THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Just got this in TODAY, no time to really "review" it, no need to either, as we only got a handful and it's limited edition vinyl from the MELVINS after all. Here's the facts: "A limited edition three-track 12-inch EP from MELVINS featuring a long version of "Dies Iraea" and a remix of "It Tastes Better Than The Truth" on the A-side, and a 9-minute version of The Wipers' "Youth of America" on the flip. None of these tracks have appeared on vinyl prior. Limited to 2,000 copies (with 1,500 for distribution) pressed on silver/gray vinyl, with artwork by Steven Parrino".
Over the past few years, Darren Tate has been wandering into some wildly weird electronics, broadening the scope of his aesthetic beyond the seminal recordings he made with Andrew Chalk (amongst others) as Ora, and more recently through Monos. For the most part, Monos has been a collaborative project between Tate and Nurse With Wound engineer extrordinaire Colin Potter, but at other times, we're pretty sure that Tate is the only one behind the wheel. For Above The Sky, the Monos line-up includes Tate, Potter, and fellow British dronescraper Paul Bradley; and this record is a top notch, vintage sounding Monos disc for sure.
The extended pieces found on this album were culled from the one and only live Monos gig in 2006, the handful of recordings from that gig were processed, recreated, forgotten about, rediscovered, and processed again throughout various starts and stops over the next four years. The resulting album is surprisingly coherent, presenting itself as a sinewy mass of undulating drones dappled with various textures, shadowy events, field recordings, subtle instrumentation, and then some. The ghostly ambience that introduces this album is sublimely beautiful, like the druggy drones of Nurse With Wound (e.g. Soliloquy For Lilith) or the permafrost laden expanses of Thomas Koner or even a darker version of Leyland Kirby's much-lauded hauntological ambience. Distant sound elements of scraped metal echo to the foreground, as the latent sounds from some occluded ritual in some forgotten place. Shimmering acoustic clouds of resonance peel away into field recordings of numerous birds flitting about. Later on, semi-melodic phrases hover near the event horizon dominated by ominous electrical vibrations and dilated drone fields. Seriously, this is fantastic stuff!
The first 135 copies of Above The Sky feature a full extra disc worth of material that easily complements that found on the album proper. Needless to say, these won't last long!
They may be called Soft Pack now, but at one point they were called the Muslims, and were touted to be the next big thing. And like the recent Soft Pack 12", this lp makes it abundantly clear just why, a killer mix of indie jangle, and snarly, snarky post punk, the most obvious comparison is the Strokes, the opener here "Right And Wrong" definitely sounds like it could be a Strokes B-side, heck, who are we kidding, an A-SIDE!!! Catchy, and super rocking, a little bit lo-fi, but totally hooky and a little bit irresistible.
If the Soft Pack record shows the band stretching out their sound, this reissue of the Muslims's self titled debut finds the band still searching for a direction all their own, still cribbing liberally from their heroes, and hell doing it as well if not better. Another super obscure reference, that definitely infuses the Muslims' sound whether they know it or not would be long lost lo-fi blues pop combo Railroad Jerk, the same sort of stripped down sound, drawled vox, simple, pounding and hooky. A little Stooges here and there for sure, but screw it, the Strokes thing is pretty much unavoidable, so if you dig that sort of thing, which hell, we most definitely do, then you'll dig this. And if you do end up digging this, check out Soft Pack, and see where these guys eventually took this totally satisfying if somewhat unoriginal sound.
The original record is augmented by some singles tracks tacked on (which were originally on a bonus cd that came with the original release), which are even better than the record proper. Cool gatefold sleeve, with printed insert, download code, and holes that were shot in the sleeve with a .22 caliber pistol!!
A pretty strange, but in many ways pretty perfect pairing, cult Aussie black metal / black noize horde Nekrasov, and industrial cinematic black doom project Aderlating, which just so happens to be an offshoot of the mighty Gnaw Their Tongues.
Both blackened, both noisy, here the two drift together and end up meeting somewhere right in the middle, floating in the hellish black abyss, heavier on the ambient than the black metal, more abstract and atmospheric than harsh and harrowing.
Nekrasov offers up a side long stunner, which begins as a roiling minimal dronescape of textured blackness, muted streaks of submerged melody, buried vocals, creeping slow motion pulses, constantly shifting layers, deep dense overtones, creaks and scrapes, utterly haunting and otherworldly, occasionally building to a SUNNO)))-like wall of sound, before slipping back into something more slithery and cinematic. By The end, the sound has reached a fever pitch, a swirling, caterwauling cacophony of inhuman vocalizations, tangled black tendrils of buzz and skree, all woven into an organic, heaving blackened ambient drone driven sonic beast, before finishing off with a stretch of hushed minimal shimmer.
Aderlating, aka Gnaw Their Tongues, otherwise known as Mories, counters with a set of three interlocking soundscapes, abject and industrial, set amidst a sea of softly swirling black tones, shapes and sounds seem to creak and groan, like some hellish machine, churning away just below the surface, spewing gouts of feedback, and sinking ever deeper into the vile black void that somehow keeps it afloat. Fragments of voice, melody, surface here and there, only to be swallowed up again. Occasionally the proceedings seems to almost coalesce into some sort of garish subterranean cabaret, but still cloaked in swirling swaths of hellish hiss and black buzz, and epic rumbling low end that threatens to devour all the other sounds. Fragmented barely there rhythms lead into an avalanche of crumbling distortion and in-the-red psychedelic blacknoize, which roils and churns and explodes in a frenzy of sonic chaos, before returning again, to its more tranquil state, which even itself is rife with industrial clatter and swaths of muted caustic noise, finishing off in a blaze of brilliant bristling blackness.
Gorgeous packaging, stunning cover art, black inner sleeve and pressed on sick green, white and black splattered vinyl.
LIMITED TO 300!!!
Another mysterious disc that just showed up in the mail one day, and totally knocked our socks off. So we ordered a bunch cuz we wanted to share them with all of you, but then we realized we had to describe it, and damn if this isn't a tough one to figure out.
Dark and somber, rhythmic and minimal, a muddy, murky, sort of krautdrone drift. The rhythms are pulses, that drift in and out, the guitars moan and keen, electronics warble and rumble, lots of twisted bits of low end, changing speed and tone, super abstract and drifty and otherworldly, the band occasionally coalesce into a sort-of-groove, but even then, it's a sort of convoluted lumber, vocals, wrapped in reverb and echo, draped over the stuttering anti-funk, the melody carried by deep slow shifting swells, all around fragments of sounds tangle and untangle, their overtones creating strange minimal melodies.
When the vocals do come in, it almost sounds like some sort of avant coldwave, imagine a cold wave Starfuckers maybe, a little bit cold and clinical and machinelike, but Net Shaker are less concerned with song, and groove, and being new wave or cold wave or whatever. They definitely exist in their own fucked up and fractured world.
The sound may be hard to pin down, but it's definitely mesmerizing, hypnotic, cyclical, a woozy, warped, murky assemblage of cold Teutonic pop, layered drones, motorik krautrock, spaced out post industrial ambience, not to mention some fractured druggy sonic collage. Noise rock, post punk, avant pop, dirge wave, cold core, krautwave, not sure what to call it, or if it even needs a name, what we do know is this is one of the most original sounding records we've heard in ages, and we find ourselves listening to this cd-r all the time. Which pretty much says it all...
Man, have we been waiting for this! Why? Well, does Chrissy Zebby Tembo mean anything to you? The group that backed him up on his wonderful My Ancestors album from 1974 have a rare record of their own that's just been reissued, the electrifying indeed 45,000 Volts, and it's another killer document of Zambian heavy fuzz rock ("Zamrock"!) from the '70s! Founded by Paul Dobson Nyirongo, otherwise known as Paul Ngozi, a Hendrix-styled guitarist (he even did the trick of playing with his teeth), the Ngozi Family band released this winning album in 1977, and now that we've heard it, it goes right to the top of the selection of awesome garage fuzz rock from Africa in our collections, a small but ever growing category thanks to ruling reissues like this (we're also looking forward to Shadoks' impending cd edition of The Witch album, also from Zambia, next month, you should be too). And it's not so lo-fi as that Tembo disc, much better sound, though the production still sounds very "live", we think it's perfect, capturing both the thud and grace of the Ngozi Family's music.
There's ten tracks (including one bonus from a 7"), containing so much raw FUZZ! Burbling, sizzling, wah wah action. Along with wicked beats, soulful sincere vocals (some songs in English, others in a Zambian language, Nyanja perhaps), and groove that just won't quit. Most of the tracks are in a Western psych-rock style with distinct African influences, though a couple tracks near the end of the disc are much more like traditional Afrobeat, with hand percussion and mass chanting vocals. As far as the rock stuff goes, even when they kick back on the mellower, more sunshiney numbers there's still lotsa fuzz and snappy beats. And Ngozi actually translates to Danger in English, so you know that they don't neglect the harder and heavier fare on this album. Particularly proto-metal-ish is "Night Of Fear", with immensely fat riffing and echoed lyrics about graveyards and nightmares! Here and elsewhere we're reminded of Los Dug Dugs. Heck even a little Blue Cheer. And of course Ofege and Chrissy Zebby Tembo and others from Africa.
Timeless stuff, highly recommended. Tembo's My Ancestors, reissued on the same label, is already out of print on cd, and this reish is equally limited too, 500 copies only, so get it while you can. FYI there's also a vinyl version but our supplier is already out of those, at the moment anyway, if we're able to get more we'll list it then.
We're a sucker for a band name, you should definitely know that about us by now. And a lot of you are the same. The thinking is, if you're that creative with just the name of your band, imagine how nuts the music must be?? Sure, that doesn't always hold true, but in the case of the awesomely monickered Tremor Of The Black Manx, the name couldn't suit the music more.
