No doubt about it, this total gem and often overlooked left field outing by Herbie Hancock, recorded in 1972, is one of those records that belongs in the COSMIC HALL OF FAME! Lightyears ahead of its time, it's a record that mixed electronics, synthesizers, Afro-funk, prog, spiritual jazz, free-bop and more, as it charted territories that had rarely been explored at that point, and that still sound so otherworldly and divine all these years later.
Sextant is a record that undoubtedly has had a major influence on so many of our favorite music makers of today, like Matmos, Four Tet, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Flying Lotus, Etienne Jaumet, Gavin Russom, Robert A. A. Lowe, Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance etc. In fact when we were blasting this in the store the other day, one of us who hadn't heard this before (gasp!) came up front asking if this was a new Oneohtrix Point Never! It's that spaced out, mystifying and alien-sound-channeling.
Tapping into the atmospheres and stratospheres that Miles Davis drifted through on Bitches Brew but taking it even further out, Sextant is truly one of the most tripped out and transcendent recordings of all time. Three long tracks (about 40 minutes all together) of pure psychedelic mind melting "fusion" innovation. You could definitely imagine this was Magma, Goblin or even (especially) Sun Ra. Somehow it's managed to remain below the radar of so many music lovers, we're always so excited to see people freak out when they hear this for the first time. And for some reason its now priced crazy cheap (it's not new after all, we just realized we had never listed it!), so if you don't own it, this is a an absolute MUST own and hell, you might as well get a couple to give to friends that you want to blow away with these far our cosmic sounds!
A whole mess of new 7"s from Captured Tracks, and all of them awesome. This one, the weirdly named Hanoi Janes, is a German one man band, who kick out some of the most excellent reverb drenched jangle pop we've ever heard. Some awesome sixties girl group sounding vox over pounding surf rock drums, chiming bell like melodies, all washed out and reverby and psychedelic, plenty of 'ooooohs' and a super catchy main hook.
The flip side is a bit more driving, the same sort of reverby, echoey feel, but a super rocking garage-y groove, still lots of 'oooohs', but some deeper more obviously male vox, perfectly complimenting the crunchy fuzz guitars and wild garage rock drumming. Really great stuff. One of our new favorites for sure, we've already played this to death and are dying for the full length.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is the second bit of gorgeous ambient folk drone we've heard from Higuma, the duo of Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and his musical partner Lisa McGee, after a criminally limited cd-r on Root Strata, sadly this lp is nearly as limited, only 250 copies total, already sold out and out of print, except maybe for the 25 copies we have right now, which as you know means, be quick or be dead (dead as in, no Higuma for you, you won't actually die, maybe).
The sounds is much like you might expect from the Barn Owl / Elm / Caminiti and now Higuma axis, looooong tracks of dark windswept shimmer, dense brooding drones and epic abstract folk flecked drift.
Clouds of processed guitar swirl ghostlike above buried rhythms, chant like vox, skeletal melodies, the sounds sprawl and smolder, occasionally building to drugged out Spacemen 3-like soft cacophonies, but just as often melting into something more delicate and space-y with spidery psychedelic guitars blurred into distant swells, gongs and chimes, adding mysterious textures and overtones to the already gloriously murky and moody proceedings.
The whole record is a delicate assemblage of whir and buzz and rumble, the sounds intertwined, smeared, layered into spectral space drone, but always remaining earthy and organic, not OF the stars, but earthbound and staring up INTO the stars, the sound of deep black night, dusted with starlight, all held at bay by the flicker and crackle of Higuma's slow burning dreamlike blurscapes.
So gorgeous. Cool handscreened sleeves, original art by Caminiti, and again, 250 copies, out of print, and unavailable once these final copies are gone...
We have to hand it to Hot Chip, they were one of the major forces to really reimagine and reconstruct indie-pop by mixing electronic and dance music with extremely earnest and fleshed out songwriting, to create music that not only gets stuck in your head immediately but holds up on repeated listens. While they helped open the gates for so many new groups who want to get your ass shaking, Hot Chip still really sit at the top of the class. They are as much informed by commercial pop music as they are more nuanced influences, bringing out the best of all the sounds that influence them. Unapologetically sincere, this is irony free, hearts on sleeves dance pop. The total charm of Hot Chip is how they are somehow so totally dorky yet super cool at the same time. We became bigger believers in them when we saw them live, totally owning the stage with their enthusiasm and energy, as a sold out Fillmore audience all totally lost it, dancing and jumping like crazy. It was such a sight to be seen. This is what New Order might sound like if they were produced by The Neptunes, or imagine Erasure, OMD and The Pet Shop Boys with Timberland behind the board.
One Life Stand has the high energy bangers that we've come to love, as well as a few slower emotional tunes that make us think they've been turned on to the classic sounds and songwriting of Boy George / The Culture Club. But it really is the more uptempo dance side of the band that we think is their strongest asset which luckily makes up the majority of the record.
Arguably the finest Illusion Of Safety record ever made, Probe was the 1992 recording composed by Dan Burke and Jim O'Rourke. The former began Illusion Of Safety a decade earlier with a revolving door personnel policy involving a handful of Chicago malcontents. O'Rourke began working with Burke's project around 1989 or so, when he was still a teenager and studying composition in college. Where many of the Illusion Of Safety albums are full-frontal assaults on the psyche of the listener (especially the groundbreaking album Historical with its raw use of narration from torture documentaries), Probe is a far more subtle and thus effective album marked by the extended use of disturbed silences, predating such sound design techniques that David Lynch mastered in Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway. This use of space is definitely coming from the O'Rourke side of the equation (which according to Burke was 50/50 on Probe), as O'Rourke's early solo album Scend was released at about the same time as Probe with profound similarities. Throughout the subsonic frequencies and unsettled spooky drones, there are numerous punctures of analogue sourced micro-bleeping, errata from shortwave, scrabbling of tactile objects, field recordings of traffic jams, children at play, carnival rides, etc. and jittery digitally sculpted loops. As all of these elements slowly unfurl over several lengthy chapters, Probe truly synthesizes the aesthetics of both Burke and O'Rourke into a cohesive body of work, with Burke's research into the dark and transgressive balanced with O'Rourke's studies into the musique concrete of Luc Ferrari and Michel Chion.
Staalplaat first released Probe in a wooden slipcase in an edition of 500 copies. Those quickly went out of print; but fortunately, Perdition Plastics has just reissued this brilliant album, albeit in more conventional packaging...
We love it when something unexpected, unknown, and essentially totally off our radar shows up and then completely blows us away! Which is exactly what happened with this chunk of epic cosmic psychedelic space-out by French artist Etienne Jaumet. By the looks of his photo on the cover we first thought this was going to be some sort of smarty pants singer songwriter, Jarvis Cocker sort of thing, but talk about about how you shouldn't judge a book by its cover! Instead, Night Music is one of the most satisfying and fully realized analog synth driven discs we've heard in ages. Imagine Goblin and Kraftwerk gliding through cosmic space, as the record's opening 20+ minute track really does evoke some sort of interstellar autobahn, the listener whirling through the stars and sky, Night Music a deep rich and nuanced soundtrack for that late night cosmic excursion. We also think about some of our fave modern psych-space rockers, like try to imagine Expo 70 remixed by Jonas Reinhardt, or Arp channeling Franco Battiato or Subway stretched way out into a sonic stratosphere pioneered by Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze. Folks who dug the Altres record we listed last time should definitely dig this too. We'd also bet the Black Devil Disco folks and both Zombi and Zomby lovers will find loads to love on Night Music. Oddly enough when we starting doing some digging to find out more about Jaumet we discovered he was in a group called Zombie Zombie (not however, related to the above Zomby/i's).
You can tell that Jaumet also has a deep love of cosmic free-jazz as he introduces subtle saxophone on parts of the record with perfectly understated results, bringing to mind Herbie Hancock's Sextant album for sure, and also Sun Ra as reimagined by Four Tet, particularly on that epic opener "For Falling Asleep" - the very next track sure says "wake up", though, bringing in more of a techno thump to the proceedings, but still staying wonderfully spaced out. Pretty much every time we play this in the store either a customer or one of us who works here asks if this is a reissue of some long lost kosmiche gem, maybe from Germany in the 1970s. In fact we found out that Jaumet based the sequencing of the record on many of those same amazing cosmic psych records from the '70s, where first side of the vinyl is one long track and the other side is filled with shorter tracks. Jaumet also has such an obvious understanding of composition, especially how to stretch tracks out without letting them overstay their welcome, and thus Night Music is just long enough to totally transport us to another dimension, yet focused enough to stay listenable and sonically complex the entire time.
Something which only makes us love this record even more was the discovery that long time AQ favorite, '70s French folk-psychstress Emmanuelle Parrenin adds her voice as texture on a couple tracks (sounding very Yoko Ono, at times) as well as playing harp and hurdy gurdy. Furthermore, the mix was "directed and imagined" by none other than Carl Craig and you can totally tell, as the whole record flows with such a lush layered sound and driving pulse that is both immediately satisfying and utterly hypnotic!
