and absolutely incomparable recording of Cedric Im Brooks finally gest reissued by Astralwerks via Honest Jons. Those of you who've picked up copies of the Trojan Nyabhinghi Box Set have already gotten a taste for Mr. Brooks. Born in Kingston in 1943 Cedric Brooks had been involved in Jamaica's music scene since the early sixties, playing both clarinet and saxophone for several groups and recording some successful instrumentals for Coxsone Dodd, along with working as a session musician at Studio 1. It was two subsequent events that really sharpened Brooks' musical aesthetic though: the first was a trip to the United States where Brooks almost had the opportunity to join Sun Ra's Arkestra (the birth of his daughter back home in Jamaica thwarted this). The other was his introduction to rasta percussionist Count Ossie. Ossie & Brooks teamed up, forming the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, to produce the holy grail of reggae/nyabhinghi recordings "Grounation". After parting ways with Ossie, Brooks formed his own orchestra "Light of Saba" in 1974 and recorded several albums worth of material with them. This compilation of 18 tracks here are absolutely amazing, a truly bizarre amalgam blending roots reggae, jazz, afro-funk, soul, calypso and even disco -- all glued together with pounding nyabhinghi drumming (not to mention bass, guitar, organ, horns and flute). Those beginning to feel squeamish about such shameless genre blending fear not: this is not some half-assed world-beat record cum marketing gimmick. This is perhaps one of the best "reggae" (though it doesn't completely fit the genre) reissues we've seen through these doors in a long time! This is heavy, rough hewn, beautiful and potent. This is one of those gems that, when we play it in the store, everyone either wants or wants to know just what the hell it is and when the hell it was recorded. Timeless and crucial. Highly recommended!
It's been 5 years since the last Bunkur record, the appropriately titled Bludgeon, possibly one of the slowest, heaviest sickest doomdronedirge discs EVER. Corrupted, Esoteric, Khanate, Asva, Rigor Sardonicous, Skepticism, Fleshpress, all heavy and slow, but it always seemed like Bunkur managed to push that sound a little further. And if anything, record number 2 from these guys, titled Nullify, might have thrown down the gauntlet, creating a single, sprawling, 77 minute cloud of oozing slow motion black hate. Until Corrupted come through with their rumored triple disc single song, Nullify might just rank as the one to beat. That is if by beat, you meant create a doom record, that was impossibly slow, with instruments tuned insanely low, a sprawling skeletal song structure that is so spare and sparse it seems essentially structureless, with vocals that sound like you're vomiting up your internal organs, drums that sound like they're playing to some subterranean deathmarch, and basslines that aren't really lines at all, more like subsonic tones emanating from some bottomless pit. Cuz that's what it would take to out-doom these Dutch destroyers. But hell, why bother, better to just sit back, and let Bunkur's filthy black tide wash over you.
Slow, and epic, not really 'heavy' as much as dense, dark, deep and dismal, in fact Nullify almost sounds more ritualistic and abstract than doomy, like a heavier blacker Abruptum, lots of rumbling and groaning and howling and creeping and oozing, here and there the band do lock into something more propulsive, and by that we mean like 4 or 5 bpm, the drums offering up some chaotic fills, the bass swelling and undulating, but just as quickly whatever forward momentum is generated is dispelled and the band grinds back to a near static rumble. In a weird way, this is almost a drone record, strangely soothing in fact, a blurred smeared expanse of rumbling buzzing low end, the vocals and grinding riffage, so low and filthy and downtuned, that they just sound like more layers sound, but strap on some headphones, and it's like being sucked into hell, a harrowing sonic journey through the deepest pits of the underworld, every crushing thrum like the soul shattering footstep of some massive demon, every streak of hiss like a fiery blast of hellbreath, intense and brutal, massive and mysterious, punishing and pummeling, a gorgeously grim expanse of ultra, mega, multiple o'd, beyond funereal, kvltish hell doooooooooooom. And thus, gets our highest, or perhaps lowest, recommendation.
It's the moment that reminds us why we still love doing all the work it takes to run AQ. The moment when you put on a record by an artist you have never heard before and are immediately transported to another dimension, all senses completely heightened as you realize that you are hearing for the first time what will be sounds and songs that you will be playing over and over for years to come.
This is the moment that occurred the first time we put on this album by Caethua. We knew that the label it was on Preservation, had given us some tender and dreamy releases in the past, especially the great bliss out Japanese band Eddie Marcon, but other then that we had nothing to go on. But the moment we pressed play, that sensation hit harder than it has in so long. With its sparse and haunting arrangements and daydream inducing vocals this is one of those records that we thought could only exist in our imaginations. You know that fun 'what if' game you play to invent the perfect record. What if Machinefabriek and Jasper TX merged forces with Beach House??!! And for once one of those too good to be true imaginary concoctions has totally come to life!!!
Caethua really manage to meld so many of our favorite worlds. That feeling of being somewhere between waking and sleeping worlds, faded and melting layers of sound creating the perfect bed for the irresistible vocal delivery, the magical soft force behind Caethua, Clare Hubbard.
The Long Afternoon Of Earth is spread out over two discs, bursting at the seams with the layered and haunting elements of her sound. Like if Vincent Gallo and Mira Cook jammed together with disintegrating Chet Baker records woven into the mix. There are also songs with a more straightforward approach that evoke a modern day Karen Dalton or Shirley Collins, if teamed up with the Tenniscoats, maybe. Makes sense that Hubbard is from Maine as these would be the perfect sounds to keep you warm and safe and protected when the world around you turns so frosty and dark. Absolutely stunning!
Cindytalk on Mego? It was a shock to see that pairing. Cindytalk has been the sporadic project of Gordon Sharp with a shifting ensemble over the past two and half decades. At first, Sharp's abject post-punk took a gritty, almost industrial growling to the ethereally dark tunes of the Cocteau Twins. Sharp's voice in many ways is the masculine equivalent to Liz Fraser's, just as beautiful and haunting; and the two had paired up on a few tracks through This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins. Cindytalk's two releases in the '80s - Camoflage Heart and In This World - have been secret gems to all those who had uncovered that work, with Cindytalk only emerging a few times since. There was the impressionist Ambient piano record The Wind Is Strong and 1994's underwhelming Wappinschaw. Then, a decade of silence followed by a limited edition single from 2003 and a brilliant one-sided 10" of drone-rock beauty in 2008. So, it was hard to know what to expect with a 2009 full album from Cindytalk, especially from the digi-centric label Mego.
Here, Cindytalk is just the work of Gordon Sharp; and The Crackle Of My Soul certainly sounds like a Mego record on par with the likes of Pita, Kevin Drumm, and BJ Nilsen, as shards of digital noise are looped and phased into building compositions that glow with a very intense high-end piercing. Not quite Whitehouse territory, it's actually far more glacial and icy in tone. Nevertheless, Sharp's electronics have a way of drilling into your skull. Voice and piano occasionally creep into the mix, but not to the extent that you would hear on any of the earlier records, even the aforementioned album The Wind Is Strong. We have to admit that we didn't love this record as much as Camoflage Heart and In This World; but it's sort of a different beast, and there's a lot of very strong electro-acoustic renderings to be found here...
The return of Ukrainian black metal legends Drudkh! In the past, the Ukraine have given us Hate Forest and Nokturnal Mortum and Astrofaes and Lucifugum and so many more, but Drudkh somehow always manage to overshadow their blackened brethren, their sound transcendent and otherworldly, at once grim and frosty and black, but at the same time timeless and epic and majestic and melodic. Few black metal bands could release an all acoustic folk record, and imbue it with the same sort of intensity and emotion, but Drudkh did just that with Songs Of Grief And Solitude, a folk record that one might assume would most definitely not appeal to metalheads, but we've yet to meet a black metal freek who didn't also love that record. Definitely speaks to the band's power and originality and energy.
