This is another one of those records that is almost beyond reviewing. A record that if we found out someone we knew didn't own it, we would simply insist they buy it immediately. No questions asked. Of questions were asked, we would respond with something like "Because it's awesome!" or "It's one of the best collections of songs EVER" or more likely "JUST BUY IT! IT RULES!".
But since that doesn't work on everyone, we'll do our best to describe what is one of our favorite records EVER, and arguably the best Mudhoney release EVER. Partially because it's not a proper album, but rather a collection of single tracks. Pretty much every one a perfect chunk of slithery filthy grungy punk rock genius.
When we first discovered Mudhoney, it was because we were super obsessed with Green River, the band that vocalist/guitarist Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner called home before Mudhoney. Both quitting as that band leaned more and more toward glam rock and late eighties Sunset Strip rock. But to our ears, Mudhoney didn't sound all that different from Green River. Maybe a little punkier, definitely less bluesy, but from the second we first heard Mudhoney, we were in punk rock love.
A lot of it has to do with Arm's raspy croon, so raw and primal, but managing to be super melodic and versatile. He's a bit like a mop topped grunge rock Iggy Pop, wiry and writhing while spitting out insane punk rock bon mots, wailing away on his axe, bouncing maniacally around the stage. His voice is definitely the defining feature of Mudhoney, but that wouldn't mean shit if the songs weren't amazing, and they are. Punk as fuck, but way poppy, hooks galore, but all wound up in super tight riffs, wiry melodies and wild drumming, the band careening wildly one second, pounding away through some doomy dirge the next.
No amount of flowery description, no review, no matter how well written, can possibly compare to just hearing this stuff. We're so jealous of anyone who gets to hear "Touch Me I'm Sick" for the first time, or their cover of the Dicks' "Hate The Police", or the slithery "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More". When we first heard these songs, our minds were BLOWN. Literally, we had no idea what the heck we were hearing. Punk rock. Grunge. Pop. But it was more than that. The energy, the spirit, the groove, the vibe, and holy shit THE SONGS. So with all of that to chew on, I think we're finally at a stage where we can unleash the "JUST BUY IT. IT TOTALLY RULES!!"
We get a little bummed out on reissues sometimes, thinking we have to buy a record all over again, for maybe a few extra tracks, or a dvd, or whatever, but then you have to realize, stuff like this is not necessarily for fans who already have the record, but for folks who might have somehow missed out, many of whom were maybe not even alive, or still toddlers when it first came out. So for you folks, this is absolutely a must have. Whether you're a metalhead, an emo kid, a punk rocker. Mudhoney are one of the few bands whose appeal transcends genre, and rightfully so.
For those of us who already have one or more copies of Superfuzz Bigmuff, well, the new version has three demo tracks, as well as an entire disc of live tracks, one live show, one live on the radio, new fancy pants packaging, deluxe six panel digipak, housed in a slipcase, huge booklet with tons of photos, liner notes, all the original single covers, so yeah, we're all gonna buy one, you might as well too, replace the old worn disc with this new remastered version, support a bunch of cool dudes who are still making kick ass records (in fact, a new one to be reviewed here real soon). But really, all that extra stuff is just icing, on a cake that already tastes better than any other sonic confection we can think of...
Possibly named for an Incapacitants track from many moons ago, Necklacing is a collaborative project between the LA drone-plus-noise artists Matt Sullivan and William Hutson, the former working under the guise Earn and the latter as Rale. This is much more of a full-on noise project than what we've heard from either of them previously, as they're seeking the harness the power of various 'white noise generators.' It seems to us, that these generators include amplified tape hiss and shortwave radio static all blown out with overdriven gain and well-tempered distortion. No delicate introduction here, just a blast of a white noise that opens both tracks of this tape, and a plateau of noise is sustained throughout streaming into an thick low-end underbelly and topped with a very hectic stream of tactility. In their evenhanded application of the noise, Necklacing offer a perspective of clinical detachment, somewhat like the manifestations of tape noise on the brilliant, if long forgotten Reynols album Blank Tapes. The second side, which begins and ends just as the first, exhibits more from the shortwave, with rapid fire blips from utility signal transmissions bleeding through the agitated surface noise. Necklacing is an entirely different animal from the kaleidoscopic frenzy of Merzbow, the primal energy of Menche, and the psychological pressures of John Duncan. Very well done, and very limited. 100 copies altogether.
This record seemed like it was custom made for aQ. They're called Necro Deathmort, the record is called This Beat Is Necrotronic, they've been described as SUNNO))) meets Squarepusher, it's heavy, it's skittery, it's dark, it's like a metal dubstep record, or a grim electronic laced doomdrone record, some of the tracks are stuttery and rhythmic, others are grim and ominous and intense, all of them are heavy, the sound veers from spaced out and downtuned, to skeletal and psychedelic, to thick and caustic, to big beated and bassy.
Thanks to aQ customer Mark for introducing us to these guys, we've been listening to it nonstop since we got it in. It's definitely a tough one to pin down, a little all over the map, but no matter what's going on, the various sounds and vibes and moods are definitely connected, joined by a thick grim black thread.
"Spilth (Spill Your Filth)" starts things off with a lumbering electro jam, all squiggles and squelches, glitches and buzzes, but underpinned by some serious speaker destroying bass, fuzzed out and thick and rumbling and very very prickly, like the heaviest dubstep bassline you've ever heard, cranked even higher. "Hurt Me I'm Bored" is where the band get serious, spreading out a serious chunk of smoldering electronic flecked doom, haunting and propulsive, the drums simple and stripped down, the main riff minor key and a little bit woozy, all around the main groove, clouds of static and hiss swirl and spark, the low end again thick as hell, the guitars gradually growing more and more metallic until, the track is full on doooooooom, but still peppered with little squiggles of distorted leads and various shards of electronic detritus.
"I Can See Through Time" is all washed out whir and hushed shimmer, looped and chopped sounds smoothed into a droney almost pop ambience, which quickly gives way to "Return To Planet Atlas", a sort of trip hopped slowcore jam, all big beats, and thick gnarled woofer shredding low-end, surrounded on all sides by streaks of high end, and all manner of swirling effects. The beats are definitely reminiscent of Scorn, even Bomb The Bass (remember them?), but a bit amped up and a lot heavier: "Necro Effigy" is another strange beat driven groove, with strange voices, croaking frogs, fractured glitched out crunch, and stuttery stop start beats, "Broadcast" is a dreamy interlude, sampled voices, looped bass notes and distant drone-y rumbles, dreamy and ethereal, which leads right into "I Fought The Law And The Law Won" which sounds like Portishead, all smoke-y and late night, or maybe a more beaty Bohren, creepy crawly, mysterious and weirdly pretty, "Technicolour Minstrel Show" begins with a SUNNO)))-y wall of crumbling blackened sound, only to give way to a whirring soft focus dreamscape, while "Origami Werewolf" is a dark loping jam, all throbbing beats, sheets of blown out guitar, keening feedback, and some serious industrial riffage, and finally, the record closes with the nearly 13 minute "Ultimate Testament", a gorgeous super minimal slowcore crawl, the beats skeletal and spaced out, the guitar raw and distorted, thick and noxious, but the melodies epic and majestic, it sounds like it might build to classic post rock crescendo, but instead, everything drops out except for the drums, and the last few minutes are a strange minimal beatscape, booming, pounding, crashing, but with tons of space, the beats echoing into the blackness before winking out, only to be replaced by another beat, until there's nothing left.
This shit is amazing, so dark and heavy and unlikely. Gorgeously packaged too, in a super swank fold out six panel sleeve, adorned with some garish woodcut style illustrations, and be sure and check out their Myspace page as well, tons of other music that didn't make it onto the cd, including a killer reinterpretation of an old Nirvana song, that gets all Necro'd. So Rad. And just for the record, January is in no way too soon to start picking records for your best of 2010 list... just so you know...
The origin myth of Night Control is almost as fascinating as their music, it was explained in great detail in our review of the first Night Control record from a while back, but in a nutshell, Night Control was at one time called Crystal Shards, and that band released a whole mess of super limited cd-r's, all amazing and tripped out and weirdly poppy, but before we could get our hands on any of those cd-r's, the band resurfaced with a new name, Night Control, and a new record, Death Control, which cherry picked all the best songs from those impossible to find cd-r's and voila, and all time aQ favorite, twisted, fractured outsider lo-fi pop, that managed to infuse hook filled classic sounding pop music, with all manner of rhythmic aberrations and sonic inconsistencies, transforming NC's music into something truly original and transcendent.