On the same label as last week's record of the week, the bizarre black metal weirdness of Jute Gyte, comes TOTBM, who we know NOTHING about, but it hardly matters, what does matter is that this is some awesomely confusional and fucked up stuff, like some sort of fractured electronic hyper grind, or maybe we could call it grindtronica, or something like that. The structure is definitely grind, the songs are short, the arrangements are head spinning, but all of the sounds seem to be synths and not guitars, although sometimes the sounds DO seem to resemble guitars, maybe they're just super processed, regardless, the result is a strangely synthesized bit of frantic buzz, tangled melody, moody murky drift, all wrapped around skittering, stuttering programmed drums, that go from plod to pound to inhuman blast in the blink of an eye, dragging the rest of the sounds along with it. Really rad, and WAY weird.
TOTBM are teamed up here with Night Troll, who sound like a slightly electronic, WAY fucked up, ultra lo-fi raw primitive black metal. Ildjarn, Bone Awl, Akitsa, if you love that stuff but wish it was WEIRDER, more damaged and demented, with throbbing sub bass, tangled atonal guitars, processed death metal grunts, and all sort of other random fuckery, then this is for you. Total lo-fi stumbling ultra raw outsider electronic black metal. Which to us reads: SUPER RAD.
It's been a while since we've listed any UNblack metal, the twisted Christian variant of the more traditionally heathen black strain of metal that we hold so near and dear to our black withered hearts. But as longtime readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, we LOVE unblack metal, not necessarily for the message (we don't love black metal for its message either), but instead, the sound of unblack metal is so far out, so far removed from the tired tropes of BM, not sure if it's divine inspiration, or just the particular group of unblack metallers we tend to be drawn to, but it seems like the unblack tends to be weirder and more warped than the black in most cases, and thus, we've found ourselves looking to the UNdark side for that which our musical soul yearns for.
This latest slab of abstract experimental UNblackness, comes courtesy of aQ faves Njiqahdda, which just so happens to be the work of the man behind a bunch of other aQ unblack faves including Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial and others. Which already meant this was gonna be some seriously experimental, evocative buzzing brilliance. Which it is, we're happy to report, but much has changed, the sound here is much prettier, much more stripped down, with less of an emphasis on buzz and blast, and more on mood and texture, ambience and emotion.
The epic 15 minute opener, is all jangly clean guitar, and wild drumming, at least in the beginning, the song soon explodes into something much more black, but after the initial burst, it sort of smoothes out, and instead of being crushing and punishing, it's hypnotic and mesmerizing, there are still harsh vocals, but the buzz is smoothed out, and the melody is lilting and melancholic, not hard to imagine this song could be stripped down to a gorgeous hazy drone, without losing to much of it's actual form and structure. The follow up skips the buzz entirely, and offers up a bit of dreamy, slightly gothic indie jangle, a sort of sweetly minor key post rock, wrapped in a light haze of shimmery ambience.
The next two tracks look back to the opener, both lengthy drone drenched black metal jams, with that muted buzz, tangled guitar harmonies, and super catchy melodies, both, even at their heaviest, manage to remain poppy and melodic, that blend, and the push and pull between light and dark, is what makes those tracks so emotional and powerful.
The closing track is an extended dronescape of whirling haze, shimmering high end, and deep cavernous rumbles, it almost sounds like a field recording set to music, one can almost visualize, the epic forests, the moon reflecting off the water, the glimmer of starlight on the frost covered branches, quite beautiful, and a fitting finish to a strangely beautiful batch of buzzing washed out unblack post metal.
We hate to say it, or maybe we don't really hate to say it, but it seems like, well, you could pass a (rather draconian) law that no new music is allowed to be recorded or released, EVER, and even then, just by virtue of folks digging up and reissuing old obscure recordings from the '60s, '70s, etc., there'd still be enough awesome releases for Aquarius at least to still have a kick ass New Arrivals list of reviews every two weeks, right?? The cool reissues that keep on coming seem like proof of this. Here's the latest great example.
Long forgotten, private press, early '70s American psych-prog, rather pastoral (it's dedicated to the pagan Greek god Pan after all), masterminded by some earnest, bearded prog nerd doing his musicianly best to emulate his English/European heroes of the day, shades of Pink Floyd and King Crimson. That sorta sums up this all-instrumental album, recorded by composer William Nowik with a little help from his friends somewhere in upstate New York back in 1974. Except, that doesn't quite convey quite how fantastic and unusual Pan Symphony In E Minor really is! Possibly Nowik was into krautrock too, and we do know that the Master Musicians Of Joujouka had some influence on his musical vision of Pan.
Nowik's meticulously crafted, moody song-suites flow gorgeously, making precise sudden shifts as well. There'll be mellow rustic folkiness one moment, then -wham- it starts rockin' out with some fairly heavy guitar riffing, but then things wend and wind along further, and it's back to all-acoustic folk or jazzy bliss, but wyrd y'know, and then wyrder, with parts that are downright experimental, such as the passage towards the end of the disc which sounds like people climbing stairs while a church organ plays, followed by the sounds of a ticking clock, then plinking thumb piano...
There's just something ELSE to Nowik's music, an x-factor (the -actual- influence of Pan, perhaps?) that's hard to define but makes it more than just another obscure '70s prog effort. He takes things further, the music goes places other than where you'd expect, and dwells there longer, before heading off in another surprising direction (acoustic folky groove morphing into disjointed funk, ferinstance, at one point). But in all cases it really pulls you naturally there along with it. And it's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Much will appeal to fans of Six Organs of Admittance, among other acts (Citay too?), we think.
The cd booklet is filled with enthused liner notes & lots of vintage b&w photos, giving a glimpse into the album's creation and the subsequent career of its creator. Since only a mere handful of copies were originally pressed in '74, and it was barely distributed to boot, thank Pan that it's been reissued and more folks can enjoy this today.
We will note one oddity of the cd reissue: though there's 14 tracks listed, the actual disc is only indexed into 3 tracks (one very short, two quite long). Doesn't really matter though, as you should listen to the whole thing all the way through every time anyway...
Madlib's super talented younger brother Oh No has been doing a great job as the ambassador of '60s & '70s international psychedelia to the hip-hop world, liberally sampling all sorts of aQ faves, Turkish psych, Mediterranean pop, whatever struck his fancy, so Dr. No's Ethiopium should really come as no surprise, a whole record sampled and inspired by rare '60s and '70s Ethiopian soul, jazz, funk, folk and psychedelic rock, all chopped up and recontextualized into brief little snippets of bad ass Ethiopian groove, wreathed in record crackle, peppered with pops and clicks, adding a warm timeless texture to these jams, some are just straight ahead sampled, others are rearranged into lurching, stuttering rhythms, the basslines woozy and funky, horns wailing, the vocals often left intact, but just as often all mixed up, flipped backwards, woven together to create strange hiccupping vocal layers, the sound ranges from soulful ballads, to pounding jazz funk, to cinematic string laden drama, to swirling Ethiopian folk transformed into something way more buzzy and bouncy, some jams synth swaddled, others warped and warbly, the bass cranked up all over the place, you can almost imagine the Wu-Tang swooping in for a verse or too, these brief jams are just so groovy and heady and funky and kick ass.
Hands down THEE mix of the year!!!
This one might just be for superfans only, but then again, maybe not...
It's one song, one sided, costs $15, and is a live version of a previously released track (from the Peanut Butter Oven ep), but hell we know how Oh Sees fans are, OBSESSIVE, and this is a pretty sweet object. Besides the music, it's pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl, comes in an eye popping black and red heavy duty jacket, and the B-side features an incredible etching, all patterns and pumpkins and shapes and leering mouths, super sweet.
The original track, already a bit sprawling and jammy, gets the full on live workout, recorded at a house show in SF, the song sounds pretty much like the original at first, all shuffling drums, reverb drenched guitar jangle, yelpy echoed vox, repetitive and kinetic, but then the song stretches waaaaaay out, breaks down, sounds a little like the parts in old songs where the band gets introduced, but instead, there's a drum solo, and the track spaces out and gets all sixties shimmery and dubbed out, to the point that is seems like enough of a new jam that you'd probably want it even if you already had the Peanut Butter Oven version. Cool stuff. And LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
Yet again, Finland delivers some divine delirious musical weirdness, this time in the form of psychedelic black metal freaks Oranssi Pazuzu, whose sound hews somewhat to the conventional tropes of black metal, but only somewhat, letting the requisite buzz and blast, splinter into swirling spaced out psychedelia, slow burning ambient space rock, PROG, druggy post rock, and pretty much any other strange sonic avenue these guys decide to explore. Think classic buzzing black metal, but then mix in some krautrock, lots of space rock (there's an astronaut on the cover for a reason!), classic hard rock and heavy metal, tons of not very black metal instruments, mellotrons, synthesizers, Hammond organs, strange vocal harmonies, it's really hard to explain what these guys are going for, but it's something spaced out and blackened, gnarled and abstract, but sprawling and expansive.
The opening track begins with muted drums and swirling electronics, soft focus chords, a strangely serene buzzscape, before the track kicks in with soaring high end riffage, pounding drums, only to break down into a sort of Hawkwindy workout, albeit with harsh vokills, but also all sorts of swoops and trills, sounds like maybe a Theremin, the band slip back and forth between blasting epic blackness, and tripped out stripped down spacejam, the guitars are rubbery and tangled, the bass a loping pulse, the riffs are strangely effected and stutter and ripple out, while a second guitar sprays shimmering harmonics out like stars in a black night sky. The second track opens up like a lost Gary Numan track, all Cars-style haunting synths, and simple motorik beats, over haunting high end melodies, peppered with bursts of furious blackness and weird chugging post rock parts.
