Natural Yogurt Band??? So many associations come to mind of what kind of band would name themselves that, but without hearing them, you probably wouldn't guess right off jazz, funk or soul. Or if you did, you might think they were of a hippie jam band mentality and not this amazingly tight British jazz combo mining the sounds of late sixties Verve label cool jazz stalwarts like Cal Tjader, Lalo Schifrin, Gary McFarland, and Jimmy Smith. Rife with psychedelic flutes, vibes and organs, Away With Melancholy takes us through a vibrant cinematic sound world propelled by funky Latin rhythms and kaleidescopic compositions. The band isn't merely aping their influences, but extracting their key ingredients and repurposing them into something modern. El Michaels Affair and Clutchy Hopkins may be covering similar territory, but not nearly with the amazing aplomb and spot-on musicianship these guys have. And if you like those groups, the artists mentioned above, that Spiritual Jazz compilation we reviewed a while back, or anything on the Stones Throw label, you should definitely check this out! And, by the way, we've got to say something about the packaging, the metallic silver gatefold mini-LP style sleeve that this cd comes in is eye-catchingly gorgeous, adorned with delicate purple op-art spirals. We had people asking about it in the store just 'cause of the cover! Nice job, Jazzman.
This Japanese guitarist would have been much better off calling this record anything other than Improvisations #1. To be fair, these five extended pieces of drone smolder are technically improvised, but they sure as hell do not sound like the improvisations of Keiji Haino, Tetuzi Akiyama, Masayuki Takayanagi or any other giants of Japanese improv guitar bruitism. Shinobu's work recalls much more of the post-shoegazing excursions that you would get from Explosions In The Sky, Tarentel (circa From Bone To Satellite), and even some of Machinefabriek's constructions. As we mentioned, Shinobu does technically improvise each of these tracks, although it might be better stated that be records these pieces in single takes, collecting loops through his arsenal of pedals and layering them into these architecturally dense mounds of compacted fuzz, drone, and noise all blurred into a beautifully shoegazing atmosphere. The first track builds a warm enveloping haze on top of which Shinobu plops a rich piece of slide guitar work, that gives this track train-chugging-through-desert-valley-at-sunset type of cinematic scope. The second piece takes a slightly darker arc that billows with bioluminescence and distantly mechanoid pulsations. Again, Shinobu continues darker still throughout the album with the ensuing tracks, as the guitars become more spectral, more laced with shadow, and heavier on the low end frequencies. Here, you'll find more references to Troum or Aidan Baker, in terms of a darker take on the ambience. With the fourth track, Shinobu brightens everything with a guitar driven variation on the Gas / Pop Ambient sound that's very, very nice. Afterwards, the darkened murk and shadow returns on the finale, a majestically black piece of ambience. So so cold.
Experimedia has been turning up some pretty amazing artists from around the world that previously we had never heard of, and this album is certainly one of the gems in their increasingly prolific catalogue of releases. Limited to 150 copies!!!
Awesome. Simply, awesome. Phill Niblock is an artist that every musician should aspire to be. He's tirelessly composing, performing, and hosting this seminal series at his own Experimental Intermedia loft, all well into his late '70s! If you were to think of so many artists who had started to suck when they hit 30 or 40, the fact that Niblock is continuing to amaze as the elder statesman of NY Minimalism is all the more impressive. Never one to be effusive in his titles, Niblock's Touch Strings is a double disc of compositions for stringed instruments. The first disc is a 60 minute piece for electric guitar and bass, performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss (both from Band Of Susans) each restricted to only a few notes (E, F, and F#, to be specific) to coax sounds through their respective instruments with ebows. The resulting composition is an unhurried set of majestic drones, whose microtonal shifts delicately unfold over the course of the hour. Changes are definitely noticeable but only after they've happened, as Niblock's compositional genius is thoroughly hypnotizing. The second disc is broken into two pieces, both sourced from acoustic strings. The microtones from a single cello are ripped apart and layered back as a densely packed, monumental drone that buzzes, blurs, and bends for 25 minutes. The next piece applies the same strategy but to a four piece ensemble, all of whom are building harmonic intervals along a single drone arc that Niblock then reconfigured digitally after the fact. So fucking good!
Really, what needs to be said about Nirvana's Bleach? Nothing probably. But also everything. Most of the folks here probably rank Bleach as their favorite Nirvana record, and some of us might even include Bleach in our best of all time list as well (c'mon, we know you keep one too, even if it's just in your head). And listening to this again today, it's shocking out great it sounds, not at all dated, better than 90 percent of the music coming out today, and it cost like $600 to record. EVERY song here is a goddamn classic, equal parts punk rock, pop, sludge, grunge, '60s garage, everything perfect, the vocals raspy and raw, the drumming killer, the guitar parts weird and wonderful, thick and heavy and grimy and so utterly catchy. Half the bands around today wouldn't even exist if it weren't for this record, hell, the musical landscape would be WAY different if it weren't for Nirvana, sure we grew up listening to Bleach, but we can only imagine discovering this record today, it would blow your fucking mind. How could a band on their first time out create a record that would basically reinvent rock for a new generation. Odds are most folks probably have this, and some of you are probably big ol' Nirvana geeks like us and will need to buy it again, for the improved sound, the killer packaging, the bonus live show tacked on the end, but if for some crazy reason you've yet to hear this, drop everything, don't buy another record until you take this one home and immerse yourself in its utter rock genius. Listen to the sound samples, and either be reminded how good this record is, or discover your new favorite band and let your life be changed, the way ours were when we first heard this 20 years ago.
The bonus tracks are from a live show recorded in Portland back in 1990, and it sounds amazing. Admittedly, Nirvana live were a dodgy proposition, or at least Kurt was, often singing weirdly or not at all, fucking up songs on purpose, or sometimes not on purpose, but this set is wicked tight, and loud and heavy, the vocals are pretty much perfect, they do some killer covers, some rad non-Bleach songs, and a few songs that would show up on future record, but it's cool to hear with this lineup, live all rough and ragged. And yeah, the new packaging is pretty badass too, no new liner notes but tons of photos and flyers and stuff, the perfect companion to the Live At Reading set which was also just released, and which we'll probably review on the next list.
So here's a question that may not need to be answered: did Pink Floyd come up with the idea of hosting lazer shows in planetariums for Dark Side of the Moon or was it a groundswell of psychedelically minded astronomers who took up the cause independently of the band? Obviously, a planetarium would make for a fantastic venue for a psychedelically bent excursion for light and sound. Just drop a tab or pull a hit, sit back in a comfortable space surrounded by kaleidoscopic lazer effects with decent surround sound, and go for a cosmic trip. So, why not have something other than what has become a yawning standard of the planetarium soundtrack? Why not something really lysergic like Nurse With Wound?
In Melbourne, Australia, somebody's willing to explore the cosmos with something far more alien and far more challenging; thus the commission for Nurse With Wound to score a piece for the Melbourne Planetarium's Science In The Dark Series. On the whole, this is a quiet subliminal piece of music with eerie charges of electricity and echoing pools of sustained pure tones, all of which set against low hovering rumbles and deep-gasping drones. Yup, Stapleton (here working with Colin Potter and Andrew Liles) has successfully sutured together the strategies for tonal beauty from his immaculate Soliloquy To Lilith with the very special nothing music of A Missing Sense. While 95 percent of Space Music is cosmic solitude and deep-space floating for Nurse With Wound, the other 5 percent is filled with huge ruptures of exploding noise burst forth during an early interlude of the album, followed by mangled bits of alien speech. Pretty awe-inspiring as with most every Nurse With Wound record. It probably would sound pretty fucking great in a Planetarium, too!
It's on Not Not Fun, so we were sort of expecting something a bit noisier and heavier, but instead, Odd Clouds traffic in some sort of fractured stoner folk, stumbling shambolic space rock, skittery and skeletal, lysergic and lethargic, some seriously druggy weirdness.
