For all the black metal bands, trafficking in raw, primitive, crusty, blackened d-beat driven minimal metal, few can touch mighty Canadian BM horde Akitsa. Active for over a decade, every record from Akitsa is a grim black testament, an unholy writ, rendered in greys and blacks and blood reds, a sonic assault equal parts frosty blast and thrashing crush, but infused with stray elements of pop and drone and classic metal, those elements subverted and transformed and absorbed into the bands twisted take on classic black metal. Feral like punk, buzzy like black metal, doused in noise, Au Crepuscule De L'Esperance might be the weirdest Akitsa yet, which makes perfect sense as it's their first for Hospital, run by the man behind Prurient and Ash Pool among others.
Past Akitsa records were experimental, but subtly so, here the band digs deep, explores their sound in ways only hinted at before, so between bouts of blast and bash, there are long stretches of manipulated sound, of dark drones, and sculpted noise.
The record begins with a brief nearly 3 minute stretch of crumbling distortion, of hiss and glitch, a swirling cloud of corrosive noise, but wrapped around a strange haunting melody, the sort of thing you might hear on a Prurient disc, but not normally on black metal records. But here it sounds perfect, a caustic blown out blacknoise intro, leading right into still more weirdness, a hazy melodic dirge, weirdly loping drums, soaring majestic riffing, what sounds like organ, a mysterious minor key slow burn, the harsh vokills hardly distracting from this blurred melodies and almost regal sounding crush.
"Morsure" is really the first old school Akitsa jam, pounding, the guitars grinding and super distorted, the vocals a hellish bellow, the drums, a punkish pound, trancelike and repetitive, killer of course, but even more so set amidst all this fucked up far out experimentation.
Then there's tracks like "Loyaute", dirgey and almost groovy, sorta like some Stooges-y garage rock coated in filth and slowed down, again way melodic, but still fierce and with weirdly whined almost glammy sounding vox, and a killer main riff, which explodes into the blown out drone drenched chugscape of "Cercueil National", with it's howled vocals, and looped tranced out riffage.
The title track is another chunk of outsider black noise, or metal noise, totally in the red, meters pegged, layered drone, crumbling distortion, the various layers throbbing and pulsing, super hypnotic and noisy, but weirdly dreamy too, a sort of shoegazy melodic thrum, but super charged and blackened.
The rest of the record plays out like a more traditional Akitsa record, blasting, pounding, thrashing, simple and stripped down, but WAY distorted, until the final song, which sounds like a Japanese Brainbombs, or something, an insanely distorted riff, seemingly assembled from white noise, a lumbering drum plod, and some awesome croaked, almost throat singing style vocals, super creepy and fucked up and GENIUS.
Part two of Carsten Nicolai's (aka Alva Noto) apparently ongoing 'For' series, in which he composes songs for specific people, the first volume featured tracks dedicated to and composed in honor of John Cage, Jhonn Balance, TVPow, Jeff Wall, Peter Roehr, Ernie And Bert (!) and several others. This time around it's A Garment, Chain Music, Marta Feuchtwanger, two for Heiner Muller, Andrei Tarkovsky, Camera Lucida, two for Dieter Rams, Phill Niblock, Evgeny Murzin and the kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland. Don't recognize most of those names? Neither do we, it doesn't matter that much though really, the important thing is that these people inspired Nicolai to create some of the warmest and most melodic music of his career. Like the first volume, this is anything but cold sterile glitch and click. The tracks here and lush, and elegant, warm and melodic, rhythmic, dreamy and quite lovely. Opener "Garment" could have gone on forever, a woozy downtempo groove composed from short bursts of static, beeps, smears of hiss, all draped over a looped low end melancholic melody. Some of the tracks are quite brief, field recordings, room sounds, planes passing overhead, lush bell-like tones stretched into hushed streaks of whispered ambience, glitched out high end bleeps and bloops, but those act more as interludes for the longer form pieces. "Argonaut" is breathtaking, long slow tones woven into a sweet soft melody, peppered with looped melodies, soft streaks of barely there hiss, tinkling chimes, while "Stalker" is a haunting stretch of subterranean outer space minimalism, the various tones and textures heavily reverbed, wrapped in a blurred sonic gauze, while that low melody from the previous track resurfaces, plus a creepy spoken word part, intense and beautiful.