So here we have what could be considered to be the first proper NEW Night Control record, and thankfully, all of the weirdness is fully intact, and the songwriting has seemingly grown by leaps and bounds, without sacrificing a bit of fuckedupness. So, just like Death Control was, it's gotta be a Record Of The Week! Night Control's sound is still firmly positioned amongst the current crop of warped lysergic lo-fi popsters: Ariel Pink, Gary War, John Maus, Ty Segall, Wavves, Blank Dogs, Kurt Vile, etc., but there's just something about Night Control, that makes this music different. And special. Not better necessarily, although in some ways it definitely is, but just special, the songs are ramshackly, but fully formed, catchy as all get out, but laced with all manner of clatter, and squealing feedback, the vocals are generally buried, so sometimes the melody is more suggested than anything, but somehow all the woozy warped parts fall (im)perfectly into place, and yet again, Night Control has created a songsuite, that is at once warm and familiar, but also alien and abstract.
There's no denying the fact that these songs are tighter, and more rocking, and it definitely sounds more like a real band, than a bedroom project, the opener "CS" is heartbreakingly good, warm and woozy and lush, drum machine, loping piano driven melody, big rich guitars, and a main vocal line that is so dreamy and melancholic and definitely harkens back to classic sixties pop a la The Zombies, but the record immediately changes gears, and "There's A Chance" begins as a stumbling chaotic lurching kitchen sink pop workout, very New Zealand sounding actually, the drums are distorted and tangled, the vocals are processed and all wrapped up with streaks of high end and feedback, all under a blown out haze, making the song's poppiness all the more subtle. "Take Apart" is super rocking, with actual burly guitar riffing, pounding drums, even some squirrely almost-leads, but it's interspersed with some wheezing atonal organ, some detuned guitar squiggle, some surprisingly active rubbery basslines, and the whole thing is wrapped in a cloud of hiss and crumbling distortion. It's like a Joe Meek track gone haywire.
And so it goes, the whole record veers from perfect pop to deconstructed lo-fi pop flecked weirdness, drums get blown out, vocals slip way up in the mix in a reverbed Lou Reed like sung spoken croon, guitars warble, chords jangle, rhythms are flipped backwards, fragments of songs are looped and layered, some tracks skip and skitter, you can hear someone push the stop button on the tape player, the 'ka-chunk' becoming part of the song, vocals pile on top of one another creating big lush, dense harmonies, long stretches of barely there sound drift and shimmer, like a pop song muted and melted into shimmery sonic strings, new wave collides with new age, classic rock stumbles into power pop, drum machine driven skitter explodes into druggy garage rock, hazy riffs coalesce into crystalline space rock, and on and on and on. The final track might just be the most beautiful, a nearly 8 minute stretch of processed guitars, all delicately intertwined, looped and layered, melodies and overtones surfacing and then fading into the background, notes pulse and throb, creating sort-of-rhythms, a little pop ambience, a little abstract Appalachia, warm and lush, the perfect rainy day dreamdrift, and a fitting way to finish off this perfectly imperfect record. One of our new favorites for sure.
It could be a coin toss as to who's our favorite recording artist on Touch. Christian Fennesz, Phillip Jeck, and Chris Watson are all impeccable musicians working for the legendary label; but BJ Nilsen is the one artist who may be lurking beneath the radar a bit and has NEVER failed to deliver a great record. His work has always been focused on the drone, beginning back in his earlier sample heavy orchestrations as Morthound through Cold Meat Industries and onto his recordings as Hazard through the Touch imprint Ash International. Throughout his career, he's often tapped into the psychic and physical cold of his native Swedish landscape. That was definitely the case for his North album as Hazard and the three alcoholically bent records made in collaboration with Stilluppsteypa for Helen Scarsdale; and it's certainly true for The Invisible City.
A shimmering glow from an aggregate of rasping frequencies opens the album, sounding almost like a chorus of poorly grounded street lights offering their sustained, post-Ligeti plainsong to vacant streets on some cold wintery morning in Oslo. After some exploratory field recordings of bees and sympathetic atmospherics, Nilsen snaps into a frozen blur of softened distortion (e.g. Machinefabriek, Fennesz, and Lawrence English) laced with half-melodic phrases and shortwave transmissions echoing like distant ghosts on "Virtual Resistance." It's a signature move for Nilsen, and it's one that he's masterfully executed. Another great Nilsen strategy: his phased loops with theatrically brooding ambience and tactile field recordings, reappears on that same track which morphs into a shadowy post-apocalyptic smear somewhere between Deathprod and Barn Owl. Digital errata suspended in darkened rooms, barren windswept tones, and haunted field recordings dominate The Invisible City, which stands as another monumental achievement for BJ Nilsen.
BACK IN PRINT!!! Nice digipak w/ original artwork.
Infamously receiving a rating of "?????" instead of the normal star system employed by Sounds Magazine in 1979, Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella was the first release, from what would eventually be a massive catalogue of sonic absurdity, from the mighty Nurse With Wound. Steven Stapleton began this album and the Nurse With Wound project during the serendipitous moment when engineer Nicky Rogers asked Stapleton, if he ever felt like making some noise on the weekend to come on over to the studio. He called up his friends John Fothergill and Heman Pathak with the frantic proposition: "I've got some studio time, go buy an instrument and let's see what happens!" The three brought over a cheap organ, an accordion, a guitar with a treble booster, a ring modulator (which Stapleton was somewhat saddened by), and as many "little noise making items" that Stapleton could carry (drills, handsanders, vacuums are some of the more obvious items), and they seem to have had access to the studio's in-house piano as well. After a mere 30 seconds of checking the levels and 'practice', Nurse With Wound began recording their first album. Random plucks, plinks, scrapes, and blurts from the NWW arsenal erupt with varying densities of reverb to create a surprisingly rich space for these improvisations. Making up for their lack of real musical training with years of collecting obscure music, Stapleton and company sat aloof amongst their mess, conjuring their own means of communication to some otherworldly plane. Obviously, Stapleton had enough sense to recognize that the power of studio editing, and didn't release this as a direct-to-tape improvisation. Chance Meeting could be positioned between Faust, Pierre Henry, AMM, and Sun Ra, but Stapleton's own unique view of how such a meeting would sound and his own application of Surrealist thought kept this album from being merely a meeting of minds.
We should probably stop being surprised when we discover records we dig and groups we love are in fact made by or made up of long time aQuarius customers. It makes sense after all. People who are obsessed with cool weird music are often the same ones who make it. We should also probably stop marvelling about what a small world it is, similar to the above sentiment, it makes sense that people into the same sort of weird shit would gravitate toward each other.
So thus, it makes perfect sense, that The Observatory, who hail from Singapore, count at least one long time aQ mailorder customer as a member, and thus it should also make perfect sense, that The Observatory's eye popping, ultra deluxe hardcover silver inked book packaging was designed by none other than Justin Bartlett, another aQ customer, and the man responsible for the first bad ass installment in our Artist Edition t-shirt series. So now that we're no longer surprised, and all finished marvelling, we can get to the music.
The Observatory are difficult to describe. Their sound is lush, and dark, and mysterious, woozy and softly psychedelic. The core traditional band instruments are augmented by what sounds like a whole mess of other random instruments. The songs sprawl, the seem to ooze and creep and drift. Mark Ribot like angular guitars are draped over a Bohren like dirge, sunshiney almost Beach Boys harmonies are woven into a slowly swirling synthscape, drums are minimal and spare, the songs shift into soft mysterious dreampop, with Theremins, steel string guitars, and hushed crooned vocals, more of those glorious harmonies, before drifting back into something more croonsome, until some crunchy guitars come in, and the song splinter into a dizzying grinding circus gone haywire sort of psychedelic freakout, finally slipping back into something much more tranquil and soft and poppy.
At their core, these guys (and gals) are definitely a pop band, but their tendencies definitely lean toward something much more avant and out. Jangly, shimmery, poppy, and folky for sure, in fact, this is most definitely 'dark folke', but it's informed by much more than just folk music. Dramatic strings sing and soar, ethereal female vocals drift over spidery strum and buzz, strange bits of shortwave interference, reverbed piano plinks, all draped over the band's lush dark folky almost chamber pop, so dreamy and divine.
Did we mention the packaging? WOW. A 7" x 7" black clothbound hardcover book. The front and back printed in metallic silver ink, inside 14 pages of lyrics and Justin Bartlett's gorgeously creepy pen and ink drawings, like some nightmarish children's book, so over the top and deluxe, not sure how they manage to sell it for so cheap, needless to say, grab one quick before they realize they can't and the price goes way up, or more likely, they sell out!!