The opening track is a rickety campfire crawl, with some almost black metal sounding vocals, growling and gurgling, beneath some scraped guitars, some simple drumming, everything detuned and melty sounding, tribal and ritualistic, almost sounds like some cool Avarus / Abruptum mashup, also sounds strangely medieval. The second track introduces horns, the guitars get more pronounced and driving, but the vibe is no less fractured and chaotic, if anything, when the horns come in, Odd Clouds begin to resemble late great Northwestern outfit Reeks And The Wrecks, whose sole record (released on tUMULt) channeled the same sort of drunken druggy sprawl.
The record dips into krautrock and space rock, but even in those moments the band tend to ramble and wander, we hear hints of No Neck and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, free and flowing and abstract, but dark and sinister, the drums usually offering up splatters of percussion instead of rhythm, everything hovering in a haze of reverb and delay, playful melodies surface here and there, often only to be swallowed whole by those creepy vox, the horns add a strange jazzy vibe once in a while, but just as often bleat and moan and just make the proceedings sound that much more haunting and otherworldly. Really really rad, a nice surprise for sure, and WAY recommended
Finally, the first proper vinyl release from mysterious Italian avant black metal horde Ovskum, presented by the just launched Obscure Origins label. Atto III is the first in an Ovskum reissue campaign that will hopefully also include a cd on Andee's tUMULt label.
Bu for now, let's just revel in the blackened musikal actions that make up this amazing collection of haunting and otherworldly blackness. We don't know all that much about Ovskum, but one thing we do know is that we fucking LOVE them. One of our favorite BM outfits for sure. For the uninitiated, this is no ordinary buzzing black metal, although it does buzz and is most definitely BM, Ovskum, conjure up some sort of midtempo, near ambient blackened plod. The guitars are huge and thick and seem to be crumbling into pieces, the drums are a midtempo trudge or a relentless martial march, the riffing is sometimes sludgy and thick, other times, angular and jangly, often both, a swirling slithering low end beneath keening upper register guitar skree and howled vocals. It's almost weird to call these guys black metal, they sound more like some super chaotic ambient noise rock, or spacey black sludge, or dreamy noise rock doom, all definitely fit... melodies are angular and obtuse, the drumming is sort of stumbly and simple, but the sound is HUGE, thick and swirling, raw and atmospheric, guitars are gnarled and convoluted, bits of melody and keening droneguitar are whispy streaks above the roiling fury below, some tracks forego the drums completely, and become these haunting abstract riffscapes, drifting and throbbing and crawling along malevolently... it's all so intense and dark and so so so good.
This deluxe vinyl version, comes in a plain black sleeve with a sticker on the front of the jacket, as well as a front cover insert, along with a massive printed booklet of original artwork from Morte404, the mysterious woman whose creepy line drawings have accompanied all the Ovskum releases. III collects all four actions from the 2006 s/t tape on Insikt as well as a track from Ovskum's split with Necrolust.
LIMITED TO 490 COPIES!!!
Absolution is another missive of blackened ambience extracted by Bay Area denizen J.Kaiser (aka Petit Mal), once again mining his trusted electro-acoustic set-up of bicycle wheel, shortwave radio, tape loops, and effects. On the first cut "Passover," Kaiser begins with a subterranean gloom, built out of an excess of reverb applied to the metallic scrapes of his bowed bike wheel and incidental noise elements which grate against this mournful bellow that loops out of his reel-to-reel tape deck. Out of this sour atmosphere, Kaiser builds a menacing slab of noise through a series of concussion bomb blasts, thrumbing static from shortwave radio, and squealing divebombs of pierced feedback. The whole piece drips with leaden reverb that further sinks this malcontent set of noise into a depressive, apocalyptic dirge. The much shorter "Other Fields" is also much prettier, although most anything would be pretty next to the ashen bleakness of "Passover." Somber piano notes hang in space against a clatter of wooden objects being randomly tossed in an abandoned warehouse with some tape manipulation in the distance of undefined captured dialogue. File somewhere between Lethe, Anenzephalia, and The New Blockaders. Super limited.
It's getting harder and harder to keep track of bands these days, considering how many have either 'pink' or 'skull' in their names, so it was inevitable that a band would finally combine both. So Pink Skull, another band mining the eighties, creating their own brand of new wave, Pink Skull's is tight and smooth and controlled, with a bit more of a house-y vibe than is usual with the new breed of retro 'wave revivalists, the beats propulsive and motorik, laced with fluttery flutes, horns, little flurries of falsetto vox, all wound into a sort of New Order / PiL space disco. Throbbing new wavey basslines, all sorts of chopped up samples and stuttery percussion, a bit psychedelic here and there, groovy, funky, definitely would sound right at home on DFA, but a bit more space-y and far out, with a few tracks getting all kosmiche, like Klaus Schulze with swooshing layers synths and crystalline melodies, mostly designed for the dancefloor for sure, but varied and interesting enough to merit some late night headphone exploration.
The covers seem to be different, with alternating titles printed on the front, also comes with two big fold out posters!
Jeepers it's been a while since we've reviewed an album by these heavynoisyspasticartpunkrock dudes from Nebraska, and we almost neglected to list this new one, but thought we should since there's bound to be a few AQ customers who groove to Racebannon's weird brand of manic, maybe-metallic mayhem, one part Melvins, one part Dillinger Escape Plan, one part anything on Skin Graft or Toyo (RIP).
Sounds like: screaming sneering vox, jagged guitar distortion, wiseass brutality... When you're in the mood for it, great! When yr not, well, the 22 separate, entirely silent 7 second tracks that come between track 10 and 33 will be among your faves here.
If on the other had you want even more of Racebannon's earhole abuse, keep an eye out for their next release, a 12" entitled Merzbannon, which is apparently one of their previous albums "remixed" by you-know-who.
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!!!
Yes, Mother of the Blues! Ma Rainey, one of the very first blues divas, already had a 20 year career under her belt, before she made her recording debut in 1923. Legend has it that she gave Bessie Smith singing lessons as she toured the South with her performing husband Pa Rainey as "Rainy and Rainey, Assassinators of The Blues". Hailing from Georgia, Rainy had a wide repertoire of blues, pop and minstrel songs, but her tough and heavy vocal delivery set her apart from the more cabaret-focused female performers. She was often paired with horn and piano jazz bands, but she also performed with guitar duos and southern jug bands too, often performing with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson and Coleman Hawkins. This collection covers some of her earliest material recorded in Chicago for the Paramount label from 1923-1924. Though her career lasted a mere six years, she recorded over 100 songs, many of them classics like "C.C. Rider" and "Bo-Weavil Blues" (included here). The lady knew how to have a good time!
Newly Reissued on Vinyl!
Hot stuff! The liner notes for this soundtrack suggest that the movie, which paired the ultra sexy Marianne Faithfull with the equally irresistible Alain Delon, fell "somewhere between fetish and fantasy" and we'd venture to say that this soundtrack does too. Sooo perfectly '60s - bringing together the grand orchestra and the rock band! There's the expressive horns that frolic, chuckle, taunt and weep... the glorious strings and woodwinds that sweep you around a dancefloor or along an open road... oh and let's not forget the funky noodly electric guitars and keyboards. Now, punctuated the proceedings with some thunderous timpani drums, some enchanting Cleo Laine and Mireille Mathieu vocals and yes, some ambient sounds from the film itself like the roar of a motorcycle! Super sexy and stylin'. If you dig hip '60s flicks, this soundtrack and the movie is totally for you.
A few years back, bassist Zak Sally decided to leave the band Low, to pursue his true loves, printing and book making, and thus La Mano was born, an incredible publishing / print house run by Sally, with some amazing books, many made by hand, a few of which we've had for sale at aQuarius. But it was inevitable, that he'd feel the itch again, to play music, and so Sally recorded his own record, played all the instruments, and then printed and assembled the super cool covers by hand at La Mano, total DIY all the way, which is only made cooler by how good this record is.
The sound is a rough and raw amalgamation of all the rad nineties rock we (and probably Sally) grew up on, specifically Rex, Red Red Meat, Codeine, and yeah, even Low, there's a definite twang too, that makes much of this sound a bit like a heavier Calexico, but Sally's voice is a dead ringer for Red Red Meat's Tim Rituli, so the less rocking, more dark and brooding tracks here definitely sound a lot like Red Red Meat.