Something strange seems to be going on currently with Drudkh and their catalog though (or maybe with Drudkh and their old label Supernal), all of their previous records are currently out of print and unavailable, which makes the arrival of Microcosmos even more timely. Continuing on from where the brilliant Estrangement left off, the sound of Drudkh is a dizzying blend of old world folk music, melodic metal, and of course grim buzzing blackness. The record begins with a brief bit of baroque court music, some old school folk, all buzzing strings and simple percussion, Eastern melodies and warm wheezing textures, before the second song kicks in with a flurry of frenetic buzz and wildly blasting drums, the main guitar immediately unfurling a totally epic and timeless sounding melody. The band establishing in a matter of seconds that they have returned, and all other black minions must bow down or be smote. The nearly ten minute epic is packed with twists and turns, as we described Drudkh songs in a past review, an epic sonic journey, from soaring washed out melodic whir, to howled blasting fury, to woozy mid tempo grooves laced with heart rending minor key melodies, stretches of Deathspell-ish gnarled riffage, even a drifty acoustic interlude, with steel string guitars, weird bits of buzz and fragmented riffage and some scraped atonal bass, before lurching back into a blown out Godspeedian majestic black coda.
And so it goes for the whole record. Four songs, all hovering around ten minutes, the guitars intense and massive, the melodies and arrangements so unlikely but so perfect. Strip away the buzz and take away the vocals, and this would be some super dense tripped out folk flecked post rock epic, but as it is, Microcosmos is next level black metal, their naturalist vibe is totally present, the songs and sounds organic and lush, evocative of forests and fjords, of grey skies and snow covered mountains, but the magic most definitely lays in the songs, even the harshest heaviest parts are impossibly melodic, and even the pretty parts often splinter into total buzz drenched chaos. The bass is all over the place (a rarity in the realm of black metal), throbbing and pulsing, adding melodic counterpoint as often as it does texture and ambience, the vocals appropriately harsh and howled, but really, they seem to just merge with the music, a gorgeously blackened metal that easily slips from relentless blasting, to Burzumic plod, to seasick lurch, all blended into a sound that while on the surface is most definitely black metal, is ultimately a strain of blackness that could only be Drudkh.
In the past we've mentioned the bands possibly problematic politics, but recently the band issued a statement to the effect that the absence of lyrics and information, the no photos, no interviews, no website policy is purposeful, and this dearth of information is what led some folks to posit that the band espoused ideals in line with the NSBM movement, when in fact, the band claim to be apolitical, and to promote "individualism, self-improvement and estrangement from modern values." So there.
A long lost eighties artifact from UK tape label The Tapeworm, released along with three other strange and wonderful tapes, to be found elsewhere on this week's list.
E-Man is probably not a name familiar to most folks, and Geir Jenssen might not be either, but odds are, most aQ customers and drone obsessives do know Jennsen by his 'other' name, Biosphere!
But before you freak out and nab one of these expecting some sort of icy grim minimal ambience, be prepared, this was originally released in 1984, and is a whole 'nother beast. E-Man specializes in gloomy synth driven new wave, with crooned dramatic vocals, programmed electronic percussion, Joy Division-y basslines, Kraftwerk like melodies, wicked cool, but definitely of its time. Although folks who have been digging on the recent resurgence of new wave / cold wave, should for sure check this out, cuz this is the real deal, warm whirring swooshes of synthesizer, "Rockit" like rhythms, electronic drums, even some scratching, a little bit funky, but also cold and clinical, space-y here and there, with haunting snippets of found sounds, mysterious voices, but all would around the groups propulsive sound. There are some moments that hint at the Biosphere to come, a little more spacey and abstract, but even those tracks are strangely new wave-y, almost new age-y actually, and often lead right into some stiff outerspace robo-funk, usually overlaid with the above mentioned reverb drenched croon. Not at all what we expected, but we're totally digging it.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES. Bad ass Savage Pencil artwork too...
Now on vinyl, once again! England's snotty teenage first-generation punks get their due with this nice vinyl reissue of their insanely enjoyable album, The Album. Never the smartest of the punk scene (they literally were snotty little teens), the band still possessed undeniable songwriting chops, influenced by the glammy side of Bowie, the Velvet Underground, and the rest of the usual suspects. Above all, Eater are super charged and out of control fun, and the boundless enthusiasm of their work has held up surprisingly well over the years.
Here's our review of the cd reissue that came out last year:
Maybe not the most important nor most influential '77 punk band from the UK, no, but definitely one of our personal all time faves! And Eater were both one of the earliest (forming in '76, debuting with a single in March '77) and youngest (they were literally schoolboys, their drummer Dee Generate was only 13 years old!). That's pretty punk, innit? Being snotty and pissed off wasn't a problem for them. Neither was writing high energy, highly catchy tunes that usually did the dirty deed in under two minutes, tops. Gotta love the poppy punk power of tracks like "Public Toys", "Room For One", and their age-adjusted Alice Cooper cover, "Fifteen". They also covered tracks by T-Rex, David Bowie, and the Velvet Underground, always infusing 'em with their own teenaged punk 'tude. Which admittedly (and not unexpectedly, giving their age/testosterone combo) gets a little un-PC on their own "Get Raped", though that's still a catchy number too... Maybe you've heard the Sex Pistols a few too many times, but probably not Eater.
All right now. After a few unfortunate issues at the pressing plant (discovered, of course, after these beautiful, highly elaborate gatefold double lps were already on the market), we finally have the mind boggling 2009 edition of John Fahey's America. And man was it worth the wait. Originally released in 1971 as a single lp with only four songs, America wasn't heard as it was intended until 1998 when Takoma issued a cd version with all the tracks (NINE extra songs!), and even then, a few minutes had to be shaved off the song Mark 1:15 because of cd time constraints. But now we have it on vinyl, and let it be said, 4 Men With Beards have really outdone themselves with this one, offering an appropriate package (limited to a scant 3000 hand numbered copies, by the way) for Fahey at his most epic!
America definitely ranks among Fahey's most thematic albums, which is saying a lot. Even with covers of songs by Skip James and the McGee Brothers, (not to mention an amazing interpretation of the third movement from Dvorak's Symphony #8), this album presents a powerful and unique vision that is pure John Fahey, and in doing so, he takes things further than usual with a couple of massive tracks stretching into the double digits. Some real mind blowers, for sure, and you'll probably be left wondering how anyone could maintain such an amazing and disciplined command of a steel string guitar. But hey, it's John Fahey after all, and chances are you've been waiting for this one for quite some time.
The subtitle here, or perhaps it's their slogan, is "Join Our Mental Phase Sound". It's a good slogan, whatever it means, and if you wonder what "Mental Phase Sound" is, all you have to do is listen. Total Pink Floydian, Tangerine Dreamy synthesizer laden space travel from Japanese hippies with krautrock connections! The Far East Family Band, as their name definitely implies, was a '70s hippie Japanese psych/prog outfit, forerunners of the likes of Acid Mothers Temple. Once known as Far Out (they were!), they got even trippier in their Far East Family Band formation, which included future New Age artist Kitaro as a member. This album was their 2nd, originally released in 1975, and is a classic for sure (#14 in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler Top 50). It was produced by krautrock legend Klaus Schulze by the way, for extra kosmische cred!!
Nipponjin is an electronic/organic/rock ritual, a symphonic ceremonial music, effortlessly fusing the spacey synths of the German krautrock scene with authentic Eastern mysticism in a way that probably made the European hippies jealous. Some tracks are propulsive, full of electronically effected drum beats, others more mellow and meditative, with the whooshing of synths... there's ethnic instrumental twang, heavy bluesy electric guitar noodling, stately rhythms, majestic vocal choirs, and it's all quite melodic too, making for memorable music that's a prog classic album for the ages, from Japan or anywhere else in the universe. Heck the side-long title track that opens the album qualifies all by itself.
This is the first time we've seen a non-Japanese-import (and thus non-ultra-expensive) cd reissue of this, so get it while you can. It's limited to 1000 numbered copies, packaged in a cardboard "wallet" sleeve like Phoenix did for Flower Travellin Band's Satori and other reissues.