Soon after the band slows down to full on shimmery near ballad, warbly guitars, simple skeletal drumming, hushed growled vox, before exploding into a complex keyboard driven prog workout, which leads into a more metal march.
The more we listen to these guys, the less they sound like a weird black metal band, and more like some heavy space prog band who just happens to incorporate elements of black metal into their sound. Which seems more apt considering very little of the record is spent buzzing and blasting, instead, the songs sprawl and expand into epic, convoluted spaced out prog, complex and catchy, but also obtuse and difficult, but totally unique and confounding and fantastically original.
We'd recommend this to adventurous black metallers for sure, but it almost seems like it was tailor made for all you Finnish music obsessives who have been on the lookout for something heavier and blacker and proggier and more freaked out and fucked up even than the usual Finnish fare, well friends, if this isn't what you were after, we don't know what it...
Holy moly, we've already sold a TON of these before even listing it! In fact, we meant to review it on list #336, and then on #337, but we kept running out of 'em before list day so we couldn't. Well, now or never, we just got our last batch of these records direct from Mr. Orcutt himself, 20 copies and he says that's it, he's not going to repress it again. So, you ask, what's so great about this, why have they been flying out of here? Maybe it's 'cause this was picked by the editors of The Wire as number 3 in their top 50 albums of 2009. Or maybe 'cause so many AQ customers have an unhealthy obsession with the seminal underground '90s no wavey noise rock outfit that Orcutt used to abuse his guitar in, the notorious Harry Pussy. But this is pretty far from the skronk and spazz of HP. Well, it's still noisy in its way, but what Orcutt is playing here on this solo guitar album is "the blues". In an "American (very) Primitive" style. That's right, it's kinda the Harry Pussy version of John Fahey or something. Totally tangled, out there improvs from a guy who's really really feeling it, you can tell.
His steel string acoustic guitar is only strung with four strings (missing the two in the middle, apparently, who needs 'em) and it's recorded up close and personal, played in a choppily percussive, and definitely emotive way. Appalachian angst that's sometimes stark, the background hum or tape hiss somehow somber, but mostly crowded with energetic bluesy bursts of notes spilling all over themselves, punctuated by occasional yelps and hollers as the spirit moves him. Imagine an agitated, ADD old timey outsider artist on Mississippi, also part Tetuzi Akiyama, part Jandek...
Sure, there's some folks who might bring out the hoary old argument that "I could play like that too". But they didn't, and Orcutt did, and we're digging it! Definitely for fans of avant electric guitar freakouts - even though this is all-acoustic! Grab it while you can if it sounds good to you (it does to us).
After the sprawling 4lp Lucifer Rising Suite box set on Ajna reviewed here a while back, comes yet another awesome archival treasure trove of psychedelic sounds from Bobby Beausoleil, this one focused on demos and unreleased recordings from his Orkustra, a sort of Eastern style psychedelic jazz group he started after a brief stint in an early incarnation of Love with Arthur Lee.
Beausoleil was a friend and one time bandmate of Manson (not a member of the Manson family as is commonly thought), and is currently incarcerated, not for the 'Manson Murders' though, he was in fact arrested 3 days before that infamous killing spree for killing Gary Hinman after a botched drug sale. He spent time on Death Row but his sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison, which is where he has spent the last 40 years. Much of that making music.
The Orkustra however came well before, when Beausoleil was just a young hippie who headed to California looking for love and drugs and sex, and who discovered music as a gateway to another plane, to spiritual salvation.
The Orkustra never released a proper record, so this 2lp collects many of the demos and rehearsals, most unreleased, and thus the sound quality varies, the record opener, "Bousaki Blues Experiment" features lots of drop outs where the tape had obviously been damaged, but somehow that only adds to the mood and mysticism of the recording. That track already sounds a bit like a spacier, druggier Dirty Three, but with the strange garbled bits of tape damage, it sounds like some unearthed chunk of sonic mystery. The sound of the Orkustra is actually quite varied, from gamelan like grooves, to propulsive psychedelic rock, to tripped out fusiony free jazz, a definite Eastern vibe running through much of the music. "Flash Gordon" sounds almost big band, but with strange buzzing melodies, and woozy electric guitars. "Punjab's Barber" sounds like it could have been plucked off of some Sublime Frequencies compilation, and in fact, many of the tracks here, due in part to the songs, but also the recordings, sound like genuine artifacts of lost world music. "Freeform Improvisation (While Watching An Experimental Underground Film" is a murky muddy, spaced out krautrock workout, that sounds like it could just as soon be some current band getting all retro and lo-fi. Woozy, mesmerizing, drone-y, space-y and totally psychedelic. The literally titled "Flute Player Audition" has the titular flutist adding flurries and trills to the bands, warm and languorous garage groove. The record finishes with a practice version of "Gypsy Odyssey", a sprawling 12 minutes slow burning raga infused drone jam, murky and lo-fi, the bass throbbing and pulsing, the guitars unfurled in sheets of blurred sound that slowly coalesce into riffs, plenty of buzz and rumble and in-the-red blown out psychedelic blur, a space jam, that most bands today would kill to replicate.
Incredible stuff. And as with all Mexican Summer stuff, they pull out all the stops, gorgeous thick full color gatefold jacket, thick thick vinyl, download card, it is on the pricey side, as seems to be the case with Mexican Summer releases, but in this instance, it definitely seems worth it. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
Latest release from Bay Area blissdronespacedrift duo Ozmadawn, this one a gorgeously and elaborately packaged double cassette of music for sleep, separated into two sections, "For Sleep Or Meditation" and "For Smoke And Spirits".
The first tape is designed as the title suggests, for meditation and sleep, and is indeed a dark, dolorous bit of drifting low end, slow motion rhythmic swells, shimmering drifts of soft buzz and delicately crumbling distortion, lots of space, distant hiss, a softly swirling bit of minimal ambience, but with a dash of grimnity, this is not totally blissful and dreamy, the sounds here are dark and haunting, the mood harrowing, the overall vibe cinematic, the soundtrack to late nights and lost caves, to grey clouds drifting in front of a blood red moon, the various bits of electronic glitch, sound like they could be field recordings, insects, small creatures exploring their nocturnal landscape, all quite beautiful, but simultaneously quite dark.
The flipside gets even more evocative, with a layer of hiss that makes the record sound like it's wreathed in a rainstorm, or at the very least a late afternoon shower, the rumbling and buzzing drifting way back behind a sheet of processed hiss, the whole thing a softly shimmering bit of deep blackened late night moodmusic. So nice.
The second tape, the one designated "For Smoke + Spirits" is indeed a much more stirring bit of soundscapery, right out of the gate, creepy and tense, long tones wrapped around repeated motifs, total scary soundtrack stuff, a slow build from haunting to downright freaked out, streaks of feedback, a low lumbering melody, but right up in front a bit of sustained chordal soft focus skree that will most definitely have your hairs standing on end. Still pretty and mesmerizing, but seriously and cinematically harrowing, eventually building to a full on swarm-of-insects frenzy, a buzzing, swirling, convulsing wall of sound, while underneath, the original creep and drift continues to hover, the mix of the two disparate elements creating something gorgeously noisy, and/or noisily gorgeous.
ULTRA limited, as in 50 copies, we got about a dozen, they come housed in those oversized plastic clamshell cases, the kind that usually contain language tapes or instructional cassettes, the sleeve is hand stamped, hand numbered, and assembled one at a time, featuring a cool reflective front cover, includes a printed insert, and again, will probably be gone in no time...
We won't go into too much detail with this one, it was limited to 100 copies, is already sold out, and we got a mere 10, sold 3 or 4, so by the time you read this we'll have 5 or 6 left, and will NOT be able to get more. Gnaw Their Tongues obsessives will NEED this, three new tracks of GTT's fucked up and brilliantly brutal industrial symphonic cinematic black doom, all buzzing guitars, crashing percussion, twisted strings, warped vocals, twisted samples, black ambience, all woven into something freaky and creepy and unlike anything else you've heard.
We had never heard Painforged before, but they are most definitely a worthy matchup for GTT, a similarly abject bit of abstract blacknoize and metallic ambience, processed sounds throb and skitter and pulse over monstrous vocals, strange samples laced with super spare programmed doom-ed drumcrush, swirling black ambience and thick swells of rumbling buzzing doomdronedirge low end, laced with deconstructed and decaying riffage, slowed down cookie monster vox, and spidery atonal guitar squiggles, all melted down into a noxious and black sonic stew.
Packaged in a dvd style case, nice printed covers, almost sold out, so cross your fingers and add to cart...
It's apparent from Seven Seals that James Pants is one artist that does not want be pigeonholed. We already got a glimpse into his all-but-the-kitchen-sink approach towards cosmic funk on his Stones Throw debut, Welcome. But on Seven Seals, he takes us to a whole other universe, one where Vangelis gets high with Bauhaus and George Clinton while listening to Hawkwind. Seriously! And the weird thing is that it shouldn't work but it does! Pants is definitely exploring the gothier sides of new wave here with deep dour vocals but with an eye towards a dark retro-futurism and cosmic pop turbulence in the synth and rhythm treatments. Imagine Dam-Funk, Cold Cave and Neon Indian mashed together and broadcast out to a desolate planet where the atmosphere is really heavy and everything is silver, streamlined and egg-shaped and on the verge of being blown apart by cosmic forces. This is their soundtrack.
As we mentioned in the Pulse Emitter Meditative Music reviews, we do get a lot of folks here looking for cds for meditation, massage and yoga, and while we can get down with the concept of meditative music, we can't always get past the aesthetic cheesiness inherent in most music specifically designed for this purpose. You know what were talking about, right? Those photoshopped jewel tones, that terrible Hindu/Sanskrit-like font, and the gross overuse of words like "dharma", "kundalini", and "chakra".