But this record is all over the place, with blown out drum machines, distorted riffs, dreamy acoustic guitars, vocals that go from raspy howl to hushed croon, wheezing keyboards, opener "St(R)Utter" is killer, with super distorted chugging guitars, pounding programmed drums, swirling glitchy effects, and moody impassioned vox, "How I Did What I Did When I Did It" is a stripped down acoustic stunner, with really gorgeous multitracked vocals, a gorgeous main melody, and some wild psychedelic guitar, the title track too is acoustic and intimate, but underpinned by swirling buzzing weirdness way off in the background, and of course record closer, the awesomely titled "Corpsegrinder!", begins all acoustic, with distorted vocals, and strange muted percussion, all moody and meandery, before building to a full on, emotional, soaring indie rock ballad.
Definitely for fans of any of the aforementioned bands, or just cool homebrewed DIY indie rock.
And again speaking of DIY, the packaging is amazing, printed on thick textured paper, the front cove image glued to the booklet, same with the little 'band' photo on the back, the insert with the track listing is oversized, houses the disc itself, and has a tab sticking out, signed by Sally and hand numbered, LIMITED TO 900 COPIES!
If we picked our Records Of The Week based on how likely they were to inspire massive bouts of head banging and air guitaring (and come to think of it, why the heck don't we?) then this new album from San Francisco's Saviours would easily be the Record Of The Week this week. And maybe next week too, and again and again for some weeks to come, since we don't know who'd want to mess with 'em, they might be tough to dethrone. Do you feel lucky, punk? they'd be asking all future pretenders to Record Of The Week status. Seriously, maybe the only reason we just made this a highlight on our list instead is that while Saviours are so good at what they do, what they do is perhaps a bit more circumscribed than the sort of metal we would make a Record Of The Week (such as the more eccentric likes of The Lord Weird Slough Feg's Ape Uprising a while back... though we'd definitely imagine any fan of that band would dig a lot of what's happenin' on this Saviours platter). But if you're in the mood for ragin' METAL and nothin' but, have we got a record for you!
Saviours, whom most metal inclined AQ customers already know we hope, are punkish proponents of adrenaline fuelled, NWOBHM lovin', thrash infected, uber metal up your ass gallop. Punkish maybe only 'cause they ooze attitude, also in part from the hoarse and shouty nature of the vocals (which we dig more on this album than in the past it must be said). As we have come to expect, then, Accelerated Living is in large part the sound of triumphant twin axes rampaging together, wet and red with poseurs' blood, lashing out left and right with slash and burn soloing. There's of course plenty of crushing low end heaviness and dominating battery propelling things along at a breakneck pace. But number one in our book are the guitars, dealing out heroic harmonies and rambunctious riffery. Oh yeah, this has got riffs, good ones. Riffs piling upon riffs. As much as we liked the Skeletonwitch album reviewed last time, THIS is way catchier and more memorable (maybe 'cause it lacks the more modern and monotonous black/death aspect, going only for the thrash/punk and trad '80s metal thing). We're even ready to sing along with the vocals, dammit! This is the type of album where it's tough to pick which tracks to make sound samples of for our review, 'cause they're almost all standouts. We kept thinking, ok, this one, then we'd listen to the next track, and be like, this one too, and on and on through the record. Of course, in the end that meant we could pick any 3 random tracks to sample and that'd be fine, let's just that sample making out of the way so we can put the album on again from the beginning, loud, and bang our heads!!
Our appetite for this rad, rippin' release was whetted by the limited edition trilogy of 7"s that preceded it, featuring spirited covers of Saxon and Judas Priest as well as demo versions of some of Accelerated Living's songs. They sound even better here, the album produced by Phil Manley (of Trans Am, The Fucking Champs, etc.). Recommended, if you couldn't tell.
FYI vinyl of this is forthcoming, not out yet though, we should have the LP version later in November.
When we first heard / heard about Shit And Shine, a mysterious noise rock collective from the UK, they definitely seemed custom made for aQ, multiple drummers, multiple bass players, someone playing lawnmower, a sound equal parts vintage Butthole Surfers, classic Hawkwind, and modern kraut-psych-drone-rock a la Circle and Pharaoh Overlord and Cave and the like, not to mention the garish, sometimes offensive album, art, the hilarious and usually offensive song titles, we were sold, smitten, totally obsessed. And thankfully, in the several years since that very first 12", very little has changed, almost all of the aforementioned essentials are still part and parcel of the Shit And Shine experience (minus the lawnmowers, but then the more we've come to understand these jokers, the more we realize that probably a lot of the 'facts' circulating about S&S is total bullshit, so odds are there never was any lawnmowers, sigh), and if anything, they've managed the impossible, getting tighter and more polished, more rocking, with better and somewhat proper 'songs', while simultaneously getting more and more fucked up and far out, taking super minimal elements and combining them into something massive and bewitching and baffling and heavy as fuck, but sounding literally unlike anything we've ever heard. Sure there are elements of plenty of stuff we love, but the way these guys twist those elements and cram them into whatever shape THIS is, just blows our minds, and eardrums.
So yeah, garish pink on white cover, masked lady with one of her breasts out on the front, a weird long necked headless super hero lady on the back, inside an awesome scary photo of two little girls, long hair obscuring their faces, standing hand in hand in front of a massive wall of amps, and song titles: "Have You Really Thought About Your Presentation?", "Goodbye And Good Gardening", "Girls Against Shit", "20 Years Of Caring For The Nations Eyes", "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", "I'm Making My Lunch", " People Like You... REALLY!" and on and on, but none of that would mean shit if there wasn't a head spinning gut churning din to back it up, and holy shit do these guys bring the noise this time around.
The opening track, "Have Your Really Thought About Your Presentation" is equal parts Brainbombs and last list's Record Of The Weekers Rusted Shut, but with a little bit of krautish hypnorock mixed in, so what you get is a crushing, super distorted mega main RIFF, a pounding mesmerizing drum beat, everything super hot and blown out and in the red, looped and locked and pounding away over and over and over and over, but with some weird stuff going on, buried vocals, strange bits of glitch and crunch, and the weirdest part of all, seems impossible to play, but every few measures, it sounds like the band skips a beat, almost like the record skips, but it's super subtle, like a weird stutter step, that just makes it all the more weird, but no less trancelike and heavy, and it only gets weirder from there on out.
All the songs here are based on rhythms, which comes with the territory when you have multiple drummers, the second track begins all skittery, an almost drum machine sounding shuffle, which slips into a looped dubbed out pound, while all around the rhythms is buffeted by swirling FX, jagged shards of jangle guitar, and super distorted wild over-saturated leads and weird voices buried in the mix. The next track explodes in a tangle of twisted string buzz and fractured electronics, before those sounds coalesce into a crazy noise drenched rock racket, rife with angular guitars and layer upon layer of drones and voices and feedback and sonic chaos. "USA / Mexico" is some Buttholes gone black metal weirdness, super murky muddy riffage, pounding blast beats, start stop rhythms, bizarre vokills and crazy electronics all over the place.
The crushing stop start chug of "The Cusp Of Innocence, Prettily", almost makes the record for us, with a killer main riff, and an increasingly distorted guitar tone, until a sample of some cheesy European sounding folk song comes in, and like magic, the crunch and chug and pound lock in and fit perfectly with that lilting little ditty, turning it into something nasty and scary and AWESOME. It's only a second, but it's sooooo good.
The abstract dub of the title track, the main rhythm made out of what sounds like someone writing on a chalkboard, some super effected tripped out dubby bursts, random spoken words, thick sheets of warm washed out guitars, until the track gets all Circle-y, but filtered through some fractured nineties industrial, like Pharaoh Overlord jamming Meat Beat Manifesto, but with strangled metal guitars and vrooming motorcycle sounds. There's some dance-y almost house sounding throb and pulse, but it's butted up right against a twisted angular noise rock / electro mashup, that is so distorted it's dabbling in Merzbow territory.