We were a little hesitant to check this out at first, even though we've loved all the tracks we've heard on various comps, because for some reason it was described as dark dubstep with "spoken word vocals". Spoken word? Ugh. Thankfully, one person's spoken word is another's woozy warbly mumbly crooning, 'spoken word' not in the crappy poetry slam sense, but as in brooding smoldering, slow motion toasting, totally reminiscent of classic Tricky, especially Nearly God, the music too, all hazy, and druggy and somnambulant, the beats, cough syrupy, gorgeous late night, rain soaked, glacial tarpit slow jam ballads. Totally dubbed out and minimal, the production hazy and gauzy and softly psychedelic. There's a new Massive Attack out this week too, and it's not bad, but listening to this, all we can think is this is how we wish Massive Attack sounded now.
Every track is a bleary eyed, druggy drift through warped, slow melting downtempo dubscapes, the rhythms, clipped and skittery, horns moaning in the background, wheezing keyboards, clouds of record crackle, the vocals, both male and female, wreathed in reverb and echo, draped over the slowly undulating grooves, sultry and sexy, so darkly languorous, murky and mysterious, the beats thick and dense and heavy, all wrapped in a laid back and lysergic, grimly psychedelic atmosphere, which makes sense considering the man behind the King Midas Sound is none other than Kevin Martin, aka The Bug!
WAY RECOMMENDED!
Third full length from these German post-black metallers, long time favorites around here, which of course means a new Klabautamann record is always a cause for celebration, as is any record by any band related to this ever shifting collective, who play in a bunch of different outfits, including other aQ faves like Woburn House, and Island. But Klabautamann is probably the 'blackest' of the bunch, the guitars buzzy, the vocals harsh and hellish, the drums furious, but that's really where the resemblance to typical black metal ends, take the first song, exploding out of the gate with a loping mathy post metal groove, a bit Slinty, all wound tight, gnarled rapid fire guitar chug, wild drumming, when suddenly, the song shifts and the band are locked into some sort of prog / folk thing, with spidery guitars, and polka like rhythms, which gives way to a dreamy waltzy folk breakdown, but peppered with brief dynamic bursts of metallic crunch, only to slip right back into the opening churn and chug.
The next track is another woozy, doom flecked bit of black lope, but it changes constantly, at its fiercest reminding us of classic Satyricon, but at it's least metal, reminding us of some sort of avant prog pop. Which is the cool thing about Klabautamann, the fact that they're constantly flitting back and forth between the two, but in such a away that it sound totally natural and organic. The songs, as convoluted and complex as they are, seem to flow perfectly, slipping from grim raw blackness, to weird pretty pop in the blink of an eye, often finding some way to meld the two in transition. The playing here is incredible, dexterous, nimble, frenzied and freaking fast, super prog, only in so much as the parts are intricate, and there's so many of them, without digging too deep, this is definitely easy to enjoy as just a super varied black metal record, the band do tend to return to blasting buzzing blackness, but there's so much going on, that to try and enjoy it on just that one level would be a waste, Merkur, much like the records before it, is a lush, layered complex black prog beast, one best enjoyed slowly, immersing yourself in every nuance, from the harsh and heavy to the ethereal and delicate. Amazing stuff.
This sort of rarefied minimalism is not entirely expected from the likes of Monorail Trespassing, although the Larval Hairs project does live up to the high caliber releases which the label has been steadily releasing. Ades Flashback is a double cassette intended to be played at the same time on separate systems. While similarly minded excursions have been demonstrated throughout the sound-art world with multi-channel transmissions, there's something wholly unpretentious about Larval Hairs' production. Little more than two boom boxes are required, although we'd suggest taking those two boom boxes to one of those huge resonant concrete bunkers in the Headlands and seeing how everything bounces. Side A aggregates sinewaves, small swells from rapidly splashing saw-tooth waves, a soft extension of pink noise, and other synthesized oscillations that suggests the longform feedback works of Jason Kahn or a rougher version of Eliane Radigue's early minimalism. The corresponding Side C (which we're assuming is what's to go with Side A, although you could probably switch it all around and it would still sound really cool), contains similarly-minded elements tuned to slight different pitches. Side B broadcasts another series of synthesized tones which hit some skull-drilling harmonic convergences through ever slight oscillations and phase shifts. Side D takes a grittier approach to the synth pulse drone with grinding saw-tooth patterns situated just below the surface of rumbling vibrational tones. Both tapes are 45 minutes in length and are housed in a really nice double tape case, something we've not seen in ages. Limited to 100 copies and certainly recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's a record that we had been excited about for well over a year, back when Projekt announced that they would be releasing a 2cd set by Loveliescrushing. This is a band that should warrant a much bigger pressing than the 300 copies of this elaborate box; but, at least we have a few copies to offer.
Loveliescrushing is a shoegaze duo out of Tuscon, Arizona who made a surprise debut on the darkwave / goth label Projekt around 1993 or so, with the cassette Bloweyelashwish (which later did get a cd release). This album took the My Bloody Valentine overdrive of distortion, reverb, more distortion, and more reverb to a deconstructed end, further blurring the notion of song structure and entirely getting rid of the rhythm section. The duo has slowly been releasing work over the past two decades, gradually smoothing out the distortion and leaving an almost Tim Hecker like mass of droned texture from ethereal female vocals and once heavily distorted guitar wash.
The two discs of Girl Echo Suns Veils are split between the crunched shoegaze density of their earliest recordings and the most recent explorations of their narcotized drone-pop. Those early recordings are remastered from demo tapes dating back to 1990, when 'the noise' and 'the pretty' were coming together in equal resolve. The later material is certainly nothing to scoff at, and would make for a great addition to the next Pop Ambient compilation.
Brilliant stuff, and packaged in an oversized wooden box, hand silkscreened by Loveliescrushing's Scott Cortez, with some collaged art work, and a feather or two found within. AND CRAZY LIMITED. We have less than 10 copies, and can NOT get more, so grab one while you can...
Yikes! No quiet forest folky revels here. Sure, last time we reviewed something by Finland's Maniacs Dream, an lp they did for HP Cycle a few years back, they were a sort of skronky psychedelic heavy freakout band, whose jams we likened to an unholy union of Faust and the Butthole Surfers. Well, on this disc they've gone a bit further down the freakout path. In fact, it seems like they set out to prove that Finnish peeps can make "Finnish noise" that's just as noisy as any Japanese noise. Turku Hold 'Em is just an all out assault on the ol' earholes, 68 and a half minutes of sheer feedbacking, crinking-cranking, screaming n' screeching N-O-I-S-E. Spread out over two long tracks with nary a respite, though sometimes the rumbling distortion will hold "steady" long enough to take the hardy listener into something of a drone trance zone. This happens more during track two (or maybe its that by track two, the listener is in a state of stunned submission anyway).
If this calorie-burning cavalade of chaos was by Japanese spasming noise outfit Incapacitants (subject of a recent 10cd box set), Allan here would buy this in a second. In fact, he's gonna buy it anyway. It's that good. And if good=noisy in your book, you might agree!
The minimal wave rolls on! Martial Canterel is the work of Sean McBride whose darkened electronic tunes have come to us by way of his work with Liz Wendelbo as Xeno & Oaklander; and this album actually predates the exceptional Saracen record from Xeno & Oaklander. That said, all of his productions could have come via some Belgian post-punk imprint circa 1982, so the exact timing of his records matters little. There's plenty of similarities between his solo work and his work in Xeno & Oaklander, meaning that if you loved that record, this will not disappoint. Recorded entirely on analogue sequencers, synthesizers, and drum machines and first released as a cassette (foreshadowing the current resurgence of tape releases by a couple of years!), Refuge Underground bristles with dark pulsing energy, snapped around whip-cracking drum programming, tinny metallic sequences, and seriously infectious melodic arppegiations (think the best of DAF, Dark Day, Nitzer Ebb, or Absolute Body Control). McBride's monotone somber delivery accentuates the moods set through his cold and sparse, synth-pop constructions. Another great recapitulation of the past-future from Wierd Records.
Very excited to come across a new sweet release from aQ fave and experimental guitarist extraordinaire William Fowler Collins! But don't expect the usual soundscaped guitar ambience from WFC this time! Mesa Ritual finds Collins teeming up with another Albuquerque desert dweller, Raven Chacon, for some heavy buzzing, face melting harshness. Cascading swarms of sizzling drones meet distant plumes of rising smoke in the wavering desert heat, as the red sands of the southwest swallow you into ecstatic doom. The label describes the instrumentation as "two large piles of highly magnetic instruments standing too close to each other, yet walking toward you". Huge geologic low end creeps up from the center of the earth as oscillators pulse and hover in mid air. A single track spanning over twenty minutes, the piece ranges from soaring walls of noise and destruction to a subdued eye of the storm, a calm moment of melodic reflection just after the 8 minute mark, that reminds us of a distant William Basinski loop drenched in a fuzzed out haze. But the serenity doesn't last long before the electric bleakness is once again unleashed and only subsides in the final minutes as the micro-epic dwindles like a campfire flame. Totally massive, harsh and somehow beautiful, Voltaic Processions is perfect for fans of the harsher synth stuff happening like Grasslung or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer. Needless to say this one is highly recommended by us, but beware, Voltaic Processions comes limited in an edition of 100!