The Oh Sees have changed a lot since they were the OCS. Back then, Oh Sees frontman John Dwyer had his Coachwhips, a wild sweat soaked, garage stomp party, furious and frenzied, throbbing and in-the-red, so OCS was the outlet for Dwyer to explore the other sides of his multiple musical personality. The debut OCS record (released on tUMULt) was two discs, one of mostly solo acoustic guitar, a super intimate bedroom folk, all dusty and crackly, warm and super intimate, bits of damaged Casio, warbly old vinyl, damaged FX, lovingly crafted into some sort of heartfelt lo-fi sonic loveletter. The other disc was more noisy, super abstract, blown out blasts of free jazz weirdness, drones and rumbles, howling feedback, white noise, pink noise, and every color in between. OCS 2, 3 and 4 followed a similar pattern, a sort of lonely lo-fi homebrewed indie folk, off kilter and melancholy, wistful, damaged and dreamy.
But with the dissolution of the Coachwhips, came a name change for OCS, now The Ohsees, or sometimes The Oh Sees, a change in sound, and a transformation into a full band.
While not as freaked out and furious as the Coachwhips, the Oh Sees new record sounds more like the long lost CW's than any of Dwyer's records since. Garage-y jangle, shuffling drums, the vocals distorted, the songs simple and stripped down, but the big difference is that here Dwyer splits the vocals with bandmate Brigid Dawson, the result is truly endearing harmonies, with Dwyer often the wailing counterpoint to Dawson's sweet angelic croon. And songs that sometimes sound like alien versions of that classic Phil Spector girl group sound. But at its heart, the sound is still fuzzy and buzzy and skeletal, groovy and garage rocky, wouldn't be hard to imagine this disc on In The Red, or see these guys on tour with the Dirtbombs or the Country Teasers or the Husbands. (Bonus points for having a song about aQ pal and local artist extraordinaire Maria Forde!)
Weird too that it's out on Tomlab, it IS blissy and fuzzy and poppy, but not nearly as much as everything else on Tomlab, which is why it's only -through- Tomlab and is really on Dwyer's just launched Castle Face label�
Big booklet, with lyrics, and kick ass eye popping artwork on the front and back!
We know very little about these guys, where they're from, who they are, in fact, even the front cover / logo is so abstract it took us a while before we even figured out they were called OS, which makes this all the more appealing, a mysterious murky slab of blackened doomic filth, pounding and ominous and harsh and downtuned and hellish, these guys traffic in a sound not that far removed from the black doom of aQ faves like Amort, Monument Of Urns, and Light, but with a definite nod to classic crusty doom of the past, not to mention a sound that also seems informed by modern dronescapers and noisemakers like Gnaw Their Tongues, Pussygutt and the like.
Two epic sidelong tracks, the guitar unfurling huge slabs of rumbling grinding crunch, the drums a funereal plod, the vocals anguished and unhinged. The first side spends half its time plodding along doomily, fans of Monarch, Moss, and other monumental slowpokes will dig it big time, but gradually the sound gets more and more melodic, until the band shift gears completely, and spread out into a strangely pretty dirge, all clean guitars, over still pounding drums, and a backdrop of hellish wails and buzzing static drones, before finishing off in a tangle of slow motion mathiness.
The flipside starts off similarly, a massive sprawling creep, but laced with some gorgeous melodies, the guitars ringing out, the distortion crumbling, almost more slowcore than doom, but still heavy heavy heavy, the vocals even more harsh and demonic sounding than before, the track is epic, and lumbers monstrously, building to another strange crescendo, the sound growing warm and more dense and strangely melodic, without ever shedding any of its doom or sludge.
Fucking epic stuff, crushing droned out heaviness, that will definitely appeal to doomlords and dronelords alike, way recommended for anyone into Khanate, Wicked King Wicker, Habsyll, Thou, Fleshpress, Atavist, and of course Moss, Monarch and all the above mentioned heavies.
Killer packaging, super abstract skeletal / logo cover, folded over to make a partial back cover, printed insert, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 400.
Anyone who has checked out the aQ lists within the last year will no doubt have noticed the flood of essential blues reissues that have come out on the Italian label Monk. We're sure everyone has their favorites, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone here who hasn't had their minds sufficiently blown by the Charley Patton releases in particular. While all four of the "Electrically Recorded" Patton lps were collected in an awesome and elaborate (and expensive!) boxset limited to 275 copies worldwide, we were waiting for a bit to get a hold of this final set of tunes, and now that wait is up. Moon Going Down collects four separate recording sessions, one from 1930 in Grafton, Wisconsin and three from New York in early 1934, making them the last songs recorded before Patton's death a few months later. It's strange listening to those final songs after familiarizing ourselves with everything that came before. It's sad to think what we are hearing on this lp is the end of the line for Charley Patton, but he sounds just as forceful and self-aware as always, and in death he would become recognized as one of the most legendary American musicians ever to walk the earth. Listening to these songs confirms why things turned out that way. This is it, the source, and if you are even casually interested in blues music, you should do yourself a favor and grab this right away.
A flurry of releases from Mexican Summer, all limited, all gone before you know it, and all pretty dang good. Pearl Harbor offer up 4 songs of hazy, warbly girl pop, all crooned angelic vox and shimmery Cocteau Twins like guitars, dreamy and otherworldly, but plenty psychedelic and washed out, a bit reminiscent of a female Ariel Pink in some ways. Folks who dug Girls At Dawn, Dum Dum Girls, Grass Widow, Vivian Girls, will definitely feel right at home. But unlike a lot of those bands, PH channel a distinctly eighties vibe, the drums simple and machinelike, the guitars crystalline, and wreathed in soft effects, the melodies and harmonies reminding us of that era of MTV, synth pop, and new wave, with a slightly gothic tinge, woozy Joy Divisiony bass underpinning the chiming guitars, and glimmering tangled vocal lines, everything slightly blurred and indistinct, giving all the songs here a strange otherworldly feel, like you discovered some old broken radio that only picks up stations from 30 years ago, broadcasting lost synth pop from some alternate dimension. Trippy and psychedelic and really really cool.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, each one with a download card too. Sorry tho that they're not so cheap, Mexican Summer just jacked up their prices...
Long overdue reissue of this lost jazz classic from Texas saxophonist Prince Lasha, who recorded with Dolphy, Sonny Simmons, Elvin Jones, and was a contemporary of Ornette Coleman. Recorded in the mid sixties, Insight is notable for its strange lineup:TWO bass players and a harpist (a la Dorothy Ashby), plus Lasha traded his sax for flute, and in fact played both the wooden flute and the plastic alto flute, and you know how we feel about flutes! Thee's also trumpet, trombone and piano of course, the sound lush and shimmery and skittery, and soulful, so fantastic, the harp especially adding a totally different vibe to the proceedings, the horns get all gloriously intertwined, the dueling basses makes the sound thick and more busy, the record is split pretty evenly between deep soulful jazz ballads and full on bop workouts. It's not super weird, or far out, or skronky or free, instead this is just perfectly played, classic sounding jazz, with a tinge of the out of the ordinary, the solos inspired, the arrangements divine, the playing fantastic, one of our favorite jazz reissues of the last few years along with the recent Record Of The Week, A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz by Lloyd Miller. And like that one, this too is VERY recommended.
Includes original liner notes as well as photos of the original labels and inside sleeves...
Sorry if you missed the recent instore with Austin's Silver Pines and Pure Ecstasy, because both bands were really amazing! We were especially impressed with Pure Ecstacy, of whom we only heard their first 7" (recently repressed!), which was really a grower for us. Cool and curious at first, but the more we listened to it, the more hooked in we got to it's lo-fi and dreamy vibe. Live, they really brought it, their songs a bit more uptempo than the recordings, but still spacious and reverbed out, like a mix of Beach Boys retro harmonies with the more pop jangle meets Crazy Horse side of those Tokyo Flashbackish bands like Doodles, Miminokoto or even LSD-March. And what a full sound they get from such an economic set-up, just three guys: a singer/guitar player, and a rhythm section pulled from two members of Silver Pines. Their new 7" contains two brand new tracks: "Easy", a slow and heavy-lidded ballad and "Baby", a more uptempo garage-pop number, and like the first 7" contains almost a third track, a breezy and dreamy refrain that we could listen to for much longer than it lasts.
Woodsist, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones and/or Mexican Summer, get on this band quick!
Ok, how can you go wrong with a record called Fantasy Quest, that features awesome, high school binder, D&D fantasy pencil art, with a dog headed warrior princess wielding a shield and a tiny mouse with a sword waving a pennant, some ghosts, a winged rabbit headed warrior, a creepy forest, a castle, even harder to resist when you realize it's a compilation of all female, mostly instrumental, fuzzy, psychedelic hard rocking, metal bands from the Northwest! FUCK YEAH!
