We nearly wore out our copies of the first volume of singles and jams from the amazing Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou, a previously little known but highly prolific Afro-beat group from the tiny western Africa country of Benin. Now they're one of our top favorite groups! The Analog Africa label was practically founded on their discovery and other groups who recorded for the Albarika Store Label and its elusive producer, Adissa Seidou. That discovery yielded enormous riches. Over 500 tracks from this legendary group in its many incarnations were unearthed, nearly half were recorded for the Albarika Store Label and this collection focuses on that period. The previous volume was a collection of singles from smaller labels that the band made on the sly while Seidou was out of town. All lo-fi recordings often only using one microphone for the singer as well as the band. The recordings on this collection were made with higher quality recording equipment, and while the songs here have less of that urgent funk made by a band on the run, they are much more composed, varied and altogether stranger. Some of this is in fact seriously nuts! Lots of fuzzed out and wah'd guitar, layers of distorted percussion, horns and spacey organs. Though there are tracks that continue the Voudon funk vibe of the first volume, tracks like "Noude Ma Gnin Tche De Me" bring some head-boppin' Go-Go garage stomp, while tracks like "Gan Tche Kpo" are mind-melting Afro-psych. Others have more Latin flavor similar in vibe to Konono No.1's infectious dance rhythms, which makes sense as the OPRDC are one of the featured groups on the latest Honest Jon's comp, Africa Boogaloo (reviewed elsewhere on this list) that traces the influence of Latin rhythms on West Africa. The Analog Africa Label has yet to disappoint, and if you liked any of the labels other releases, or are new to this group/label, right here is a fine place to start!!
Brand new track from Mr. Campbell Kneale, formerly known as Birchville Cat Motel, now working under the monicker Our Love Will Destroy The World, and like the last few OLWDTW records, Blondesummer Snowqueen is a gorgeous nearly half hour noisedrone blow out, which on the surface sounds pretty cacophonous, with streaks of feedback all over the place, everything grinding and crunching and buzzing and howling, and it is a pretty serious chunk of chaos, but as we've learned over Kneale's many releases, there's definitely a method to his madness, but don't bother trying to figure out what it is, cuz it IS madness, just sit back and let these sounds envelop you, headphones help, and get lost in this swirling whirling dervish of sound. Imagine a huge cement mixer, filled with notes and drones and feedback, and fractured riffage, and disembodied voices, and buzzing synths and crumbling distortion, and now imagine that huge drum rotating, the various elements colliding and careening, now imagine getting that drum to spin fast, REALLY fast, then opening up the hatch, and plunging your head inside. It's like that. Sort of. But all filtered through Kneale's flair for taking noise and cacophony and skree and twisting them all up into one twisted warped whole, and getting the whole thing to sound, well, fucking AWESOME.
This is definitely on the difficult side, but fans of OLWDTW and Birchville, will feel right at home.
On Kneale's Don't Fuck With Magic label, ultra limited, and mostly only available at aQ!
One of two new mini-missives from Our Love Will Destroy The World, the project of ex-Birchville Cat Motel kingpin Campbell Kneale, who it seems might be positioning his OLWDTW project to eventually be as prolific as the sadly defunct BCM. Elsewhere on this list you'll find a new tape from Our Love, but this 7" matches up Kneale with Bark Haze, the duo of Gown's Andrew McGregor and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth.
The Bark Haze side is pretty fantastic, noisy, but soft noise, and more drone-y than anything, warm processed guitars, looped and layered, thick and textured, wrapped in warped and warbly effects, pretty mesmerizing and dreamlike, at least until the very end, where the duo shut it down with a bit of high end tangled psych guitar skree.
Our Love Will Destroy The World have crafted a sound, that takes the divine ur-drone of Birchville, and tosses in more of everything, a maximal swirling assemblage of sound upon sound upon sound, drone-y and noisy, but also space-y and groovy, and tripped out and psychedelic. The track begins with buzzing backwards sitars, stuttering acoustic guitars, keening high end riffage, plenty of muted crunch, a super spare abstract 'beat', definitely employing OLWDTW's more is more compositional strategy, adding layer after layer, which in other hands might end up being too much, but the cacophony is softened by Kneale's deft arrangement. The result is like sticking your hand in a sonic supercollider, your ears being bombarded by a million musical particles, an atomic shower of shards and fragments of amps and guitars and samples and synths and effects. So good!
1971 strikes again! Here's a new cd reish of this beautifully freaky album by a Japanese "Buddhist-psych" band called People, featuring guitarist Kimio Mizutani (who played with Love Live Life + 1, Hiro Yanagida, and others, and did a solo album called A Path Through Haze). There's monk-like chanting and resounding gongs, field recordings of birds and street sounds, and even, strangely enough, samples from soulful psych-funk producer David Axelrod's classic 1968 album Song Of Innocence. And of course heavy wah wah guitar action. The album is a real 'trip', much of it indeed very ceremonial-sounding, venturing from blissful grooves with tick-tock rhythms ("Shomyo Part 2") and placid, lovely droniness ("Prayer Part 1") to sheer pounding electric fuzz riffage laced with screams of orgasmic ecstasy ("Prayer Part 2"). The puzzling use of those lush, orchestral Axelrod samples on the first and last tracks just helps to make this somehow both very much of its time and also way ahead of it (since Axelrod is heavily sampled by folks today as well!). Quite recommended.
This live recording from the East Bay denizen Petit Mal (aka J. Kaiser) is much better once removed from the performance space in which it was recorded. Not that there's anything wrong with the Luggage Store per se, but that these dark subterranean rumbles, distance bits of radio transmission, and echoes persisting in a damp gloominess contradict the Luggage Store gallery's crisp white walls and huge windows overlooking San Francisco's Market Street. It's better to consider this performance some apocalyptic ritual recorded out in the industrial wastelands elsewhere in the Bay Area, maybe out near Suisun Bay where the US Navy sends its old World War II era ships to slowly leach their heavy metals into the water and soil.
As on many of Kaiser's projects (NF Orchest, French Radio, and his collaborations with Angela Hsu), the sounds are generated through a reel-to-reel tape, a shortwave radio, and his well-worn bicycle wheel which he plays with a violin bow, achieving similarly dissonant bellows that Organum produced through an ensemble of bowed cymbals. Kaiser's work is more Spartan than Organum's, though with these mournful tones which emit through the metallic shimmer, drone, and scrape, resonating really as if they were transmitting through the hull of one of those rusting ships in Suisun Bay. Limited as is always the case with Kaiser's series of 3" discs.
The demise of legendary doomlords Reverend Bizarre had two strange but positive after effects, first, there seemed to be a flood of posthumous RB releases, more we think than when they were actually a band, a from-beyond-the-grave release schedule to rival Biggie or Tupac, as is further demonstrated by yet another new Reverend Bizarre release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list! The second outcome was the more inevitable one, a whole slew of new projects from RB mainman S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), whose voracious need to rock would obviously need a new outlet, and thus we have The Puritan and Opium Warlords. Both born of Hynninen's newfound obsession with ultra doom, with sludge, especially of the Japanese variety, Boris, Corrupted, Solar Anus, Hynninen set forth on a mission to create some serious Japanese style ultra doom sludge. We'll have the Opium Warlords disc for next list, but for now, we shall celebrate The Puritan, and Lithium Gates, which compiles two previously released, now out of print vinyl lps, one of which we never had, the other which we had in extremely limited numbers.