Mist is the Ohio-centric retro-grade electronics duo featuring John Elliott of Emeralds and Sam Goldberg, who runs the Pizza Night tape label. This is actually the third outing for Mist, as the two have mustered a couple of other cassettes, released earlier this year which disappeared before we even had the chance to grab any. Fortunately, we did manage to snag some of this LP on Amethyst Sunset, which will most likely be around for at least a little while, although it is limited to 500 copies. The Elliott / Goldberg authored electronics here don't veer too much from the Emeralds spaced-out electronics that reflect the best in the realm of late '70s / early '80s progressive electronics (e.g. the more abstracted moments from Kraftwerk and the Eno collaborations with Fripp and Cluster). It's not quite as dark or as melancholy as Emeralds and thus sounds like those sci-fi percolations that fellow knob-twiddler Oneohtrix Point Never and Pulse Emitter have rejuvinated in recent years. Certainly, these are elegant passages of arppegiating analogue electronics and heavily sequenced patterns that intertwine nicely into chiming, sparkling, bubbling zone-tripping.
It wouldn't be that far off to lump Robert Henke alongside Brian Eno as a pioneering force of electronic music. Eno's legacy through his impeccable glam-pop records of the '70s and into his ambient period is well documented; and there's plenty of ripples felt throughout the world from Henke's work both through his minimal techno variations and through his ongoing development of the Abelton Live software. Similarly, in discussing Henke (as with Eno) comes the topic of the superior quality of Henke's recordings. While his compositions are good, the sound those compositions achieve is always exquisite. His tones, textures, and rhythms are rich, silky, precise, and, like any self-respecting techno, coldly detached. As many of you know, these are not necessarily the values we seek here at aQuarius. If some kid in his bedroom can unleash a horrific fury of black metal that's ungodly expressive, we're gonna get really excited about that, especially if all of that rage, hate, and sorrow really translate through the murk, grime, and hiss. So, when it comes to a record like Monolake's Silence which sounds so good, we'll admit that we're less impressed by production skills on display and more by the impressive slippages between dubbed-n-chilled downer techno, dubstep bass rattling, gestures of arctic ambience, and well spatiallized use of clanging metallics, digital textures, and disembodied voices. Fantastic.
Right on. Moon Duo are back with another four song blast of spaced out, super rhythmic psychedelic goodness. Escape arrives on the heels of two 12" eps, and it is by far their best effort yet. Of course we loved those previous releases, but Escape is the sound of a band who has really hit their stride now, and the songs are more mysterious, more relentless, and just more rocking than anything up to this point. We're not sure if there are real drums on this release (yes?) instead of a drum machine, but whatever the case, the rhythms here just grab hold and throttle you, while Ripley Johnson, he of local favorites Wooden Shjips, takes things beyond the stratosphere with his trademark fuzz solos, which are among the best you will currently hear on planet Earth.
"Motorcycle, I Love You" opens the album in perfect fashion with a vaguely evil two note riff, murky vocals bubbling out of the haze, swirling keyboard drones, and yeah, an awesome extended solo that kicks in and stays there. Goddamn. "In The Trees" is a steady rocker, like a hyped up Velvet Underground jam simplified and done west coast style. A nice tambourine hit accents the pounding drums, while the spacey guitar builds an impenetrable wall of beautiful, melodic white noise. "Stumbling 22nd St" - hey, that sounds familiar - is driven by a simple keyboard melody riding above subsonic fuzz guitar and a tight rhythm. When the riff switches to riff #2 (there aren't really choruses or any of that unnecessary shit here), you will know why we think this is the best stuff Moon Duo has produced so far. The changes in their songs, subtle as they may often be, are what make it clear that this isn't just stupid psychedelic rambling. There is some awesome songcraft going on, and we love it. The title track brings the album to its end. "Escape" is by far the poppiest and most upbeat song on the album, sounding like an extended take of the best pop song in the world working its way through some phased out vortex. The recording quality, lo-fi but perfectly appropriate, definitely gives this a nice timeless quality. It sounds like this stuff could have been recorded at any point within the last 40 years, while never sounding anything but current. Good stuff for sure.
Yeah, it's easy to see why people are digging Moon Duo so much. There is nothing not to like, and while this type of music can be rendered totally boring in the wrong hands, some people just know what's up. Moon Duo knows what's up.
Even if they hadn't called their new album Hyper Machine, we expect we'd still have ended up using both those words in our review of this, the latest blast of high energy EBM mechanoid mayhem from the over the top (and somewhat tongue in cheek?) techno duo known as Motor. Formerly on the Mute label, they've jumped ship for this release, which actually came out in Europe last year on the Shitkatapult label, under original title Metal Machine, with different cover art and a slightly altered tracklisting (3 more cuts on this one), just to be confusing we suppose, though exposure to their music is disorienting enough, automatically locking your body into mechanical robot rhythms and assaulting your ears with all manner of distorted zips and zaps, bleeps and blaps, relentlessly punishing beats and varispeed, pitch-shifting dronefuzz, as if every single knob on all their gear is constantly being turned, up and up and up. Mostly instrumental, their sonics seem derived both from video games AND industrial strength grinding tools, like a Teutonic Tron soundtrack. Imagine skweee gone "Sprockets". That's kinda what this sounds like. Nothing subtle about it. Unapologetically techno. None more techno!! In one track, an ominous voice says, "What's that you say? You say you don't like techno? Well ain't that a bitch." Well, we don't like ALL techno, but there's something about Motor that really can't be denied. Join the party! And of course if you liked Klunk and Unhuman, the previous Motor discs on Mute, you'll like this one too for sure.
While some techno knowitalls will probably hate us for saying this, if you were gonna buy just one "techno" record this year (outside of those in the Pop Ambient style on the Kompakt label that we love love love), then Motor's Hyper Machine is IT.
Total "Arctic Hysteria" here people! We liked this a lot when we first listened to it, before we even knew what it was. Well, we knew it was Finnish (always a plus), and released on Circle's Ektro label (also a reliable indicator of quality). It's not another "NWOFHM" band though, or even any sort of Circle side project, or even really a band at all. As it turns out, the quasi-Industrial DIY soundscapes of noise and drone created by Musiikkivyory ("Music Avalanche") are the work of one person, Mika Taanila, who was all of 15 years old when this was first released as a homemade cassette - back in 1981! That's right, a Finnish teenager in the early '80s making monstrous noise/drone tapes, contemporaneous with the likes of Maurizio Bianchi. How cool is that? Pretty cool we think.
The 12 tracks here (resurrected from a couple of super rare tapes, circa '80-'81) are a wonderful witches' cauldron of throbbing rhythmic chaos, fractured grinding drones, strange voices, field recordings, and DISTORTION, lots of distortion... it's a playful sort of isolationist music, if that makes sense. And as an evidently artistically inclined kid he had every reason to want to express himself in such a fashion. Imagine being a teen with fears of nuclear war, living up near the Arctic Circle. The dark postpunk music (Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, The Normal, Dome...) you were able to tune in to on the BBC's John Peel show might make a lot more sense than the "normal" happy Christian adults who surround you!
So Mika began messing around with tape recorders, cast-off band instruments, radio static, toys, primitive percussion, etc., and pretty soon had generated enough material to fuel his own bedroom cassette label (of which it's hoped that Ektro will eventually reissue more releases), which issued limited runs of tapes not just by his own Musiikkivyory project but also by other likeminded Finnish friends... and, in fact, one by Italy's M.B. himself! (A reminder that international networking was possible before MySpace came around.)
Ektro has colorfully packaged this in a fashion up to their usual spiffy graphic standards, the cd cover insert folding out into a large sheet with photos and liner notes (in both English and Finnish) on one side, the other a poster depicting one of the original cassette releases at larger-than-life size.
Crude, creative, and compelling, this is quite an interesting surprise, thanks Ektro!! We'd definitely like to hear more from this corner of '80s cassette culture, hint hint.
So here's another psychedelic offering of mountain time, roots raga for the true trippers. Only this time the duo have turned their amps up to 11 and leave the acoustic guitars in the closet. Some of you might even be pleased to know J. Mascis holds down the heavy driving rhythm section on drums!! The east coastin' folksters don't veer too far from their past few Ecstatic Peace records, although Barn Nova does seem louder, bigger and more on the electrified country tip. Perhaps with the addition of Mr. Mascis the duo have crafted a more driving and more post-rock sound. "Wandering Nomad" is a perfect example of this more driving, pastoral hugeness, giant chords rip through the country air, vocal harmonies peer through the enveloping reverb, wailing guitar solos beam overhead. We can even catch some glimpses of some dissonant, Sonic Youth type jam outs, wailing feedback and chaos blistering into the red, so unlike anything else we've heard from these cats. So if you're even wondering whether buying another MV and EE album is a good idea, take our word for it and just do it for the Mascis.