One of two new releases from the always kick ass Awesome Vistas label, run by artist, musician and aQ pal Chris Johanson.
Flower Of Flesh And Blood is the new project from Sean Kennerly, a write and musician based in New York, who was a SF scene regular back in the nineties (he fronted the late great Ponyride, remember them?), and who later went on to play guitar in pop punk combo Samiam. Flower Of Flesh And Blood finds Kennerly teaming up with Johanson and Hisham Baroocha (Black Dice, Soft Circle, etc.) for a record of dark brooding indie rock, that wouldn't be out of place next to recent Record Of The Weekers True Widow. The same sort of head nodding grooves, drawled vocals, slow builds and big hooks, the guitars fuzzy and warm, the sound definitely reminiscent of classic nineties indie rock / slowcore.
Flower Of Flesh And Blood are dark and languid, mellow and stoned, druggy and dreary, laid back and almost twangy here and there, rocking for sure but not loud or heavy. Hooks galore, but they're subtle, and lurk beneath the surface, letting the guitars buzz and chime, the bass unfurl thick and distorted tendrils of low end, the drums pound away, powerful but restrained, the songs minor key and melancholy, definitely poppy, but a more muted pop, dour and contemplative, occasionally locking into droney almost looped sounding parts, totally hypnotic and spacey. Really nice.
Packaged in a gorgeous silkscreened sleeve, with a xeroxed insert and a cd of the record to boot!
Former Ghosts is a primitive darkwave trio featuring two folks we know quite well, the teen goth chanteuse Zola Jesus and Xiu Xiu's emotionally wracked Jamie Stewart; but it's the third party who's responsible for penning all of the songs for Former Ghosts. That would be one Freddy Ruppert, who also records as brilliantly named solo project This Song Is A Mess But So Am I. Even though Zola and Jamie are the supporting cast in Former Ghosts, their unique theatricality is welcomed in Ruppert's dark cabaret of cheap synths wheezing out downer melodies. The Joy Division / early New Order axis is the most obvious influence on Ruppert's songwriting, alternating between peppy minor-chord tunes and maudlin electro-dirges; yet the production veers much closer to the John Maus ethos for warped home recordings. In fact, the track "Mother" could be straight out of New Order's Power, Corruption, and Lies, minus the lack of a Martin Hannett production in favor something much more jagged around the edges. Zola Jesus mostly keeps her vocals as backing chorales of sustained trills and ululations, but on a couple of tracks she steps forward to belt out those songs with operatic prowess. As affected and gloomy as Ruppert's monotone can be, the Zola Jesus tracks are probably the standouts on the album. Certainly one to place alongside Cold Cave, Blank Dogs, and of course Xiu Xiu and Zola Jesus. Great stuff.
BACK IN STOCK!!! Martin Franklin and Michael Northam began communicating in the early '90s, both engrossed with the realm of possibilities extant in the laboratory that was the experimental cassette culture. At the time, Northam was beginning a career of sound-art globetrotting by way of festivals, residencies, and the generosity of others, having emerged from the Austin, Texas sound community that spawned the likes of John Grzinich, Olivia Block, Rick Reed, and Seth Nehil. Martin Franklin had gone on to form the British ambient ensemble Tuu, with releases through Beyond, Hic Sunt Leones, and Amplexus. It seems that Franklin and Martin enjoyed a single three hour session back in 1991, and out of that session came the original set of recordings which made their way on to a cassette, released by Sounds For Consciousness Rape, and later onto cd by SDV Tontrager. As both the cd and the tape have been long out of print, we can't comment on the differences between the original recording and this 'recovered' remix of the original source material.
Franklin and Northam settle organic textures from metal, dirt, and wood clattering against each other and building softened drones amidst the aggregated sounds. It makes perfect sense that Northam would later work with Darren Tate in one of the final Ora recordings, as these sodden ambient passages and quietly gritty noises share plenty of similarities. Northam had also brought to the session a cassette deck rewired to generate feedback systems, and Franklin had a handheld dictaphone with static and white noise broadcasting through the hypercompressed speakers. These elements give the recordings a rough hewn edge which counterpoint Franklin's sinewy ambience and ghostly half-melodies which are evidence of the contemporary remix work. Altogether, this redux has a darkly ritualized feel of isolationist drones divining something tactile out of the void, much like one would expect from the occluded sounds of the recent Drone Records catalog.
You think Soul Jazz are good and funk, jazz and soul reissues, you should see how good they are at making books! Holy crap this thing is amazing, just based on the incredible and expansive booklets that come with all the Soul Jazz releases, it should come as no surprise that these guys can put together a pretty amazing book. Then again, how can you go wrong working with some of the coolest, most striking, and arguably most important jazz album covers EVER (well, okay 1965-1983).
We can't think of a single music obsessive we know that wouldn't flip for this book. It's huge, perfect for displaying record covers almost full size, and the covers, WOW, so creative, the design so fantastic, some just great looking, many super political, all of them AWESOME. Covers of albums by folks like Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Rashied Ali, Steve Reid and more more more!!
The only thing more fun than listening to these classic free jazz records, is looking at the covers, and since most of these you'll probably only ever get to see on cd, it's nice to have the covers big and bold to enjoy.
There's also a companion double cd, with some of the best revolutionary jazz jams ever, ones with their covers represented inside, we'll list it on the next list, but if you want one, just ask, or it should be in the In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed section at the end of this week's list.
We first discovered Ben Frost on, of all places, a dubstep comp. It definitely worked, this long brooding chunk of creeped out electronic dronemusic plopped down right between to stuttery stripped down dubbed out jams. It quickly became our favorite track on that disc, and got us to hunt down his full length, Theory Of Machines, which was just as good as that track. A strange assemblage of mysterious psych jams and minimal techno, drones and glitchy electronica, but all shot through with a mysterious darkness, that seemed to infuse every track with a bit of malevolence.
But if that record was dark and mysterious, then his new one, By The Throat, is downright terrifying. Who knew electronic music could be this harrowing, this epic and intense?! Mixing organic instruments, field recordings (lots of wolf howls and growls) and fucked up glitched out electronics, Frost has conjured up an incredible cinematic electronic dronemusic masterpiece. Sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. This record is amazing, playing out like a soundtrack to some lost-in-the-woods Italian horror film, pianos and strings, dense swells of static, the aforementioned wolves, all wound into tense soundscaped vignettes, each one rife with tension, and emotion, and a sprawling darkness.
The opening track is worth the price of admission alone, a series of slow building sonic swells, each a wall of crumbling distorted hiss, throbbing over a minimal stretch of subtle glitch and muted melody, the tones are jagged and sharp, the melodies are fragmented and minor key, bits of acoustic guitar drift over the squalls, ghostlike, while beneath, thick ominous low end rumbles and whirs. It's like a more electronic, more minimal, and much darker Godspeed.
That track segues right into "The Carpathians", where the wolves make their first appearance, howling over Bernard Hermann like strings, their growls providing seriously scary low end, the baying matched by the mournful melodies, it's easy to imagine being lost in the snow, miles away from civilization, wandering through the dark, the night filled with the howling of wolves.
The whole record really does play out like a soundtrack, each track evoking a certain mood, "O God Protect Me" is all clipped abstract rhythms and muted crystalline melody, soft glitches and distant beeps, pretty and melancholy and subtly ominous, while "Hibakusja", which starts out with a simple guitar melody and what sounds like the moan of horns, becomes the scariest track on the record, the wolves growling processed into fucked up glitched low end stutters, that original opening guitar remains, but beneath those fucked up grinding glitchy growls, totally intense, before becoming more and more staticky and abstract.