We've become convinced, that Hynninen must be somehow related to Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo. They're both Finnish, they both front or fronted kick ass heavy rock bands, and both have totally twisted senses of humor, which finds its way, however subtly (or not) into their music. So while the Puritan was originally inspired by Japanese doom and sludge, by the time it worked its way through Hynninen's cracked Finnish filter, it had been transformed into something else entirely. Something heavy and brutal, but warped and far out and brilliant.
This is no ordinary doom. And is far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre. Although on first listen, maybe not so far removed after all, beginning with the first Puritan lp, The Untitled, the sound is ultra heavy, downtuned, spaced out, melodic, with a distinctly classic strain of classic doom running through it, the opening intro could indeed be the opening salvo from some doom classic, and the follow up too does not sound that far our, awesomely epic and troo vocals over a lumbering slow motion dirge, but then the record shifts gears, and "The Sulphur - Coloured Clouds Are Hurrying Through the Lithium Gates" explodes like some nineties noise rock juggernaut, loping bass, crumbling guitars, jagged riffing, only to gradually slow to a nearly complete halt, before slipping back into slow motion ultra doom dirgery. "The Sepulchral God Holding a Speech for the Moribund" sounds almost like some extra heavy slowcore, with some dramatically crooned Slough Feg like vox, before a strangely haunting outro, with clean guitars, whirling ambience, mysterious sampled voices, including a classic Charles Manson rant, all hovering beneath thick washed out guitars and lilting sweetly sorrowful melodies. Then it begins to get even weirder.
The second half of Lithium Gates contains the entirety of The Black Law, the second Puritan lp, which begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlor music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us of Midwestern pigfuckers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly AmRep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift.
From there on out, the record continues to devolve gloriously with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with more deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed.
Needless to say, fucking awesome! And essential listening for any one into sounds slow and low, doomy and heavy, fucked up and far out.
Finally a full length from these guys. Up until now, all we'd heard was a two track 7" and a couple tracks on that Underwater Peoples Summertime Showcase 2009 compilation, but what we heard we liked, A LOT. And this full length is more of the same. Bucking the trend of lo-fi murk, tropical psychedelic haze and noise drenched weirdness, these guys offer up something much more classic and timeless sounding. A little fuzzy, a little jangly, a bit psychedelic, and super catchy, Real Estate sound a bit like long time aQ faves the Dodos, with a pinch of Pavement, and a definitely a little of that current crop of hazy reverby garage pop.
But again, the sound of Real Estate is barely even lo-fi, or underground for that matter, this is pure sparkly pop perfection, summery and sunshiney, with just a hint of melancholy, with nods of course to the Beatles and the Bee Gees (baroque pop BG, not disco BG), but also Sebadoh, Built To Spill, Death Cab, although not nearly as 'pro' as any of those groups. Rough around the edges, definitely more raw and immediate, but still earnest and emotional, the songs catchy and hooky and fun, definitely about as mainstream as most Woodsist stuff gets, which is not a bad thing AT ALL really. We're loving this record, been playing it non stop, and we have a feeling a lot of you might just feel the same.
FYI: Real Estate just so happens to include Matthew Mondanile, aka aQ faves Ducktails!!
Along with the post-Reverend Bizarre project we just got in and made our Record Of The Week (Sami "Sir Albert Witchfinder" Hynninen's ultra-doomy The Puritan, you already read about it above, right?), we also were finally able to get some copies of this, a MUST HAVE for all fans of these now defunct Finnish true doom metal legends. In fact, it's so good we would not hesitate to recommend it to any curious persons who have yet to hear ANY Reverend Bizarre. It's not an official "best of", actually this posthumous collection consists of uber rarities from various vinyl split ep's and other obscure sources, but it does still have some of their best stuff on it. And, since Rev. B. had fashioned themselves into one of the best "traditional" doom metal bands around (in part by not being TOO traditional) that means this is one of the best double discs of doom we've heard since, well, the LAST Reverend Bizarre album, the 2cd swansong that was III: So Long Suckers.
There's 15 tracks here, leading off with "Demons Annoying Me" from a long vanished split 12" with Orodruin, which happens to be a NON-boring nearly 18 minute epic, a true masterwork of heedless heaviness, built from raging riffs, distorted noise, and cathartic screams, one of the tracks that transcends this band's obvious influences and definitely deserves pride of place as the first track on this altogether awesome double disc. Other standouts abound, from the anthemic "Blood On Satan's Claw" (boasting some King Diamond-y falsetto in the vocal dep't.), to the brief and bludgeoning "Odinn's Men", to the seemingly Current 93 influenced "Apocalyptic Riders", to the also pretty darn epic eleven and a half minute "From The Void II", complete with slo-mo drum solo...
Then there's the two killer cover songs included here, both from a long out of print 7" we once stocked: Judas Priest's "Deceiver" and Saint Vitus' "Dark World". As the liner notes put it, it's as if Saint Vitus wrote that song for RB to cover. And while Albert's vocals are quite impressive throughout this entire collection, it's really amazing how well his wildly over the top "impersonation" of Rob Halford comes off on "Deciever", and with Vitus such a huge influence on RB to begin with, it's no surprise that Albert channels Scott Reagers perfectly on "Dark World" (heck he channels Reagers perfectly all the time, check out the track "The Tree Of Suffering" for another very good example). Wow.
RB's music can get pretty trancey, doing a dirgey drone at a creepy crawl, with the likes of the gloomy "Bend" (an unlikely "cover" of a track by Finnish electro artist Mr. Velcro Fastener, by the way, from a split they did!) and a bunch of others bringing in hints of black metal grimnity. But also some tracks are fairly uptempo and succinct, like the '70s Sabbatheque rockin' of "Broken Vows", which any Witchcraft fan is gonna love. And if you get at all bothered the Devil in your music (why are you reading this then?), beware the backwards shit going down on "The Gate Of Nanna" at the end of disc 2, that's Satan worship if we've ever heard it. So cool.
The cd booklet deserves mention as well, they didn't neglect the liner notes that's for sure. There's many pages of text in tiny tiny type discussing the what/when/where/why of each track in great depth.
R.I.P. Reverend Bizarre... and doom on brothers, Doom On!!
Roedelius's fourth solo record from 1981 has obvious connections to his first record, Durch Die Wuste as evidenced from the similar album covers involving feet and water. But while his first record was a head-first dive into exploring the palatable possibilities of mixing acoustic and electronic instruments, Wenn Der Sudwind Weht is all about the tranquil relaxed after-glow, drying off in the afternoon sun. Limiting the instruments to just organ, synthesizers and piano, Sudwind is surprisingly rich and layered and arguably the most stunning of his solo records, reminding us of the pastoralism of Popol Vuh and early Deuter, but never succumbing to new age music's typical lack of focus. In fact it's the most focused Roedelius record of the last couple that have been reissued. While the Cluster-Harmonia catalog with all its off-shoots and solo projects can be quite unwieldy especially in the middle of its currently aggressive reissue campaign, but this may be the most essential Roedelius reissue of the bunch. Highest recommendation!