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!!!
We nearly wore out our copies of the first volume of singles and jams from the amazing Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou, a previously little known but highly prolific Afro-beat group from the tiny western Africa country of Benin. Now they're one of our top favorite groups! The Analog Africa label was practically founded on their discovery and other groups who recorded for the Albarika Store Label and its elusive producer, Adissa Seidou. That discovery yielded enormous riches. Over 500 tracks from this legendary group in its many incarnations were unearthed, nearly half were recorded for the Albarika Store Label and this collection focuses on that period. The previous volume was a collection of singles from smaller labels that the band made on the sly while Seidou was out of town. All lo-fi recordings often only using one microphone for the singer as well as the band. The recordings on this collection were made with higher quality recording equipment, and while the songs here have less of that urgent funk made by a band on the run, they are much more composed, varied and altogether stranger. Some of this is in fact seriously nuts! Lots of fuzzed out and wah'd guitar, layers of distorted percussion, horns and spacey organs. Though there are tracks that continue the Voudon funk vibe of the first volume, tracks like "Noude Ma Gnin Tche De Me" bring some head-boppin' Go-Go garage stomp, while tracks like "Gan Tche Kpo" are mind-melting Afro-psych. Others have more Latin flavor similar in vibe to Konono No.1's infectious dance rhythms, which makes sense as the OPRDC are one of the featured groups on the latest Honest Jon's comp, Africa Boogaloo (reviewed elsewhere on this list) that traces the influence of Latin rhythms on West Africa. The Analog Africa Label has yet to disappoint, and if you liked any of the labels other releases, or are new to this group/label, right here is a fine place to start!!
This recently re-mastered 1976 debut album from the deliberately obscurant and unclassifiable Penguin Cafe Orchestra has always been one of our favorites. Led by the classically trained multi-instrumentalist and composer Simon Jeffes, who frustrated with the limitations and rigor of traditional classical music and inspired by the freeing structures of ethnographic folk music and minimalist aesthetics, created a surreal hybrid of sorts. Forming a chamber ensemble of various players performing with strings, electric piano guitar, ukulele and spinet, this first PCO album is actually compiled from 3 years of recording with different variations of the ensemble under different names (ZOPF, Penguin Cafe Quartet, etc.) that would eventually become the Penguin Cafe Orchestra proper. Neither truly classical nor truly ethnographic in any telltale way, the music has the dreamlike quality of a Jorge Luis Borges short story involving a nonexistent far-flung island colony and the intriguing presence of a foreign visitor who shouldn't be there. Yet, it's highly listenable, oddly structured at times, and sometimes deeply melancholic (the 12 minute "The Sound of Someone You Love Who Is Going Away and Doesn't Matter" is one of the most beautifully sad and amazing compositions we've heard). Originally released on Brian Eno's Obscure imprint, The PCO had several worthy releases, before Jeffes died in 1997 of a brain tumor. Luckily, his son Arthur has taken over the reins and has not only overseen the re-mastering and reissuing of the PCO back catalogue, but has been touring with a new incarnation of the group as well!
The sudden breakup of garage punk legends Dead Moon caught more than a few people off guard, but we safely assumed Fred and Toody Cole, rock n' roll lifers by definition, wouldn't sit still for too long. Now Fred and Toody are back at it with new drummer Kelly Halliburton, and fans of the Coles' vast musical history will surely rejoice. The sound is not too far removed from Dead Moon - in fact, we might go as far as to say that it isn't in any way removed - so if you dig scuzzy, no frills rock free of all bullshit, this will be right up your alley. Descending Shadows cuts right to the point with production that is upfront and immediate, not at all over the top, working perfectly for these impassioned tunes. Vocals are split pretty evenly between the Coles and there is plenty of great husband and wife punk harmonizing. The songs are full of classic Pacific Northwest fuzz and grit, with Toody's simple driving basslines and Halliburton's steady pound working right alongside Fred's melodic riffing. For fans of Dead Moon, this one is a no brainer, while Descending Shadows is also a highly worthy place to start for the uninitiated. Really awesome stuff, not surprisingly.
"In The Devil's Kitchen." So translates the German title, the first that we've stocked from Daniel Lowenbruck, who both records as Raionbashi and runs the Tochnit-Aleph mail order service out of Berlin. He's also a long standing member of the Schimpfluch Gruppe whose provocative recordings and performances directly channel the Vienna Actionists such as Hermann Nitsch, Gunter Brus, and Rudolf Schwartzkogler. Where the Austrians were pushing their transgessive acts through art world channels, Schimpfluch has their origins in punk, industrial culture, and (at least for the case of Schimpfluch's Dave Phillips) metal taken to a Dada extreme laced with theatrical ultra-violence. So begin these deconstructed tapes and mangled silences.
Lowenbruck cites that the sources to his Devil's Kitchen include 'noises, instruments, body functions, and apostrophes.' The discernible sounds are a piano being struck by a hammer fist on the lower octave of the keys, a police whistle blowing out the condenser mic on a Walkman, and some downpitched vocal howls that come across as way more demonic than those wolf growlings on Ben Frost's album By The Throat. Between these recognizable elements, Lowenbruck cuts and pastes with monochromatic noises that puncture grey curtains of leaden hiss. Compositionally, certainly hits the mark with the guttural musique concrete from the Schimpfluch Gruppe, somewhere between the machined ruptures of Dave Phillips and the unsettled ambience crafted by the impeccable G*Park; or less self-referentially stated, somewhere between the sound poetry of Henri Chopin and the corroded tape work of Joe Colley. Limited to 500 copies and highly recommended!
Roedelius's fourth solo record from 1981 has obvious connections to his first record, Durch Die Wuste as evidenced from the similar album covers involving feet and water. But while his first record was a head-first dive into exploring the palatable possibilities of mixing acoustic and electronic instruments, Wenn Der Sudwind Weht is all about the tranquil relaxed after-glow, drying off in the afternoon sun. Limiting the instruments to just organ, synthesizers and piano, Sudwind is surprisingly rich and layered and arguably the most stunning of his solo records, reminding us of the pastoralism of Popol Vuh and early Deuter, but never succumbing to new age music's typical lack of focus. In fact it's the most focused Roedelius record of the last couple that have been reissued. While the Cluster-Harmonia catalog with all its off-shoots and solo projects can be quite unwieldy especially in the middle of its currently aggressive reissue campaign, but this may be the most essential Roedelius reissue of the bunch. Highest recommendation!
A bit of a left field release for Digitalis, Roll The Dice is a duo from Sweden, producers who have worked with The Knife and Fever Ray, but who here, serve up some sort of futuristic retro John Carpenter / Goblin style synthscapes, albeit with their own twist.
The sound is most definitely spacey, and synthy, and soundtracky, throbbing, pulsing, subtly psychedelic, the continuous sci-fi pulse that seems to drive every low budget movie made in the eighties, but wrapped around elements that are distinctly more earthy and organic, a little bit of folk, some broody minimalism, even (and especially) a bit of pop, definitely a strange hybrid, but of the two elements it definitely leans heavily in the synth/space/retro direction. That said, these guys cover a lot of ground, slipping from full on Goblin pulse, all haunting and minor key, to moody poppy playfulness, to long drifts of shimmering spaced out ambience and even extended moments of almost Basic Channel-like deep dub minimalism, all of those held together by the presence, either subtle or pronounced, of that relentless, pulsing sci-fi synth line.
The flipside finds RTD getting all blissed out and Pop Ambient, washed out, shimmery, sun dappled and glimmery, crystalline melodies, and barely there buried soft focus rhythms, before closing the record with what sounds like the music behind the credits from some super obscure, eighties, straight to video thriller, slow and spacious and smoldering, ominous and a bit creepy, but still spacey and synthy.
Anyone into recent records from Umberto, D.A., Anima Morte, Somnam, Pulse Emitter, Steve Moore, as well as yeah, of course, the aforementioned Goblin, Zombi and John Carpenter, would do well to check this out too.
SOLD OUT AT THE LABEL, super limited, not sure how long these will be around.
We're pretty skeptical of the two man band, a lot of the time we end up wishing a bass / drums duo just had a guitarist, or that a guitar / drums duo had some more low end. There are of course exceptions: Godheadsilo, Om, Ruins, and you can now add Belgian duo Sardonis to the list. The latest blast of kick ass heaviness from MeteorCity, who are on the roll to end all rolls, recent releases from Freedom Hawk, Egypt, Leeches Of Lore, Whitebuzz, Village Of Dead Roads, Flood, Ararat, those guys are killing us! And we love it.