First up is Purple Rhinestone Eagle, whose record we went nuts for a while back, and their track here is just as good as anything on the full length, pounding, groovy, garagey, a little stonery, a lot space-y, riffy, metallic psych rock with a pinch of NWOBHM, so so good!
Here they're teamed up with Northern Swords, whose track is a two parter, you gotta flip the disc to hear the whole thing, and it slays, like a more loose Fucking Champs, still tight and technical, with killer harmonized guitar leads, killer drumming, the second part is super aggro and WAY technical, and relentlessly rocking, both parts sound like they COULD, or SHOULD have lyrics about dragons and swords and sorcerers, you can almost hear the airbrushed seventies van, and leather pants, the fringed jackets and feathered hair, the big amps and smoke machines.
Finally, Forsorcerers (awesome name btw!) finish things off, kicking out the only jam with vocals, total hard rocking classic garage rock, like Thin Lizzy crossed with the Runaways, more awesomely tangled guitar harmonies, and bad ass female vox.
Not sure what's going on up North, but we definitely want more.
Pressed on super striking white / black / grey splatter vinyl, with a printed insert, and the aforementioned bad ass cover.
We REALLY like Viennese instrumental glitch-groove trio Radian. This, Chimeric, is their first album in four whole years. And it's awesome. So it deserves a glowing review from us. We're having trouble writing it, though. The problem is, we made the mistake of going back and looking at what we wrote about their previous albums, and feel like we already said it best about 'em then, can't really top lines like these: "Y'know how in subatomic reality, seemingly solid objects aren't solid at all, but filled with empty space interspersed with electrons and protons and such? Radian's music is kind of like that, atomized, spacious, abuzz with crackling energy", and "There's a jazz/improv element as well, but rather than rock/jazz fusion this is more like fission, breaking down elements of both musics, and releasing volts of energy in the process."
See? Good stuff, eh? And those sentiments apply here as well. Though, it's not like this is just the same as Radian's earlier work. No, their computer-processed live improv post rock electro-acoustic sound (whew!) has definitely developed, Radian themselves considering Chimeric to be more "Free", though what they mean by that we have to guess, perhaps it's why this Radian record does seem rather more noisy, raw, chaotic, rocking, & heavy than ever before, though.
Which is much to our liking, as it brings 'em even closer to sounding like some bands to which we've compared 'em in the past, a "sliced-up Circle" and, especially, a "sci fi This Heat", that uniquely rhythmic British experimental prog-rock unit from the '70s, who are really one of our "touchstone" bands here at AQ that we're always referencing in reviews, always hoping to hear something new that reminds us of 'em (we're the same way about the likes of Comus, Goblin, Earth, Magma, Black Sabbath, and Circle too). Thus, one reason we dig this Radian album so much (and Radian's other efforts too) is 'cause we can hear a lot of This Heat goin' on here. This Heat gone electronically futuristic in some mad scientist's laboratory, that is... The fractured structures, jumbled rhythms, distorted guitar stabs, and rumbling textures found here are totally hitting the spot. We mentioned it's been 4 years since their last album, and it's about time. We NEED more music like this, thanks Radian!
Somehow this is nothing like what we expected, not sure what we actually expected but this definitely was not at all it. Rev has spent most of his musical life in the seminal group Suicide, creating the iconic musical backdrops for his partner Alan Vega, he's also released tons of solo records over the years, from pop to new wave, we've heard a handful of them, but none of them prepared us for this.
Stigmata is basically soundtrack music, all strings and synths and Rev's dreamy almost Antony like vocals, most of the tracks are short, and establish a musical theme, and then work around it, creating tension, establishing the mood, pizzicato string plucks, soaring stringed melodies, some ominous and haunting, others playful, and still others majestic and epic, all moody and dramatic, while Rev croons and coos, not singing so much as offering up almost falsetto sounding 'whooo's, it sounds strange, but in fact, it's pretty compelling, and moving, and intense. The music sounds classical, or operatic, while the vocals are weirdly distorted and way up in the mix, mostly wordless, as far as we can tell, almost like karaoke opera, which is a lot cooler than it sounds, check out the sound samples, not sure what it is, but we just can't seem to stop listening to this. Be cool to see what Rev could do with an actual score, seems like it might be pretty interesting...
We've long been a fan of Encomiast, never tiring of his gorgeous drone explorations, so when we discovered that the man behind Encomiast also had a black metal band, it seemed like a no brainer, and indeed, the music of Schrei Aus Stein manages to fuse Encomiast's deep rumbling drone music, with a strangely washed out and hypnotic midtempo buzz drenched black metal, this is not blazing riffy thrashing black metal, no this is a murky sprawling blackened oozing blackness, the riffs super distorted to the point of almost becoming drones themselves, the vocals are buried in the mix, the drums are simple and skeletal, the buzz and black infused with haunting melodies, the songs heaving and lumbering, the overall sound very Burzumic, but also weirdly poppy and melodic, not glaringly so, but within the swirling black mass of sound, melodies creep out only to disappear again, a few of the tracks sound almost gothic, with a bit of a cold wave vibe, definitely some Joy Divisiony low end going on in the background.
Another song starts out all high end Sunroof! style ur-drone, only to splinter into a loping depressive black metal pound, while another is all slow building and doomy, a little post rocky, with soaring riffs and simple motorik drumming, and the final track is all slow motion SUNNO))) dirge, which quickly gives way to something much more melodic and pretty, a sort of shoegazey soft doom, that slowly builds to a wall of blurred noise, only to finally explode in a frenzy of blasting flute flecked proggy black metal tangle, eventually blissing out into yet more shoegazey dreaminess, before fading into streaks of effected flute.
Housed in a DVD case, with photocopied insert, and LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
We're huge fans of the Sacred Bones label. They're responsible for some of our favorite records lately, from space rock to cold wave to twisted garage pop. Gary War, Moon Duo, Blank Dogs, Zola Jesus, The Cultural Decay, 13th Chime, so we were definitely excited to check out this latest release, from a fella called Carl Simmons, and once again, SB has come up with something weird and cool and confounding.
Unlike the more gothic or cold wave or noisy leanings of much of the other stuff on the label, Simmons' record is a strange stripped down psychedelic folk missive, that sounds like it was broadcast from some other world, or other time.
Super spare and simple, mostly vocals and guitar, but fleshed out with layers of sound collage, and lots of effects. But unlike a lot of heavily effects laden music, Simmons manages to pile on the effects, without it becoming ABOUT the effects. Lots of reverb and multitracking results in a strange reedy, almost helium sounding main voice, often laid over Simmons' more natural gruff croon, the result is definitely magical, and mysterious, gorgeous druggy loner bedroom folk for sure, but infused with plenty of spaced out shimmer, and muted lysergic energy. If you can imagine a freaky, psychedelic, lost freak folk artifact, equal parts Sentridoh, Peter Grudzien and Ween (the latter mostly because of the processed helium vox), you might get a rough idea of what Honeysuckle Tendrils sounds like, but it's so much more than its influences or whatever references we can come up with. Recorded 10 years ago, and released in a micro edition of almost none, Honeysuckle Tendrils is definitely a lost gem, emotional, intimate, haunting, pretty and definitely a bit twisted.
Fantastic packaging as with all Sacred Bones stuff, cool hand screened arigato style cardstock sleeve, with multiple mini printed inserts.
Last year we raved (cackled?) about an album by the band Acid Witch, spooky-ooky doom released on the reliably gory death metal label Razorback. Since then, Razorback has put out several other fine releases of old school death metal, including one, Claws, featuring a former member of Acid Witch. Of course, we can't review everything, not even everything that we like. So haven't gotten to all those yet. But THIS new Razorback release we had to bring to your attention, 'cause it's a bit more in the freaky, psychedelically doomy style of Acid Witch. Furthermore, the band's from Sweden, and are quite capable practitioners of their country's traditional music: death metal! (The sort of stuff documented on that recent triple cd compilation "Swedish Death Metal" reviewed here not long ago.)
Skeletal Spectre mix classic Swedish DM buzzsaw guitar tones with rocked out riffage and weird, whining, grinding atmosphere, even some droning organ. Haunting melodies are intertwined with the background buzzings as, churning and chugging, they trudge at near-doom speeds on such creepy-crawl numbers as "Burial Ground" and "Eerie Bones", never taking it too slow though, and certainly speeding up to bash out the likes of "Wrath Of Corrupta" and "Amulet Of Impurity".