Elsewhere Nicolai dabbles in glistening crystalline pop ambience, fuzzy spaced out dream dub minimalism, thick layered dronemusic, and the cool thing is, the more you listen, and the further you get into the record, the more you realize, Nicolai is using mostly the same sounds, recontextualized for each track, for each person, a slowly shifting, interconnected song suite culminating in a strange snare driven buzzscape, and the almost jaunty sounding final track, that sounds almost like traditional chamber music, filtered through Nicolai's buzz/click/glitch/hiss/hum approach to soundmaking. Gorgeous!
Lal Lal Lal sent us these, though technically it's private release not on that tiny Finnish label, the reason they had 'em being that Nuslux is a project of Roope from Lal Lal Lal, who's also in Maniacs Dream, Pylon, and Avarus. Meanwhile the Amon Dude (haha) is Arttu, also from Avarus, Anaksimandros, etc. It's limited, it's weird, it's vinyl, and it's Finnish. We only have a handful. What else need we say? Oh, what's it sound like? Well the Dude's side, "In Full Flight", is a live recording of their distorted, danceable (?) electronic shenanigans, while Nuslux jam on the flip, using mostly self-built analog instruments to make their "good-humored and chilled out" electronic minimalism. Basically if you liked that Lal Lal Lal festival cassette we listed not long ago, this is for you too.
Though we've never gotten around to listing anything by this awesome UK trio, we were impressed with their two previous full lengths from years back, and we're definitely stoked to have this new release. Coconut comes 4 years after the band's last record, and the production courtesy of ex-DFA dude Tim Goldsworthy helps to bring their sound to new territories. Pinning down Archie Bronson Outfit's music is not the easiest thing in the world, but at the same time, there's nothing not to get here. The effects are immediate and the band doesn't fuck around with abstract experimentation, even though the songs themselves are quite adventurous. It seems like there were more British bands going for this kind of thing a few years ago, and maybe this is a better representation of what all those bands actually wanted to sound like. ABO do what they do well, better than most to be perfectly upfront. This causes us to wonder why they aren't a bigger deal here in the states, especially being on Domino and all. It seems like many reviews don't know what to make of it, and maybe ABO hasn't done themselves any favors by touring as support for bands whose audiences could probably care less for this kind of thing. But whatever, Coconut is a superb album. The band is bluesy and quite psychedelic at times, but thankfully without a trace of any hippie bullshit or rock dude posturing. Instead, they seem like garage punk circa 1965 (you know, right before things started getting really weird) played by stoned guys with beards in button up shirts, with a nod to the dance floor (hence Goldsworthy's presence), rhythmic psych propulsion in the vein of Cave (especially on opening track "Magnetic Warrior"), and some major post-punk influences as well (some of us were reminded of The Fall and the Talking Heads, both apt comparisons). Sometimes things get pretty frenzied, but they also know when to hold back and get into a groove, always a good thing. Everything is held in place by the singer's urgent yelp, and the songs flow together really well. Nothing seems forced, and the songs take you where you want to go with their catchiness and overall rocking approach. Throughout it all, the melodies just pour out. It's dark, it's sexy, it's mysterious. It's f'n Coconut, and we hope you dig it as much as we do.
Long gone are the days of Autechre albums like Incunabula, Amber, and LP5 where spiralling electronic melodies tumbled upon algorithmic breakbeats with ghostly allusions to hardcore techno and hip-hop. Over the past five records (LP5 being perhaps the last Autechre album to embrace the 'classic' IDM sound), abstraction for the sake of abstraction has been the order of the day. The atonal squiggling set upon a wooden breakbeat on "Treale" is about a close as (Oversteps) comes to a classic Autechre track, but much of this album seems to be wandering without much clear intention as to what might happen next. Just a fizzing sound here, and a blobby splutter of jazzy midi-synth there. That said, at least some of us have been digging this quite a bit, not for it's Autechre-ness, but rather for the fact, that much of the weird mopey rhythms and synthy splutter, remind us of all of those fucked up weirdo guitar synth bands we're so obsessed with: Xynfonica, Shevalreq, Thursar, Gluttony, somehow, and in some weird way, the less rhythmic, more ambient tracks on (Oversteps) sound like cleaned up, less obviously fucked up versions of that outsider weirdness, which to most ears might not be a plus, but to some of us, makes this Autechre pretty cool, and weird, and we definitely find ourselves drawn to it, listening to it more often that we might have expected...