We've never actually reviewed a record by these guys for some reason, but at least some of us here have been fans for a while. Listening to this now, all we can think is that we don't remember these guys being so heavy. Or so metal. But for math rock / post rock, this is some seriously brutal and fierce stuff. It's definitely melodic and mathy, the band definitely finding inspiration in Mogwai, Godspeed, Explosions In The Sky, Pelican, Jesu, but rather than aping those groups, Russian Circles definitely make that sound their own. And one of the ways they do that is by making it HEAVY. They spend a good amount of the record chugging ominously, or locked into some epic riffing, the drums pounding, the bass an incredible grinding crunchy low end, the songs often following the sort of post rock template of slow build to explosive chorus, but just as often not, sometimes locking into long contemplative drifts, other times pounding away relentlessly on a single riff, and still other times exploding into a full on frenzied psych metal blow out.
In the time it took to write the above paragraph, two people came over to see what was playing, and when they were told it was Russian Circles, both responded by saying they didn't remember Russian Circles being so metal. Which is not a bad thing at all really, in fact, they've kind of out-Pelican-ed Pelican, the same sort of general sound, but RS are now the heavier of the two. But they still get pretty post rock and pretty, "Hexed All" is a gorgeous super mellow string laden meander, "When The Mountain Comes To Muhammad" spends much of it's time slithering and brooding all Slint style, and record closer "Philos" is a long sprawling post metal drift, spending much of its time hushed and abstract, and building briefly, but never to a full on metallic climax, but in between all this prettiness is "Malko" is a sort sharp blast of melodic heaviness, and even some of the pretty tracks are peppered with bits of crunch and pound.
Regardless of whether you think this is metallic post rock, or post metal, or if you even care, this is some seriously good shit, and anyone into ANY of the above mentioned bands, who might be looking for some melodic heaviness, should for sure check this out.
The first proper release from these Swedish metal misanthropes. Their last release, Amfetamin, while quite excellent, was more of a compilation, with only two studio tracks, the others recorded live, and thus wasn't super cohesive.
But that's not a problem here. We weren't sure what to expect really, considering our only exposure to Skitliv previously was the aforementioned Amfetamin, but whatever it is we thought we might here, this is way better, heavier, darker, catchier and creepier, which shouldn't be that much of a surprise really, after all, guitarist Kvarforth plays in Shining, Ondskapt, Manes, Den Saakaldte among others, and the band features Mayhem's Maniac on vocals, and this record in particular features a pretty bad ass set of guests, Gaahl, formerly of Gorgoroth, Attila (also of Mayhem, as well as Aborym and Tormentor), and of course David Tibet from Current 93, who also guested on the first record.
On Amfetamin, Skitliv trafficked in a sort of stumbling abstract doom, and that doom vibe is definitely present here, but the sound is at once more blackened, and more melodic, the grim riffing and harsh vokills wrapped around almost Lifelover style minor key melodies, the songs super catchy, almost like a black metal My Dying Bride or a more well produced Hypothermia, some of the tracks slipping into minimal moody drifts, creeping black ambience, and almost post rock sounding skitter, while all around, clouds of strange effects and processed electronics swirl and swoop, giving the proceedings a definite spaced out vibe.
David Tibet's contribution is immediately recognizable, his track sounding like a black metal Current 93, haunting and otherworldly, his manic vocals over clean guitars, even some piano, before the song explodes in a frenzy of howling buzz.
Elsewhere the tracks occasionally burst into full on blasting blackness, but just as often splinter into a swirling hazy almost pop sounding plod, with cool harmonized guitar leads, and more melancholic melodies. The record closes with the epic "ScumDrug", a smoldering gothic doomscape, all clean guitar, tinkling pianos, growling demonic vocals and distant distorted riffage, a woozy cabaret crawl that eventually morphs into a freaky collaged outro, all garbled voices and rumbling low end pulses, squalls of white noise hiss, and mysterious gurgles, an appropriately twisted ending to a seriously twisted record.
One of the first things we turn to in any music magazine is the reviews section. Yup, when we're not writing record reviews, we just love to read 'em. Go figure. So of course, that makes Ed Pinsent's Sound Projector one of our favorite mags around, seeing as how it mostly consists of reviews - well-written, expert ones, hundred and hundreds of them, covering all sorts of underground sounds we like, from field recordings to free improv to acoustic folk to electronic drone to black metal, and more!
With its trademark black/red/white cover color scheme intact, and expected massive bulk as well, the Sound Projector's 18th issue is here, straight from England, and we've really only just skimmed its 180 pages 'cause we're too busy right now with our own reviews (but we can't wait to dig into it this weekend!). The reviews are as usual grouped into several sections (International Surveys, Evil Noise and Rock, Art Music, Vinyl and Books, Melodic), those divided into even more precise (?) smaller groupings with designations like "Atoms Of Pure Noise", "Japan", "Touch Sevens", "The Droning Ones", "Stoner And Doom", "Tape Maschines Maken Klang"... Some labels get their own sections, some reviewers do too. There's an index in the back, in tiny tiny type, so you can find individual reviews alphabetically by artist if you like, but browsing through seems best.
Of course, more than a few of these records we've reviewed already (but it's nice to get a second opinion... and the SP crew don't always agree with what we said), and there's plenty more here we've been meaning to get to, or definitely will once we track 'em down on the basis of the Sound Projector's say. One thing we've always liked about the Sound Projector (and that we try to do too) is that they don't limit themselves to reviewing the -newest- of releases, so even if something's 2 or 3 or 5 years old, it might get written up here anyway, just 'cause someone's been listening to it and gotten enthused, regardless of when the record in question was released.
Like we said, it's mostly reviews (yay) but there IS some other content here too, including in-depth interviews with Industrial percussionist/composer Z'ev, English avant-folk guitarist C. Joynes, and '70 San Francisco synthpunks The Units!! Also, this issue comes with a download code for a free special Sound Projector mp3 compilation, English Wildlife, highlighting some unknown to us UK underground acts.
Basically, next to our own website, this is pretty much essential reading for all devoted AQ customer-types in our opinion!
We're always up for really well executed and super engaging psych-pop. The UK's Soundcarriers are hitting the spot so perfectly this summer, updating '60s psych-pop (a la Stereolab) an creating new sound with a totally timeless feel. Everything about this album is so flawlessly executed. Recorded with such deep flowing warmth we wouldn't be surprised if these songs were all captured to analog tape, as each instrument sounds so rich and full. Armed with a strong pop sensibility, the Soundcarriers remind us of a bit more muscular Belle & Sebastian, with nice doses of pastoral psychedelic undertones that bring to mind a more pop minded version of Dungen. They also know how to tap into a slight groove with just the right touches of breezy effervescence and have us hearing hints of a wide range of folks like Sergio Mendes, Alceu Valenca, Galaxie 500, American Analog Set, The Free Design, and The Elephant's Memory who some of you might remember from their role as the stand-in-band for the Velvet Underground in Midnight Cowboy. There is a fluidity to these songs and a flow to this album that proves that The Soundcarriers have found a way to bring strong influences of the past to create something modern, yet timeless, of their own. So nice!