The other looooong track "Roberts Church Problem" sounds like it was recorded live, ad thus sounds like vintage S&S in full on unhinged Buttholes mode, multiple pounding drummers, wall of buzz, fuzzed out heaviness, repetitive and looped and seemingly never ending (we wish!). "Friseur Nelson is another good one, all very Circle, distorted and murky, a killer tribal rhythm, crumbling fuzz bass, and a muted chugging low end, some weird haunting chiming minor key melodies, another one that could have been stretched out to the end of the record and we would have been perfectly happy.
We could go on and on and on (even more than we already have), but why bother? Every song here rules, they're all super strange and heavy and hooky and groovy and noisy, and somehow, for being so disparate, they all manage to sound like part of a proper record. Well, certainly not a PROPER record, but you know what we mean. And while the rest of the songs are just as tripped out, and what-the-fuck and holy shit! as the ones we already described, odds are by now you probably got the feel for whether this is your cup of blown out rhythmic heaviness or not.
The sound of Shit And Shine is like some constantly twisting and transforming, bloody and mangled wreckage, equal parts This Heat, Aluk Todolo, Geronimo, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Brainbombs, Merzbow, Terminal Cheesecake, Strangulated Beatoffs, Faust, Laddio Bollocko, all pulled apart and reassembled into some damaged Frankenhooker noiserock drum circle spacejam. And odds are if you like any or all of those bands, you're gonna LOVE this...
Bay area black metal masters Von were responsible for two of the most important USBM documents ever, the Satanic Blood and Blood Angel demos, considered by many to be the first US black metal record(s), and to this day, those records continue to inspire a legion of musical hordes, who strive to emulate that furious idiosyncratic raw that few can reproduce. What few people know, is that right after the release of those demos, the members of Von shifted their focus to another project, with a way different sound and vibe, called Sixx, which was anything but black metal, instead a dark, creepy, brooding, gothic deathrock, think Bauhaus, Christian Death, Specimen, all minor key spidery guitars, swirling dark ambience, pounding new wave drums, and of course, super dramatic crooned vocals.
It seems almost prescient, considering that this sound is enjoying a pretty serious resurgence these days: past Record Of The Weekers Soror Dolorosa, Hateful Abandon, Factums, Dial M For Murder, Cold Cave, Crystal Stilts, etc. But this demo, recorded in 1991, was as mentioned above, recorded hot on the heels of two of the most grim and raw, blasting black metal records ever! And while it may not directly inform the actual sound, it does speak to what a strange and special record the Sixx demo was and is. Chiming guitars and krauty rhythms, lots of reverb and delay, a dark brooding ambience, we hear lots of classic goth and darkwave and new wave, Kommunity FK, Human Drama, Tones On Tail, and the more we listen to it, the more the link between Sixx and Von crystallizes, both bands trafficked in simple stripped down songs, most with only one or two parts, vocals repetitive and mantric, in fact, in some ways, Sixx almost sounds like Von with all the distortion removed, right down to those classic Von goaty grunts. That said, just 'cause you like Von, doesn't necessarily mean you'll like Sixx, but if you dig that sound, and any of the above mentioned bands, then Sixx's Sister Devil might just be your lost reissue / rediscovered gem of the year.
C'mon, it's SLAYER!!! Does this even need a review. What if we said it was the heaviest and maybe best Slayer record in ages? There's never really been a -terrible- Slayer record really, there have been a few missteps, a stinker here and there definitely, and there was that one record that had rapping on it, oof, but for the most part Slayer have always ruled, and continue to reign supreme (and in blood!), and World Painted Blood definitely finds them sounding the best they have in a decade. The songs here are fierce and heavy and complex, catchy in that way only Slayer can pull off, wild squiggly leads, killer riffing, incredible drumming of course, and seriously some of the best Slayer songs in a while. The opening / main riff of "Psychopathy Red" sounds like it could have come straight off South Of Heaven, the title track is another killer, total classic Slayer until about halfway through when the band slips into a crushing half time solo laced chug driven breakdown, "Snuff" explodes right out of the gate with a wild frenzied solo, which you rarely hear, the first 40 seconds are ALL SOLO, fuck yeah! "Beauty Through Order" is a chuggy dirge, with some insane drumming, a wicked hook (like "Dead Skin Mask"), and a weirdly proggy arrangement. We could go on, track by track, not a bad one in the bunch, which definitely hasn't happened in several Slayer records, and is well worth celebrating by blasting this as loud as you can and playing it over and over and over.
Bad ass artwork too, really grim and creepy, almost like black metal art, a blood stain bone adorned booklet, with strange diagrams inside with the lyrics and photos, and a thick red plastic transparency in front of the booklet, making the whole thing look blood soaked!
Some awesomely sunshine-y jangle pop from right here in SF, Sonny & The Sunsets, fronted by local luminary Sonny Smith, who for his debut was joined by a who's who of local rockers, including Kelly Stoltz, John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees, Shayde Sartin of the Fresh & Onlys, Flying Canyon and Kelly Stoltz's band and Tim Cohen (Fresh & Onlys, 3 Leafs, Amocoma!). The label compares S&TS to Jonathan Richman, Michael Hurley, Velvet Underground, the Holy Modal Rounders, which definitely all apply, but there's plenty of Beach Boys going on too.
From brooding moody lope, to shimmery doo wop flecked surf rock to stripped down classic power pop, to fifties style balladry, to twangy back porch folk the songs are simple and heartfelt, sometimes intimate and hushed, other times subtly silly, even a bit more rocking now and again, but always catchy, melodic and cool.
Another mysterious release from upstart UK tape label The Tapeworm, one of FOUR new releases this time around (all reviewed on this week's list). So who are Souls On Board? Well, like lots of the stuff The Tapeworm releases, it's really hard to tell, the recordings sound live, plenty of crowd sounds, shuffling feet, room noise, tape hiss, according to the minimal liner notes, the sounds were "recorded in Tangiers, Mallorca, London, Lisbon, Lanzarote and other unknown locations." Guests include Wire guitarist Bruce Gilbert, as well as Northwestern noisenik Daniel Menche, each contributing something subtle to the Souls' smoldering buzz drone minimalism. Hushed barely there static, deep pulsing swells, smears of gristly hiss, bumps and clunks and clanks smoothed out into rugged textures, thick and layered and dense, and quite mesmerizing. With a vibe and sound that recalls the antique obfuscations of Philip Jeck, or the warm pixelated sonic Gauze of Tim Hecker, but way more abstract, but that's really only the first lengthy track. After that, there's some intercepted conversations, some intense high end tones, some strange abstract field recordings, but soon those too give way to more of that washed out creepiness, peppered with voices, strange electronic glitches, and plenty of soft focus noisiness.
The flipside offers up some more dark minimal throb and pulse and buzz, beginning as a super hushed throb, laced with found sounds, and a patina of static, before getting all rhythmic, then noisy, a sort of Chain Reaction / Pan Sonic / Wolf Eyes mash up. Dark and heavy and haunting and droney and a little bit noisy, quite cool for sure.
LIMITED TO ONLY 250 COPIES!!!!
They're called Speedwolf. Their demo tape is called Bark At The Poon. They have song titles like "Time To Annihilate", "DeathRipper" and "I Am The Demon". The inside cover features a pants down drummer, wearing a wolf headdress, on the can, rocking out. They're obsessed with football, their hometown the Denver Broncos (they not only thank John Elway, but they named one side John, the other Elway). The cover features a rad high school binder drawing of a crouched wolf in front of the full moon. Sounds goofy, and maybe it is a bit, but fuck do these guys slay. Or shred. Slay AND shred. Full on thrashing metallic madness, with a vocalist who sounds a bit like Lemmy, and with super catchy classic sounding thrash jams, the first of which sounds a little like aQ favorite Young Ones faux metal heroes Bad News fronted by Lemmy, but way heavier. The guitars chug and churn, the drums blast relentlessly, flurries of double kick laid beneath , the songs shift from full bore neck snapping frenzy, to loping hooky groove, to pounding almost doom, laced with some creepy samples, some killer riffs, and plenty of rad licks. Definitely on the punker side of thrash, with the vocals and some of the hooks reminding us of a way more metal Danzig, which is definitely not a bad thing. "I Am The Demon" is THE jam here, with its killer Danziggy chorus, its super catchy guitar harmonies and insane drum breakdown (complete with wolf howl at the end), these guys kick so much ass, heavy and hooky is a pretty unbeatable combo. If you're hip to the whole modern retro thrash revival, these guys will definitely hit the spot, and if there's any justice, they'll end up on some huge label rocking stadiums with dressing rooms overflowing with coke and booze and groupies, cuz this shit is so much better than 90 percent of the new thrash we've heard...