The vokills by bassist Behold The Pentagram (!) are wonderfully wretched, owing something not only to the Cookie Monster but also to the death grunts of Tom G. Warrior. Guitarist Sacrifice The Virgin (!!) and drummer Haunting The Beyond (!!!) are obviously familiar with the works of Hellhammer/Celtic Frost as well! Also, Entombed, Dismember, Autopsy, Coffins, Cathedral, Acid Witch... all could also be good RIYL's in regards to the retro DM/doom, ghoulish good times on offer here.
For a while, there was a band called the Muslims, who were seriously hyped, before squeamishness about their obviously problematic moniker found the band changing their name to Soft Pack, only to have the kids cry 'sell out', but hell, one can only imagine trying to get on a plane with a bunch of flight cases filled with strange battery powered devices, all stenciled with the words 'The Muslims'. But hell, whatever they're called, it's easy to see what all the hubbub was about. These guys kick up a seriously excellent racket, somewhere between the lo-fi jangle of groups like Thee Oh Sees and the Fresh & Onlys, classic hooky Britpop and the more seriously post punk rock of the Hot Snakes, which is precisely how this 12" plays out. Opener "C'Mon" is equal parts frantic jangle and Strokes-y indie sunglasses jangle pop, while "Eat Gold" is a pounding and manic with on-the-verge-of-cracking vocals and a definite screamo vibe, and then there's "Answer To Yourself" which also has a Strokes vibe, a little like a way more rocking Hoodoo Gurus, surf guitars, and world weary vocals, garagey, with pounding muted verses and a soaring chorus, while the final track follows a similar sonic path, but adding a bit more grit and distortion. Really good stuff, it's easy to see why these guys were, and still are the talk of the town, it's not hard to imagine them on Matador, or opening for Interpol or on MTV. Which is not a bad thing at all. Especially considering we've been listening to this pretty much nonstop since we got it.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, with a download code so you can cram these jams onto your computer.
The return of Spoon always means another batch of subtly kick ass indie rock, and with Transference the same holds true. While lots has changed since the days of Girls Can Tell, still maybe our favorite Spoon record, not counting the early way more rocking ones like Telephono or Soft Effects, later Spoon records seem more like growers, the kind of records the blossom with repeated listens, which is definitely the case with Transference. Minus the obvious single, "Got Nuffin", which was already released on its own, none of the other tracks here leaps out and screams 'Single!' or 'Hit!', but that's the magic of Spoon, that most of the songs here, just like on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and Gimme Fiction, will end up stuck in your head, and most definitely on repeat play after a handful of listens.
Record closer "Nobody Gets Me But You" is our current fave, stripped down and skeletal, with bloopy bass, and some cool little flurries of piano, and a lazily drawled main hook, but "Written In Reverse" with it's falsetto vocals and vampy piano is another contender, as is "I Saw The Light", which definitely harkens back to the rocking old days, with some crunchy guitar and moody vox, but hell, every listen we pick another one to obsess over. And while Spoon would have to do something seriously stellar to top Girls Can Tell, we're perfectly happy digging into Transference. Again and again...
If we take the album's title literally we'd say that Stricken City knows effervescently perky folks as well as despairing and dour ones. Perhaps a few more of the latter. While we have nothing against their more decidedly downcast numbers, we think the band should be spending more time with the former because they really shine brightest when they leap wholeheartedly into a buoyant rollicking pop romp. They most certainly do so on tunes such as "Small Things", "Five Metres Apart", "P.S." and the album's groovy second to last song "Pull The House Down" which reminded us a bit of Les Rita Mitsouko. Just try to prevent your head from bouncin' and your toe from tappin' along to these tunes. Trust us, it's pretty darn difficult! Lead singer Rebekah Raa's varied vocal delivery also draws easy comparisons to the gasping urgent swoop of Sugarcubes era Bjork as well as the girlish coo of The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler. Sweet and a bit coy, but not cloying. Stricken City's overall sound is imbued with a warm fuzzy affection for late '80s and early '90s indie pop a la Sugarcubes, Sundays, Bow Wow Wow, Velocity Girl, and Tsunami, but it just as cozily slips in nicely alongside current female forces such as Tegan And Sara and Metric. A terrific debut!
"Jump in the fire" with Skeletonwitch! That's who's on the cover here, making the big time it seems, ah we remember 'em when...
Also this issue, Converge, Canadian black metal, A Rammstein poster (oooh), Om, Finntroll, The Accused, Russian Circles, Gama Bomb, Weapon, Overkill, Portal, and tons more, all the usual reviews, news, ads for cool festivals they only have over there in Europe, etc.
Oh, and there's also a free sampler cd featuring cuts from Skitliv, The Meads Of Asphodel, Dark Age, Arsis, and more...
Chuffed to get another gorgeous transmission from the pagan UK dronester known as Urthona! Previously we've enjoyed the heavy organic sounds of his J. Cope approved "shoegazing freeform rural-psych-noise-guitar-drone" via Urthona's I Refute It Thus cd on Head Heritage and Amid Devonia's Alps cd-r on Further. Now he's back, teamed up with a likeminded mysterious entity known as The Asterism, for a cd (not cd-r) on Further called Murmurations. There's two tracks here, "River Severn Bore" clocking in at 24 minutes 20 seconds and the title track, a mere 19 minutes 50 seconds... about what we'd expect, epics! Both pieces are titled after natural phenomena that even though admitting of scientific explanation, still may appear mystically significant even to modern day observers.
"River Severn Bore" refers to an unusually high wave that in ancient days inspired legends, "Murmurations" are what vast swirling swooping flocks of starlings are called, as they dance in the air, seemingly synchronized in their movements. Both titles make for excellent inspirations for the sonics here, Urthona and The Asterism's amped up guitars building buzzing drones massive enough to match such awesome spectacles, with their own field recordings captured on hikes in the English countryside mixed in perfectly, the electronic fuzz eventually morphing into a wash of rain/water sounds at the end of "River Severn Bore" ferinstance. That's the denser/darker of the two pieces, throbbing thickly, grinding drones licked with feedback, SUNNO))) and Boris fans should bow down... "Murmurations" is heavy too, but as befits its subject, displays more agile, active movement, sounding somehow exotic and raga-like, with delicate high-end shimmer from guitars and amps echoing the cries of birds from the field recordings that are also present in the mix, as is, we think, some gentle percussion... it falls somewhere between James Blackshaw and Bong, perhaps. Quite lovely -and- fuzzy.
Packaging is again a trifold "eco-wallet" affair, recycled cardstock, vegetable based inks, these fellows nature worship taken pretty seriously, in more than just the music...
They don't make compilations like they used to; but this one from Elevator Bath is certainly an exception to that rule. A good percentage of the currently released compilations tend towards collections of impossible to find rarities (at best) or (at worst) a random assortment of tracks which never quite made it onto proper albums, so why not lump them all together on some disposable compilation with the good tracks just ending up on the iPod anyway. But there was a day when labels took the job of curating compilations very seriously with the artists rising to the task as well. One can think back to the Perspectives And Distortion comp from Cherry Red back in 1981, or the eccentric electronics on The Elephant Table Music Album, or those weird comps on United Dairies, or even 4AD's Lonely Is An Eyesore. Dare it be said that A Cleansing Ascension might be one of the few modern comps that even comes close to those seminal compilations of post-punk atmospherics and obscure experimentation.
Elevator Bath was birthed in Texas, although relocated to Seattle in 2004; and this compilation marks the 10th anniversary of the label, which has quietly and consistently released an excellent body of deep drone construction, damaged plunderphonic collage, sound ecological research, and even a few things which are down right sublime. The heavy hitters on A Cleansing Ascension are LAFMS ring-leader Tom Recchion and the globe trotting field recordist Francisco Lopez (operating here in a more musique concrete guise), with plenty of Aquarius favorites as well: Keith Berry, Adam Pacione, Matt Shoemaker, and aQ's own Jim Haynes. Shoemaker opens the album with a synthetic soaking of midrange din and drone immaculated sculpted in a blur of mottled hiss. Pacione, Keith Berry, and label boss Colin Andrew Sheffield conjure the more lush moments of Eno's Music For Airports with remarkable flare for restraint through their smoke & mirrors. Haynes does his best Organum impersonation with a cranky motor rumbling beneath a hallowed gasp of refined long-form tones. Rick Reed moves from a Delia Derbyshire squiggle into a deep reverberant belllow. The vastly under-published Dale Lloyd generates a thick rumble dappled with bristled electronics and distant Andrew Chalk-ish half melodies. James Eck Rippie turns toward a clank and clamor of found objects scraping across the patina of vinyl surface noise and Phillip Jeck stabs at turntable manipulation. Tom Recchion's maudlin lullaby reconstitutes haunted melodies of ye olde carnival into a beguiling conclusion to the compilation.