Latest issue, with Radiohead on the cover, yawn, but the cover STORY is actually pretty funny, all your favorite rock myths, true or false? Hair metal was killed By Nirvana? Rod Stewart had a gallon of semen pumped from his stomach? No one will miss the cd? Frank Zappa eats poop? Alice Cooper bit the head off a chicken and drank its blood? Keith Richards has a complete blood transfusion? And on and on...
Plus, Tegan And Sara, a rad feature on metal in Savannah: Baroness, Kylesa, Unpersons, Blacktusk, etc., Band Of Skulls, Vampire Weekend, and of course the usual columns and reviews...
A brand new record from the Starving Weirdos, two old old tracks, resurrected and pressed onto what we're pretty sure is the SW's very first 7". The group's sound changes so much, that these two archival tracks, while entirely different from anything we've heard from them, still sound very much at home in their constantly shifting body of work. And unlike the more recent material, is much more lo-fi and looped, giving the sound a very rough, lo-fi, sort of Jeck / Tim Hecker vibe, which obviously we love!
The A side begins with a murky processed pulse, with propulsive krautrock drumming but before it gets more than 10 seconds in, there's a strange backwards swoop, and the track seems to skip back to the beginning, which takes up almost the whole side, a gorgeously fragmented tribal drone krauty loop, until right near the end, when the track shifts, the guitar builds to a chaotic squall, the drums blown out, the cymbals sizzling distortedly, a serious freaked out psych jam, with strange spoken word vocals, bits of feedback, and tons of distorted murk.
The flipside is also loop based (or sounds like it), a militaristic snare, rat-a-tat-tat's out an insistent beat, over which a cool shimmery loop, cycles over and over, while in the background deep rumbles pulse and swell, until the drums drop out and the track finishes off with some moody washed out Jeckian ambience.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Pro printed black and white covers, with printed inserts.
Not '80s metal, not '70s metal, this is '60s metal. Or at least, heavy hippie psychedelic garage rock to be more precise. The Shadow Kingdom label, who seem to go for cult current metal bands and even more obscure reissues, reached pretty far back for this one, all the way back to the late sixties (the recordings collected here date from between '65-'70 as far as we can tell). Stone Garden were from the Pacific Northwest, predating the Seattle grunge scene by a couple decades... But if they'd been born later, we could almost imagine 'em on Sub Pop, playing shows with Mudhoney and, uh, Soundgarden, yeah.
Pounding drums and bass, wild jamming organ, and plenty of throbbing distorted guitar, that's what you get from Stone Garden. No, it's not Black Sabbath (it never is) but this ought to appeal to heavy psych, proto-metal heads into Blue Cheer, Bubble Puppy, Sir Lord Baltimore, Iron Butterfly, Fraction, Negative Space and the like. For the era, and considering their age (in the pictures here, Stone Garden are really young looking, though shaggy-haired, teenage kids still in high school), this was on the HEAVY side of the blues rock spectrum most definitely. Not all of it, but enough of it. "Assembly Line", ferinstance, is an appropriately grim lament, laced with acid guitar soloing. They were into Cream and Hendrix, you can tell.
Throughout these 15 tracks, production quality varies, some material was recorded in a real studio, others in a basement home studio, still others in a living room, or live on stage. So this collection has got a patchwork production vibe for sure, but that doesn't stop Stone Garden from rockin'. And when they did make it into a studio, they took advantage of it, you gotta love the freaky tape speed manipulation studio shenanigans that make "Grayworld Forest" an even weirder place to wander than the title suggests.
Stone Garden's music has been reissued before, originally on a limited edition (long out of print) vinyl by Rockadelic in the '90s, and also on compact disc by Gear Fab, but this Shadow Kingdom cd edition is the best, with a bunch of previously unreleased bonus tracks and a nice booklet full of liner notes, vintage photos and, on the back, what we're guessing was the b&w flower power sleeve of their sole 7" release, circa 1969, with the boys looking really REALLY young on it. Which means you can flip the booklet around and have it as a the cd cover instead of the crappier looking "Stonehenge" cover inherited from the Rockadelic lp version, if you like.
It's been ages since we've heard from these guys, maybe the second most referenced band on the aQ list when we're trying to describe stumbling tribal avant free rock, after the the No Neck Blues Band, both bands pretty much rule that world, each an ever shifting collective with a few core members, able to conjure up super epic clattery free folk, and droned out abstract minimalism, dipping liberally into noise rock, free jazz, 20th century classical, infusing their lo-fi chaos with a sense of art.
No Neck definitely drifted in the artier direction, releasing super limited editions, deluxe lps, performing in art spaces, playing with dancers, mysterious vocalists, while Sunburned Hand stayed more sort of punk rock, releasing an endless series of home made cd-r's, their sound remaining relatively consistent, a gorgeous, cracked, grimy and gritty anti rock, as much about noise as jazz, the players connected on some other level, their performances amazing, their recordings equally so, slipping from buzzing ragas, to strange clattery soundscapes, to full bore free rock roar, to hushed and contemplative drift, to spidery post rock minimalism, to skronky almost free jazz, to foresty free folk all detuned guitars and fluttery horns and stumbling drums, to a sort of avant Appalachia, all of that and more are touched on here, a killer recording from way back in 1998, only now seeing the light of day, packaged in a cool hand stamped origami style sleeve, with pasted on front cover art, and a printed poster / insert. LIMITED to 999 COPIES... (hmm, that's a lot for a cd-r!)
It's been quite a while since we've heard from Tenhornedbeast, one of our favorite purveyors of deep blackened ritualistic dronemusic, but as always, it was well worth the wait.
Like past releases My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth is grand is scope, unlike much of the ambient music and dronemusic we hear, the sounds here sound deliberate, the songs composed. We can only assume that the years between releases are due to a certain meticulousness, one can almost imagine Mr. THB as a mysterious cloaked figure, in his subterranean lair, hunched over a workbench of strange assemblage of electronics and burbling cauldrons, a lone alchemist working by torchlight, crafting these elegant dronescapes, equal part dark shimmer and caustic buzz, cinematic creep and smoldering sinister doom-ed minimalism.
The opener is a softly cacophonous slow build of cavernous tones and groaning low end rumbles, but these sounds are not smooth at all but raw and rough around the edges, an organic thing, something musical, but removed from 'music' as we know it, a sort of synesthesia, like shadows flickering in firelight, THB deftly assembles layers of drone, and weaves together barely there melodies, into massive dreamy drifts of delicate ambience, that slowly shifts from grim shimmer to ethereal hush.
The appropriately titled "My Horns..." takes what does indeed sound like a horn, and slows it way down, and loops it into a gorgeously textured hypnotic low end mantra, playing on and on and on, while all around, various other sonic shadings surface, and lilting melodies seem to peek from behind the heavy black shades of sound.