So thank God, there are musicians like David Parsons who still work within the new age genre but don't completely fall into its trappings, making worthwhile music that both experimental drone heads and meditative music seekers can get behind. Maybe you'll recall his Earthlight disc we liked last year. Now, on Jyoti, Parsons takes us deep into some heavy inner earth drones, low temple bells and cavernous tonal soundscapes. Each track over 9 minutes of slow monumental and drifting resonance with no unnecessary or excessive melodic elements. If you need music to get your chakras aligned, we recommend this!
Record number two from this German minimal electronic alchemist, combining the Chain Reaction style heroin house, with Pole like space dub and a pinch of super abstract dubstep into something super dreamy and divine. Definitely more for the headphones than the dancefloor, which is generally how we prefer our techno...
Collecting a handful of tracks both old and new, Cauldron Subsidence is a gorgeously seething bit of dark brooding dub-techno, the beats skeletal and ghostly, the melodies gauzy and ephemeral, the various tracks laced with chunks of strings, snippets of sparse vocals, reverb swirls and delay throbs, a cloud of FX haze seems to envelop the proceedings. Some of the tracks get downright propulsive, locking into a space-y minimal groove, while others simply throb abstractly, slipping from druggy digidub, to total retro heroin house, the record closer is a total nod to primo Chain Reaction, the surface just a patina of soft focus hiss and muted whir, while waaaay off in the distance, a slowed down 4x4 pulse wafts up, barely audible, like listening to a techno party down the block, the beats filtering their way through walls and buildings and the sonic clutter of daily life, before arriving in your earholes muted and muffled and gorgeously mumbly.
Way recommended, especially if Kompakt, and Chain Reaction, and Echospace, and Deepchord, and Echochord, and Pole and that sort of spaced out dubbed out minimal techno is your bag. But give it a try even if it isn't. It's like the techno version of late night trance out drift off dreammusic...
An old fave, in fact a former Record Of The Week, at last reissued and available again, previously it was part of a 2-on-1 cd with another A.R. album, Echolung, but here it's by itself (with bonus dvd, more on that later). Nice packaging, great sound, so glad to have this back in the store! Here's more or less what we said before:
How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (one we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect - spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. A total krautrock essentials. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear it.
This new, artist approved "Achim Reichel Edition" of Die Grune Reise is digitally remastered, and comes packaged with an extra, dvd disc (PAL, region 0, so it'll work in your computer but maybe not your dvd player) that contains an album length 42 minute video interpretation of the whole record ("Grune Reise - Der Film") that looks to be made fairly recently, with lots of trippy computer graphics going on, it's maybe better than the watching the "visualizer" on your iTunes but not much. Chances are, the pictures A.R.'s music will make in your mind are better than this, so use your imagination instead. The dvd also includes a 10 minute "Making Of" feature, but we don't know if that's a making of the album or a making of the video, 'cause the dvd menu/interface is just about the most confusing thing ever and we weren't able to figure out how to access that segment. So, the dvd is a bit of a bust, though again we didn't actually watch everything... and maybe the surround sound feature is a cool. Regardless, the album itself is highly, highly recommended!
Record number 2 (hence the title) from Allan Sparhawk of Low's Retribution Gospel Choir, a way more rocking foil to Low's less rocking slowcore. And a pretty bad ass chunk of riff heavy rock for sure. Thankfully, much of the songwriting that defined and still defines Low has of course followed Sparhawk to the Choir, so in some cases, many of these songs are easily imagined stripped down and slowed down into Low jams, but on their own they function as some classic sounding, sometimes heavy, sometimes jangly sounding indie rock. Sparhawk's vocals powerful, the arrangements lush, plenty of hooks, some not so obvious, while others nail you right out of the gate.
Our favorite moments are when RGC get heavy, like on "Your Bird", the main riff is a monster, the indie vocals balancing the almost metallic tenor of the guitars, but the song twists and turns and does get pretty dang metal here and there. But even then, there are plenty of 'ooooohs' or something else to ground it far from actual metal.
The band also space out here and there, letting songs sprawl and smolder slowly, "Poor Man's Daughter" starts out like that, peppered with bursts of guitar chug and drum crash, but allowing for lots of drift and shimmer, until the last few minutes when things get super heavy, churning guitars, almost Jesu-like, blown out and in-the-red, but it's Allan Sparhawk, so the last few minutes returns to some lilting almost folkiness, which sounds divine on the heels of something so caustic.
It took us a while to warm up to this record. Not sure exactly what it was, but now we find ourselves returning to this a lot, and getting these songs stuck in our head like crazy...
We've always had a certain fascination with Eastern European black metal. Sure, there are some similarities to the hordes of Scandinavia, but there is just something about bands from places like Russia, Romania, and the Ukraine, home of Shadows Ground. At this point in black metal's long history, things are usually a little more raw, more bleak, and just a little more mysterious with bands from these places. Shadows Ground are very reminiscent, both sonically and lyrically of Old Wainds, who you might recognize as one of our favorite black metal bands of all time. Like Old Wainds, and to a similar degree OW-related project Nav, these guys give you a first hand glimpse into the cold wintry realms of their homeland. Depressing insectoid melodies buzz relentlessly over the non-stop blasts, and the vocals are a harsh demon croak spitting out classic black metal truths of darkness and despair. There are some nice pics of the band being irresponsible with knives and fire, and this certainly harkens back to the days when black metal still seemed like a threat, or at least something you would want to avoid in a graveyard. Even though there are plenty of other bands who may be doing things more unique in the way of instrumentation and presentation, sometimes you just don't want to fuck with classic formulas, and anyone who yearns for some Transylvanian Hunger styled madness will find plenty of reasons to rejoice with this.
After totally loving their 7" from last year we were so excited to get a full serving of this Oakland band's awesome, raw, reverb soaked garage pop. And as much as we did dig that 7", this full length is really taking it to new levels with greater urgency and intensity. I Wanna Go Home definitely demonstrates that Shannon And The Clams possess the ability to inject so many damn hooks in to a smoking brew of haunted and infectious down and dirty garage pop. At times the vocal delivery makes us think of the first Strokes album if it was stripped of its major label polish and doused with the magical aura of Billy Childish/Thee Headcoatees. Or like if Wanda Jackson somehow magically collaborated with The Cramps or The Crystals, and was the covered by The Gits. Shannon And The Clams perfectly meld their love of old school rock 'n' roll / RnB and girl groups with their appreciation of crustier punk and garage rock influences, and the result is so kick ass. Makes perfect sense that they often play with Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall, cuz while they don't sound exactly like those other bands, they do share the same undeniably true sonic soul that makes the great garage sound makers stick out from the legion of dabblers. None of those wannabees have the true punch and fire in their sound to pull it off like Shannon And The Clams do. So damn good!
Yet another issue of this retro-minded music magazine out of the UK. We always get 'em, don't always list 'em, but we should 'cause they're good reads indeed if you're into '60s and '70s stuff, like in this issue, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (on the cover, no less!), Procol Harum, actress Mimsy Farmer, Todd Rundgren, The Up, and more, including a feature on the marketing scheme/actual scene known as The Bosstown Sound. And there's of course tons of reviews and news and regular columns etc. as well. All in 99 large glossy full color illustrated pages.
Ready to return to the bizarre black metal (and beyond) world of Japan's Sigh? You'd better be, since that's where we're going, straight to, well, HELL. Hell for those who would prefer to listen to something simple and straightforward, that is! Scenes From Hell, Sigh's eighth studio full-length, is again an idiosyncratic mix of metallic symphonics and cartoonish chaos, complex and careening. If you liked both their last couple of albums, Gallows Gallery and Hangman's Hymn, you should be happy with this ('cause it's sorta like a blend of the two). In other words, it's for folks who like their metal ornate and over-stimulating. There's A LOT going on here. Piano, horns, thrash guitars, piano, classical string quartet, rasping vox, vocoder, even the sex appeal saxophone of new co-vocalist Dr. Mikannibal (not a medical doctor, she has a PhD in physics apparently). Whew! Sigh's unusual brand of orchestral metal is compositionally eccentric and utterly grandiose to say the least, like an over the top mash up of Cradle Of Filth, Carl Stalling, Ennio Morricone, Finntroll, Devil Doll, Arcturus, Dragonforce, Uz Jsme Doma, Hammers Of Misfortune - or imagine a black metal Koenjihyakkei, if you can - it's THAT hyperactive, heavy and heretical. Not to mention, performed to perfection.
The eight busy tracks here race through twists and turns, sounding both vicious and mournful, cinematic and circus-y, and very very Japanese. Even when they've got a horn section tooting away more like an oompah band than black metal, it's still freakin' hellish. So dizzying we're STILL trying to take it all in, but this review should suffice for now...
Oh, but maybe we should mention the guest spoken word appearance by Current 93's David Tibet?! And there's also a vokill cameo by Kam Lee from '80s Florida death metal pioneers Mantas and Massacre. Huh, David Tibet and Kam Lee on the same album, wow.
Originally released on Skelton's own Sustain-Release Private Press Imprint in 2009 as a sonic accompaniment to a collection of writings bearing the same name, both were made over a period of 4 years in the landscape of Lancashire's West Pennine Moors. The chilly Arcadian climate sets the perfect tone for Skelton's oblique investigations into memory, displacement and loss. Made with huge washes of long-form bowed string drones and piano tones in a deep engagement with the natural surroundings, you can feel the all-encompassing frost, the cold water on falling leaves, and the harsh blanket of wind through a threadbare shelter. Attempting to resolve the delicate boundary between intense loneliness and tranquil solitude, these recordings take off from the personal memorial to his wife of his last release under the moniker A Broken Consort, and into a beautifully larger dialogue of place, history and perseverance.