If there's not a movie, someone needs to make it NOW. The rest of the record evokes still more strange territory, skipped Jeck-like loopscapes, all glitchy and tense, the skipping records offering up snippets that on their own would be fairly haunting and mysterious, but recontextualized become something even more, thick swells of buzzing cellos and harmonized voices transformed into massive crumbling walls of sound, various melodies and elements resurfacing throughout, especially a main theme that seems to define the record, and sounds like a simple melody, but here is infused with the terror and fear of the surrounding sounds, long stretches of layered high end shimmer, more glitched out electronic minimalism, again, all rife with tension, with a cinematic weight, that makes this record sound like so much more than just a collection of songs and sounds.
Gorgeous cover art too, all reflective inks on a matte background, all images of snow and wolves and empty landscapes, the spare frostbitten white wasteland, where the seemingly imaginary events described by the sounds on By The Throat could have taken place. Intense and amazing.
This one should be a no brainer. Any one into space rock krautdrone a la Expo 70, might as well just stop reading and grab this right now.
Recorded by Expo 70's Justin Wright, and released on his Sonic Meditations label, Glacier definitely sounds like it could have been Wright under a different name, the same sort of brooding psychedelic drift, the same blissed out ambience, the same minimal blurred dronescapes, the same occasional forays into something slightly heavier and Sunn-ier, but it's actually the work of a fellow named David Williams. And don't assume that Glacier are a rip off of Expo 70, they just happen to tread the same sonic territory. Imagine the furthest reaches of space, Wright's Expo 70 is drifting aimlessly through the stars, coordinates set for the heart of some distant sun, when who should drift into view, Glacier, their trajectory an entirely different far off sun, a wholly different destination, but with a shared journey.
Glacier to our ears sounds a bit more droney, and abstract, not as heavy or space-y, instead, more contemplative, minimal and abstract, tendrils of guitar melody drift in a haze of deep low end tones, occasionally thickening into something a bit more dense and blackened, but retaining a proper amount of bliss and shimmer, the resulting overall sound is more like slowcore or shoegaze, but slowed waaaaaaaaay down, to a crawl, what once might have been a dirge, is transformed into something much more ephemeral and ethereal, chords and melodies are spread out over minutes rather than seconds, tones are allowed to ring out, and dissipate, chords sprawl spaceward, almost disappearing completely before the next one is sent in its wake. Hushed, minimal, dark and lovely, definitely essential listening for folks into the dreamier side of spacedrone, could be your new favorite late night chill out drift off soundtrack... it's fast becoming ours!
We first discovered Hjarnidaudi via the always amazing Paradigms label, but at the time we were even more excited by the fact that the man behind Hjarnidaudi was one Hlidolf, who was responsible for one of our all time favorite (and sadly now out of print) doomdronedirge records, a massive slab of slow motion spaced out sludge that was the perfect combination of SUNNO))) slow motion sludge and blissed out psychedelic space drift a la Klaus Schulze. So we were surprised to learn Hjarnidaudi was a full on band, still heavy and doomy and slow, but a band, who didn't traffic exclusively in slow motion sludge, but created glimmering shimmering doomscapes, that took the slow and low and wreathed it in fuzz and warmth and shimmer, on Paradigms' Pain:Noise:March.
And now it's 3+ years later, and we discover there's a NEW Hjarnidaudi, so we order a bunch cuz we loved the last one (made it a Record Of The Week!), and whattayaknow, we're surprised once again. The band is barely even doomy anymore it seems, instead offering up some looped, hypnotic heaviness, the guitars dense and heavy, the drums big and booming, the sound a sort of epic post metal mathiness, guitars moaning and keening, while another offers up weird high end tangles, super propulsive, downright rocking and a little proggy.
But hold off, that's only the first song, the other three tracks are definitely a lot doomier and darker, pounding and plodding, with guitars ringing out, chiming and shimmering, wreathed in crumbling distortion, woozy and washed out, but definitely dark and depressive and dreamily doomy, however, also strangely clean, the guitars more loud and effected than downtuned and distorted, some moments this actually sounds like a more blissed out less gloom pop Katatonia... and by track three the distortion becomes totally blown out and the band slips into full on metallic Jesu / Nadja territory offering up a deafening blown out coda.
Another out of left field record that just knocked our blocks off. Not sure what we were expecting, something super noisy and fucked up actually, but what we got was some totally irresistible sloppy chaotic garage power pop, that actually sort of ends up sounding a bit like noise rock guys unleashing their inner power pop demons. Before we go any further though, listen to the first sound sample, "Two Steps", we'll wait...
Man that song destroys, some of you have probably already added this to your cart, heck, that's what we would have done, there's no resisting that one, easily THE pop jam of the year, we've literally listened to that song about 50 times in the last week, so much that it wasn't until a couple days ago that we finally listened to that whole record, which thankfully revealed a whole 'nother bunch of killer pop chaos, not to mention some even more chaotic off kilter noisiness.
Let's talk about that song first, it's definitely the best song on the record, and we would gladly pay $14 for a one sided single with JUST that song, it's pretty much the most perfect pop song we've heard in forever, with wild almost cracking vocals, some incredible riffing, including a weird slippery almost slide part that gives us chills every time, sloppy drumming, and a killer tempo shift part way through that's just fucking perfect. And the hook, that song has been stuck in our head non stop since the first time we heard it.
But after you get it out of your system and listen to it 20 or 20 or 50 times, the rest of the record will reveal itself as a pretty much non stop kick ass punky power pop gem, like some eighties pop record transported through time. but on the way it got all tangled up in the slipstream with some random noise and garage rock records and emerged like, well, THIS.
"Other Side Of The Street" is a short sharp ultra distorted pop jam, with a punky frame but laced with all sorts of amazing hooky guitar melodies, "Route 18" (after the 3 minutes of near silence that is "Live Outside") is total bubblegum FM radio pop, but all twisted up and tweaked, and just like the other tracks, it's the extra guitar that turns it into something super special, adding some super rad melodic filigree. It's hard to not hear some Guided By Voices and other purveyors of lo-fi pop, but this isn't traditionally lo-fi, it doesn't sound muddy and 4-tracky and much as it just sound ramshackle and haphazard, and if there are hints of those other lo-fi rockers, these guys definitely make it their own, plus there's the weird extra noisy parts which manage to fit perfectly, not disrupting the flow at all, rather highlighting the subtle noisiness in the poppiest tracks, while hiding some serious poppery within the various layers of crunch and howl, the angular no-wave opener "Nest Of Vipers", with its sampled broken glass, fucked-with tape speed, mumbled vocals, super blown out drumming, and dreamy hushed detuned piano backward outro, "A Different Touch" is super in-the-red, the drums so distorted they sound like bursts of radio static, the guitars practically melting, but the whole thing wrapped around some killer hooks, with amazing guitar melodies, an impossibly noise drenched murk-pop blow out, and that's basically the magic of Home Blitz, the practically perfect pop is infused with noise and on the verge of total implosion, while the fucked up noise jams are infused with pop, threatening to shed the noise completely and explode into another burst of wild eyed power pop. If these guys went in a real studio and spent a fortune, it's almost possible to imagine them getting huge, but smooth out the rough edges and it just wouldn't be the same band.
Absolutely killer noisepop, and yet another record to add to our year end faves list...
A new batch of Awesome Vistas is always a cuse for celebration around here, so we're pretty thrilled to get not one, but TWO new AV jams, Flower Of Flesh And Blood, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this, the simple titled Is, which is the soundtrack music for an art exhibit by Chris Johanson, who also happens to be the Awesome Vistas head honcho.
For this project, Johanson gathered up a whole mess of kick ass guests, including Sam Coomes (Quasi), Tom Greenwood (Jackie O Motherfucker), Sara Lund (Unwound), Emil Amos (Grails), Tara Jane O'Neil, Nick Bindeman (Acre) and more, to create a gorgeous abstract drift of folky percussion, soft wheezing drones, and looped mesmer.