The final track begins with distorted guitar, a riff slowed down to near stasis, a plodding doom rendered in a washed out muted blur, a doomdronedirge that builds to a soft roar, the whole time gradually letting the light swallow the dark, the heaviness and riffiness gradually receding, while the song begins to glimmer and shimmer and glow with an otherworldly warmth, as if emerging from some blackened captivity, but all of that is cut short, as the moaning groaning minor key melodies that opened the track return, swaddling the fading shimmer in their ominous embrace.
Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it.
The outside sleeve is gorgeously printed shiny on matte on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom is printed in metallic silver ink. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny ink on matte paper, some of the details in shiny metallic silver, the credits, the tracklisting, then inside that is a small printed insert, on thick reflective paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it.
Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil.
The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstacy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please?
The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box.
Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and chrome (although, as of this moment, the chrome version is not available yet, it should be in a couple weeks). And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...
Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it.
The outside sleeve is gorgeously printed shiny on matte on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom is printed in shiny black ink. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny ink on matte paper, some of the details in shiny black ink, the credits, the tracklisting, then inside that is a small printed insert, on thick reflective paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it.
Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil.
The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstasy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please?
The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box.
Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and chrome (although, as of this moment, the chrome version is not available yet). And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...
Hopefully you already are familiar with this Texas heavy psych band with the not-so-heavy name. We've reviewed a couple of their releases before - most recently, a way-cool 7" of all Lungfish covers, and previously, their massive November Session (we still have a handful of that cd in stock, so go read our review of it and snatch one up!).
THIS new disc comes to us via the Small Stone label, who've been getting much props from us lately (for the likes of Obiat, Iota, Sons Of Otis, and Los Natas) though we already knew the Tia Carrera was gonna be good. And it is. Freeform jammin' blown out psychedelic wahwah'd guitar wailin' freakdom here that we wouldn't hesitate to recommend to fans of Boris and Earthless and Pearls & Brass. And ol' Jimi Hendrix for that matter. Of course, if you're already into TC, we need only say that this new disc is another slab of dizzy distorted genius from them.
Oh yeah, if you're partial to Earthless in particular, by the time you're in the middle of the 22 minute "Unnamed Wholeness", the second track of The Quintessential, you'll have a new favorite band. Those into Tokyo Flashbacking acts like LSD-march and Up-Tight might think so too.
But then, surprise! While most of the album is all electric and instrumental, the fifth and final track is a strummed acoustic number, melodic and gentle, with stoned effected vocals and pretty guitar pickin', like Led Zep in the sunshine on the backporch getting baked. Really nice!
Latest slab of guitar based whir and drift from these masters of the drone (they do in fact run the DRONE record label after all). Formerly Maeror Tri, Troum�embody the drone, they live, breathe, eat and sleep drones. And it shows. Their records are gorgeous and epic, but seem so effortless, as if the sounds they create are simply channeled through their corporeal forms, but have been created in some fiery forge at the center of an alien planet.�
The first half of this single still sounds like Troum, but is unlike anything we've heard from them, strange looped high end guitar, what sounds like backwards chords, almost choral vocals, dramatic and haunting and cinematic, very much like some super stylized horror movie music almost, warbled and wavery, over a distant grinding low end tone drifting way off in the background, washed over by epic sweeping swells..
The other side is a bit more raw and intense, a seriously corrosive guitarscape, distorted and crumbling chordal buzz, looped and layered into a strange glacial riff, strewn over deep dark swirls of slow shifting sound and haunting minor key melodies. It manages to be intense and fierce but also gloriously washed out and blissful.�
Super�swank, full color covers, full color inserts, and pressed on nice thick vinyl. And of course limited, just not sure -how- limited...
Soon to be out of print, soon to be only available on eBay, the latest slab of blissed out psychedelic dreamfolk from Twinsistermoon aka Mehdi Amaziane aka one half of underground darlings Natural Snow Buildings, and you know what that means, grab these while you can, cuz pretty much everything NSB releases turns to gold, but not before selling out in a heartbeat. Which, as we've gone on at length about in the past, is a huge shame, as the music they create is positively enchanting. Together as NSB and separately as Twinsistermoon and Isengrind. This here record was originally released as an lp limited to 105 COPIES!! WTF? Thankfully, this cd reissue is limited to 1000, so this will hopefully be around for a while.
The music of Twinsistermoon, while definitely its own entity, is closely linked sonically to the Natural Snow Buildings mothership, from thick washed out drones, to delicate sun dappled folk, to haunting collaged soundscapes, Amaziane is an old hand at conjuring up sweeping cinematic vistas of sound, her voice angelic, her guitar playing lovely, her arrangements ethereal and otherworldly, all the various elements blurred and woven into slow burning and divine dreamscapes. The Hollow Mountain is heavy on the folk, with more than half the songs consisting of super stripped down, just voice and guitar numbers, delicate, crystalline, often wreathed in some sort of subtle sonic glow, or backed by some swirling textural ambience, but just as often stark and spare and simple. The other few tracks here are warm woozy meditative drones, with wheezing organs locked into cyclical melodic loops, various field recordings, and thick corrosive muted hiss and sitar like buzz.
And that's not counting the massive 44 minute 'bonus track', which essentially amounts to an entire extra Twinsistermoon record tacked on to the end of this one. Beginning with another darkly delicate bit of folky drift, the 'track' moves from there to clattery Avarus style free folk jangle, to garbled distorted lo-fi soundscape, to thick blown out sun dappled Sunroof! like ur-drone, to gorgeous soft skeletal Appalachia, to whirring soft focus slowcore, to barely-there hushed ambience. So goddamn lovely. Let's hope this one stays in print longer than the last few releases. 1000 COPIES. Remastered. And as always, super swank packaging, a printed full color sleeve, with a bunch of new artwork as well as the original lp art, housed in an oversized full color jacket / booklet...
The last Honest Jon's compilation we carried focussed on the roots of Congolese Rumba through a wave of Latin influence on the region from the thirties to the fifties. The latest Honest Jon's compilation, Africa Boogaloo, expands upon that concept by tracing Latin music's influential trajectory from the fifties to the seventies all along Africa's Western Coast from the Congo to Senegal.
Culled from rare recordings by both celebrated artists as well as the little known, this compilation focuses not so much on the single artist but the bigger dance bands like Orchestra Baobab, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou, Orchestre OK Jazz, and one of the major stars of Afro-beat, Manu Dibango (here performing the title track with Le Grand Kalle and Don Gonzalo). Boogaloo being a hybrid style of soul, R&B, mambo and various other forms of Afro-Cuban music, it makes sense that not only would it be popular in Africa whose various indigenous musical styles inspired Latin music in the first place, but that it would proliferate further into modern fusions of various African musical forms. The constant cross-cultural influence is amazingly uncanny as well as delightfully infectious!
As elemental to psychedelic music of the sixties and seventies as fuzz-fueled freakouts and surreal mystical lyricism, was the dirge! Those slow and heavy head-nodding anthems of bittersweet self-reflection often replete with powerful descending chord progressions and moody and soulful angst-laden vocal crooning.