It's hard to believe Skullflower has been a band for 20+ years, and that there have been more than 40 Skullflower releases (and that's not even counting all the other non-SF projects, like Total, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, etc.), but many of us have been along for the whole ride, from the early days of crushing post industrial caveman thud rock, to the more blissed out ur-drone guitarskree, to the second wave of riff centric looped heavy drone spacerock, to the most recent incarnation, a return to incendiary, explosive, ear shreddingly psychedelic guitar noise. And we have to say, we've loved every minute of it. Don't think there was a bum disc in the lot.
It is safe to say that some versions of Skullflower are more accessible, it seems like the riffier discs, opened up lots of ears, only to have them clamped down as Mr. Skullflower Matthew Bower decided to ditch the riff completely, or if not ditch it, bury it beneath an avalanche of corrosive, crumbling, amp destroying black hole white noise, which is where we find ourselves now, with this, the most recent disc from Bower and co., Strange Keys To Untune God's Firmament, a sprawling two disc collection of some of the heaviest, most punishingly brutal sounds we've heard from Skullflower maybe EVER. Which is saying a lot.
Like many of the recent SF discs, Strange Keys requires some dedication, some effort, this is UNeasy listening for sure, a glancing earful will get you nothing but the surface, a blown out wall of grinding NOISE, but take a deep breath, strap on the headphones and dunk your head into this roiling blackened mess, and suddenly, your third eye is opened to all of the sonic subtleties going on within this swirling orb of guitarnoize, textures, rhythms, layers, tones and overtones, riffs (yeah, there are still riffs), what sounds like percussion, some of the tracks get downright blissful, slipping into almost Sunroof! territory, albeit less sun dappled and divine, and more heavy and harrowing, other tracks introduce lots of textures and glitched out electronic buzz, the sharp edges dulled, a muted blast of warped throb and thrum, with buried foghorns, tangled tendrils of feedback, and even some hidden melodies, only to explode moments later in a shower of jagged psychnoise shards.
Fans of recent Skullflower excursions will not be disappointed, those in search of the elusive Bower riff, will just have to gird themselves and dig deep, but if you like your guitars noisy, and your drone music like a hail of rusty nails and broken glass, then, you will find your salvation in Strange Keys To Untune God's Firmament.
LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!!!!
We'll be the first to admit that sometimes our customers are quicker than us to be turned on to the newest coolest sounds. We hadn't heard the Smith Westerns but a few of our regular customers kept gushing about them and told has we had to check it out. And we're so glad they did. While there has been no shortage of lo-fi garage pop in the last couple years, Smith Westerns have their own endearing and charming take on that kind of fuzzy bubblegum garage pop we can never seem to get enough of. While they hail from Chicago, these guys would be so at home right here in the Bay Area as they share a similar spirit and aesthetic with folks like Hunx & His Punx, Girls, Thee Oh Sees, Nobunny, Personal & The Pizza's, etc. In fact we just found out they will be playing a Valentines Day show here in San Francisco with the above mentioned Girls and Hunx & His Punx. So perfect!! We love how Smith Westerns bring in a wide range of influences, from T. Rex to girl groups, to create songs that are fleshed out and lushly lo-fi while bursting with bright eyed excitement. So fucking cool!
From the same label that brought us that amazing Otesanek record from a while back comes this, the first lp in a series called Sound Cartography, which, as the label helpfully explains is:
"Concerned with the investigation of how individuals react when presented with unfamiliar material. Using a linear sequence, each consecutive participant ultimately determines the structure & feel of the record, taking cues from the previous submissions." Sounds cool so far. So when you figure in the fact that the participants include members of Iron Lung, Pig Heart Transplant, Brainoil, Lana Dagales, Running For Cover and Cages, you might be getting an idea of what sort of heavy sonic punishment you're in for, but odds are, you'd be wrong.
While this record is heavy and punishing, it's not metal, or grind, or power violence, there are no drums, if there are guitars, they're used in very un-guitar-like ways, if anything, it's a drone record, albeit a particularly malevolent drone record, with deep swells of cymbal shimmer, rumbling low end buzz, blackened and blurred thrum, all underpinning a haunting spoken word vocal, and laced with a grinding layer of gnarled FX laden crunch, way down in the mix, streaks of glitch, a bit of clatter, building to a burst of abstract ambient near power violence before giving way to an extended bit of super spare, minimal drift, peppered with bits of plinked piano, detuned steel string buzz and hysterically howled invective.
The flipside offers up more of the same, another swirling abstract dronescape, grim spoken vocals, pulsing distorted soft noise, thick swells of sound, barely there pulse like rhythms, reverbed crunch and clatter, slightly sci-fi sounding, again finally slipping into a gorgeous sprawl of hushed drones and ominous whispers, laced with bits of effected dubbed out glitch.
Gorgeous packaging, hand screened two color (black and metallic silver) chipboard fold over jackets, printed on both sides, pressed on thick vinyl, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
Hmm. There's no point in really "reviewing" Spacemen 3 records at this point. They're surely one of the top 10 greatest bands to ever exist and even with their influence touching so many bands everywhere, no one - NO ONE - sounds like Spacemen 3. They just got it in ways other bands couldn't. Simple as that. It sure is great to have the band's Glass Records output, their first three full lengths, available on vinyl (some nice 180 gram vinyl to boot) for the first time in God knows how long. They look amazing in their heavy duty sleeves, and after years of absorbing every molecule of the shitty looking Taang Records cd versions, seeing these records as they were initially presented puts things into perspective even more. They just look so classic, so timeless, and so many years later, it makes perfect sense why we felt like we uncovered some secret portal when we discovered this band. Any song they ever did is the perfect soundtrack to any moment of any or every day.
Performance was released to fulfill contractual obligations with Glass, sort of an easy solution before moving on to bigger things. Still, it comes completely recommended, as it captures Spacemen 3 in a live setting on the Perfect Prescription tour, and there's no reason to complain about that. Apparently they weren't exactly pleased with this particular set, and the drums are surprisingly low in the mix, but they tear things up just as you would expect, with the molten guitars taking over everything everywhere. Recorded in 1988 in a setting one could imagine the band being quite comfortable in - Amsterdam - Performance is a fiery run through some early classics, and it will no doubt give you further insight into Spacemen 3's revolutionary approach. Goddamn, there sure aren't any bands like this these days.
Hmm. There's no point in really "reviewing" Spacemen 3 records at this point. They're surely one of the top 10 greatest bands to ever exist and even with their influence touching so many bands everywhere, no one - NO ONE - sounds like Spacemen 3. They just got it in ways other bands couldn't. Simple as that. It sure is great to have the band's Glass Records output, their first three full lengths, available on vinyl (some nice 180 gram vinyl to boot) for the first time in God knows how long. They look amazing in their heavy duty sleeves, and after years of absorbing every molecule of the shitty looking Taang Records cd versions, seeing these records as they were initially presented puts things into perspective even more. They just look so classic, so timeless, and so many years later, it makes perfect sense why we felt like we uncovered some secret portal when we discovered this band. Any song they ever did is the perfect soundtrack to any moment of any or every day.
Sound Of Confusion was the band's first statement after building up a repertoire for a few years. It's their most aggressive record and even though the future was full of surprises, it is the album that set the template for how most people will describe Spacemen 3: loud droning guitars, a minimal but intensely psychedelic approach that is almost violent in its focus, and of course, an inseparable cloak of drugginess. Lyrically, you just can't fuck with songs like "Losing Touch With My Mind" and their mindblowing cover of Juicy Lucy's "Just One Time", retitled as "Mary Anne". The album contains three originals, and three amazing covers that manage to become originals, and a sort of original/cover hybrid. Everything Spacemen 3 did is worth your time, they're definitely an appropriate band to get obsessed with, so why not start at the beginning?
Hmm. There's no point in really "reviewing" Spacemen 3 records at this point. They're surely one of the top 10 greatest bands to ever exist and even with their influence touching so many bands everywhere, no one - NO ONE - sounds like Spacemen 3. They just got it in ways other bands couldn't. Simple as that. It sure is great to have the band's Glass Records output, their first three full lengths, available on vinyl (some nice 180 gram vinyl to boot) for the first time in God knows how long. They look amazing in their heavy duty sleeves, and after years of absorbing every molecule of the shitty looking Taang Records cd versions, seeing these records as they were initially presented puts things into perspective even more. They just look so classic, so timeless, and so many years later, it makes perfect sense why we felt like we uncovered some secret portal when we discovered this band. Any song they ever did is the perfect soundtrack to any moment of any or every day.
For some people, it's Playing With Fire. For others, probably most, it's The Perfect Prescription, Spacemen 3's ultimate statement and the record where everything was working together in absolute harmony. The record cover itself seems to completely capture the essence of Spacemen 3, with Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce holding their guitars, eyes closed, no doubt concentrating deeply on the contents of their minds. It seems fair to call this their pinnacle, as things would become increasingly more split between the group's mainmen from this point on. The Perfect Prescription is one of those rare albums that is completely beyond criticism. Don't even try. Beginning in classic Spacemen 3 style with "Take Me To The Other Side", the album subsequently incorporates a wide array of influences and styles, from soul to gospel to country, making it clear that, even though they did it better than anyone else, there was far more to this band than just walls of fuzzed out drones. Even with this diversity, everything on the album belongs to Spacemen 3 - especially their cover of the Red Crayola's "Transparent Radiation" - and they were able to harness all their powers into something which is, yeah, pretty fuckin' definitive. We could go on forever, but we won't.
As if we needed any more proof that Finland is and was a weird and wonderful place, producing some of the most far out sounds we've ever heard. It's no secret we have a thing for Finnish music, but c'mon, every record we hear, like this one for example, a reissue of one recorded in 1970(!!!) just proves over and over that Finland were always way ahead of the underground rock curve. Or behind it. Either way, the Finns have been blowing minds for 40 years now. (Remember that Psychedelic Phinland comp? There was a Sperm track on that...)