Way recommended. LIMITED TO 200, each one hand numbered.
One more track from our new favorite retro thrashers, Denver's Speedwolf, whose killer demo tape is reviewed elsewhere on this list, which you should grab immediately before they're gone. Think classic thrash, but with some Danzig mixed in, as well as some Bad News (really!), hooky and heavy and pounding and frantic, and so fucking killer. Bad ass riffs, crushing drumming, throat shredding vox, and hooks all over the place. These guys should be HUGE.
Speedwolf share this single with long running rockers The Hookers, who we'd only heard once or twice before, but who prove to be a pretty epic match for the 'Wolf. We remembered them being more punk rock, and while this is till plenty punky, it's got a serious NWOBHM vibe. A little Iron Maiden, a little Venom, wild feral vocals, killer riffs, rad harmony guitars, and hooks that slay. Definitely gonna have to give these guys another chance and track down some of their full lengths.
Both sides rock AND rule, anyone into classic sounding heaviness NEEDS this (and the Speedwolf tape) BAD!
Super cool cover art, and limited of course, ONLY 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered...
Over 30 years, Steven Stapleton has worked with countless musicians, miscreants, and madmen in the brilliantly surreal Nurse With Wound, and occasionally he's stepped beyond Nurse to engage in fully collaborative projects. His long-standing friendship with Current 93's David Tibet brings the most prolific non-Nurse collaborations (both with Current 93 and as Stapleton / Tibet pairings); but in 1992, a curious one-off project between Stapleton and Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus, ex-Death In June) was released. The Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish is certainly not a Nurse With Wound record, but it's also not a Sol Invictus record. The album finds itself in one of those unique locations that really exists on its own, but also manages to perfectly hybridize the aesthetics of both artists.
It's unfortunate that we've not posted much on Tony Wakeford, and for those not aware of his work, here's the brief synopsis. After working with Douglas Pearce in the anarcho-punk trio Crisis and later forming Death In June, Tony Wakeford's personal aesthetic took up a very dark, occultish take on British folk, even darker and more malcontent than those apocalyptic recombinations of Current 93. His vocal style was never terribly polished, with his mumbling delivery and blue-collar brogue probably serving the punk snarl of Crisis better than the stoically minimal arrangements of Sol Invictus. While some of the Sol Invictus records could be pretty painful to listen to, a few are downright classics, Trees In Winter and Against The Modern World being the two strongest.
We seem to recall Stapleton quipping somewhere that he felt Tony Wakeford's music was too po-faced and that his collaborative project was his own way of subverting Wakeford's agenda. The two genuinely seemed to enjoy each other's company, as the liner notes from both artists can attest; but one has to wonder if the flipside was true as well that Wakeford felt Stapleton's collages were too silly from time to time.
The atmosphere of the album is somber from the onset, with slashing drones not dissimilar to the Nurse album Soliloquy For Lilith, but situated into a gentle melody surrounded by gasping noises and eventually giving way to melancholy piano chords bounce off of oscillating drones. These collages of semi-melodic drones continue until a frenzied noise burst gives way to a quick interlude of Perez Prado inspired mambo shimmy. This leads to the albums centerpiece: a song-based diptych of "Lucifer Before Sunrise" and "Walk The White Ghost" (a haunting remix of the former), both of which center upon an archetypal Wakeford song of grim folk tunes that Stapleton twists to their profound benefit. The album concludes with an dubbed collage of spectral noises juxtaposed with more of that mambo grooviness that could only come from Stapleton.
For the reissue of the Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish, there's a bonus disc with material unused from the original album, plus a series of remixes from irr. app. (ext.), Andrew Liles, and Brian Conniffe.
Very nice to have this record in stock again!
What more can we say about Striborg that we haven't already? The most consistently brilliant and baffling purveyor of bizarre and ultra personal depressive black metal we know of, every record is drenched in otherworldly buzz, super evocative and atmospheric, harrowing and haunting, as gorgeous and strangely beautiful as it is black and grim. This will be about the 20th Striborg record we've reviewed and that's not nearly all of them.
But everything we've heard from Sin Nanna, the man behind Striborg, has totally hit the spot, a sound that is so unique in a genre that seems to breed sameness, Striborg is as much a soundscaper, a noise maker, a sonic alchemist, as his is a corpse painted grimlord, in fact maybe even moreso. The songs are hypnotic and repetitive and mantra like, the guitars locked into cyclical loops, wreathed in layers of texture, tape hiss, guitar buzz, wheezing synths, the drums almost an afterthought, a rhythmic skeletal system to keep the tracks from drifting off like black clouds of warm buzz. The vocals raspy and demonic, probably the most black metal element of Striborg's sound, but set amidst dreary doomy loveliness, buried beneath soaring streaks of buzz, of swirling soundscapes of lo-fi keyboards and angular twisted guitar melodies, the mood and the vibe not afterthoughts, but elements that infuse every sound, ever song, with some strange Tasmanian forest magic, which is definitely part of what sets Striborg apart from the black metal pack.
If you're like us, you can never have enough Striborg. Don't believe us? Read through the tons of other gushing reviews, and you'll maybe begin to understand why we, and lots of you, are so obsessed with this mysterious one man band. And if you've yet to take the plunge, this is as good a place as any. Needless to say, even though we did and great length, some of the most special, and uniquely twisted doom drenched atmospheric and depressive black metal you'll ever hear.
Back in the old days, when space rock heavies SubArachnoid Space called SF home, we sort of took them for granted, they played all the time, and opened for pretty much every cool band that came to town, so without trying, it was easy to end up seeing them play every week or two. But then two things happened. They moved away, so suddenly they weren't ever playing around town, and second, and maybe more importantly, they started to get heavier, and more fucked up, and way more metal, which made us want to see them so we could check out the new, more heavy SubSpace.
But we've been keeping tabs on them through recordings, 2005's The Red Veil was the last one we reviewed, and even back then, we were already talking about them appealing to fans of Kinski and Yeti and Tarantula Hawk, and if anything in the 3 years since, they've gotten way spacier and way heavier, and this is the proof, Eight Bells, released on weirdo heavy label Crucial Blast, and it's a pretty good fit, 5 songs, the shortest a little over 5 minutes, the longest well over 13, every one a tripped out Hawkwinded blow out, effects drenched and psychedelic, propulsive and super rocking, epic and intense, the guitars thick and distorted, the arrangements pretty complex and intricate for space rock, none of that jam at the same tempo for 10 minutes (not that there's anything wrong with that) but it definitely keeps things interesting, and in fact, if we had to classify the new SubSpace, we'd probably call it metallic space prog, which is obviously a good thing.
"Hunter Seeker" starts off all eighties Big Country style, with a cool effected stuttery guitar part, before the rest of the band launches into a woozy doomy dirge, and over the course of the next 12 minutes, flits from spaced out dreamy ambience, to chugging almost metal, to soaring Godspeed like drama, to full on noise rock. The last three tracks find the band slipping from droney drift to dense psychedelic blowout to pounding space/math rock and back again, culminating in the super frenzied explosive last couple minutes that has us imagining how good this stuff must sound live these days.
Produced by Stephen Ray Lobdell (Faust, Davis Redford Triad), who's now a SubArachoid member weirdly enough! And it boasts cool Stephen Kasner cover art...