The amazing folks at the Now-Again label (who usually focus on the funk side of the psychedelic equation) have assembled quite a tour-de-force with these rare heavy-hitters from around the globe, including long-time aQ favorites as well as plenty of new discoveries. Here's the line-up: Top Drawer (Kentucky), Sensational Saints (Cleveland, OH), East of Underground (USA via Germany), D.R. Hooker (New Haven, CT), Shin Jung Hyun & The Men (Korea), T. Zchiew & The Johnny (Thailand), The Strangers (Nigeria), Damon (Los Angeles, CA), Ellison (Montreal), Morly Grey (Cleveland, OH), Shadrack Chameleon (Dakota City, IA), Ofege (Nigeria), Ana Y Jaime (Columbia), Kourosh Yaghmaei (Iran), and Baby Grandmothers (Sweden)! Focusing not only on the rare, but also the rather unconventional modes of the ballad, this compilation doesn't just cover heavy psych territory, but also crosses currents with gospel, soul and downbeat international funk by obscure artists who sought after their own kind of sound. Just in time for those cold winter months, this is perfect fireside listening. In fact, it's the perfect, sad and beautiful companion to the energetic exuberance of that Psych Funk 101 compilation, we raved about a couple of lists ago. Meaning, it's a total must-have!
The cd comes with a beautiful booklet of album covers and notes about each band.
Another incredible collection from Soul Jazz, this one focusing on jazz from the sixties, seventies and early eighties and how that music, and the lives of the performers intersected with the civil rights movement.
As jazz developed and radicalized in the sixties, African American artists began to rebel against the stereotypical image and role of the jazz musician, reimagining their music, the sounds, looking to Africa for inspiration, turning their back in the mainstream, and approaching their music more as art than entertainment, resulting in some of the most revolutionary music made in America, and producing all manner of musical hybrids as well as all sorts of musical and cultural organizations. The booklet is super informative, and will most likely have you wanting to read and learn more. And the music here perfectly captures all the energy, confusion, turmoil, pain, suffering, anger, despair, sadness, hopefulness and joy of the era. Lots of familiar faces: Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Joe McPhee, Gato Barbieri, Philip Cohran, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Joe Henderson, but also tons of amazing groups we'd never heard before. And the sounds are all over the map, straight up post bop jazz, wild skronky free jazz, groovy Shaft style jazz funk jams, wah wah guitars, soulful vox, intense tribal drum workouts, smokey late night grooves, some spoken word, some jazz almost verging on dub, lots of African influences for sure, in the instrumentation, the chant like vocals, the arrangements, some amazing flute action, some seriously intense and unique sounds and songs, and we're now on the hunt for records by most of the artists we heard here for the first time, which is always the sign of a great compilation, and this is most certainly a great compilation.
Gorgeous packaging, with a massive booklet packed with tons of photos and extensive liner notes... a great companion to the rad coffee table book of album cover art Soul Jazz also released under this title, reviewed last list.
After wonderfully tackling the amazing sounds of 1970's Nigeria in their stellar Nigeria Special series, the folks at Sound Way now have applied their refined crate digging skills to the sounds of Ghana, assembling an amazing collection of tracks from 1968-1981. It took almost a decade to painstakingly track down the 37 tracks that make up this double disc and damn all that work was so worth it! We have always been huge fans of so many of the sounds that have come out of West Africa, and this comp is only fueling that fire even more. We can honestly say we had not heard of just about any of the artists here but they have all grabbed our attention as every track on this collection has something special going on, whether it's the hypnotic guitar playing, or the unique emotive vocal delivery, we find ourselves madly scrambling to see what track is playing to find out who the artist is so we can try to track down anything else by them. While not quite as outwardly flashy as some of their Nigerian counterparts, the songs on Ghana Special unfold with a distinct richness in songcraft and so many totally beautiful psychedelic and entrancing moments.
Once again Sound Way demonstrate that they not only have impeccable taste but that they also understand how to make compilations that flow, and feel like proper albums from start to finish instead of just a haphazard collection of tracks.
The double-disc cd set also comes with a 44-page booklet of photos and liner notes, including a history of this amazing musical era. School is in session and we're in the front row taking notes cause this shit is just so damn good! FYI there's also vinyl version comes in a monstrous box, the songs spread out over 5lp's, and includes two bonus tracks not available on the cd, but we happen to be out of it today, maybe we'll get a couple more in next week...
School is in session and we're in the front row taking notes cause this shit is just so damn good!
So stoked to have this awesome collection back in print!
Here's an interesting collection. Put together by Robert Crumb, at the behest of his wife Aline, from his personal collection of 78's. The collection moves across the globe by continent, starting in Louisiana, USA moving south through Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America; then touching down in Europe (Spain, Sicily, Greece and Turkey), moving south through Africa, on to India and South East Asia (Burma & Vietnam), and finally resting in the South Pacific. Most of the recordings come from the 30's (with a few from as early as 1927 and as recent as 1950) and are quite likely to be tracks you've never heard before in your life. Some artists, like Greek singer Rita Abadzi, first lady of Cajun Cleoma Falcon and Norteno musician Lidya Mendoza are well known, and have plenty of recordings assuring their place in history. But of much of the others on this disc, very little is known. In a typically erudite, but self deprecating and witty form that is unique to himself, Robert Crumb leads us through his recordings armed with what little knowledge he's been able to glean about each performer (mostly from the internet and, Crumb insists, with the help of others who understand such modern technology).
The home silkscreened sleeves make this 10" Siltbreeze sampler seem like it could have been just some old record discovered in a beat up cardboard box in the corner of some musty warehouse, the ink a little smeary, the sleeves a little rough around the edges, hand stamped, simple black on black skull cover, but have a peep at some of the names, Sic Alps, Kurt Vile, Dan Melchior... as well as some new to us outfits like Chickins, Tommy Jay Band and of course Puffy Areolas.
This is primo Siltbreeze lo-fi garage rock / sludge pop / whatever, from the super distorted garage murk of Dan Melchior, to the reverby stomp of Chickins, to the super distorted atonal stumbling groove of the Tommy Jay Band, to the surprisingly catchy lo-fi power pop of the Puffy Areolas, to the dreamy bedroom folk strum of Sic Alps, to the big classic rock via druggy garage pop blowout of Kurt Vile and his Violators, we're digging ALL of this. Big time.
What we're NOT digging though is the price, oof, but what can you do? It's probably crazy limited, 300 copies we think, we got all we could and that's not that many, plus they seem to have all been hand screened and stamped, and hell, the songs are pretty bad ass, and they're are all exclusive tracks as far as we can tell, so your call, for some folks, $25 won't be that steep a price to pay for these jams, and considering how fast these have been selling, you might not have to worry about that for long anyway...
The first Steppa's Delight dubstep comp on Soul Jazz totally knocked our socks off. We're so desperate for new dubstep and grime all the time, and we have such limited access to limited 12"s and white label dubplates, that we anxiously await the release of comps, hoping they'll compile some of the best jams, and usually offer up a bunch of new tracks as well.