Sperm was the project of a fella named Pekka Airakinsen, and consisted of him creating gorgeously abstract and haunting dronescapes and twentieth century style classical sprawls, constructed from looped guitars, feedback, primitive samples, and various found sounds and invented techniques, the results are fantastic. Dark shimmering fields of suspended tones, of tripped out psychedelic delay, of deep undulating low tones, thick, buzzing rumbles, jazzy horns, chaotic squalls of skronk and skree, No Neck style rhythmic workouts, tons of space, very dark and moody and mysterious. Minus the first half of side two, which features lots of horns and fractured jazz-isms (titled coincidentally "Jazz Jazz"), the rest of the record plays out like something that could have come out on a cd-r this year, seriously genius free noise abstract dronescaping that pretty much puts the current crop of noisemakers to SHAME.
An exact reproduction of the original, with thick paste on, silkscreened sleeves, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Unfortunately already out of print. We only have 5 or 6, most likely the last copies we'll see.
Some strange, unsettling rumblings from across the bay, here. Oakland noise rock brutalists Stress Ape (originally from Chicago, and counting one of the dudes from aQ favorites Cave among their ranks) pound out a nihilistic, two-sided Neanderthal jam on Time Hard, beating the fuck out of their instruments until you are wrapped up in a suffocating blanket of downtuned, harmonically rich sludge that could go on forever if we had our way. There is a somewhat industrial feel to the record, it's easy to imagine blasting this out of your crumbling, asbestos filled apartment just before the final shitstorm hits and everything burns. The distorted vocals scream out hateful musings in a manner that will surely appeal to fans of Six Finger Satellite and the Load Records roster, and the band itself lurches forward like the Stooges at their most smacked out getting stuck in a tarpit. It's heavy and doomy, no doubt, but certainly not metal... just mean, depraved rock that locks in a groove and stays there for the whole trip. The huge, overblown chunk of noise goes on and on, soon becoming unexpectedly hypnotic, and side 2's version of Time Hard carries the record to its spaced out conclusion, like some mutant dub record being remixed in a tornado. Things continue to pulsate under the oscillations sweeping all over, creating an impenetrable wall of heaviness that will probably have you putting this bastard on for a round two. This band slays, they truly understand the still potent potential of a 7" record, and we're stoked for whatever madness they cook up next.
Latest disc from these Italian gloom rockers, the long running solo project of Claudio from aQ black metal faves Frostmoon Eclipse, but unlike the black buzz of FME, Stroszek traffic in something more dramatic and epic, subtle and subdued, with a sound hewing closer to Katatonia, or late period My Dying Bride, big riffs, huge moody melodies, lush arrangements, hushed almost whispered vox.
Slow and brooding, the songs are gradual smoldering builds, often exploding into a churning crunchy chorus, only to slip right back into some dour bass driven doom pop.
Life Failures Made Music is actually a lot heavier in parts than past Stroszek releases, making the Katatonia comparison even more apt, if you can imagine the same sort of bombast, but stripped of its dramatic vocals, which makes these songs sound so much more intimate and personal, still well produced, and lush, but the strange barely there vocals make it seem somehow less commercial, less accessible. And the songs themselves are darkly gorgeous, repetitive and cyclical, with super catchy melodies, and some really nice guitar playing, and super solid drumming. Definitely not cult or grim or even all that heavy, but it certainly hits the spot if you're looking for something moody and morose and a bit metal.
Two words we never thought we'd need these two words in a review of solo lysergic space psych outfit Sun Araw: Funky. And Reggae. But indeed this latest slab of effects drenched trip out, indeed requires both of those descriptors to do it justice.
The A side is all fuzzy bloopy bass, over a groovy loping rhythm, lots of wah guitar, drenched in effects, little squalls of psychedelic freakout here and there, super stripped down, synthy and spacey and yeah, a little bit funky. But in some weird way it totally works.
The flipside offers up, right out of the gate, some funky timbales, more wah guitars, he whole thing pretty blissed out and druggy for sure, with super tripped out stereo panning and warm wheezing organ, and a distinct and undeniable rocksteady vibe.
We're trying to remember if these tendencies were present in past Sun Araw outings, and we feel like they must have been, but it's not until now that they were allowed to blossom, seems strange, and it definitely sort of is, but we're digging it. Try to imagine the a totally drugged out, abstract, fuzzy, reverby, effects doused slightly funky, lo-fi reggae drone space jam, and this is probably it!
Probably all anyone will really need to know about Sun Of The Blind is that it is the solo project of Zhaaral from mighty Swiss black metal spacemen Darkspace, and in fact that's all we really needed to know, when we first heard about this, we knew it had to be good, how could it not be? And thankfully our faith in this grim Swiss black warrior was not misplaced.
Don't be expecting any blazing buzzing black space metal a la Darkspace, or even wintery black frost a la Paysage D'Hiver, although you do get a little of each, there are similarities, in the use of ambience, of mood, and texture, but Sun Of The Blind is way more melodic, poppy even, the sound washed out and woozy, melancholy yet epic. The songs tend toward the midtempo, with some of the riffs and melodies, reminding us of a more amped up Jesu or Nadja, the same sort of lysergic shoegaze quality, clouds of interwoven melodies, gorgeous harmonies, all over a churning, mantric, hypnotic black groove.
Much of the record is spent drifting and droning, single notes and gently strummed chords suspended between sheets of blackened shimmer, while elsewhere, strange electronics and crumbling loops underpin woozy sun dappled minor key melodies, building to gauzy dreamlike dirges, or exploding into dense flurries of black crush.
Skullreader is warm and enveloping, a massive roiling melodic buzzscape that is almost more hypnotic than it is heavy, an utterly gorgeous collection of blown out black beauty that almost sounds like some impossible Darkspace / Katatonia hybrid.
Easily one of our new favorite black metal records for sure, and essential for any Paysage / Darkspace obsessives...
You would most definitely be forgiven for not expecting big things from a band called Todd. And you sure as shit would probably wouldn't expect something this fierce and heavy and fucked up. But once you realize these guys are on Riot Season, and that they count as members (or did at one time) guys from long time aQ faves Shit And Shine, then it all begins to make a bit more sense. Right down to the taking-the-piss monicker.
And Todd most definitely have plenty in common with their way more tweaked and druggy countrymen S+S, but where S+S do their multiple drummered post Buttholes freak out thing, Todd are a bit more riffy and raw, still rhythmic and heavy and blown out and in the red, but more pounding and relentless, maybe more akin to Brainbombs and Rusted Shut and Twin Stumps and White Mice and the Mayyors, you get the drift, howled marble mouthed vox, riffs crumbling with distortion, so much so that half the time they just sound like a wall of fuzz, the bass a wash of bowel rattling rumble, the drums pounding and frantic, the band swing from unhinged Scratch Acid / Jesus Lizard noise rock, to seasick post rock groove, to lurching sludge-y doom, to full on filthy space rock trip outs, to repetitive, looped sounding dirge-y drug rock, there's even some warped twang flecked almost slowcore sounding drift, but even then, the vocals are unhinged, and the amps sound like they're gradually turning to some sort of black goo, and the band eventually stumble back into a filthy field of sonic broken glass and ear shredding pound and howl.
Needless to say, if you dig Shit And Shine, Brainbombs, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Oxbow, Hey Colossus, the Anals, Billy Bao, any of that sort of crusty, metallic, noise drenched filth, then these guys will definitely hit the spot.
It's always interesting how the dispersion of music takes place. It's harder than one might think to get a record from artist, to fan. Case in point, the tons of Japanese customers who order records by Japanese artists from our store in the US, or the Europeans who order records from us that were released by labels in Europe. And of course we often find ourselves ordering records from overseas, by bands who live right here in the US, often right here in California.
Which is sort of how we discovered Unhuman Disease, a killer USBM band from Oklahoma of all places, and who we had never heard of until we ordered their records from Black Hate over in Germany.
It really doesn't matter in the long run, as long as the music gets to the people, so we're psyched to introduce folks to Unhuman Disease, even if we had to get to Oklahoma via Germany.
Unhuman Disease is the one man BM project of Nocturnal, who is probably better know as the former drummer for Texan black metallers Thornspawn, but in Unhuman Disease, he whips up a seriously frenzied black blast of satanic fury. Into Satan's Kingdom is one of two UD full lengths released last year, and it's a killer, slipping deftly from hiss drenched blackened doom, to blasting frantic hyperspeed black buzz, to plodding midtempo Burzumic blackness, it's lo-fi and raw, grim and blown out, the whole record seems cloaked in a sonic haze that is definitely reminiscent of Striborg, with some distinctly Nordic moments of soaring majestic riffage, and even some weirdly melodic prettiness, but for the most part Unhuman Disease is for the corpsepainted true grim warriors, who want nothing more than to fill their caves with sick black buzz.
Killer black metal / black ambient match up, featuring one of our favorite mysterious ritualistic drone combos, Uno Actu. But let's start with Maledicere, a duo from Minnesota of all places, and whose sound is a sort of raw pounding black metal, with a bit of a post rock vibe. After an intro of tinkling tones and dreamy ambience, the band launch into a loping Burzumic pound, but with strange howled vocals, very melodic, but still plenty buzz drenched. Mostly midtempo, but the band do explode into bursts of frenzied buzz with soaring majestic melodies, before slipping back into something more pounding and primitive. Definitely be psyched to hear more from these guys.
But no matter how good Maledicere is, Uno Actu are the reason we're so excited about this record. With only a handful of demos over the last few years (a couple of which we've raved about on past lists), a new record from these guys (or this guy), is like an (un)holy message sent from another realm, a rare occurrence that produces much rejoicing, and much huddling around the stereo late and night by candlelight.