While each track is quite solid, the album also flows very well, with somber drones dominating the palette of sound although similar themes and complimentary sounds seem to return after small detours towards the heavy, the oblique, and the desolate. Highly recommended!
NOW ON VINYL! This is part one...
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.
NOW ON VINYL! This is part two...
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.
One of three new cd reissues commemorating Warp Records' 20th anniversary, all culled from the super swank, and prohibitively expensive boxset the label released a while back. We reviewed the 'Unheard' disc recently, which featured a handful of rare tracks from some of our all time Warp faves, Broadcast, Boards Of Canada, Autechre, Plaid, Clark, Flying Lotus, Seefeel, and while this one isn't quite as essential, it is basically a hugely bad ass Warp mixtape.
Essentially a greatest hits, it's two discs, one chosen by the fans, and one chosen by Warp co-founder Steve Beckett. Most of these are tracks you know, there are definitely a handful of surprises, especially on Beckett's disc, but it definitely feels like a lovingly complied greatest hits, with the fans' disc continuing lots of hits, and Beckett's mixing hits with some obscurities. Both discs are great, and barring the overlap with records already in your collection, it's pretty essential listening. Want to introduce someone to electronic music, need an electronic music primer covering the last 2 decades, just need a killer mix for the car or a party, then this should do the trick. The first disc has Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker", Boards Of Canada's "Roygbiv", Squarepusher's "My Red Hot Car", Autchre's "Grants Graf, Luke Vibert's "I Love Acid", and a bunch more. And while the second disc contains some classics from Grizzly Bear, Broadcast, Squarepusher, Seefeel and others, it also includes less likely jams from Jamie Lidell, Mike Ink, Xeper (Black Dog Productions), Nightmares On Wax, and loads more. Needless to say, killer stuff.
One of three new cd reissues commemorating Warp Records' 20th anniversary, all culled from the super swank, and prohibitively expensive boxset the label released a while back. We reviewed the 'Unheard' disc recently, which featured a handful of rare tracks from some of our all time Warp faves, Broadcast, Boards Of Canada, Autechre, Plaid, Clark, Flying Lotus, Seefeel, and we review the 'Chosen' disc elsewhere on this week's list, featuring a two disc greatest hits compiled by both fans and the label, but this one is definitely the weirdest of the bunch. And maybe the most fun because of it...
Two discs of Warp artists, covering songs by other Warp artists. Born Ruffians, with their Pixies post punk jangle, tackle Aphex Twin's "Milkman", Maximo Park cover, Vincent Gallo's "When" and make it their own, giving it a synth new wave makeover, Clark reimagines Milanese's "So Malleable", and it gets even more gnarled and spastic and HEAVY, Hudson Mohawke transforms Jimi Tenor's "Paint The Stars" into a glimmering drift of sparkly ephemeral shimmer, Mira Clalix covers Boards Of Canada and turns it into chamber music bliss, Jamie Lidell covers Grizzly Bear, Seefeel covers Maximo Park(!) and creates a glutchy chunk of blurred new wave, Gravenhurst covers Broadcast and more more more. Some of the tracks are just gussied up a little, some are recreated with alternate shadings, subtly shifted sound palletes, while others are totally and wholly transformed. Cool.
Hype and Vampire Weekend seem to go hand in hand, and while we still don't totally see what all the fuss is about, we sit somewhere nicely in the middle opinion-wise about these unabashed prep-school popsters, as we aren't blown away by what they do but we don't think it's terrible either. This time out it seems as if the overwhelming influence of the Animal Collective has for sure touched the Vampire boys as this sounds a lot like a more commercial and smoothed out version of AC's signature sound. There are some really catchy standout moments here, especially "Cousins" which could have been on the last Dodos record, and we're not afraid to admit that we've listened to that song over and over and definitely find it to be pretty much undeniably one of the most joyful pop songs of the year. They still have their light afro-pop side that feels like a modern day version of Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel. Maybe not the most original or amazing band around but no doubt they are peppy, preppy, catchy and fun.
The first batch of these comes with an extra disc featuring three bonus tracks/remixes. And the lp includes a download of the whole record too...
Wow, when we reviewed those two J.P. Massiera Psychoses compilations, a couple of years back, we somehow assumed that this eccentric French producer recorded so prolifically under so many monikers that many of the groups (especially the space disco ones) were probably just single releases and not complete full length albums. Well, the Mucho Gusto label has proven us wrong once again, by reissuing the full length albums of both Venus Gang and Herman's Rocket, two of the zaniest freakout space disco-funk outfits that Massiera ever created. Commissioned in 1977 and 1978 by an Italian producer to jump on the European Space Disco craze, Massiera teamed up with his half-brother, Bernard Torelli and the singers Mickey and Joyce to create these two amazing groups. Amazing also in the sense that while he used what is basically a cookie-cutter disco template (he blatantly borrows lots from American funk and disco - but really who didn't? And at least he borrows well!), he managed to create such a crazy, unique sound with lots of Moogs, strange vocal effects and lots of spacey noises and sounds. Considered too crazy at the time for marketable appeal (check out the great covers!), both records have gained a cult following over the years and sound so good right now especially with all the modern throwbacks of Italo-disco trying to sound like this, these two groups are by far way freakier and so worth your time. We're curious if all of Massiera's disco incarnations released full length albums, and if we'll be soon gifted with reissues of The Human Egg, Sex Convention and The Starlights too. Here's hoping!
Both albums were only reissued on vinyl, not on cd, but do come with mp3 download cards!
Another awesome release from Sacred Bones, this one from an all girl Italian combo called Vermillion Sands, who mix post punk pound with indie jangle, crunchy guitars, propulsive drumming, angular melody, and sassy sultry vox, all wrapped around some killer super catchy songwriting, reminding us a bit of Brilliant Colors, who in turn fit right in the current crop of retro garage poppers like Grass Widow, Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls and the like. But VS do make the sound their own, infusing their songs with plenty of classic girl group shimmer, and a sort of classic garage-y vibe a la Thee Headcoatees. Killer stuff for sure. Anyone into the above mentioned bands or any of the classic female pop combos like The Vaselines, Shop Assistants, Talulah Gosh, Black Tambourine, the Pastels, should definitely check this out.
Not to be confused with legendary Bay Area black metal horde Von, although Vom's sound does sonically link back to Sixx, the post Von, gothic deathrock combo we reviewed a while back. These grim Scots spew out a depressive, atmospheric, super distorted sort of gothic cold wave, the label suggests the sound falls somewhere between Scream-era Siouxsie And The Banshees, early X-Mal Deustchland and the first Killing Joke lp, which is definitely pretty right on, but for the aQ faithful, we might also throw out some recent list faves like Soror Dolorosa, the aforementioned Sixx, Ye Olde Maids, Second Decay, Factums, even Cold Cave, but imagine all those bands if they were way more heavy and harsh and hateful, raw and rough and intense, and you'd be getting closer to the sound of Vom.
Pounding pummeling drums, grinding crunchy guitars, throbbing rumbling bass, howled vocals buried in the mix, hooks all over the place, but somewhat obscured by the bands furious deathrock onslaught, this stuff is gloomy and heavy and catchy and harrowing, and so goddamn good. Anyone into the recent wave of cold wave revivalists or goth rock wannabes, who found themselves hankering for something way harder and heavier, these guys might just be your new favorite band.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Because his live concerts are so few and far between (and usually in Europe or Talahassee or some such place), Glitter and Doom, the new live Tom Waits cd, is a blessing from the heavens above. The man himself still sounds amazing and imaginative, even after all these years; that gravelly voice digging deep and soaring into high falsetto, channeling Howlin' Wolf and cracking jokes. Old favorites like "falling Down" and "I'll Shoot the Moon" sound as fresh as ever, their arrangements and instrumentations altered slightly, while newer classics like "Get Behind the Mule" and "Make It Rain" are executed with more energy and finesse than on the original recordings. Though it would be nice to see Mr. Waits' extraordinary facial expressions while he sings, his voice and the incredible musicians he assembled paint such a picture in the mind's eye to make the lack of a visual element negligible.
The second disc contains 35 minutes of Mr. Waits at the piano telling stories and relating obscure facts to a live audience, usually about animals or etymology. It's like a stand-up comedy routine, only he's sitting down....