The first thing we thought when we threw this on, was, man, it's gonna be pretty tough to top Domkirke. The last SUNNO))) release, vinyl only, found the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley recording their low end Earth worshipping drone symphonies in an actual cathedral, incorporating the cathedral's church organ. Hard to imagine anything heavier.
For Monoliths and Dimensions, the duo drafted in all sorts of extra help. The usual suspects sure, Attila Csihar on vocals, guitarist Oren Ambarchi, but also, a veritable orchestra, French horns, violas, piano, hydrophone, English Horn, Conch Shell, double bass, and that's just on album opener "Aghartha", which on first listen sounds like the SUNNO))) of old, all churning low end, slow motion glacial riffage, but as the track progresses, the heavy riffage peels back, revealing, a sea of moaning horns, Csihar's haunting intoned vocals, creaks and groans, and the actual sound of water (the hydrophone?), eventually getting super abstract and minimal, before fading out completely.
"Big Church" featues four guitarists (Ambarchi, O'Malley, Anderson and Earth's Dylan Carlson) as well as trombone, trumpet, organ, tubular bells and a choir!!! The choir giving the track a definite Arvo Part vibe, haunting and choral, drifting ethereally over the slow burning rumble of the multiple guitars, before locking into a strangely melodic almost slowcore creep.
"Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia)" featueres yet another expanded lineup, this time including a "Man choir", the track begins all standard doom, crushing lugurbrious riffage, growled gurgeled vokills, but the man choir's deep haunting chant adds a whole other dimension, creating a sort of choral doom hybrid, much like the other track, but this one remains much darker and heavier.
Finally, the record closes with Alice, this time with horns AND strings, and the song that probably is most responsible for describing this record as "SUNNO))) with strings". It starts out all woozy and twangy like some nineties slowcore jam, except for the Morricone-ish horn swells, the guitar crunches few and far between, the sound quite spare and skeletal, and weirdly enough, downright pretty, a shuffling slow motion drift, the whole thing surprisingly melodic, and spacious, quite possibly one of the loveliest (and most unlikely) SUNNO))) tracks yet.
SUNNO))) have done wonders with their limited sonic pallete, who would have thought a one time Earth cover band would have survived this long, and resulted in such an impressive body of original work, but the group have grown and expanded and explored, they manage to incorporate all manner of sounds and textures and guest players, to realize their ultimate vision, while somehow keeping the core sound intact. We only just got this in, and we've been listening to it like crazy (which should tell you something), and the more we hear it, the more we dig it, especially that last track. Quickly becoming one of our fave SUNNO))) discs...
Incredible packaging as always. Deluxe booklet, exquisitely designed, with lyrics, lineups, diagrams, photos, illustrations, some of the pages vellum, all housed in a transparent printed vellum slipcover.
Last time we were in New York, we managed to grab a single by this band, Taylor Bow, named for an infamous online porn site featuring videos posted by a disgruntled and spurned ex boyfriend, we heard it playing in a store, and had to buy it. An insanely furious and frenzied, blown out chunk of metallic punkness, or maybe punked out metal, either way, the speakers seemed to be melting and malfunctioning, spewing red hot daggers of sound, the vocals ultra distorted and in the red, the drums, total practice space boom and crunch, chaotic and unhinged, the guitars slipping from wild feedback soaked squalls, to churning Brainbombs-y sludge. So we of course tried to order a bunch, but it was the LAST copy.
So we waited and waited, and our patience was finally rewarded with this, the first full length from NYC hardcore noise metal weirdos Taylor Bow, fronted, you might not be surprised to discover by Dom Fernow, of Prurient, Vegas Martyrs and Ash Pool among others. Taylor Bow features the same sort of lo-fi metal-punk noise drenched crush, but instead of blasting blackly, or exploding into sheets of white noise, TB slip back and forth between freaked out on-the-verge-of-collapse hardcore and looped sounding sinister dirges, that totally push all our Brainbombs buttons. The sound is red hot, blown out, brittle and brutal, but still thick and heavy, the vocals are super intense, which sometimes makes Taylor Bow sound like a way more rocking Whitehouse, but there are definite nods to the current crop of stripped down raw black metal, Fernow's Ash Pool for sure, but also stuff like Akitsa and Bone Awl. But even with that metal edge, this stuff is way more filthy and punky, and we're loving it. Released on the same label that brought us Ancestors and that Hallow record, which makes perfect sense, just more fucked up freaked out heaviness that we can't seem to get enough of.
SUPER LIMITED of course, we may have the last 20 or so copies, so grab one while you can...
Awesome cover - Immortal!! The larger than life face of Abbath staring out at you in perfect corpsepaint.
Also this ish: Slayer, Nile, Venom, Marduk, Baroness, Secrets Of The Moon, My Dying Bride, Evile, and plenty more.
On the free cover-mounted sampler cd: The Ruins Of Beverast, Skeletonwitch, Destruction, Gwar, Paradise Lost, Belphegor, and a bunch of other less well known acts.
As always, an essential metal periodical.
Brainbombs. Rusted Shut. Billy Bao. Shit And Shine. If that sounds like your record collection, you best grab one of these pronto and add Twin Stumps to the list.
Heavy, and noisy, filthy, ugly, brutal, pounding, misanthropic, blown out, grinding, crushing, druggy and damaged, yet weirdly and impossibly catchy. This NY crew conjure up some of the heaviest, most distorted noise rock we've heard in ages, sounding like a million guitars and a million drum kits melted down, poured into a woodchipper and sprayed all over you, while someone howls through a bullhorn, these songs are bursting with guitar freakouts, from churning impossibly low end chug, to tangled feedback, the drums pound, but are so buried in the muck and mire, they sound more like some muted subsonic throb, the vocals are unhinged and maniacal, also pretty much buried, the whole record lurches and lumbers and stumbles, like a way heavier, more metal Butthole Surfers, but these songs can't seem to disguise the little bits of pop that lurk inside, sometimes the guitars lock into a weirdly harmonized melody, or the band slip in a killer hook, but even at its catchiest, it's still insanely heavy and harsh, hypnotic and hateful, gloriously misanthropic and noisy. Quickly becoming one of our favorite new noise rock records for sure.
Anyone into any of the above mentioned bands MUST own this, and if you buy it and dig it (heck even if you don't), go here:
http://mikeyanirofund.wordpress.com/
And help support Twin Stumps guitarist Mike Yaniro, who was savagely beaten, and remains hospitalized with years of surgery and therapy ahead of him, and no health insurance.
The best thing about Ugly Things' rather irregular twice-yearly schedule is that it's always a pleasant surprise when the latest issue of this magazine of "wild sounds from past dimensions" suddenly shows up here! And, somehow, it's always a day or two before "list day" so we can't totally kick back and spend as much time reading it right away as we'd like, 'cause there's work to do. And we do mean we'd need to spend time, lots of time, it's a big ol' magazine (224 pages this ish) packed to the gills with text and vintage photos.
However, since our list-work IS to review New Arrivals, and since this Ugly Things is a New Arrival, we WILL take a moment now to leaf through it... ah, maybe sit back a bit, put the feet up, settle in... whoops, better be careful, hours and hours of "lost productivity" will go by as we read about cover stars The Masters Apprentices ('60s Australian psych-pop sensations we know better in their later proto-metal mode). That article is 27 pages and it's only part 1, another of editor Mike Stax's multipart epics, to be continued next issue! Then there's several eulogies to the late Sky Sunlight Saxon of The Seeds (who passed away the same day as Michael Jackson, who gets mentioned here in Ugly Things for probably one of the only times ever on account of that). And the usual slew of obscure groups are dug up and examined, in depth - this time 'round, The Fenmen ('60s UK harmonizers with Pretty Things connections), The Reactor ('70s Mexican-American Inland Empire punk), The Nomadds ('60s Midwestern garage rockers), The Bittersweet (all girl garage from Ohio in the '60s), The Wildflower (mystical ballroom era SF "lost band"), Dentist (late '70s French punkers), and PLENTY MORE. As usual, we most often find the stories told quite fascinating, even when we've never heard a note of a band's music, nonetheless entire long gone music scenes open themselves up to the imagination, the world as it once was, somewhere, elsewhere, underground, rockin' out.