A cloud of muted feedback and textured buzz, swirls and pulses, over delicate acoustic guitar, some sort of dreamy blackened noisefolk, slipping from corrosive and caustic to washed out and meditative. Demonic vocals gurgle over smears of fracture melody, and distant guitar strum, eventually spiraling into a looped bit of minor key droneguitar mesmer. So fantastic.
Someone needs to collect all the demos and release them on cd, or vinyl, or something, but until then, we'll just have to make do with these little offerings, everyone a black joy to behold.
We haven't had a good Turkish psych compilation in some time and while this covers some pretty familiar ground, there's plenty of stuff new to us to recommend it. Don't let the time range of the music create any doubts, the bulk of this is from 1968-1976 with one song from 1977 (Edip Akbayram & Dostlar) and one from 1983 (Fikret Kizilok, doing a smoky ballad that sounds older than most material on here). Three of the tracks are reissued here for the first time. While there are key hits from Selda, Erkin Koray, Mustafa Ozkent and 3 Hur-el that have been on numerous other releases, the tracks by Baris Manco, Esin Afsar, Umit Tokcan, Nurcan Opel, Galatasaray Lisesi, and Cem Karaca Ve Apslar are all unfamiliar to us, mostly taken from rare 45's and soundtrack records. Lots of heavy rock groove, surfy lounge beat, and smoky soulfulness to make this a highly worthwhile collection for DJs and unusual psych connoisseurs. Just ignore the subpar cover art! On Red Vinyl!
(This was also released as an outrageously expensive cd-r, we passed on those, but figured it was worth it on vinyl.)
Better act fast on this one, super limited, as in ONLY SEVENTY COPIES, and it's a pretty killer sampling of some of the best SF bands around, all exclusive tracks, from a bunch of our favorites, and a whole bunch of bands we'd never heard of before.
Barn Owl, Lucky Dragons, Tussle, Pale Hoarse, Ascended Master, Snowblink, Drumz and so many more. Two discs, nearly 2 hours, of spaced out drone, groovy abstract rhythms, dark swilring ambience, woozy drum machine driven lo-fi pop, pounding low slung post rock, and lots of stops in between.
All of the tracks were recorded live in the Fall of 2007, during Drew Bennett's collaborative Clouds Carved The Mountains Installation / Sound Series at the Triple Base Gallery, here in SF.
Beaufiul hand assembled and hand silkscreened cover, with a printed insert, of the seventy copies we only got a handful, so grab one quick before they're gone...
You know music is beyond powerful and soulful when it can be all about faith in something you don't personally believe in, yet you can't stop listening to it! The sentiment, passion and energy put into the music transcends any one specific belief and becomes more about the music and its ability to truly tap into raw spirit and deep conviction.
Such is the case for the amazing gospel jams compiled once again by the always dependable Numero Group, in their second volume of gospel burners that we think might even outshine their first installment from a few years back. These are the reeeeal deal, unfiltered sounds that were blasting in black churches in the 1960's. Informed by the soul and deep funk of popular secular music, folks took that inspiration into their churches to create sweaty, impassioned deep grooved fiery and catchy songs that spoke of their deep running spirituality and beliefs. And it's just impossible not to get swept up in the spirit of these songs. Musically it's just some of the most solid, groove filled and exquisitely performed soul music we've ever heard. The equivalent of getting to hear Aretha Franklin or James Brown let it all hang out in the house of the Lord. Most of the tracks here come from Chicago, whose long history of spiritual soul is reaffirmed once again.
While most of us here are everything from Atheists to Buddhists to Jewish to Quaker to Agnostic to worshipers of nature and sometimes even Satan (got to represent out black metal tendencies) we all can't help but testify to the righteous sounds in this collection. For the duration of the eighteen songs on Good God! Born Again Funk, we are all devout believers! Vinyl version coming in a few weeks, by the way...
What really needs to be said about this collection? Vintage Peel Sessions (songs recorded live in the BBC studios to later be broadcast live on John Peel's legendary radio show) by some of the most legendary, and influential grind bands EVER. As well as some not exactly grind bands, and some rad obscure (to many) lesser knowns. C'mon, Napalm Death, Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Godflesh, Extreme Noise Terror, Heresy, Unseen Terror, Intense Degree... the names alone should have most heavy music freeks frothing at the mouth, granted much of this stuff has been available before, but much of it has NOT. And for $16!!??
The first three Napalm tracks here: "The Kill", "Prison Without Walls" and "Dead" are quite literally, the most perfect 57 seconds in extreme music history. We first heard those tracks on a John Zorn radio show, and immediately set out to track them down, and that whole Napalm Peel Session totally trumps (to these ears) anything else they've ever done, to this day, so furious and frantic, the recording so hot and in-the-red, seriously still possibly the most extreme sounding music we've heard. The Napalm tracks here include Peel Sessions from '87, '88 and '90. And if you don't have any or all of 'em, they're worth the price of admission alone. Then there's Extreme Noise Terror, whose sound is way more crusty and punk, bordering on grind, but still totally and fantastically punk rock. The Carcass sessions were definitely available at some point, but these too, if you've yet to hear them, they will SLAY you, crushing and heavily reverbed, fierce and totally sloppy, but so goddamn good. And Bolt Thrower, no one can fuck with Bolt Thrower, and they totally shine on their Peel Session, thrashing and crusty and blown out and totally untouchable. Godflesh pops up for a few songs too, and of course those rule too, especially the Peel version of "Like Rats" which somehow sounds even meaner and heavier.
And then there's the more obscure stuff, 38 tracks of wild, thrashing grinding metallic punk crust from Intense Degree, Unseen Terror, and Heresy, all of which are pretty excellent, ID kick out some fierce skate punk slop, UT are a downtuned grunting blast beat terror, and Heresy start out all goofy and poppy with "Flowers (In Concrete)" before launching into a flurry of off kilter chaotic grind.
Killer slipcovered packaging with tons of vintage photos, liner notes, and a lengthy interview with Mick Harris (Napalm Death / Extreme Noise Terror / Unseen Terror)...
Naturally, this is the sequel to the excellent '60 fuzz psych compilation High All The Time Vol. 1. We reviewed that last year, it was a pretty darn killer comp indeed, and so is this follow-up! There's 14 cuts from 14 bands, from garages all across the US of A, circa 1966-'74. Like Vol. 1, this is the place to go for savage fuzz romps -and- trippy psychedelic excursions. And as before, it's all obscure stuff. The only artist we'd heard of before is J.D. Blackfoot, one of the few acts here who managed to release a long-player, most of the rest of 'em having but one rare 7" single to their name. However, the A-side (or sometimes B-side, let's hear it for B-sides!) to that single was often enough of a recorded legacy to earn 'em a pool of drool from record collectors and garage psych connoisseurs for ever and ever. Listen in, you can hear why.
This starts off plenty fierce with the aforementioned J.D. Blackfoot's gruffly-sung "Epitaph For A Head". Classic & wild! That's followed by "Time Out To Fly" by Magical Mist, almost as fuzzy but a bit more dreamily moody as befits their name, reminding us of the Electric Prunes by the end of the tune. But even the most melancholic and melodic cuts here tend to erupt eventually into at least one white hot blast of acid guitar soloing excess, if not totally freaking out into full-on scuzz stomp. Other highlights include the lovely "Sad Now" by Solid Ground, and a not-so-folky rendition of "If I Were A Carpenter" by Grant's Blueboys, among others. Another cool cover here is Chesmann Square's "Circles", originally by The Who. The line up also includes: American ZOO, Thundering Heard, ESB, Thorinshield, Odyssey, Ocelot, Jordan, World Column, and Catfish Knight & The Blue Express.
The glossy cd booklet contains brief (sometimes very brief!) liner notes and discographical information for each act, with vintage photos and 45 labels in some cases too. Yep, just what we were hoping for when we realized that Volume 1 of course implied a Volume 2... By the way, we've reached the point in time where we're seeing reissues of reissues, apparently both volumes came out on vinyl in the early '90s but now's the first time they've appeared on cd.
At this point in this fantastic on-going series, with us having already reviewed Messthetics #101-106 plus both Messethetics Greatest HITS and Messthetics Greatest HISS, we probably don't have to introduce you to the whole Messethetics concept, that being archival anthologies of DIY recordings by obscure post-punk bands from the UK, circa 1977-1983 or so, some noisier, some poppier, some weirder, some cruder... You know what we're talking about - if not, please look up all our reviews of the previous installments in this series, you're in for a treat!
So, here's #107, subtitled "D.I.Y. '78-81 London III", meaning it's the third collection of London-based bands in the series, returning to the city previously documented by #101 and #102. Of course, there's a been lot of great bands from there! There's 23 audio tracks on the cd, plus 7 bonus songs in mp3 format included here. Here's the lineup of bands: Stepping Talk, Jelly Babies, Avocados, Occult Chemistry, Patterns, Six Minute War, Demon Preacher, Methodishca Tune, Jangletties, Stolen Power, Flags, Steppes, Disco Zombies, Insex, 49 Americans, The Milkmen, Design For Living, Twilight Zoners, and Club Tango, with a few more only on mp3. Not too many household names there, eh? But you will find, if you peruse the incredibly extensive liner notes in the thick cd booklet (filled also with photos, fliers, and 7" artwork), that folks participating in some these acts also played in the likes of Alien Sex Fiend, Flying Lizards, A Certain Ratio, and others.
More of a recommendation, really, is simply that it's another volume of Messthetics - they're ALWAYS awesome, so collect 'em all! As usual with a Messthetics volume, this disc is packed with long-unheard gems that are so charmingly THEN but also so perfectly NOW considering the sort of retro influenced stuff we've been hearing from the current DIY pop scene. Naive shambolic pop rubs shoulders with machine-driven punk angst, dubby rhythms mix it up with melodic jangle and skronky guitars... off kilter lo-fi avant garde action abounds! If we had to pick a fave, we'd say the Disco Zombies for some reason jumped out at us when we gave this the first of several spins thus far. But you'll doubtless latch onto your own faves here if you give it a few listens yourself.