Even though these dudes are a local band, few of us had heard of them. However, all it took was a brief glance at the back cover, revealing a song called "Beast Toker," and we were pretty much sold. We carried their last ep, a self-released cd-r, but that one is long gone, and now Walken take things to the next logical place with an actual cd, one that is sure to win them support from anyone digging fellow local sludgelords like Kowloon Walled City, Black Cobra, and pretty much all of the East Bay. The band stands along the border of punk and metal, with one foot on each side, but luckily things never seem like some self-conscious hybrid. Best of all, Walken shred things up in expert fashion with all kinds of cool pinch harmonics and uber metal elements while the songs chug along with catchy riffs, super tight drumming, and lots of cool gang vocals. At times, there seems to be a fairly pronounced NWOBHM vibe, but maybe that's just us (probably not though). Things often end up sounding like a more grooving Converge with vocals at times reminiscent of legendary Swedes Refused, or perhaps a more punked out Nachtmystium. Sound good? You bet it does. And if this album is any indication of this band's unholy talents, we can only imagine how much they must KILL it live. Another welcome release from San Francisco's ever fertile heavy underground. Fuck yeah.
Another ultra limited cd-r from Root Strata, only 100 copies, most of which are already gone, so we'll be brief, but grab one of these before they're gone, it's quite lovely.
A mere 20 minutes long, a series of hushed barely there ultra delicate guitarscapes, all drift and shimmer, breathless and minimal, a glacial swirl of muted tones, and subtle overtones, no attack, just decay, notes left to hang as they slowly fade out, only to have another hazy note laid over the top. Dreamy and ethereal and ephemeral, strap on some headphones to truly get lost in these blurred stretches of soft focus guitar, you'll most likely end up setting your player on repeat, laying back, and letting these sounds carry you away.
So gorgeous. As is the packaging, brown chipboard, sleeves with a hole cut out, each one displaying a water colored insert, every one unique, all done by hand, and LIMITED TO 100 COPIES...
Recently we remarked upon how the long-running stoner rock label Small Stone had been kicking our asses with some great releases of late (Obiat, Iota, etc.). Gotta say the same thing now about the MeteorCity label, another veteran stoner rock purveyor who in the '90s, were second only maybe to Man's Ruin as THE stoner rock label of the day. Well, it's 2010 and, despite a lowered profile, the re-activated MeteorCity has been killing it lately, maybe even moreso than in the good old days, with such recently highlighted here releases like Ararat, Village Of Dead Roads, Freedom Hawk, and Egypt... THIS list, we've got two more from 'em to rave about, Leeches Of Lore and WhiteBuzz!
WhiteBuzz hail from Germany and illustrate a controversial point. You might think that the sound a band is known for is THEIRS, they invented it, and anyone else that sounds similar are obviously influenced or are flat out copycatting. Well, yeah maybe that's sorta true. But you could also think of it this way: the SOUND exists already, band A just came along and "discovered" it, channelled it, made use of it. But rather than wait for band A to make another record 'cause you want to hear that sound again, what about if band B comes along and ALSO taps into that sound, and it speaks through them just as legitimately as it does through the "original" band? Nobody is copying anybody, both bands A and B are servants to that sound, it's just that chronologically speaking band A came first, band B later. Likewise, there could be bands C, D, E, etc., all "tuning in" to this pre-existing, eternal "SOUND". That's a theory anyway, and it makes more sense when the sound in question seems so darn cosmic. We might be making to big a point out of this, actually, 'cause while we were gonna say if band A = Om then band B = WhiteBuzz, we think you'll be able to tell 'em apart. For one thing, WhiteBuzz have a guitarist! But if you like the epic ritualistic psychedelic fuzzed out epics of Om, we're pretty sure you're gonna dig WhiteBuzz, complete with a similarly chant-like vocal style and lysergically spaced-out interludes amidst the blown out super heavy repetitive riffage on the 4 loooong tracks here (plus a fifth, shorter, unlisted bonus cut that sounds more like a tribute to the Melvins).
Has WhiteBuzz heard Om? Well, we'd bet they have, probably, yeah, but who know, could be the not-so-coincidental cosmic scenario outlined above too. Heck, these heavy invocations weren't invented by Om, or precursors Sleep, EITHER, exactly. They go back to Pink Floyd and Hawkwind and Black Sabbath... to Tibetan monks... to the first cultivators of cannabis... to pagan prehistory... You could probably hear sounds like this in temples on Mars or in ancient, imaginary Hyborea!
Basically, we're sure YOU'VE heard Om, anyway. And it's likely you like Om, too. If so, and you'd like some more Om-ishness RIGHT NOW, then check out WhiteBuzz. To be honest, original or not, we like 'em almost as much as Om themselves. The only thing that kinda bugs us about WhiteBuzz is, why do they spell white/whyte two different ways in band name and album title? But otherwise, we're quite happy with this release!
We first discovered French electro-grind-metal-psych-whatthefuck duo Whourkr a year or two back when we got their debut record, Naat, which totally blew us away, it sounded like a malfunctioning metal record and a freaked out techno record, all scrambled up together, tangled up and spit out, a skittering, skipping, looped, grinding chunk of electronic metal weirdness. The vocals would howl, but then get processed and looped and would become something else altogether, the drums and guitars were so gnarled and stretched and twisted up, that the band could explode into flurries of rapidfire mathematical grind, way faster and more complex and convoluted than any human could possible play. It was a total headfuck. Like the fastest freakiest grind, made even faster and freakier, but with a little techno thrown in for good measure. Remember the Drum>MachineGun compilation, of insane drum machine driven grind? Whourkr makes that stuff sound so so tame in comparison.
We tried and tried to track down copies for the store, but never had any luck, and then we heard that Crucial Blast would be releasing the NEW Whourkr, so we waited and waited, and now it's finally here, and it's totally different than the first one (or at least how we remember the first one), way poppier and more melodic, like the band are now actually composing songs instead of throwing all the sounds in a blender to see what comes out (not that we don't dig that too!), it's way poppier, catchier, but still totally and utterly freaked out and glitchy and fucked up beyond belief.
Chugging guitars and shrieked vox are chopped and spliced into a hyperspeed deathmetal Melt Banana, all the sounds constantly shifting, the tempo changing, the rhythms colliding and hiccuping, occasionally coalescing into full on grooves, other times splintering into bursts of electronic freakouts, and there are serious hooks happening too, it doesn't seem possible that music like this could be listenable, let alone catchy, but it is. Big time. We'll be the first to admit, that the other Whourkr record was difficult listening, brutal and to many ears annoying, and yeah, the same might be said for Concrete as well, but the band are so much better now, in terms of composition and songwriting, that once you're immersed in their fucked up and freaked out soundworld, it becomes surprisingly easy to acclimate to the rapidly and constantly shifting sounds and rhythms, in order to enjoy the songs themselves. Plus the vocals seem to play a much larger role, not just howls and shrieks, there are plenty of clean vox, soaring almost operatic, low AND high, wrapped around frenzied riffing, wound up into spiralling psychedelic freakouts, or like the instruments, chopped into crazed stutterscapes.
Take the track "Santo", with its deep crooned vox and acoustic guitars, sounding almost like Circle, the electronic effects very subtle at first, before the track lurches into full on doom, the voices and guitars just slightly glitched, eventually giving way to gorgeous delicate piano, only to be obliterated by the next track "Skovsnails", a little burst of drums, and a crazy clipped main riff, it almost sounds like some insane DJ remixing Orthrelm, the song stutters and lurches and hiccups, totally frenetic and relentless. The record dips its toes into all sorts of weird sounds, loping moody electronic downtempo, albeit a little fractured, head spinning hyper grind, shot through with unlikely pop hooks, glitched out death metal, soaring slow building post rocky drama, and more Melt Banana-esque grind pop, but nothing here sounds thrown together, or hodge podge, this is a baffling collection of sounds, but one that is meticulously composed, performed and recorded, and for those in the market for something truly demented, insane, extreme and heavy, not to mention out-there, and pretty much entirely unlike anything you've ever heard before, be next to impossibly to top Whourkr. Definite contender for metal record of the year, even though calling it a metal record is selling it WAY short. Regardless, absolutely recommended.
And, for a limited time (next couple of weeks, until February 2nd 2010), we'll be selling this for a special $2 discount off the regular price, which would normally be $13.98.