Two twenty minute side long tracks, the first begins with an awesome looped start stop figure, before expanding into something more free and folky and free jazzy, drums and flutes and acoustic guitars and cellos, eventually growing to a muted frenzy, like a free jazz / free folk / drum circle psych jam, think Avarus, No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Jackie O, but with a bit more of a chamber music vibe. Quite nice.
The second track is much more folky and hippy, definitely reminding us of the Finnish forest folk, with tribal rhythms, hand drums, shakers and random percussion, fluttery flutes, detuned guitars and chanted vocals, total psychedelic spaced out Wicker Man folk that slowly sprawls and then dissipates.
Gorgeous hand silkscreened sleeves with a photocopied insert, and yeah, probably limited too...
Three new songs from one man black metal band Jabladav, limited to only 100 copies, so grab one while you can.
Jabladav explores some different sounds on Cold, the opener "Coldest Last Winter" begins with just keyboards, and clean guitar before the distortion kicks in, but instead of exploding into a frenzy of black buzz, the song lopes drearily, the keyboard remaining, plinking out a sorrowful minor key melody, while the drums pound out a doomic tempo, and the guitar buzz all washed out and Striborg like. It's heavy but more sort of dreamy and ethereal, near the end things get a little more mathy and convoluted with some cool stop starts, but for the most part it's all drift and haunting and doomy.
The second track is another keyboards and guitar jam, the guitars tangled and folky, intricate and lush, the keyboards set on some strangehuman voice setting, so it sounds like a stuttering choir, and again, the 'band' kicks in, a trudging plod, harsh vokills over angular distorted chug, before things build to a full on black blast, the keyboards drifting creepily below the surface the whole time.
The final track is way more classic Jabladav, the guitars sharp and jagged and buzzy, the drums frenetic and blasting, the melody epic and haunting, with some cool stumbling, lurching gnarled arrangements and a cool black ambient outro. Rad stuff as always. A bit different, but still shot through with that same twisted Jabladav vibe.
Comes in a printed color sleeve, the 7"s are each numbered, there's an insert too, also numbered and signed and each with a little drawing, ALSO comes with a cd-r featuring the tracks from the 7", that too is hand numbered. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we got a bunch. but Jabladav stuff always blows out of here...
For this list, we don't just have one, or two, but three of the Early Blues' heaviest hitters newly reissued on vinyl from the always amazing Monk label: Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the "Mother of the Blues", Ma Rainey!!!
Of all the bluesmen from the Delta, Skip James is a true auteur. Master of the blues subgenre now known as the "Bentonia school", named for the region he hailed from in Mississippi. He's also one of the longest living, having survived through an early career and a later rediscovery. His signature style of odd guitar tunings, three finger picking and eerie falsetto vocals could make shivers run down your spine. He didn't just interpret material he invented it, influencing the likes of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and none other than Robert Johnson himself (Johnson's "Hellhound On My Trail, was derived from James "Devil Got My Women"). James didn't begin recording until the early thirties and this collection is pulled from lost Paramount 78 recordings recorded in Grafton, WI. All material is completely original including his most well-known songs such as "I'm So Glad", "Drunken Spree", "Devil Got My Woman" and "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues".
For this list, we don't just have one, or two, but three of the Early Blues' heaviest hitters newly reissued on vinyl from the always amazing Monk label: Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the "Mother of the Blues", Ma Rainey!!!
Perhaps the most well-known of the blind bluesmen and the quintessential purveyor of the Southern Gothic (it doesn't get much darker than "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", though that song is not included here!), Blind Lemon Jefferson is one of the founders of the Texas Blues, and one of the first successful solo artists. Starting his career performing in brothels and barber shops, with his unique interplay of rural and urban blues techniques, as well as his lamenting theatrical vocal style, he was able to use his songs as a means to call attention to the plight of the poor and the destitute. Though he died at an early age (freezing to death in Chicago!), he managed to record nearly 100 songs in just a few years. This collection features some of his best, including "Black Snake Moan", "Bad Luck Blues", "Broke and Hungry", and "Beggin' Back".
Nobody does heartbreaking heaviness like Sweden's Katatonia. Nobody. Every record is just the perfect blend of dour gloom pop, and crushing massive metal crush, and Night Is The New Day is no different. It's tempting to say this is the best Katatonia yet, but we really can't because they're ALL great, all practically perfect. If you have all the other ones you're obviously gonna need this one too, odds are you've been dying for it since you first found out a new one was coming. For the rest of you, if you've somehow gone this long without ever hearing Katatonia, it's definitely time to fix that.
This is Katatonia's 8th full length in a little over 15 years, originally these guys were something way more metal, but even back then, they sounded more Cure than My Dying Bride, the gloom and miserablism already seeping into their music. But once the focus shifted, their sound was perfect, and has remain virtually unchanged ever since. Dark brooding metal ballads, we've described them in the past as a doom metal Cure, or a metallized Depeche Mode, but they've become so much more. The covered a Jeff Buckley on a past record, and suddenly it wasn't that difficult to imagine what might have happened had Buckley played with a metal backup band.
Katatonia manage the impossible, balancing delicate, hushed classic rock balladry, with epic modern doom, the guitars massive, the drums pounding, the vocals lush, lots of harmonies, no screeching, it's more like Alice In Chains in the vocal department, but it suits their chugging doom ballads. This is one of those bands who are really difficult to describe, their sound definitely borrows from all over the place, but manages to be totally original, it seems like it would be too wussy for most metalheads, yet, rare is the metalhead who doesn't LOVE Katatonia, and we MEAN LOOOOOVE. Must be tied in to that weird phenomenon of most metalheads digging the Cure and Depeche Mode, and in that case, Katatonia makes way more sense, cuz while they do sound a lot like those two bands, they are also HEAVY, when they want to be. Not sure what else to say, check the sound samples, if "Forsaker" doesn't convince you, then another couple hundred words probably won't either. Deep, dark, melodic, doomy, heavy and heartfelt, and just so goddamn good.
Some of us around here have been waiting for this record for months, maybe even years actually, and we were NOT disappointed, a record of the year contender for sure.
Nice. Black Metal supergroup Krallice return with record #2, and much like the first self-titled album, Dimensional Bleedthrough is full of nonstop, dizzying musical virtuosity that will send your jaw dropping to the floor. This stuff sounds IMPOSSIBLE to play, which for most mortals, it would be. But Krallice count among its ranks avant indie-metal guitar gods Mick Barr (Crom Tech, Orthelm, Ocrilim, etc.) and Colin Marston (known usually for his bass duties in groups like Dysrhytmia and Behold the Arctopus), as well as the hot-shit drumming skills of Lev Weinstein and the burly basslines of Nick McMaster. It's cool to hear what many people would have written off as a side project really take off into new territory where the music is allowed to shine through instead of hiding behind a facade of what black metal should be. In the end, Krallice effortlessly lay waste to so much of the black metal out there these days. The complexity of these songs is pretty unbelievable, but luckily things remain very musical throughout. The songs are forceful but super melodic and catchy, and listening to Krallice is like taking off on a mind altering journey. The vocals here are great and classically black metal, and anyone familiar with Barr's high pitched shrieking days in Crom Tech might be a bit surprised to hear him passing the test with flying colors. Soundwise, Krallice adhere to the template perfected by groups like Weakling and Wolves In The Throne Room, but they definitely put their own unique spin on things. Things get a bit proggy here and there, but not in a bad or dorky way at all. This is really the sound of dudes who know their way around their instruments like few others, and they have combined their talents to deliver hands down one of the most impressive metal records this year.
NOTE: We're listing this at a special sale price of $11.98 for the next two weeks only, after which it'll go back to the regular $13.98 list price.
Another amazing lost gem from Trunk records, this time it's the soundtrack to a legendary (so we're told) nature show on the BBC called Life On Earth, from 30 years ago. Obviously we've never seen the show, but the music is magical. Mysterious and haunting, orchestral chamber music that sounds way too dark and haunting and serene to be designed to accompany shots of frogs and seals and tigers and bears, that is unless they're dying or wandering away sadly into the sunset. The music here, composed by Edward Williams is really quite lovely, but is so surprisingly dark, and melancholy, minor key, sad and sometimes otherworldly, almost almost like it would be better suited for an animated Tim Burton movie, but removed from the show, taken on its own, this music is indeed fantastic, yet still sounds like it must have been taken from some old horror film, or Italian giallo.