Since the last Steppa's Delight comp though, a funny thing happened, dubstep continued to mutate and transform and is now something totally different than it was 18 months ago. The core sounds and structure remains the same, THAT beat, and THAT groove, the deep wobbly bass, but the sounds aren't so dark, or sinister, instead, the sound of dubstep has gotten a bit dancier, looking back to jungle and even house, incorporating more melody, more vocals, the sound almost more electro, with buzzy synths wrapped around that rumbling wobble. That said, there's still some darkness lurking in the grooves, and as much as we dig almost everything here, we can't help but lean toward those darker jams, Kutz's "Hardbody" is buzzy and bleak and ominous, "Purple City" by Joker & Ginz starts out all skittery and dancey, but then explodes with some of the fiercest most distorted bass on the comp.
A bunch of the tracks are super stripped down and skeletal, reminding us of some of the Skull Disco 12"s, all barebones and minimal, and some of the tracks are super atmospheric and ethereal. Killer stuff for sure, but be warned, if you're looking for stuff like Kode9 or Burial, you won't find much of that here, but if you're looking for big stuttery beats, thick throbbing bass synth wobble and can't get enough of that dubstep 'step, then this should definitely hold you over until the next comp...
Wow, is this ever cool! We kinda took a chance on ordering one in, 'cause what do we know about '80s underground metal from down in Texas? Well now we know it RULES. At least, the stuff they picked to put on this cool comp sure does. So, we ordered a bunch more copies to share with y'all. 15 tracks here from 13 bands, recorded circa 1983-1987. When metal was at its zenith, really, 'cause this stuff is so killer yet so obscure - by underground, we mean, really underground. All this stuff is from self-released demo tapes, none of these bands ever got past the demo stage to get signed or make a "real" album. So, unless you're an '80s metalhead from Texas (with a good memory), or perhaps someone who was fanatically into the tape trading scene back then, you've never heard of these bands, ever.
Thus, there's no Pantera on here - though some of these tracks were recorded at the Pantera dudes' dad's studio, and one of the bands features a guy who sang for Pantera before Phil Anselmo joined 'em. Here's the lineup: Battalion, Sentinel, Valkyrie, Death Tripper, Necrovore, Baron Steele, Warlock, Heavens Force, Wicked Angel, Forced Entry, Scythian Oath, Morbid Termination, and Rotting Corpse.
You're really not metal if that list of names doesn't sound cool to you, just the names themselves, so totally typically metal aren't they??
While each band is in fact different, you can pretty much say it's all galloping old school heavy metal action, with tons of raging youthful energy, displaying then-current influences from England, Germany, and the Bay Area, some bands more melodic than others (Baron Steele and Wicked Angel ferinstance), most of 'em in the edgier thrash and speed metal style of the day, often pushing the envelope of speed and technique, and taste! Some tracks get even more extreme, witness the protogrindpunk of Death Tripper, and the early black/death belchings of Necrovore. Vocally, while there's some punkish hardcore growls here and there (courtesy of the latter two bands mentioned, mainly), most of these acts go for clean, high pitched screaming vocals, some of 'em really over the top. Countering that, the frontman of Forced Entry (the one who had the Pantera gig, briefly) has a sneering Dave Mustaine-like voice. And by the way, if you're an Absu fan, it's interesting to guess if any of these bands were an immediate (local) influence on 'em growing up, we'd imagine some might have been, we can kind of hear it.
Sound-wise, this is all pretty decent for 20+ year old demos, really. This is metal, nothin' wrong with a little distortion! The typically lo-fi production of a track like Scythian Oath's "Shadow Of The Torturer" is actually kinda cool, the way it's kind of fucked up, it almost gets weirdly psychedelic, the mixing strangely schizophrenically "active", elements fading in and out, up and down. (If you've heard that Wicked Witch record on EM, imagine them playing metal instead of funk!). Other tracks aren't necessarily so bizarre. Raw, yes, but that's nothing to complain about.
The thick, full color cd booklet contains super detailed liner notes, plenty of graphics, photos, old fliers, logos, etc. Our favorite pic has got to be the one of Morbid Termination, their singer posing in his stage regalia, modified football shoulder pads with spikes sticking out, very homemade looking gear indeed! And there's a lot of super detailed liner notes, written by compiler John Perez (Brainticket label owner and Solitude Aeturnus guitarist), who knows his '80s Texas metal for sure, having been a part of the scene back then himself. Very obviously this whole thing is a labor of love, and the packaging reflects that. Similar, really, to that excellent Swedish Death Metal collection we highlighted recently.
Heck we're not counting on selling a ton of these, but it would be cool if we did, just 'cause it you really do dig metal, we absolutely know you'll get a kick out of this! Looking forward to volume 2!! (And wondering if Texas was so special, or were there bands this rad in the places we grew up, too?)
As the title truthfully advertises, this is a compilation of avant-garde compositions all incorporating Just Intonation in some way, shape, or form. While the liner notes go into great detail as to the specifics that define Just Intonation, the trademark sound of Just Intonation is the harmonized buzz that's found equally in Tony Conrad's abraded viola and the angelic choirs of Gregorian chants. Many 20th Century composers had incorporated such tunings as a stance against the Twelve-Tone tuning practice which had become the standard operating procedure for Western composition during the previous 200 years or so. We won't go too much into the musicological details, but we will say that this is a nice primer, featuring Pauline Oliveros, Michael Harrison, Ellen Fullman, Charles Curtis, Greg Davis, Zachary James Watkins, and others.
The highlights are found in Greg Davis' very nice Andrew Chalk impersonation through his network of low-end frequencies, Michael Harrison's extract of buzzing piano chords (which, it must be said, is an extract from his amazing Revelation album), and the bellowing horns which ground Zachary James Watkins' track. Curated by Duane Pitre.
Here's something that we didn't think we would ever see resurface. Topyscan (The Scandinavian chapter of the Temple of Psychic Youth) originally released an LP showcasing the wares of Sweden's electronic, darkwave, and experimental scenes, with some of the earliest work we had encountered from Zbigniew Karkowski and Phauss (featuring CM von Hausswolff) as well as cuts from Eld-Omala (some of whom had worked with Wire's Graham Lewis on a handful of recording) and White Stains. As a piece of vinyl, it worked quite well with gloomy electronic work sharing one side and skeletal minimalist crackling on the other. On cd, there's a bit of a disconnect between the two aesthetics, but considering how good all four tracks are, it matters little.
Eld-Omala opens the album with a minor-key piano melody hanging above a grim atmosphere of disembodied voices and dark ambient passages all set to heavy drums and distorted guitars that could easily be an out-take from Coil's Horse Rotovator. The White Stains piece is miles above anything else that this typically underwhelming project has ever done. Again Coil seems to be template, through a occultish ritualism built around a heartbeat pulse, wooden flutes soaked in reverb, and an excellent use of Shepherd tones (an auditory illusion created by several tones being layered in such a way as to give the impression the pitch is in constant descent). The scatter-shot minimalism of Phauss switches gears entirely through a wavering sci-fi tone smothered in electrical static treated with ring modulation and broken by some weird radio transmissions. Definitely a precursor to Hausswolff's recent work with radio, satellite, and EVP communication. The Karkowski piece again is one of the finer compositions that we've heard from him, although undoubtedly he would disagree 'cuz it's not punishing, violent, or masculine enough. The spiralling electronics and tight vibrations aspire to all of those attributes which Karkowski has been known for, but without the excess of distortion, his work has remarkable subtly and dynamism. Very nice!