We have to admit, we were initially intrigued by Woodsman because the label compared them to Andee's old band A Minor Forest, and while Woodsman do have a bit of a post/math rock thing going on, they still he much closer to the rest of the Mexican Summer stable, woozy, washed out, psychedelic, tripped out pop. That said, Woodsman do add some muscle to that sound, with seriously beefy guitars and some hard hitting drumming, but those elements are wrapped up in thick hazy swaths of reverb drenched shimmer, of warped wheezing synths, processed vox, if anything, the sound is more Animal Collective, or Gang Gang Dance, the guitars chime and ring out, almost like they were plucked from a Big Country jam, the drums are tribal and looped sounding at times, the band definitely have a propulsive, almost groovy thing going on, when they slowdown, it's all murky whirring slowcore, like a more druggy, abstract Tortoise (who the band also get compared to), especially on the nearly 20 minute closing track, a sprawling rhythmscape, skittery drums, chorus drenched guitars, loping bass, all wrapped in a soft focus swirl of muted FX and woozy melodies, building to a bit of a frenzied freakout, before slipping right back into slow spiraling stretch of lilting chiming blissed out drift.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, comes with a download card as well...
After records on Aurora Borealis and Paradigms, Scottish black drone alchemists Wraiths have found their way to At War With False Noise, yet another ideal home for their grim black noise. This time it takes the form of a single hour-long track, that drifts through an endlessly and ever shifting landscape of hushed bleak minimalism, strange otherworldly percussion, deep dronemusic and caustic black noise.
The Grey Emperor begins as a strangely looped glitchscape, a tribal rhythm over undulating stretches of distorted rumble, growing ever more ominous, the low end getting more and more jagged and buzzy, a black cloud of sound threatening to swallow the rest of the sounds whole, surrounded on all sides by a slow shifting layer of swirling blackened whir, shot through with streaks of muted feedback. The track pulses and undulates, slipping from caustic crunch to hushed throb, strange little rhythmic flurries careening below the surface, the textures constantly changing and shifting, like watching the surface of some grim black sea, barely able to discern the shadowy shapes underneath.
Eventually, the low end is pulled back, allowing layers of hiss and buzz to pile atop one another, just barely holding the feedback at bay, only to have the blackness begin to crumble, while black bells peal, thick shards of sound plummeting into the swirling blackness, the track building and building to chaotic frenzy, the sounds blown out and on the verge of utter collapse, weirdly melodic while impossibly dense and destructive, finally exploding in a supernova of Merzbowian grind and crunch, that manages to be strangely textural and musical, while on the surface appearing as a dying black sun.
Gorgeous oversized packaging, a gatefold sleeve, printed woodcut style design on textured paper, and held shut with a stamped wax seal. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Situated somewhere near Cold Cave, Zola Jesus, and Blank Dogs, Xeno & Oaklander offer another fantastic distillation of dark-eyed synth-pop from a previous decade. A duo comprised of Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride, Xeno & Oaklander eschew digital technologies in favor of analogue synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines, applying these instruments to the ghostly rhythmic electronics of minimal wave bands such as Absolute Body Control or Snowy Red. Less obtuse references would be early Human League, Xymox, and Depeche Mode; but no matter where you want to pin the influences, X&O are looking back to the European stylings of romantic electronica that dates somewhere between 1982 and 1986. Like Cold Cave, Xeno & Oaklander have made an appearance at the No Fun Festival in 2009, probably being one of the acts that some of the stalwart noiseniks must have hated because of their comparatively pretty songs.
There is something golden and polished to the mechanoid sequences and electrical rhythms on Sentinelle, which stands as the 'proper' debut album for Xeno & Oaklander after a cd-r micro-edition and some choice tracks on Wierd's [sic] first two collections of analogue electronic music. Throughout the album, sad electronic melodies are tightly bound around repetitive phrases and spry post-disco drum programming, with the vocals alternating between both McBride and Wendelbo (the latter singing in English and French). The album has the feel that it could be a stand in as a soundtrack to the silent film Metropolis, with its accompanying aesthetics of art-deco modernism tinged with noir shadows and gleaming bursts of reflected light. Despite the obvious allusions to the past, Xeno & Oaklander seem to have wedged themselves between all of their influences and mustered something that they can claim as their own. Very well done!
To start with, we've always commended Japan's Doubtmusic label for the handsome packaging job that each one of their digipack cd releases invariably receives. This one, though, we'd probably be inclined to buy just 'cause of the especially cool cover art alone! Done by one Tomoo Gokita, the cover suggests an arched window in a brightly patterned wall, looking out on (a photo of) some majestic snow-capped alpine mountain (the Matterhorn, is it?). But in front of the "window", the corpse-painted visage of King Diamond pokes up unexpectedly, screaming at you... WITH, IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY, A MINIATURE HEAD IN HIS MOUTH. Quite confusionally cool, eh? But for what sort of music could this art be at all appropriate? Well, why not an electronics-augmented Japanese drums duo featuring someone who once played in the Boredoms/Vooredoms?! 'Cause that's what this is, with a vengeance.
Erstwhile Boredom Muneomi Senju (drums, percussion, electronics) teams up with Tasuhisa Yamamoto (drums, metals, percussion, gong, odaiko drums) for 7 tracks of mostly percussion-only soundscapery, from "primitive groove" to "wall of onkyo" in style, according to Doubtmusic's description, which also cites poly-rhythms and harmonic overtones as things you'll hear here, and we don't doubt it, these tracks are widely varied and always intriguing, certainly bizarre enough at times to merit the colorful, epic high weirdness of that awesome album cover art!
The likes of "Foggy In Aquarium" and "Coral Flirtation" feature calm, complex layers of percussive playing, free-jazzy but not really free, with lots of bells and chimes and liquid tricklings... tinklings and twinklings... lovely stuff! THEN, there's the erratic and effected thwap-and-snap of "Scattered Devils". Zany, zappy drum hits and other bits that sound sampled from some futuristic Carl Stalling cartoon score, cut-and-pasted with slaphappy abandon together with electronic textures, ultimately funking it up in fractured, spastic fashion that reminds us of another recent Doubtmusic release, Sim + Otomo's Monte Alto Estate. Perhaps 'cause this track was further remixed by guest producer Yuta Segawa, it's the most "computery" sounding cut on here, whereas the rest of this disc comes off as much more organic, without all that obvious digital tomfoolery (cool though we think it is). Organic, AND trancelike, such as with the ritualistic rainfall pitter patter percussion, swirling and circling, of "Correspon-dance", or the endless drum-roll and cymbal-shimmer of the 8 minute plus "Fricative Lights" - very Boredoms Super Rootsy, that one!
Now as we've always said, about the only "drum circle" we can stand is one that involves the Boredoms. But two drummers does not a drum circle make AND there's a Boredoms connection both sound- and personnel-wise here. So unless you HATE percussion, this is definitely an out-there experiment in rhythm(z) to check out. Speaking of drum circles, opener "Chronoscope Fatigue" and closer "Chronoscope Fatigue Variation" are the closest this duo come to that sort of thing here, and that's not that close, unless you're familiar with drum circles that make a practice of all falling down the stairs while they're jamming...
Man, Michael Yonkers sure has been on a roll as of late. Just a few lists back we had both his collaboration with Plastic Crimewave Sound and a collection of early pre-Microminiature Love recordings with his band the Mumbles. Even after 40+ years of making music, Yonkers still sounds vital, focused, and, to a certain degree, out for blood. At the risk of sounding like a bunch of bastards, we gotta say, this is hardly the kind of music you would expect from a man in his 60s. Though to be fair, his music has never sounded like what you would expect from ANYBODY in a lot of cases. Yonkers has by no means mellowed with age; in fact, his current work is aggressive and in tune with the times and hardly some watered down attempt to cash in on his ever-growing legend. But where so many others would fail, Yonkers pulls through and shows us how and why he has been such a force to be reckoned with since the long delayed reissue of Microminiature Love brought him to the attention of adventurous music fans throughout the globe. At the same time, Cold Town effortlessly puts today's garage rock hopefuls in their place, waaaaaaaaay far behind a master like Yonkers. His music obviously falls into the "rock" category, but there has always been a degree of experimentation and a desire to step beyond what is to be expected. The songs on Cold Town are tuneful yet noisy, catchy but with just the right amount of punkish aggression, and Yonkers' voice sounds pretty much as great and idiosyncratic as it always has. It no doubt helps that he has such a shit-hot band backing him up in the form of previous Yonkers collaborators the Blind Shake, who whip up five Yonkers-free tunes of their own on the second half of the album. The band is tight and heavy with a little bit of skronkiness thrown in, sure to appeal of fans of Rocket From The Crypt and pretty much anything else related to John Reis (including, of course, Hot Snakes, the Sultans, Drive Like Jehu, etc...).
Another welcome surprise from a guy who we just can't get enough of.