Another great addition to the Messthetics library, as always we give big thanks to Hyped To Death for performing this valuable service for all music lovers whose collections aren't quite vast enough to already contain all these obscurities.
Ooooh, so awesome! If you're familiar with Minimal Wave already, or if you're not, this is the thing to get.
The Minimal Wave label and website have been tremendous resources for discovering the hidden gems of synth punk, cold wave, Neue Deutsche Welle, and any of the darker strains of new wave that all blossomed throughout the early to mid '80s. While the label has released full album reissues (vinyl-only) from a number of forgotten men and women of the trade, the two comps that Minimal Wave has issued over the years - the Lost Tapes (documenting European artists) and the Found Tapes (culling from North America) - were absolutely stunning, without a dud amongst the many collected tracks. Unfortunately, those two comps were quite expensive and quite hard to come by. So when Minimal Wave and Stones Throw came together to release this comp, our initial reaction (and that of a few others walking in the shop) was that this compilation fused those Lost & Found Tapes together. Well, we were wrong as this highlights not only some of the best tracks from those compilations, but also the best tracks from the Minimal Wave reissue library, plus a few rare gems not readily available anywhere else.
The Belgian outfit Linear Movement (which later morphed into A Split Second) opens the compilation with a very cold dance number of disaffectedly cold Italo-disco rhythms and female vocals that would fit in with any given Johnny Jewel production for Italians Do It Better (e.g. Chromatics, Glass Candy, Desire, etc.). Crash Course In Science's "Flying Turns" re-emerged first on the Found Tapes and then on the totally awesome Vinyl On Demand anthology; and is an immediately catchy if darkly unique number of dot-dot-dash electro and spiky rhythms closer in spirit to the Units or Nervous Gender. Oppenheimer Analysis reprises a very Gary Numanoid track from their eponymous record which Minimal Wave reissued a while back. The Mark Lane track "Who's Really Listening" is another insistent proto-techno number of synthetic micro-blips driving handclap drum rhythms and Lane's Ultravox-ish vocals. Tara Cross was one of the few women tinkering around with electronics, and produced some beguiling arrhythmic structures with staccato synth punches and her drawn out vocal ambience. Turquoise Days may have been the only New Wave export of the Channel Islands, pulling out some jangling dissonance from their guitars to match the Modern English synth melodies. Minimal Wave reprises the Lost Tapes with a great track from Bene Gesserit, a project of bleakly alienated progressive electronics from Alain Neff who ran the Insane Music label. The Esplendor Geometrico track is curiously playful for a project that centered so much on dangerously mechanoid industrial grinding. Das Ding's "Reassurance Ritual" was designed for the dancefloor with a constant revolution of drum machine programming around tightly wound synth melody repetitions. Cryptic theatrics from the Martin Dupont ensemble appear on "Just Because" sounding a lot like a Fad Gadget B-side. And if the Deux track "Game & Performance" sounds familiar, it's because you've heard it on the BIPPP compilation which Ed Banger re-released a while back. The compilation is fleshed out with the best death disco groove that Das Kabinette ever mustered on their single "The Cabinet" which did come out on a Minimal Wave lp a while back.
Fantastic!!!!!
FYI there IS a vinyl version of this comp too, but of our various suppliers only one got copies, and they were shorted, so we only got a tiny tiny handful, not enough to list (by the time you read this, they'll probably be gone, but you can always ask). Hopefully though we'll get more somehow in the near future...
Finally, the latest installment of pop ambience is here, a record we look forward to all year. Very few series, whether they be compilations, TV shows, movies, whatever, can make it to 10 installments, at least not without the quality suffering big time, but the Pop Ambient series continues to be amazing. And untouchable. We'd say that every one is better than the last, but that wouldn't be entirely true, since every single one has been equally fantastic. The 2009 installment introduced some new blood, some non Kompakt folks dabbling in their own ambient pop, like Tim Hecker and The Fun Years, along with the usual suspects. But for 2010, Kompakt decided to keep it in the family, lots of familiar names: The Orb, Mikkel Metal, Thomas Fehlmann, Dettinger, Andrew Thomas, Wolfgang Voigt, DJ Koze, but with a couple tracks from Brock Van Wey, whose Echospace imprint owes no small debt to Kompakt, and one from new to us Marsen Jules, with maybe the best song on the disc.
Jules' "The Sound Of One Lip Kissing" starts things off with surprisingly dark and ominous take on the Pop Ambient sound, a gorgeously grim, lopped slow motion creep, all deep tones, lots of space, and a spare skeletal rhythm, all murky and warm and washed out, the various tones looped and stuttered into blurred sonic ripples, cinematic and darkly epic, we find ourselves playing that one track over and over and over.
The two Brock Van Wey tracks take the post Chain Reaction minimal space dub sound of Echospace, and gives it a shimmery, sun dappled pop ambient overhaul, bits of guitar, and fragmented voices, wreathed in delay, and looped into ethereal dreamscapes, Van Wey's 17 minute closer "Will you Know Where to Find Me" begins as a muted blurry low end drift, but soon explodes into a glorious prismatic shoegaze blowout, that sounds a bit like a drumless M83, nearly static, a pulsing cloud of bleary eyed female vox and processed buzz, so epic and gorgeous.
In between lurks plenty of soft focus beauty, from glistening, echo drenched slowcore dream pop, to swirling seas of hiss and crackle and submerged melody, to stuttery high end drones, to blurred gauzy piano driven abstract ambient ballads, to cinematic sting laden drifts, to super intense and emotional looped dronescapes, to hushed outer space minimal psychedelia, to blissed out slow motion mesmer. Another utterly gorgeous and transcendently divine ambient pop music, which will just have to hold us over until 2011...
For vinyl folks, fear not, the lp version includes the cd as well...
Edition Sonoro is the parallel label to Twenty Hertz, both of which are run by the British drone artist Paul Bradley. Resonant Embers is collection of artists who have crossed paths with Mr. Bradley over the years and may be delivering work for Edition Sonoro in the future. There's irr. app. (ext.), jgrzinich, Ueboet, Colin Potter, Bradley himself, Maile Colbert with Tellemake, and Andrew Liles. AQ's beloved bewilderer of sound Matthew Waldron returns to his irr. app. (ext.) moniker with a disorienting chorus for vibrating objects, chiming strings, and distant moans phasing in a tripped out sonic equivalent to a funhouse mirror. Another favorite comes by the way of jgrzinich, who layers together windswept clatter from multiple recordings from high tension wires and the post-Soviet crumbled landscape of his current home in Estonia. A cold, sodden atmosphere oozes from these turnbuckle creaks and (literally) post-industrial ambience. Ubeboet is a newcomer to us, offering a majestic track of dark ambience haunted with distant strings and underwater operatic vocals. Colin Potter propagates a liquid drone from a series of harmonic belltones, which have all of the sublime power and angelic beauty of a Ligetti chorale. Paul Bradley constructs a series of interwoven guitar loops of midrange timbers that reflect similar ideas found in Aidan Baker's solo work. Maile Colbert flickers her voice through a series of looping devices and VLF recordings, recalling the early albums of Grouper but with Jarboe's vocal style instead. And finally, the comp is completed with a track from Andrew Liles, whose deeply minor chord piano keys and lilting gypsy violin have a noirish, horror film quality, perhaps in homage to Coil's lost soundtrack to Hellraiser?
Slow. Low. Downtuned. Crushing. Heavy. Sludge. Dirge. Doom. Buzz. Rumble. Pound.
By now, the appropriate parties should be paying attention, cuz this is for anyone who uses any or all of those descriptors to talk about the music that moves them. Two sprawling discs of ultra heaviness, all weirdly based on strangling scenes from horror movies, all tending toward the slow and low, a handful of aQ faves, a bunch of groups new to us, but all purveyors of metallic crush of one form or another.
The first disc is frontloaded for aQ, beginning with an exclusive track from UK doomlords Atavist, who start things off with some pretty delicate guitar, which is just a slow build toward a heaving wall of lumbering sludge, glacial and epic, pummeling and monstrous, growled vocals, and massive drum crush, but that delicate opening guitar continues on beneath the heaviness above, adding a strange vibe to the proceedings. UK bruisers offer up 3 slabs of feedback drenched Eyehategod worship, not all that slow, but buzzy and stonery and low slung with some awesome superfuzz and wildly howled vox. French one man sludge outfit The Austrasian Goat slows it waaaaaay doooooown, to a gut wrenching crawl, channeling, classic ultra funereal doom, into some gloriously abject sludge.
Up next is The Whorehouse Massacre, a Canadian one man band who spews some sick, super distorted ultra sludge doom, awesome stuff, we definitely need to hear more from this guy.
All the bands on the second disc are new to us, beginning with Stasis, who do their own take on twisted downtuned heaviness, offering up weird acoustic interludes between the blown out bursts of howled and shrieked dirgery. Feast Of Sins are classic funeral doom, even offering up one track of grim black ambience, bookended by some glacial gloomy creeps. Ghost Empire are another rad sludge doom combo, but with a bit of groove, after some super skeletal spaced out ambience, these guys piledrive with churning riffs, big drums, and throat shredding vox. And finally, Welter In Thy Blood, who hail from LA, offer up a seriously harrowing chunk of blackened doom drenched ambience, sick inhuman vocals, super spare drums, riffs that ooze like black tar, the whole track like a Khanate jam played at 16rpm.
Lots of killer stuff, all slow and low and heavy, doom, drone, sludge, if that's your thing, then THIS is most definitely for you.