Lonely coronets, strummed harpsichords, creepy pizzicato melodies, muted hand drums and marimbas, Bernard Hemann-esque strings, fluttery flutes, ominous swells, booming kettle drums, singing violins, bells and chimes, lots of reverbs, clouds of gentle harp melodies, so gorgeous, but definitely has us wanting to see the show, to understand just how this music worked with shots of animals and plants, it makes nature seem quite ominous and malevolent indeed.
The record finishes off with what sounds like an actual clip from the show, whirring drones, distant drums, what sounds like reverbed Theremins, and a deep British voiceover (David Attenborough in fact!) discussing the disappearance of man. Wow.
Cool liner notes too, and photos, including the story of how Johnny Trunk tracked down the composer, and had to also track down Sir Attenborough himself.
Totally recommended!
These guys sent us an lp a long while back, and somehow we totally slept on it. Not sure why, a 12" x 12" image of a cloudy sky, the sun glinting in the background, and the words "PURE TRANSCENDENTAL BLACK METAL" writ large in big black records across the front, and inside, just what the cover promised some seriously buzzing blazing blackness. It's not surprising these guys found there way to 20 Buck Spin, a pretty good fit for sure for this NY horde.
Unlike the blissed out blackened ethereal transcendentalism of the lp, back when Liturgy was a one man bedroom black metal band, Renihilation finds Liturgy expanded to a 4 piece, and the sound is much more raw and organic, still blown out and pretty blissy, goddamn soaring and epic in fact, but it sounds more like a proper rock band, although the drumming is still inhumanly fast, and the band lock into these cool, weird, and very un-black metal sounding high end trills, that only make the sound that much more mysterious and mystical. The band claim some unlikely non-metal influences, but as you get into Renihilation, it's easy to hear that there's way more going on here than Ulver or Darkthrone worship, the band slipping into lurching, almost mathy breakdowns, incredible dynamics, that almost sounds like Harvey Milk at 78rpm, the sort of stop start, sway and lumber, that only works if the band is tight as fuck.
These songs are not super long either, but they feel majestic, and sprawling, and never ending, in a good way, the guitars are frantic, the drumming relentless, the guitars seem to exist only in the upper registers, like wild psychedelic leads transformed into some sort of blackened tremolo picking, so instead of black metal, these jams almost sound like modern classical compositions, like Arvo Part composing for black metal band, when a song ends, you feel exhausted, and drained, like at the end of a long journey, but before you can even catch your breath, the band explode into action once again. And before you know it, they're locked into another high end blast of extreme tension, no let up, no slipping into acoustic interludes, it's almost like the musical version holding your breath, soaring as high and for as long as (in)humanly possible, so when the band does pause briefly, it knocks you on your ass, of when they switch gears and get all spacious and dynamic, it nearly blows your mind.
When we first got this, we only listened to it a couple times, and thought it was pretty cool, but on repeated listens it is proving itself to be truly transcendental, and unlike almost all of the other black metal out there, and is quickly becoming a contender for black metal record of the year.
Most people know Love from their initial run in the mid to late '60s, culminating in the classic Forever Changes album. But there's much more to the story than what you will generally read about, and bandleader Arthur Lee soldiered on under the Love name with various lineups until the mid '70s. The results from Love's less popular phase are mixed, but these scrapped 1971 sessions for Columbia Records make it plain and clear: Arthur Lee still had it, at least in 1971.
Well, it must be said that most aQ staffers - ok, ALL of them except for one - were less than blown away by Love Lost, content to file it in the much maligned "blues rock" bin. Personally, I think these songs stand strongly on their own, but it does help to take things into perspective: if you saw your pioneering band torn apart by drug addiction, mental turmoil, and public indifference (among other things), you might have a case of the blues as well. With that said, calling this "blues rock" is off the mark, if you actually take the time to listen, and truthfully, it's hard to imagine a fan of Love not digging this. Sure, like most bands from the era, a heavy blues influence is there, but there's also a super charged folk vibe that had been with the band since the beginning, and many of the songs walk an interesting line between tough early '70s rock and more the introspective, melancholy numbers that had always been part of Love's agenda. Lee's voice sounds as amazing and self-aware as it always had, and his colorful lyrics are clearly the outcome of a powerful vision. It actually sounds like these sessions were fun, not agonizing, and it's refreshing hearing the band sound this lively. Not really sure why these songs have gone unreleased for almost 40 years, because Love Lost really does sound like a fully realized album, not just a collection of throw away demos. This work stands as a powerful reminder of Arthur Lee's talents and finds itself right at home within Love's untouchable legacy, but definitely don't expect another Forever Changes....
Ooh! A hyperlimited LP from Robert Lowe, better known now for his work as Lichens and with Om, better known than for being in nineties indie noise rockers 90 Day Men. Recently, those Lichens recordings have oozed a cosmic vibe of enveloping transcendence through looping vocals and shimmering guitars; and through Om, he's been instrumental in furthering the Middle Eastern dervish vibe in Om's live sets (as of this writing, it's unclear if he'll join the band in the studio). That said, it's all electronics for Lowe on this LP-only, micro-edition pressing. The first side sinks into a side-long excursion that glides along a sedate hypnotic groove of downer electronic bass pulses, which almost has a hyper stripped down Tricky-meets-Conrad Schnitzler slinkiness to the rhythm. Filter swept tonal bendings and pixie-dusted melodies float about the laid back rhythms. Chill-out music, indeed. The second side contains five shorter cuts of library music redux with spiralling arpeggiations and weird-science bloopiness that fits perfectly into the Oneohtrix Point Never / Pulse Emitter camp of electronic meditations. The titles all give you a chance to bone up on your Esperanto! Only 300 copies!
Maurizio Bianchi is one the pioneers of Italian Industrial music, transforming the psychedelic electronics of the likes of Conrad Schniztler, Cluster, Eno, Neu!, etc. into a chilling, dark theater of cancerous sounds that had become the template for the countless dark ambient / industrialists who followed. His story is a peculiar one, as he was incessantly productive throughout the late '70s and early '80s until he unexpectedly stopped in 1984. This musical cessation served to heighten the mystique around the man, as rumors and falsehoods swirled around his legacy, followed by numerous bootleg tapes and LPs of his rarities. While Bianchi has resurfaced once again with new material (some of questionable quality), this 2cd set is a collection of the classic Bianchi sound. Mectpyo Bakterium was an album originally released on LP back in 1982, and then later in 1998 through the Alga Marghen reissue campaign of his major records. The second disc is a collection of extremely rare tracks, including several that had made their way into the public domain as bootlegs.
Mectpyo Bakterium is a bleak piece of electronic expressionism, with shivering tones and slashing bursts of clinical noise meandering through minefields of grim atmospheres. As it was originally released on LP, the two main tracks of this album are each side-long excursions that mutate and fold on top of themselves, beginning at very dark, very grim launching points and ending up in an entirely different mindframe, having rotated through dour melodies, squalid noises, funeral drum machine marches, and further bleak electronics. It makes sense for this to be a worthy contemporary of TG, Cabaret Voltaire, and Whitehouse! The Mectpyo Bakterium disc also features two bonus tracks - the same featured on the 1998 cd reissue.