So Sardonis are a guitar and drums duo from Belgium, who traffic in epic, heaving, monstrous instrumental metal, equal parts classic stoner rock, old school doom and post rock/post metal or whatever you call it. Needless to say, you won't even notice the lack of bass here, the sound is MASSIVE, the low end crushing, and the riffs killer. We'll be the first to admit that instrumental rock can definitely get boring, often sounding like it's unfinished, where you're constantly expecting the vocals to kick in at any minute, but Sardonis solve that problem by crafting super catchy songs that are as much about texture and timbre and mood as they are about rhythm and riffery. Slipping from slow motion lurching crush, to wild frantic blasting, to woozy meandery drift, to full on Sabbathy dirge, this is some seriously heavy, seriously atmospheric shit, the chords not always predictable, the melodies veering of into strange directions, the band sometimes locking into totally mesmerizing trancelike jams, but just as often, exploding into bursts of in-the-red downtuned psychedelia.
It's hard to say exactly what it is about these guys, it's a little bit of everything, some sort of alchemy between the two, and their ability to conjure these songs, riffs, this tone, the overall sound, whatever it is, it fucking rules, and we find ourselves unable to stop listening. Which is always a good sign...
Epic crushing metallic industrial heaviness, the kind of thing we thought they just didn't make anymore, but this is total Swans / Godflesh / Cop Shoot Cop worship, pounding metallic percussion, soundscapes of whirring drills, blown out low slung bass, howled distorted vox, the whole thing so repetitive and mantric, thick slabs of distorted rumble wrapped around tons of damaged electronics, bleating horns buried beneath reverb drenched beats, some songs are full on walls of twisted electronic crunch, others are brooding, droning skeletal sprawls, laid over deep blurred basslines, and tribal rhythms, some are dense whorls of deeeeeep sinister black ambience, all darkly drifting layers, and distant bits of clang and shimmer. For a few moments here and there, the sound gets downright poppy, like some sort of washed out post industrial deathrock, but even then, it's shot through with a seriously menacing sonic undercurrent that seeps into every beat, and every note. Filthy, crusty, heavy, haunting, crushing and brutal, the perfect mix of old school industrial pound, and more modern bleak blackness. Fucking fierce and frightening, grim and punishing, and we're digging it like crazy.
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.
You'd never know from listening to Solstafir's Kold, that this Icelandic post-black metal horde began life as a Viking metal band, since now they traffic in something much more spaced out and psychedelic. We've never heard any of those Viking records, but this one is for sure kicking our ass.
Barely even black metal, mostly their lineage tying them to the genre, the sound of Kold is droned out propulsive riff heavy space rock, think the Heads, Hawkwind, White Hills, the band locked into long stretches of totally hypnotic and propulsive heaviness, with guitar melodies pealing above the main riff. But they are heavy, and definitely metallic, crushing at points, but it's the vocals that will make or break it for most folks, totally emotional, anguished and passionate, a mournful wail, that fits perfectly when the band slow down to a waltzy doomy dirge, and offer a strange foil to the band's sound when they're pounding away full bore. Reference points would definitely have to include Katatonia, Lifelover, that sort of melodic post-metal heaviness, but these guys are definitely more psychedelic, letting many of the songs unwind into sprawling jams, many of them full on psychedelic metallic blues rock freakouts, others brooding drone drenched drifts, the vocals push the sound somewhere way more mainstream, they wouldn't be out of place on modern rock radio, so even at its weirdest or most distorted, when the vocals swoop in, the song immediately becomes more accessible, which is not at all a bad thing, in fact it's a nice balance to the way-more-gnarled and blackened parts that pepper the whole record. Might be too poppy for some metalheads, but if you're looking for something heavy AND melodic, epic and psychedelic, this might do the trick!
This early seventies free-jazz-funk supergroup from Philadelphia featured Byard Lancaster, Khan Jamal and Monette Sudler (one of the most amazing female jazz guitar players we've heard!) with a whole host of rhythm support from percussionists Rashid Salim, and Omar Hill, drummer Dwight James, and Billy Mills on bass, many of whom appeared on Jamal's highly praised Drumdance To The Motherland. Community-minded free players, The Sounds of Liberation tear it up through these six numbers on their debut album from 1972, moving with ease through long-form free jazz, as well as groovy funk, and urgent hard-hittingly tight cinematic jams. Each performer gets a turn in the spotlight, but it never departs from the overall energy, feel and flow of the whole album. We think fans of the groovier sides of Sun Ra and Sonny Sharrock or fans of classic Blue Note label jazz and rare groove from the sixties and seventies (Donald Byrd, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan etc.) who are looking for something a little more out but not TOO out, should definitely look into this! Lovingly reissued on Florida's Porter Records label, the lp version is limited to 500 copies with original artwork and mp3 download card.
Glad to finally get to list something by these guys, an awesome local melodic metal band who we became fairly rabid fans of just from checking out their MySpace page a while ago, though when you hear 'em, you'll think its something we've been fans of ever since 1984 or so, long before MySpace or the Internet even existed, since they sound sooooooo '80s melodic NWOBHM / arena rock it's amazing. But they're a relatively young band from here in San Francisco, and this debut of theirs Allan here considers a top ten metal album of 2010, easy... and it's just a self-released cd-r, what in the old days you'd call a demo. Wish it was a real cd or vinyl album, it should be, these songs are really fucking good!
And please don't let the goofy name put you off, we were surprised too when when we first heard 'em, but Space Vacation are indeed one of the best '80s influenced, heavy but brilliantly poppy metal band we've come across in ages. With galloping riffs, shredding solos, catchy licks, stick twirling hard hitting drumming, and stick-in-yer-head choruses, what's not to love? Classic stuff. The vocals are key, the dude (who also plays lead guitar) is not afraid to SING. Though he'll also happily shut up and play his guitar, as on the Eddie Van Halen-esque instrumental break "Streaker". And the band as a whole is not afraid to be a little (or a lot) cheesy, but in a good way. Good enough to remind us of cool EARLY Def Leppard and other greats. And we'd put this up against anything today of that old school melodic metal ilk, like Priestess, Cauldron, whomever. And you ironic inde rock types can take solace in the clever, not as cliched as you'd think lyrics that both celebrate and subvert the cliches of heavy metal.
It's the pop element that puts this over the top, as our pal Glenn, another big SV fan, puts it, "it's like the most rudimentary NWOBHM from 1980 mixed with what you might get from a one-off juvenile indie-pop band formed as a joke by guys from Sloan and New Pornographers for a bachelor party for one of the members."
We'd already heard 6 or 7 of these tracks via their MySpace but the others, new ones, are cool too. There's a "blast off" count-down intro going into a track called "Space Vacation"... a bit forced perhaps, doing the band-name-song, but then they hit their stride with "Keith's Sister" and you realize you are on a rocket ride indeed. Songs that as soon as you hear 'em, sound like you've been rockin' out to them forever. And look out for the hidden bonus track(s) at the end... the extra-poppy drinking song "Wicked Hammid"! Something else to look for, online: the band's awesome/silly DIY practice space video for "Keith's Sister" on YouTube, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBREOCxXbH0.
If you couldn't tell, recommended, if you like to rock!
FYI We've also got a Space Vacation split 7" with an LA band called The Amplifiers, SV's side featuring "Keith's Sister", for those who want her on wax.
See our review of the Space Vacation's s/t cd-r to see why you should pick this up! One of our fave tracks from that disc pressed to vinyl, on one side of this split single with a rockin' LA band we know nothin' about.
We've been waiting for this reissue for 16 years. In fact, we briefly entertained the idea of trying to release it ourselves. It's a record we have been obsessed with since it came out in 1994, a super limited self released lp, a record we taped for everyone we knew, played for everyone we knew, the kind of record that inspired that sort of undying dedication, a totally unsung, indie pop gem from the early nineties, that attained a degree of infamy with a handful of weirdo music obsessives, but remained well removed from the spotlight it so richly deserved. Spin magazine even declared it one of the "Ten Best Records You've Never Heard", which probably sadly still applies, 15+ years later, but maybe not for long. Not if we have anything to say about it.
Those of you who are in your thirties or forties, no doubt remember the era that spawned the Strapping Fieldhands, think Trumans Water, Thinking Fellers, Sun City Girls, Pavement, the Grifters, Guided By Voices... The Strapping Fieldhands would go on to make a bunch more records, but Discus is where it all started, and is STILL the group's masterwork, a chaotic and confusional jumble of nineties indie noise rock and British Invasion pop, and as the liner notes point out, there's also a definite pre-British Invasion skiffle feel to many of the songs, skiffle being the sound that inspired the sound of the Beatles and the Kinks and all the other British bands of the era. The record itself is a hodge podge, a stumbling, glorious ramshackle jumble, slipping from gorgeous perfect pop, to angular free noise drift, to dirgey balladry, to rollicking rocking, to super experimental sound collage, most of those elements and sounds blending and mixing, into a sound, and a collection of songs, that sounded like nothing else then, and nothing since. Folks into Elephant 6 might be surprised to discover there was a band doing something similar, and arguably better already, and everyone who digs the new wave of noise rock / garage pop, a la Sic Alps, Oh Sees, it would be hard to imagine that those guys hadn't heard and dug heavily the Fieldhands.