Leafing through (ok, we'll stop in a second and get back to work) it's easy to come across any number of treats, from the reprinted super-harsh one line putdown album reviews from '70s fanzine Future (a sample: "Foghat - Night Shift - The title of this LP should not include the 'F' in shift"), to the piece about recently rediscovered proto-punks the Imperial Dogs (look 'em up on YouTube!!!), to fanzine editor Phil Milstein's tale of trying to release a Nico bootleg some 30 years ago, a difficult saga which somehow manages to involve both his mom and Penn of Penn & Teller fame, as well as Nico herself of course. If we keep reading we'd find more to mention, haven't even delved into the pages and pages and pages of reviews yet, but we have other reviews of our own to write, so we'll reluctantly set aside our copy of UT#29 to pick it up again after our remaining list-duties are completed. Ah, yes, recommended. A magazine by music obsessives, for music obsessives, of almost any nostalgical variety.
Maybe you think you'd already have to be pretty into gospel music to purchase a 3cd set like this? But, when you're through listening to all three of these discs (for the first and certainly not the last) time, you'll DEFINITELY be into gospel music. Of course it helps that, as the subtitle states, this is gospel music of the "raw" and "other-worldly" variety, compiled by Yeti magazine's Mike McGonigal. And moreover, you need to realize, if you don't know already, that the relationship of gospel to secular music - soul, blues, R&B - is strong. Even (especially) rock n' roll has gospel roots. In fact, if you think gospel is some sort of goody two shoes churchy hymn singing lameness, take a listen to this and think again. There's powerful stuff here, stuff that's BADASS. Beautiful too, but let's stick to badass for the moment. Seriously, try your favorite hipster garage rock combo against Elder Beck's astonishing 1956 "Rock and Roll Sermon" and see who wins. Answer, the garage rockers will repent and sell their guitars - not 'cause they've found the Lord, but 'cause Elder Beck would obviously blow them off stage with his performance. That track in particular represents one of the brilliant ironies of this collection, 'cause whilst railing against the evils of rock n' roll music, Elder Beck manages rock harder than just about anyone, EVER. It's almost kinda difficult to believe that he and his congregation weren't aware of this fact, and were simply secretly enjoying a chance to really go wild under the guise of "gospel". Certainly the guitar player is getting into it. Whatever the case, it's amazing, as are so many other tracks on here.
With three jam-packed discs (80 tracks total!), there's really too many gems here for us to even begin to mention 'em all. There's some other early rockers, lots of groovy funkiness from the '70s that could make even the blackest heart want to join in with the praising, low-down busted-up blues guitar workouts played by old old men, all sorts of impassioned testifying that could constitute a new definition of "emo", and (not surprising, considering Satan is so often the subject, along with his opposite) plenty of eerie atmosphere and weirdness, often augmented by the relatively dusty and distorted nature of some of these recordings.
There's a few names here that some may know from other recent reissues on Mississippi and CaseQuarter among others, like Isaiah Owens, Abner Jay, Bishop Perry Tillis, and Rev. Utah Smith. And plenty more that you'll be happy to get to know, 'cause unless you're a gospel collector its doubtful you do. Here's a dozen, just for starters: Rev. Lonnie Farris, Elder Roma Wilson & Family, Madison County Senior Center Singers, Singing Son Of Zion (Brother Shelby Bransford, Jr.), Little Ax & The Golden Echoes, Madam Ira Mae Littlejohn, Fannie Bell Chapman, Hickory Bottom Harmoneers, Ray Branch & His Guitar, Napolian Strickland, Precious Bryant, Mississippi Nightingales... It's a diverse collection for sure, covering all sorts of gospel traditions, and serves as a survey of all the amazing post-war black gospel music that you probably haven't heard before. Providing some food for your mind as well as your soul, the thick, illustrated cd booklet in this nicely-packaged set provides some notes on each track, but it's the music that's really gonna speak to you.
Despite our love of black metal, comps like this remind us that the Devil does NOT have all the best tunes. As McGonigal states in his liner notes, the music represented here is "among the most vibrant, playful, beautiful and emotionally charged music in the world." We can only but agree.
Looking at the cover of this comp, what catches our eye? Well, of course the words PSYCH and FUNK in big electric pink letters. Pretty much had us right there, we're easy like that. But then the fine print on the sticker on the front adds an extra tingle of excitement: "None of these tracks have ever been reissued"! So what we have here is a survey course on some obscure shit, an international collection of freaky, fuzzy, funky jams from the golden years, circa 1968-1975 or so, mostly from groups we'd never heard of before. The ones did know were a good sign, being super groovy and decidedly eccentric. (Though we do have to point out that at least a few of the cuts here actually have been reissued before, that's how we knew 'em!). Here's the lineup: Hunsu Ozkartal Orkestrasi (Turkey), Kukumbas (Nigeria), Mulatu Astatke feat. Belaynesh Wubante and Assegedetch Asfaw (Ethiopia), Kim Sun (South Korea), Petalouda (Greece), Mehr Pooya (Iran), Staff Carpenborg and The Electric Corona (West Germany), The Group (Italy), Armando Sciascia (Italy), Wadih Essafi (Lebanon), Omar Khorshid (Egypt), Metin H. Alatli (Turkey), George Garanian with The Melodiya Jazz Ensemble (Russia), and Eskaton (France). 14 tracks in all, all of 'em b to the a to the d to the ass. Get ready for plenty of percolating percussion, infectious bass lines, analog synth buzz, chicken scratch guitar, greasy organ, drugged out FX, and in many cases Middle Eastern or African or other 'exotic' ethnic elements as appropriate to their nation of origin. Highlights are almost impossible to pick. All the African stuff is killer (Ethiopiques fans take note), so are the Turkish tracks (you want weird? check out how the Metin H. Alatli cut somehow segues from Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith music to stoned cocktail bellydance improv!!), so is everything else. We dig how eerieness and jazziness are combined on "The Feed-back" by The Group (aka Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, featuring Ennio Morricone), and also Armando Sciascia's suspenseful "Circuito Chiuso" is pretty eerie too. Both are from Italy, where it seems that it's hard NOT to sound like you're scoring a phantasmagoric horror flick a la Goblin. Also, we love love love the grandiose extended electro-funk from Magmoid progsters Eskaton that closes out the disc. But why keep writing about this, you know you need it - unless your record collection already includes all these rarities, and there's no way it does.
Lovingly compiled with the help of DJs like Cut Chemist and Stone's Throw's Egon, Psych Funk 101 is truly a lesson in, well, a variety of awesome vintage funkiness, in the tradition of other cool comps like Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Obsession, Trap Door, and the Afro-centric Love's A Real Thing. Housed in a handsome digipack, it boasts a thick, 36 page booklet featuring a two-page spread on each track, with full color repro of the original LP or 45 sleeve from whence the cut originated, along with a page of text giving more info than you'd expect.
FYI this also came out on vinyl, but was gone so fast, we don't have any to list. However, we are told it is being repressed, soon we hope...
Record number three from these American noisemakers living in Japan, who apparently have decided that while they're there, they should make the heaviest, loudest, ass kickingest RAWK possible, and hell, doesn't really seem like it could get more heavy, loud or kick ass. Or mean, it is called Listen To This 1000x Then Kill Yourself after all, and there's a note inside crediting there artwork to Stephen O'Malley, even though there's virtually no art at all, we can only assume they're taking the piss. But it's all about the sound inside, and contrary to all the above, it's actually surprisingly melodic, as well as murky, a little lo-fi, definitely super rocking. The first track is a pretty freaked out slab of cyclical hypno-noiserock, a bit like a less spazzed out Lightning Bolt, but from there on out, while still heavy and a bit noisy, it's much more melodic, the second track is all big booming guitars, chords ringing out, blurred and buzzy and droney, the drums abstract and splattery, the track after that is downright dreamy, a sort of Japanese psych take on the Necks, hypnotic, loping and washed out and dreamy, yet still distorted and in the red, just not KILL YOURSELF in the red, more like eyes closed letting the blissed out heaviness wash over you.