The second disc entitled Genocide O.T.M. culls tracks from three sources -- the Japanese bootleg Anthology 1981-1984, the acetate 7" of Genocide Of The Menses, and the Leibstandarte SS MB 2 LP. It's hard to know where that Leibstandarte SS MB track came from, as it's not credited to either of the Come Organization LPs, but the track here "Zyclombie" is a very dark, noisy construct of accreting hiss and lazer-drill droning. Bianchi in top, noise-mantra form. The tracks from the Genocide Of The Menses 7" continue in this same vein with equally impressive results. Neither of the two tracks credited as "Neuro Habitat" actually come from the album of that same name, but are woozy tape excursions with rudimentary drum machines and slow-motion noise bellowing. These tracks are pretty rough around the edges, and the sound quality could have been punched up a bit. Aside from these odd-ball cuts, the whole set is a remarkable document of just how good Bianchi had been back in the day.
We only have a handful of these which we got from Mr. Bianchi himself. It remains to be seen, if we'll be able to get more copies in!
In the beginning, Swedish black metal horde Marduk were a special breed, a sonic panzer division onslaught, that mostly consisted of locking into a riff, dropping in an insanely fast blast beat, and then letting rip, rarely veering from their course. Fast and furious and heavy. Lots of folks thought they were boring, but for us, the sound of Marduk was transcendent, mesmerizing, hypnotic, cyclical, it was trancelike, and we loved it.
The something changed, and Marduk began to morph into something new, something much less one dimensional (even though it was a great dimension), their sound began to drift more toward the avant garde side of BM, becoming more gnarled and convoluted and fucked up, where was once old school classic Swedish blackness, aligned with the Scandinavian pantheon, was now some strange modern avant black weirdness, now more in line with groups like Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist and the like, which make sense considering Funeral Mist vocalist Mortuus joined the group right around this shift.
And while we still hold the old Marduk records near and dear to our hearts, it's hard to deny the twisted beast Marduk has become, especially considering how much the BM envelope has been pushed lately, Marduk may be old guard, but they've stepped up and put most of the new guard to shame.
2007's Rom 5:12 was a totally twisted game changer, bumming out lots of old time fans, but reinvigorating the group, and turning on a whole new legion of fans enmeshed in the more progressive side of BM, which has all lead to this, easily the best Marduk record yet. Certainly the weirdest, and catchiest, the same folks who hated Rom 5:12 will probably hate this one too, unless they've finally come to their senses, for the rest of us, it's a chance to dig in to an incredibly dense and bizarre record by a band at the top of their game.
There's plenty of furious blasting blackness on Wormwood, it's just that there's so much more, and even when the band is blasting blackly, they're still twisting it all up. After a creepy intro the band explode into a frenzy of super complex convoluted thrashing, the riffs are strange, atonal, warped, the arrangement is incredible, with the band stopping and starting, lurching wildly, slipping into a doomy creep, only to launch right back into it, the sound is MASSIVE, there's bass all over the place (in a notoriously bass-less genre), Mortuus' vocals are SICK, an inhuman gurgling rasp, and the riffs amazing, wild and tangled and melodic, it's 3 minutes for Marduk, but for other bands it would be a whole record. Which leads right into the seasick lumber of "Funeral Dawn", with an almost industrial martial vibe, soaring epic and melodic, the main melody impossibly catchy, while streaks of noise swirl around the riffs, there's even a breakdown where Mortuus's sick vox are laid over a thick undulating bassline, the resulting sound is like a blackened Laibach.
"The Fleshy Void" is a 3 minute hyperblast of black intensity, still tangled and warped, but impossibly heavy and fast, giving way to the super creepy "Unclosing The Curse", all tolling bells and pulsing bass, abstract guitar chords, and hateful vokills, spare and spaced out and super ominous.
Wormwood is not inherently a 'weird record', it's not fucked up and freaky the way Furze or Necrofrost are - the weirdness here, the strange song structures, the freaked out non black parts, the fucked up samples, the drones, the doomy breakdowns, they're all seamlessly integrated into Marduk's sound, for every blast of Swedish blackness, there's some soaring melodic almost NWOBHM sounding melody, for every stretch of doomy pound, there's some gurgly bass heavy creep, the whole record is twisted, but subtly so, it's not about being weird or fucked up, it's about making a truly original piece of black art, which by its very nature IS both fucked up and weird. But the fact that's not the be all end all, keeps Wormwood from being gimmicky, instead it's a fierce and furious ultra heavy black metal record, with lots of twists and turns, which in a nutshell, means quite possible black metal record of the year for sure.
The Mayfair Set sound exactly how you would imagine a band made up of members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls would sound, AWESOME!
Equal parts gloomy retro cold wave and that reverbed sixties girl group sound, two great tastes for sure, the sound washed out and murky, the boy vocals buried beneath angular jangle guitar and simple drumming, the female vox all shimmery in the background on some tracks, way up front in the others, with the boy vox drifting off in the distance, brooding moody verses and soaring choruses, gothy cold wave basslines, lilting and sing songy jangle gives way to driving woozy gloom pop, the guitar lines are spidery and skeletal, the distorted drumming skitters and stumbles, locking into simple propulsive rhythms, holding things together, white the dueling girl / boy vocals drive most of these songs, surrounded by shimmering clouds of glitchy effects, warm whirring keyboards, the sound warm and washed out and dreamy, another one of those records that gets played like crazy every single day. No better recommendation than that! And the fact that's members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls...
A name like Megasus can only mean one thing. METAL. That's right, pounding, thrashing, ass kicking head banging metal from Providence Rhode Island, which just so happens to feature Brian from Lightning Bolt on drums. But NOT Brian Chippendale, nope, that's bass player Brian (Gibson!) pounding the skins, and hot damn, he's a pretty sick drummer for being such an insane bass player.
For those of you out there that play Rock Band or Guitar Hero, odds are you've probably heard Megasus before, one of their tracks was a huge hit on one of those games, downloaded about a million times, but for us, Megasus came out of nowhere, and proceeded to pummel us into submission!
Shredding classic style heavy metal, with a definite punk rock flavor, reminding us a bit of bands like Karp, that sort of punked up metal vibe, although with Megasus it's mostly the vocals, for the most part this is some seriously TRUE metal. Wild soaring leads, guitar harmonies, relentless drum pound, lots of chugging riffage, proggy arrangements, some stretches of doominess, the vocals a distorted howl, but for the most part this is just some seriously kick ass metal radness!
And the packaging, we talk about amazing packaging all the time, but wow, does this take the cake, an full color eye popping outer gatefold jacket, some sort of bloody winged goat, the logo and song titles embossed and stamped with gold foil, printed inner sleeve, pressed on 180 gram swirled orange and black vinyl, comes with a poster, sticker AND a patch. As well as a full album download. Phew. Also LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. We got about a dozen, might be the last we see of these.
It's been almost 2 years since we last heard from Japan's mighty Melt-Banana, our favorite purveyors of manic spastic grinding ultra complex math pop, and we were all ready to just write a generic review saying how we loved them but what else could we say, their sound hasn't changed that much, but then we threw this on and the opening track blew our fucking minds. Not sure why exactly, big buzzing bassline, all sorts of weird almost electronic sounding guitar parts, it almost sounds like a super charged sped up Deerhoof, the song soaring and epic, weirdly produced, processed, almost dance-y actually, and when the song kicks in it's just incredible, wild and catchy and frantic and heavy and so goddamn good, the sound lush and expansive, maybe like Melt-Banana doing their best Fuck Buttons or something. Whatever it is, it's just about the most delirious 2 and a half minutes we can remember.
Both the cd and the 7" are short short short, as in 5 minutes, but lots of parts and radness jammed into those 5 minutes and 3 songs. The second track is a bit more classic punked up MB, but that one too is more poppy and twisted and bouncy and electronic than we remember. The last track is another warped tangled pogo pop grind jam that RULES. Shit, maybe we've just been away from these guys (and gals) and just forgot how amazing they were. Regardless, this is just about the raddest 5 minutes we've rocked out to in forever!