The opening of "Boo Hoo Hoo" still gives us chills, the jaunty whistle, the woozy jangle, the faux British vocals, the immediately irresistible hook, the chorus with it's cloying melody and random cowbell, still one of the greatest pop songs ever. In fact, the opening three tracks, are another one of those timeless classic opening sonic salvos that remains pretty much untouchable. "Boo Hoo Hoo" is followed by "Sad Lament Of The American Indian", which begins all dirgey and druggy, totally reminiscent of Thinking Fellers / Sun City Girls and Polvo too, the chords warped and off kilter, the drums stumbly and chaotic, before slipping right back into another incredible pop jam, wrapped in streaks of feedback, hooky and jangly, and so catchy, but still so warped and just slightly twisted. "When You Came" rounds out the opening trio, with its dramatic slow build, and heartfelt sort-of-chorus, at which point the record begins its decent into (even more) madness, skipping gleefully from perfect pop to whatthefuck and back again. "Coffin Cello" is all splattery percussion, detuned twang, twisted vocals, moaning and groaning, if anything it sounds a bit like Cromagnon, total caveman psychedelia, which leads right into "Battle Down The Quarter Mile", a total classic pop gem, with strange looped basslines, descending crystalline guitar melodies, distorted vocals, and another KILLER chorus, which again slips back into an organ drenched, ultra lo-fi, droned out bit of weirdo outrock, before returning to poppier climes, "Mysterious Girl" is another impossibly perfect and hooky chunk of jangle pop, this time laced with cello, and other strings, which leads directly into "Luminous Bodies", a weirdo track that starts out almost punk rock, muted and murky, before blossoming into a meandery bit of poppy dirge, laced with synths and crunchy guitars, and those amazing, sort of British vocals, and so it goes. Push and pull, back and forth, tease you with a bit of sonic confection, only to bludgeon you with a flurry of chaotic crunch, and then nurse you back with still more pop prettiness, sometimes the demarcation between the Fieldhands' two distinct sides, not so distinct at all, which is precisely what makes them, and this record in particular so magical.
Imagine the Sun City Girls, but if instead of being obsessed with Southeast Asian music, they were obsessed with the Kinks and the Bee Gees, Discus would have been their Torch Of The Mystics. Guided By Voices' Bee Thousand, another pop classic from the same era, is considered by many to be essential listening a classic of the era, while Discus often slips through the cracks, which is odd when you consider that both groups, and both records, are essentially products of the same sonic obsessions, but Bee Thousand, for all its quirkiness and brevity of song, still goes down a whole lot easier than Discus, which is perhaps one of the main reasons Discus remained an acquired taste, but as we all know, the easiest listening is not necessarily the most satisfying, so if you like a little grit and grime with your jangle, some whatthefuck with your timeless hooks, some noise with your pop, then this will undoubtedly be your new favorite record. And all the kids who have been digging the new wave of home brewed retro lo-fi garage pop, are gonna be in for a shock when they realize their favorite bands are basically doing what the Fieldhands were doing 15 years ago, and if anything Discus is WAY weirder, WAY poppier, and WAY BETTER!
We are huge fans of weird turntable music, from Jeck, to Gum, to Otomo Yoshihide, to Martin Tetrault, but as much as we love all of those folks, our heart belongs to Strotter Inst., aka, Christoph Hess, an older Swiss turntable mad scientist, who creates Frankensteinian record players with multiple arms, weird obstructions forcing the needle to jump and skip, strange strings and rubber bands, that the moving parts pluck and strike, all creating gorgeous mechanical symphonies of sound, with JUST the player, when the manipulated records are added (and they often are NOT), things only get more expansive and lush and amazing.
This latest release from Hess finds his interest in fucking with lps and their players extending to even the pressing process, with the various tracks mastered at different speeds, requiring a small diagram on the label demonstrating which part of which side plays at which speed. Not that it necessarily matters, as Hess' crazy sonic concoctions sound great at any speed.
The sounds here follow on from those on the many other records of his we've reviewed, like some sort of minimal DIY krautrock, or a band like Avarus, populated exclusively by homebuilt noise making robots, all assembled from turntables, it is unbelievable to hear these sounds and know they were designed and planned by Hess, but it's the machines that are creating these gorgeous hypnotic rhythmscapes.
Hypnotic, repetitive, cyclical, but always shifting subtly, crackle, scrape, rumble, hiss, skip, all deftly arranged into propulsive grooves, the rubber bands offering up melody, strange rubbery tones, percussive, but definitely melodic, while the turntable itself, when not striking or plucking the bands, unleashes strange grinding rhythms, peppered with percussive scapes, haunting textural whirs, the rhythms almost tribal, often skeletal and sparse, but just as often dense and layered, when the records are included in the sound making, the various manipulated grooves, spit out even more strange clicks and moans and bleeps and even some strangely appropriate counter rhythms.
Absolutely fantastic stuff, we would imagine as amazing to see as to hear, lucky for us, there's a good chance, Hess will be in the US soon, and will hopefully be visiting aQ for a demonstration / performance.
Back in the old days, when space rock heavies SubArachnoid Space called SF home, we sort of took them for granted, they played all the time, and opened for pretty much every cool band that came to town, so without trying, it was easy to end up seeing them play every week or two. But then two things happened. They moved away, so suddenly they weren't ever playing around town, and second, and maybe more importantly, they started to get heavier, and more fucked up, and way more metal, which made us want to see them so we could check out the new, more heavy SubSpace.
But we've been keeping tabs on them through recordings, 2005's The Red Veil was the last one we reviewed, and even back then, we were already talking about them appealing to fans of Kinski and Yeti and Tarantula Hawk, and if anything in the 3 years since, they've gotten way spacier and way heavier, and this is the proof, Eight Bells, released on weirdo heavy label Crucial Blast, and it's a pretty good fit, 5 songs, the shortest a little over 5 minutes, the longest well over 13, every one a tripped out Hawkwinded blow out, effects drenched and psychedelic, propulsive and super rocking, epic and intense, the guitars thick and distorted, the arrangements pretty complex and intricate for space rock, none of that jam at the same tempo for 10 minutes (not that there's anything wrong with that) but it definitely keeps things interesting, and in fact, if we had to classify the new SubSpace, we'd probably call it metallic space prog, which is obviously a good thing.
"Hunter Seeker" starts off all eighties Big Country style, with a cool effected stuttery guitar part, before the rest of the band launches into a woozy doomy dirge, and over the course of the next 12 minutes, flits from spaced out dreamy ambience, to chugging almost metal, to soaring Godspeed like drama, to full on noise rock. The last three tracks find the band slipping from droney drift to dense psychedelic blowout to pounding space/math rock and back again, culminating in the super frenzied explosive last couple minutes that has us imagining how good this stuff must sound live these days.
Produced by Stephen Ray Lobdell (Faust, Davis Redford Triad), who's now a SubArachoid member weirdly enough! And it boasts cool Stephen Kasner cover art...
Hard to resist a Sun Ra record with a title like that, eh? And drum machine, too! The late, great, interplanetary legend of Afro-cosmic jazz and his band recorded this newly reissued album live on planet Earth (precise location: Milan, Italy) back in 1978, at the height of disco fever. But of course it ain't really disco!! Instead it's far out free jazz grooviness, full of futuristic synth freakouts and even tinny, metronomic drum machine shuffle. All of which you'll find on the worth the price of admission alone 26 minute title track, which also incorporates the Arkestra's signature "Space Is The Place" chant at one point. Nor does this set stint on screaming horns and energetic battery. Or for that matter mellow, melodic moodiness. Highlights are many, among them the gurgling chaos and solar sax blurt of "Sun Of The Cosmos", and the eerie, glistening, jittering "Dance Of The Cosmo Aliens".
Featuring the lineup of John Gilmore (tenor sax, drums, voclas), June Tyson (vocals), Michael Ray (trumpet, vocals), Luqman Ali (drums, vocals) and last but not least Sun Ra himself (piano, organ, Moog synth, rhythm machine, vocals), this expanded double cd reissue of Disco 3000 is definitely cause for rejoicing amongst Sun Ra (and cosmo alien) fans. Over two hours total, this includes the original three tracks from the '78 vinyl release along with NINE more bonus tracks taken from the thankfully well-preserved tapes of the same performance, is packaged in a handsome trifold digpack, and comes with a cd booklet with photos, graphics, and liner notes by trumpeter Michael Ray, who had just hooked up with Sun Ra not long before this recording took place. His mind is still blown! Share something of his experience here...
Emperor mastermind Ishahn is on the cover of this issue of the UK's top extreme metal magazine, promoting his new solo album... which is funny 'cause lately, with his beard and glasses, he's looking a lot like Eric Clapton!
This issue also contains Terrorizer's picks for the Top 40 Albums of the Year, 2009, and the Readers' Poll results for 2009 as well, along with a 2010 preview of what's coming up that might be good...