It might be the recording, but this new Veee Deee, for all its implied misanthropy is really listenable, heavy, and hectic, manic and a little metal sure, but really warm and psychedelic, even the last track, which is more unhinged and angular and chaotic, with wild free drumming and tangled guitar skree, it too is weirdly melodic and surprisingly not fucked up. The louder you play it, the more the heaviness and freakiness reveals itself, maybe that's true of all records, but even with headphones this is a seriously dense and heavy chunk of noisy psychedelic post rock radness. If you have the other two, definitely grab one of these while you can, but even if you missed out, this is definitely worth picking up for the heavy rhythmic psych inclined out there.
Comes in cool handmade packaging, and includes free link to what's basically another full-length: To All the Girls I've Loved Before - Which One of You Gave Me the Clap?, a hi-fi antithesis to Listen To This 1000x Then Kill Yourself.
It's been ages since we've seen folks freaking out and getting so excited about a record months before it was even released. But that's exactly what happened with this 12" by Washed Out. And while we tend to be a bit skeptical of blog-hype we have to say we whole heartedly agree with all the excitement surrounding Washed Out, because they/he do deliver, and what they deliver is some fantastic and infectious terminally chill pop.
The name Washed Out suits the sound so perfectly as the six songs on Life Of Leisure really do sound like some amazing washed out version of New Order, or Ariel Pink if he wore all white and cranked out a bunch of covers of Hacienda classics. Much like the Neon Indian record we recently raved about, Washed Out operates in that same realm of faded 80's nostalgia, and Ernest Greene's vocals are so casually seductive and smooth. Kind of like the male equivalent to the slow burning bedroom jams of Nite Jewel or a way stoned Cut Copy.
One of our customers said this was like the ultimate make out jam or post-sex chill out record and we can't really argue with that. Unless you were one of the lucky few to grab one of the crazy limited cassettes this is probably the first chance to get a physical copy of Washed Out songs and all six of the tracks on here are totally great (not a bummer in the bunch) and it also comes with a digital download. These might not last long so you know what to do......
Bands like White Fang really make us wanna be young again, really young, with their carefree attitude, snarky and scrappy aesthetic and all out blasts of fucked up fun! The opening track on Whatever sounds a bit like today's lo-fi garage burners covering Bad Brains, and throughout the record we also hear wonderful hints of the really raw and noisy early years of Pavement or what it might sound like if Wavves covered a song off the first Neutral Milk Hotel record, especially on the songs where WF rock some distorted trumpet.
Freewheeling, eclectic and on the verge of falling apart, White Fang really are all over the place, but in ways that make perfect sense to our warped ears. They have some of the awesome charm of those damaged early SST records by folks like Saccharine Trust and the Meat Puppets (their first record!) as well as modern day kindred sonic spirits like Eat Skull or Silver Daggers. These kids have wisely tapped into the more twisted and cracked side of punk and garage rock, we're sure they would be so rad live at some out of control house party or warehouse show. The record comes on really nice thick vinyl with a coupon for a digital download as well as a cool little zine filled with photos, flyers, and drawings.
This is at least record number 3 or 4 from White Mice, but somehow, we've never reviewed anything by these drugged out noise makers before now. Not sure how that happened exactly but these guys are long overdue for some aQ love...
Lots of bands, especially if they're sort of spacey and druggy get compared to the Butthole Surfers, who pretty much defined spaced out drug rock, but no one truly embodies the same sort of fucked up frenzied sonic chaos like White Mice, who sound a bit like Lightning Bolt crossed with Shit And Shine, which if we do the math correctly does basically add up to the Butthole Surfers, or at least some way heavier, way noisier modern day equivalent.
Take album opener "Passsthefissst" one part, pounded on over and over and over, wild relentless tribal drumming, throbbing buzzy bass, and distorted to oblivion guitars, locked into an endless loop, hypnotic and mesmerizing and mantra like but also totally blown out and filthy and noisy and heavy, with some sinister demonic vocalizations over the top. You can almost imagine how insane this shit must be live, nothing but strobe lights, the band a blinking blur, the crowd a writhing mass of bodies, an endless lysergic freak out free for all.
And that's pretty much how the White Mice roll, every song is another effects drenched low slung damaged psychedelic sludge jam, sometimes frantic and super intense, other times slowed down and all Brainbombs-y, but always totally in the red and blown out and trippy and freaked out. Makes sense that these guys are from Providence Rhode Island, home of Lightning Bolt and Landed and Pink And Brown (R.I.P) and all of those like minded costumed noiserockers, pretty sure they're part of the same crew too, the best part about them being from RI, is that there's a good chance they play live with big ol' tails and fucked up furry mice heads, which is pretty much the only way you could make this stuff any better.
Holy crap, it's our favorite rapper, Sensational posing in some cool shades on the cover. You know it's gonna be a good issue of this indispensable music magazine already. Then, inside, there's also features on Ben Frost (who has an AQ Record of the Week this week, you may have noticed), Oneohtrix Point Never, pianist Lubomyr Melnyk (good for him!), Dam-Funk, a primer on prog greats King Crimson (now we're really talking!), and plenty more interesting and diverse musical subjects... plus all the usual columns, charts, and reviews, lots of reviews... Oh, and there's a David Keenan article on "The now sound of Sheffield" including Harappian Night Recordings and a bunch of other related acts we're now curious to check out. Cool... though at first we were expecting a piece on True Sheffield Black Psychedelia, which ISN'T touched upon here, nothing about Black Vomit or Skultrol or the like, well perhaps next time if Keenan sticks around the place and really starts delving?
It's funny comparing the two Michael Yonkers related releases we reviewed this list. "Funny" because they couldn't be more different from each other, and yet they both bear the distinct mark of the same man. While the Michael And The Mumbles release features cuts from Yonkers' innocent mid '60s garage days, Bleed Out, a 2004 collaboration with Chicago psych lords Plastic Crimewave Sound, heads into much darker, drugged out terrain. Bleed Out makes good on the monolithic psych jams that most of us aQuarians can't get enough of, and the results are dirty and tough, super rhythmic and charged with a swirling negative energy for maximum results. Much of this record is instrumental, but Yonkers' distinctive wail does surface from the murk now and again, and it fits perfectly with this kind of thing. Even still, it's a bit of a surprise just how heavy things turned out (we certainly aren't complaining!) and this stuff is definitely satisfying our hunger for stoner grooves in the same vein as the Heads, White Hills, and the like. Super recommended!
We talk a lot about music that puts us in a spell, or drones that elevate us to some hypnotic state of mind, but what's much even more rare, is to achieve one of those states, while also tapping into something more personal and immediate and intimate and haunting. Richard Youngs is a sonic shamen, conjuring up musical rituals that never fail to entrance and ensorcell us, we've raved about so many of his records in the past and his newest outing is definitely another winner, and is striking such a deep chord with us. His use of vocal repetition transforms these songs into otherworldly mantras, that we find ourselves NEEDING to listen to on a daily basis. With hazy instrumentation and hypnotic loops as the musical bed, Under Stellar Stream sounds like a magical collaboration between Robert Wyatt and William Basinski, as Youngs manages to merge a deep emotional impact with shimmery, softly nuanced dreaminess.
Listening to Under Stellar Stream evokes the sensation of watching an incredibly intense and beautiful film. Understated and emotional piano fluttering delicately, the sound restrained, yet expansive, the last two tracks if stripped of the vocals would sound right at home on an Andrew Chalk record. While Youngs definitely has a large devoted following we really think folks who might not have heard his records, but love the more haunting side of folks like Bonnie Prince Billy and Smog, might find much to love in the mysterious sound world of Richard Youngs. So fitting that the day we got this it was pouring outside as these are sounds so perfect for grey skies and rainfall, just standing beneath the bruised sky letting the raindrops fall where they may. Totally moving and gorgeous!