More planet crushing doom drone blackness from these two axe wielding alchemists, one of which just so happens to run the bad ass Noiseville label, whose bad assness most definitely extends to his work in WKW, a juggernaut of low end brute force, ultra doom, plodding, trudging, lumbering heaviness, slowed down to an absolute crawl, 4 bpm never sounded so harsh and harrowing, which is saying a lot....
WKW take the slow and low template laid out by Khanate, and fill up all the extra space with crumbling distortion, howling feedback, garbled grunted vokills, fractured riffs, churning anti-rhythms, filthy and blackened and grim, a sprawling black cloud of sound, that seems to teeter on the edge, right between doom metal and pure drone, the two elements fused into some impossibly brutal and punishing sonic beast.
The awesomely titled "Call My Name Sweet Demon, So I Know I Am Not Alone" find WKW dipping into Wolf Eyes' bag of tricks, infusing their apocalyptic metallic creep with all sorts of industrial flavor, looped mechanical rhythms, stuttering processed electronics, sheets of feedback, thick shards of caustic buzz, layered and tangled, swooping from rhythmic throb to on-the-verge-of-collapse noise meltdown to muted damaged chug. The final epic track (all three tracks are just shy of 20 minutes long) is another strange assemblage of sounds, some abstract riffage, some swooping swirling high end streaks, plenty of hiss and skree and crunch, the whole thing twisted and tweaked, sometimes stumbling to a near halt, other times sprawling into a caustic crumbling jagged drone, and other times soaring into a near Merzbowian psychnoise blow out.
One of two new releases from this East Coast ultra doomdrone duo, the latest in Noiseville's Outer Bounds Of Sound lp series, which in the past has featured Burnt Hills, Kleistwahr. Skullflower... And Wicked King Wicker fits just find in that esteemed noise making company.
Much like their sonic compatriots Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, WKW seem to be a doom band in noise's clothing, or maybe it's the other way around. Ostensibly a doom outfit, WKW are just as likely to unfurl a burly glacial downtuned riff as they are to releases a swirling cloud of washed out psychedelic drift, which is what they do here, the root of their sound is still a downtuned buzz, a sort of murky riffage, but it's transformed into a looped dronescape, whatever riffage there was has been blurred and smeared into a softly pulsing, roiling blackened sprawl, peppered with gorgeous bits of electronic glitch, or synthy shimmer, it's hard to discern what it might be, but it adds a cool melodic component to the band's heaving abstract heaviness, the result something much more atmospheric and dreamy, that's pummeling and punishing, while still managing to sound heavy and intense and pretty epic.
The B-side sounds like it might have started life as a throbbing lumbering dooom jam, but was somehow subverted into an almost Fennesz sounding stretch of intense muted heaviness, glazed with flecks of crackle and crunch, wreathed in a psychedelic blur, the main component remains some sort of transformed guitar, all pulsing throbbing rumble and whir, finally finishing off in a blaze of abstract, super distorted Sunroof! like psychguitar ur-drone.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in cool metallic foil stamped jackets...
A whole mess of new releases from Germany's drone records, as always gorgeously packaged, super limited, and some of the deepest, darkest, loveliest and most mysterious dronemusik around.
This one comes from a group called XABEC, whose installment comes pressed on thick maroon vinyl, and housed in a gold embossed 7" cardboard box, with a printed cardstock insert. As always, it's a first edition and is thus limited to only 300 copies.
The A side begins as two simultaneous drones, one soft and shimmery and static, the other more buzzy and distorted, a hissing rumble, wrapping itself all around the main drone. Later on, creepy footstep-like percussion drifts in, and distant keening metallic melodies. Whirring distortion underpins bits of clatter, and various random sounds, all woven into a darkly undulating sonic tapestry.
The B side is a piece from a performance based on music and fireworks, and thus ends with field recordings, captured by Mnortham, the track opens with a flurry of fireworks a cloud of skittery pop, like an army of tiny machine guns, quickly giving way to a wash of deep resonant metallic drones, and a strange alien groove over the top, some sort of squeaky looped rhythm that sounds a bit like Drone meets Kompakt. Weird but quite cool.
!!!COLD CAVE ALERT!!!!
Hopefully that got your attention, not only because the world seems to be going totally batshit for minimalist synth poppers Cold Cave, but ALSO because we only have a scant 15 COPIES of this pre-CC group, and it's looking like that will probably be it for all of history, or until someone else decides to come along and reissue it. So you probably want to act now or miss out.
Ye Olde Maids follow a similar path as Cold Cave, in fact you might be hard pressed to tell the difference. But hey, we're not complaining, because like everyone else, we're too busy digging these propulsive, gloomy as hell lo-fi jams. Like Cold Cave, you might want to compare this to New Order or the Cure in terms of atmosphere and in their overall approach. It's easy to see that this is where Wes Eisold began to solidify all his new wavey inclinations after years of playing in hardcore bands, though the songs definitely stand strongly enough on their own. Things are probably a little more noisy and disjointed than what has been perfected with Cold Cave, but for those who can't get enough CC, you will definitely want to grab this one fast. Did we mention that we had only 15 copies?
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!
Another fantastic disc of gauzy, shimmery otherworldly dronemusic, from the seemingly infallible Type label. Long time aQ faves, Chicago's Zelienople moved to Type, after a handful of releases on PseudoArcana, Digitalis and Root Strata, and it was a pretty perfect match. Rameses III, Alps, Goldmund, Grouper, Xela, North Sea, Helios, Svarte Greiner, Black To Comm, it's not difficult to see that maybe this was where Zelienople belonged all along.
On Give It Up, the group deftly mix light and dark, weaving softly smoldering dreamscapes, all muted and hushed, with sun dappled dronefolk, all chiming soft focus guitars, and minimal percussion, hazy and gauzy and slightly blurred, vocals surfacing here and there throughout. A sort of ethereal slowcore, pop songs pulled apart and set in amber, this record a shadow produced by the muted sunlight shining through.
Some tracks are brooding and doomy, laced with ominous creaks and deep moaning low end tones, wheezing organs, and layered ambience, others are folky and reverbed, strummed guitars wreathed in a patina of muted thrum, spread out over some almost Neil Young sounding vox, but buried way down in the mix, still others are skeletal and barely there, voices drifting in the ether, over spare tendrils of melody, only to slowly shift, and get lost in a cloud of prismatic chordal hum.
Absolutely gorgeous, the perfect blend of minimal doom folk, hushed slowcore and abstract dronemusic.
The lp version comes with a bonus cd (NOT a cd-r, an actual pressed cd), featuring Zelienople's soundtrack for a film called Gone, stunningly beautiful, even more minimal than the record proper, the first half of the disc all gauzy drones, the second half, bleary eyed slow motion chamber music. Be careful removing the cd from the lp, it's attached by a little dollop of glue or something, but a quick pull will take some of the lp sleeve with it...