Also stuffed into this issue: Katatonia (being played mystery records a la The Wire's "Invisible Jukebox"), Overkill, Azaghal, Von, Rotting Christ, a label profile on Season Of Mist, a 3-page report from the Nuclear War Now! festival in Berlin, and more, including all the usual news and reviews and stuff. But, this issue (the ones we got) didn't include the usual sampler cd. Ah well. However, this ish does come with a free gothic mini-magazine bound in the center...
The second of two new mysterious sonic missives from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one comes from the strangely monikered Tongues Of Mount Meru, who might be more familiar to people by their given names, noisemaker Lasse Marhaug (of Jazzkamer), and Jon Wesseltoft, a member of black metal legends Thorns. Seems like a strange combination for sure. And the strangeness is further heightened by the fact that you won't find any crunchy noise, Merzbowian blur or blackened blasts here, instead, we're treated to extended mantra-like Niblockian drones, layered and hypnotic, pulsing and ever shifting, fuzzy and buzzy and dense, recorded live, the sound is rich and intense, the edges rough and prickly, within the core drone, drift all sorts of buried melodies, and prismatic overtones, strange little electronic shimmers seems to surface here and there, occasionally, the layers blend perfectly into haunting harmonies, only to slowly drift apart once again. Hard to tell what the sound sources are, but at one point it sounds like an accordion or harmonium, that lush, rich, organic wheeze, all warm and ever-changing.
Two sidelong drones, the first side is more aggressive, more intense and almost abrasive, the second much more swirly and moody, but both similarly dreamy and mesmeric. Total longform hypnodrift drone bliss.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, with badass cover art from Savage Pencil!
Last list we reviewed one of two records released in 2009 by Oklahoman one man black metal horde Unhuman Disease (we still have a few copies left if you missed out), and here's the second, another crusty, vicious, filthy blast of super distorted black fury, drum driven big time (due in no small part to the fact that Unhuman Disease is former Thornspawn drummer Nocturnus Dominus), so much like Leviathan (another drummer), the rhythm is as important if not moreso than any other element. Of course present are the usual BM tropes, buzzing riffs, relentlessly pounding blast beats, screeched inhuman (or UNhuman) vox, but UD traffic in a sound that's mesmerizingly cyclical, repetitive, and hypnotic, droney and trancelike, the songs lock into a riff, and pound and pulse and throb relentlessly, extended stretches of total black buzz mesmer, woven within are plenty of subtle textural and melodic variations, but those subtle slow shifts only reinforce how totally hypnotic the overall sound is. The music of Unhuman Disease is not especially far out or fucked, but then it wasn't meant to be, it's raw, and furious, Burzumic for sure, definitely heavily indebted to the Norwegian elite, but with its own gnarled vibe, that makes Black Creations Of Satan its own uniquely Satanic black creation, and keeps it on heavy rotation in the homes of the most black hearted and black souled of aQuarians...
This past Record Of The Week NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! There's fewer tracks than on the cd version, but at least the lp includes a download code to get mp3s of ALL of the tracks from the cd reissue. No booklet unfortunately (although it seems some of the booklet is reprinted on the cover), but there is an insert, with some liner notes, as well as an explanation for the song choice on both the cd and lp, the lack of the Units' major label material and the reasoning behind less songs on the lp. Regardless, totally essential, especially now that it's on vinyl. Here's what we said about it before:
Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
The folks at P&P know they've got a good thing going with this Electric Asylum series; appropriately monikered compiler The Psychomaniac keeps coming up with winners. In the grand tradition, here's Volume 4, and it's a relatively hard 'n heavy one, subtitled "Rock Hard British Freakrock", as if they knew that Vol. 3, fun as it was, didn't entirely deliver the dunt rock we crave. Well Vol. 4, as befits that unintentional Sabbath reference, is a lot more tough, less bubblegummy... and that even includes the band on here called Bubbles! (Whose badass glammy proto-punk strut "Zap n' Cat" reminds us of Ronno or maybe even Hard Stuff). Oh yeah, this Electric Asylum is again populated with some goofy names, most of whom we'd never heard of before. Here's the full line up: Hector, Slowload, Rog and Pip, Wolfrilla, Incredible Hog, Smoke, Spunky Spider, Ning, Quiet World, Henry Turtle, Bear Brothers, Hard Horse, Mustard, Tuesday, Godson, Bubbles, Sunshine Kid, Clutch, Jackal, and Sundance. 20 tracks in all, mostly taken from one-off, 45 rpm single only releases from flash in the pan bands we're lucky to get to hear at all, most never made an album and did just one or two 7"s... Actually, the only bands we really knew was Incredible Hog (whose entire album is great), and Wolfrilla (a fave from Vol. 2).
Coming from circa 1970-75, a lot of this can be summed up as a bit Sabbath, a bit Slade, platform boots in each camp. Though, each individual band often seems to emulate other, specific, better known acts. Like, Godson sound kinda the Rolling Stones, Hard Horse are a lot like Nazareth, and Incredible Hog come closest to Led Zep... while Ning's "Machine" is somehow part Steppenwolf, part Gary Glitter. And then there's Smoke's "That's What I Want", which is almost like The Kinks' "All Day And All Of The Night" re-written with a "Sweet Leaf" fixation.
While we're not all that surprised that nobody here really ever "made it", that doesn't mean their attempts to do so are without merit! Not if you like lotsa fuzz 'n distortion, acid guitar soloing, and grunting wailing vox! Get yer fix of obscure '70s proto-metal groovy rockin' pop here.
The booklet contains the usual detailed-as-they-can-be trainspotting liner notes on each and every track (from which we learn useful minutiae such as that Sundance featured original Judas Priest drummer Alan Moore, ferinstance) plus full color sleeve/label graphics and vintage b&w photos... too bad about the crap cover art though.
If they can keep digging up records like these, we'll keep digging these comps! After this, we halfway expect P&P to jump ahead a few years to the late '70s / early '80s and bring us the killer NWOBHM rarities comp we know ol' Psychomaniac has got in him too...
Finland's Lal Lal Lal label is one of those cottage industry imprints that's always got something interesting going on, regardless of who's paying attention, releasing a diverse selection of lo-fi hijinks from (mostly) fellow Finnish freaks such as Fricara Pacchu, Avarus, and Maniacs Dream, though they've got some international friends on the roster as well like Howlin' Magic and The Skaters. Apparently a bunch of their acts got together last year for a festival, making rare live appearances some of 'em, and to have something to special to sell at the fest they produced this limited edition compilation cassette, containing tracks from Semimuumio, Suohumala, Fricara Pacchu, Astral Social Club, and Pylon. That's four from Finland and one (ASC, aka Neil Campbell) from the UK.
Side 1 is the "danceable" side, perhaps (seriously, they get a groove on). It begins with the "emotional, adult-oriented beat" 'tronica of Semimuumio, a cheerfully synth-laden instrumental ditty, the synthwork getting wilder and more warped as the piece picks up its pace. Then Suohumala chimes in with another pleasant groover, incorporating classical-Casio sounds and a bit of a burbling reggae dub vibe. AQ fave Fricara Pacchu comes next, his track a stomping one with thick flanged-out riffs, all-instrumental like the ones before. Finally on side 1, Astral Social Club's style of cacophonic cut-up loops and beats and effects brings a chaotic throb to the proceedings. All very nice.
The cacophony continues on the second side, but in a more freeform fashion, with interesting abstract stuttering and staggered sounds, blips and bleeps and glitched out skree from Pylon, who gets the whole side for this somewhat noisier and much longer track than the others. It's pretty cool too.
This entertaining artifact comes in the form of an opaque white plastic cassette, with the J-card cover looking to us oddly very early '90s desktop publishing in its graphical execution. Sadly, Lal Lal Lal say they're winding things up label-wise so this may be one of their last ever releases...
Fascinating collection of Hebrew paraliturgical songs by Eastern Jewish singers from the Bene Israel and Baghdadian Jewish communities residing in Bombay, India during the thirties. Originally released on 78's from the King, Hebrew, and Jay Bharat Record labels, these recordings from various Hazzanim (cantors and prayer leaders), music school directors, an entrepreneurial meat-shop owner, Shofar (ram's horn) blowers, and instrumental stars of the Indian cinema are the long lost sonic artifacts from a nearly forgotten world of Indian Jewish musical traditions. We never realized before how intertwined these two musical traditions were, but of course it makes sense with the cross-pollination of Eastern European, North African and Middle Eastern populations through the bustling trade city of Bombay, that the cultural traditions would intermingle and possibly influence each other. Thus this is also recommended for fans of early Indian music, as well as for those intrigued by rare Jewish music recordings. The cd comes with a richly illustrated 24-page booklet with memories and photos of the descendants, relatives and friends of the singers and instrumentalists, gathered from across the globe.
Finally got this on vinyl! This is part one...