One of four new releases on the always fascinating, and often perplexing UK tape label The Tapeworm. This one comes courtesy of long time aQ customer and pal, bad ass artist, and scribe for the mighty Wire, Mr. Edwin Pouncey, aka Savage Pencil, along with his partner Sharon Gal, a UK artist and broadcaster. Besides doing time together in a noisy rock outfit called Pestrepeller, the duo unleash a pretty grim din as Meltaot, whose sound is a strange assemblage of abstract guitar drones, whispered incantations, abstract percussion, all woven into a candlelit crawl through some subterranean sonic doomscape, equal parts harrowing atmosphere, noisy abstraction and blackened beauty. Imagine a more artrock Abruptum, lots of squealing feedback way off in the distance, thick chordal buzz up front, lots of space, plenty of scrapes and creaks, moans and whispers, the female vocals are feral and haunting, sometimes slipping into some sort of demonic processed chantlike vokills. We also definitely hear some Angelblood, but picked apart and stretched out into some sort of unholy soundtrack to an endless night lost in a haunted forest, pursued by some unspeakable evil. Intense, and weirdly beautiful, each side a single track, each titled a 'rite', which is precisely what these sound like, the mysterious rites of some forestkult, conjuring up all manner of sonic demoncy.
Fans of atmospheric blackness and grimnoize will for sure dig, and even people into other abstract foresty weirdness, a la Sylvester Anfang, Avarus and the like, as long as they're up for something a bit darker, could do with a wonder through these black woods.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! With a killer Savage Pencil cover illustration.
The list can get a bit frustrating, in more ways than one, but we're constantly frustrated by too many records and not enough time, which means inevitably, some badass band that we love somehow never makes it onto the list. It happened with noiserock mice-fits White Mice finally reviewed elsewhere on this list, and it happened with French black metallers Merrimack, who are on full length number three, and who are only now making it onto the list for the first time. What can we say, we do our best, and as far as Merrimack is concerned, they rule, you should definitely buy this new one, and if you dig it as much as we think you will, you should buy the other two as well.
Why you ask? Cuz there's just something about French black metal. Something special, a definite vibe, a certain sound, although Grey Rigorism sounds very modern, and very Scandinavian, which is not a bad thing at all, but don't be expecting insane gnarled blackened weirdness or fucked up freaked out damaged black metal, Merrimack are super tight, their songs are dense and grim, slipping easily from midtempo pound, to furious blast, to almost industrial sounding stop start lurch, these guys would definitely have been right at home on Moonfog, along with Khold and Satyricon and other super slick sounding buzzing black hordes.
There are some strange moments here for sure, a couple tracks where the band lock into some doomy dirge while some mysterious French sample plays over the top, and the lengthy closing track, a multi parted epic that finds the band slipping from frantic blast to loping post rock to slow lumbering doom, there's some strange female spoken word part too laced amidst the howling vokills, but for the most part, Grey Rigorism is some super tight, well produced black buzzing grimness, and we dig it.
Features members of other elite French BM hordes Ancestral Fog, Corpus Christii, Glorior Belli and Morte Incandescente, and killer artwork by Seldon Hunt...
If you're like us, then you probably first came across Michael Yonkers with the reissue of his 1968 outsider garage-punk classic Microminiature Love a few years ago. That record was a wildly forward looking piece of music that worked heavy studio experimentation into Yonkers' passionate and tense songs for a result unlike anything else. But where did this guy come from? Well, Minneapolis if you want to get all geographic. But Yonkers' musical roots, like many others from his era, were initially sewn from the fertile American garage rock scene of the mid '60s. Yonkers got his start all short haired and well dressed fronting the Mumbles, a simple and straightforward R&B combo, and these recordings from 1966 present a solid group taking cues from the Nuggets style fervor that was sweeping the nation. We're not quite sure that we detected any of the "dissonant undercurrents" the De Stijl website mentioned, maybe they're there... But this is not to slight this record at all, as Michael And The Mumbles whip up a cool set of rhythmic garage rock that is pretty much impossible to dislike. Yonkers' voice here is less frantic and emotional than on his solo discs, but it is also easy to get an idea of how he developed his own idiosyncratic approach to music making by stepping off the edge of a more traditional foundation. Perhaps it would be difficult to tell where things were going if you heard this stuff first, but this record is a delightful collection of tunes that laid the groundwork for one of the craziest and punkest things to come out of the late '60s American underground. Highly recommended, and to the non-turntable having types, this lp does come with a free download card.
The collaboration between Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia), Connie Plank (the producer of pretty much every great Krautrock record), and Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru's drummer) almost sounds too good to be true. But, the one and only recording these three produced in 1983 proves to be amazing. The albums stands as a stunning amalgamation of Kraut motorik rhythms, angular electronic percolations, and a space-funk futurism that's wholly unique to Zero Set. In the early '80s, Plank had been hired to produce the early D.A.F. recordings, beefing up their already muscular Teutonic electronics; and that steroid bloated sound is found within the tight punches of electron poly rhythms and agitated sequences of arpeggiated bleep here too. The tracks all lock around the precisely synchronized rhythms of Neumeier, who has much more of a Donald Johnson / A Certain Ratio approach a la tight punky propulsion rather than the monstrous, if languid fills of "Stone In" on Guru Guru's UFO. Moebius later bemoaned that this album got "too close to techno for comfort." Well, it's actually better for it! Even if it did get close to an electroid techno, Zero Set is both weirder and more playful than many of the electronic body music practitioners of the day. This might not be something for those of you seeking the pastoral prettiness of Harmonia's Deluxe or the Cluster & Eno album, but as an response to the Neue Deutsche Welle sounds from that time period, Zero Set stands out amazingly well. Recommended!
We couldn't be more excited that this has become available once again. We were blown away by this collection when it was first released a few years back but it became impossible to restock, until now! We finally have enough to share our love of the lesser known yet equally dazzling music Moondog made in the later years of his life. We recently listed the reissues of his early LP's from the '50s, and how remarkable that this man could have crafted such amazing creative music back then and continue to do so all the way up to his passing, four decades later!!!
The German Years documents the last two decades of Moondog's amazing and eccentric life when he was living in Germany, taken in by a family who supported him so he could devote all his time to creating music. An incredible collection of songs composed for pipe organ, string quartet, voice, chamber ensemble, piano, saxophone and more. Completely other worldly and what we would want a holy church devoted to the purity and sanctity of music to sound like.
The second disc is a recording of his last ever live performance recorded in France in 1999, just five months before he would pass away. Centered mostly on his piano pieces, the show is majestic and totally moving. The cds are packaged in a gorgeous hard cardboard package and includes a 44 page booklet of notes, photos, lyrics, interviews, essays, etc. Essential for Moondog fans, and when we really think about it if you just have a deep love of music chances are you either already love Moondog or you have yet to hear his music and once you do you will for sure be blown away!
As we've mentioned in past reviews, it gets harder and harder to know what to say about Nadja and Aidan Baker records. Not just because there are so many of them, but because they all mine similar sonic territory, and heck, they all sound fantastic. This latest limited lp release is no different.
Baker, half of the duo that is Nadja (but you knew that), also has a strange habit of re-recording old songs, which drives completists and obsessive fans up the wall. Such is the case with Belles Betes, 4 solo Aidan Baker tracks, here reimagined and performed by Nadja, which basically means tracks that tended toward the minimal and drifty, get some crunch and buzz, pretty shimmer transformed into blessed out crush. And like we mentioned above, these tracks are fantastic, different enough from the originals that they're well worth owning. Probably most of you know what to expect from Nadja at this point, but just in case, the sound here is dripping with thick crumbling distortion, washed out weary vocals, muted machinelike percussion, a pounding Godfleshian post industrial metallic shoegaze, falling somewhere between M83 and Jesu, warm, thick, lustrous, epic, but somehow simultaneously melancholy and mournful.
The standout track might be "Green And Cold", the title track from a Baker disc we sold tons of, here the song becomes a bit of marginally new wave-y slowcore, spare and spacious, moody and haunting, and maybe the creepiest and mysteriously lovely Nadja jam yet.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, packaged in a super thick book bound lp sleeve.