The first Steppa's Delight dubstep comp on Soul Jazz totally knocked our socks off. We're so desperate for new dubstep and grime all the time, and we have such limited access to limited 12"s and white label dubplates, that we anxiously await the release of comps, hoping they'll compile some of the best jams, and usually offer up a bunch of new tracks as well.
Since the last Steppa's Delight comp though, a funny thing happened, dubstep continued to mutate and transform and is now something totally different than it was 18 months ago. The core sounds and structure remains the same, THAT beat, and THAT groove, the deep wobbly bass, but the sounds aren't so dark, or sinister, instead, the sound of dubstep has gotten a bit dancier, looking back to jungle and even house, incorporating more melody, more vocals, the sound almost more electro, with buzzy synths wrapped around that rumbling wobble. That said, there's still some darkness lurking in the grooves, and as much as we dig almost everything here, we can't help but lean toward those darker jams, Kutz's "Hardbody" is buzzy and bleak and ominous, "Purple City" by Joker & Ginz starts out all skittery and dancey, but then explodes with some of the fiercest most distorted bass on the comp.
A bunch of the tracks are super stripped down and skeletal, reminding us of some of the Skull Disco 12"s, all barebones and minimal, and some of the tracks are super atmospheric and ethereal. Killer stuff for sure, but be warned, if you're looking for stuff like Kode9 or Burial, you won't find much of that here, but if you're looking for big stuttery beats, thick throbbing bass synth wobble and can't get enough of that dubstep 'step, then this should definitely hold you over until the next comp...
Finally got this on vinyl! This is part two...
The first Steppa's Delight dubstep comp on Soul Jazz totally knocked our socks off. We're so desperate for new dubstep and grime all the time, and we have such limited access to limited 12"s and white label dubplates, that we anxiously await the release of comps, hoping they'll compile some of the best jams, and usually offer up a bunch of new tracks as well.
Since the last Steppa's Delight comp though, a funny thing happened, dubstep continued to mutate and transform and is now something totally different than it was 18 months ago. The core sounds and structure remains the same, THAT beat, and THAT groove, the deep wobbly bass, but the sounds aren't so dark, or sinister, instead, the sound of dubstep has gotten a bit dancier, looking back to jungle and even house, incorporating more melody, more vocals, the sound almost more electro, with buzzy synths wrapped around that rumbling wobble. That said, there's still some darkness lurking in the grooves, and as much as we dig almost everything here, we can't help but lean toward those darker jams, Kutz's "Hardbody" is buzzy and bleak and ominous, "Purple City" by Joker & Ginz starts out all skittery and dancey, but then explodes with some of the fiercest most distorted bass on the comp.
A bunch of the tracks are super stripped down and skeletal, reminding us of some of the Skull Disco 12"s, all barebones and minimal, and some of the tracks are super atmospheric and ethereal. Killer stuff for sure, but be warned, if you're looking for stuff like Kode9 or Burial, you won't find much of that here, but if you're looking for big stuttery beats, thick throbbing bass synth wobble and can't get enough of that dubstep 'step, then this should definitely hold you over until the next comp...
This defunct Ukrainian black metal band was a collaborative effort between members of Lucifugum and Nokturnal Mortum, which sounds amazing, we were of course envisioning epic, folk flecked, nature obsessed buzzing blackness, but we DIDN'T at all expect something this fucked up and far out.
The first track is not too far off the mark, a plodding, midtempo black metal almost-dirge, tribal drumming, thick downtuned riffs, dramatic synths, tons of atmosphere, the vocals an incredible demonic croak, the whole thing droney and trancelike and mesmerizing.
The second track is where it gets really strange, whooshing swaths of synth, skittery drum machine, mournful minor key guitars, acoustic guitars, and then, out of nowhere, a truly out of place techno sounding electronic pulse, making it sound almost like a black metal Goblin or something, as the track progresses, it just gets darker and denser, the vocals wrapped in twisted effects, a dizzying chunk of whatthefuck electronic blackness for sure.
"Nearby Strange Forest For Everyone Wise Forest" is another dirgey, electronic flecked bit of doom-ed blackness, with whispering vox, the sound of rainfall, deep rumbling synths and folky melodies, before finally we get to the nearly 11 minute closer, "Pure Air Of Distant Horizons", with its click bleep electronic rhythm, big slow burning distorted guitars, cheesy almost new age sounding synths, slipping from drone-y electronic black folk, to almost Renaissance Faire flutter, to swirling space-y krautrock-y drift. Wow.
Even with the pedigree, this might be a bit too far out for the troo grim hordes, but we're digging Vetche's twisted nad unique swirling new age black gypsy doom folk weirdness.
Carl-Michael Eide, aka Czral, of the illustrious Ved Buens Ende is back, with a 2nd Virus album, the band which continues the eccentric, eerily dissonant, darkly psychedelic sound once unique to VBE. And being back is pretty big deal, 'cause Carl-Michael very nearly died three years ago from a 4-story fall! Thankfully, he's recovered enough to mastermind this excellent Virus disc and also participate (under his guise of Aggressor) in the making of a new Aura Noir album too (also reviewed this list).
The late great VBE actually only made one proper album (1995's Written In Waters, sadly again out of print) plus a demos disc. At the time, we compared 'em to Slint, Don Caballero and Voivod - but somehow also black metal. Taking up where VBE left off, Virus in 2003 released the even quirkier Carheart album, that added extra electronic elements and a more prominent role for the bass, leading some to cite Talking Heads (!) and The Birthday Party as further-from-black-metal influences on their sound. And there's no denying that this ISN'T your usual black metal, or maybe black metal at all. With 'jazzy' bits, deep voiced vocal speak-singing, no wave grooves, and some vaguely techno-ish drum beats. But we'd say this one sounds more like old VBE than Carheart did, maybe 'cause some of these songs were originally written for an abortive VBE reunion attempt, heavier and less "pop", the guitars "smeary-er".
Regardless, even if VBE means nothing to you (yet), this new Virus is highly recommended for adventurous metal and non-metal listeners both, who'll appreciate its sonic similarities to Ulver and Arcturus, This Heat and the Swans... can you imagine a mathrock Amesoeurs perhaps, with Garm or Gira on vocals? It's dark metallic art rock with weird atmospheres, redolent of claustophobia and vertigo. Twisting, seasick and sinuous - not for everyone at all - but utterly compelling if you've caught the Virus.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ok, weirdo black metal obsessives, this is about as KVLT as it gets. Two songs, exclusive to this release, from reclusive, outsider black metal one man band Voltaic Omen, whose past releases we've gone nuts for in the past, not to mention a rumored eventual release on tUMULt, wrapped in textured linen like cloth, held together with a wax seal, the VO logo hand drawn on the cover, and LIMITED TO TEN COPIES. ONLY TEN COPIES!! Each one hand numbered. We've already sold a couple, still time to snag one of these, but trust us, if you want one, you better be quick...
Ye olde '70s prog rock treat time here, folks, particularly for those (like us) who like lots of flute in their prog! Coming to us via the excellent Guerssen label, who last list brought us William Nowik's Pan Symphony In E, this reissue of Belgian proggers Waterloo's one and only album First Battle from 1970 reveals another one-off gem from the dusty prog past that we had never heard of before but now are digging big time. This group's music is infused with the paisley psych poppiness of the likes of The Beatles and The Kinks, but also provides lots of pounding organ and flute rippage, making for a bombastic prog bounty indeed, a catchy one as well. Presumably influenced by certain of the British progressive rock outfits of the day, such as the The Nice, Jethro Tull, and Mk1 Deep Purple, this gets heavier too, sounding at times not unlike Uriah Heep, but with flute! It's got it all, really: sunny pop balladry, groovy brass rock arrangements (a la Blood Sweat & Tears), jazzy moves too (including some scat singing in the midst of 11 minute epic album closer "Diary Of An Old Man"). And plenty of flat out flashy instrumental action, guitars organ drums and FLUTE all in full force, charging forth on the battlefield of rock like triumphant prog troopers.
Fits in well with some other prog obscurities we've recommended previously... Blast Furnace comes to mind, also Supersister, Tetragon, Bachdenkel, Culpeper's Orchard, etc. Once again, we're wowed by the wonders of the reissue realm. How many more bands like this can there be??
To be sure, 'cause of how poppy this is, it might not be for those ONLY looking for the super dark or weird - though some of the lyrics ARE rather strange, like ferinstance the line "Can't you tell me where black children come from, daddy?" from the song "Black Born Children". What's that about? Also, don't expect any conceptual side-long song suites here, no this ain't Yes, in fact by prog standards only one song (the aforementioned "Diary Of An Old Man") is a double digit epic, the rest stay within the normal temporal parameters of pop single radio play, 2-3 minutes or so. But if you like the lighter (though no less tighter) side of prog, then check this out. It can only be regretted that Waterloo's First Battle was their last. Although, this reissue buffs up the original record's ten tracks with six extra bonus cuts from post-album singles and such. And, the cd booklet provides an in-depth history of the band in the liner notes, including mention of 'em jamming with members of Magma at one point!