This longtime AQ fave, always a steady seller on cd, is now available as a vinyl reissue! Here's what we said when it was first reissued on cd:
I've always wanted to hear this heavily-sampled, late '60s funk/soul rarity, and now here it is at last reissued! Does it live up to its reputation? Well, first, for those who haven't heard of him, Baby Huey's "story" is a sad one. The soul singer from Chi Town known as James Thomas Ramey, aka Baby Huey, only made one album, unfortunately released posthumously. Drugs and obesity (he weighed somewhere near 400 pounds -- a big guy, with an Afro to match!) contributed to his death from a heart attack in 1970 at age 26. RIP Baby Huey. That's one reason that the original LP is such a collectable... and also because heck, it DOES boast some mighty funky grooves. Including three numbers by Curtis Mayfield (who also produced the album) plus a powerful cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Going To Come" and a flute-filled, funked-up instrumental version of "California Dreamin'" among other groovy gems. This is very 'of its era', for sure, which means it's got lotsa brassy horns, DJ-friendly drum breaks, lush arrangements, some slightly psychedelic touches...and great vocals. If you're into Mayfield and Otis Redding and other '60s soul/funk, chances are you'll dig this.
Erykah Badu is one of those singular artists who is able to create such a devotional and personal relationship with her listeners. Where New Amerykah Pt. 1 had a fiery political undertone, New Amerykah Pt. 2: Return Of The Ankh, is much more personal and relationship minded. But no matter what Erykah's songs are about, there is always a sense of authenticity and integrity that runs so strongly through them. In many ways this is the closest in sound and theme to her breathtaking debut Baduizm, as it shares a similar slow melting groove and such rich instrumentation that you just don't come by on many contemporary soul records. The amazing thing about Erykah Badu is how she is both so modern, futuristic yet an integral link to the history of powerful and spiritual soul. She doesn't rehash, or mimic, instead she's created a sound and style that is so totally her own.
New Amerykah Pt. 2 is as seductive as it is psychedelic. You can tell she has a deep love of pioneers like Ramp, The Rotary Connection, and Dorothy Ashby, but she has learned from her deep love of true hip-hop how to take from her influences yet create something totally new and unique out of it. There is no one like Erykah Badu around, she has proven she is a musical visionary, and her live shows only further prove that she is the real deal, capable of creating magic with her music that hits the soul in such deep and true ways. She also stands out in the way she is still very committed to the artform of the album. From start to finish this is a record that takes you on a journey that you want to revisit over and over again. The thing that makes Erykah Badu albums so remarkable is how they slowly seep into your subconscious. They are never about the latest trends or a quick fun ride, instead they are the kind of records you turn to at those crucial moments of your life and become a narrative that becomes as much a part of your journey as it is hers. These are songs that empower, comfort and challenge. Once again Erykah Badu has proven to be one of the strongest and most unique musical voices of our time!
The lp may be out of print, but this gorgeous collection of blackened drift and smoldering shimmer is now finally available on cd!!
Barn Owl, the local duo of Jon Porras (aka Elm) and Evan Caminiti (aka Higuma), have always tread a similar path to later era Earth, a sort of blackened twang, Morricone by way of the Melvins, slow motion soundscapes as evocative and slow burning as they are epic and heavy, dark and delicate. With the addition of a drummer, Barn Owl move even closer to their sonic brethren creating a gorgeous songsuite of Western tinged, slow motion psychedelia, dark, dolorous, warm and haunting, heavily reverbed, a sort of dark skeletal doom, rife with warm chordal clusters, gauzy clouds of muted feedback, and epic expanses of effected guitars that sound almost choral.
The mood is both warm and inviting, haunting and tense, emotional and intense. The various bits of steel string guitar are draped over dense swells of roiling downtuned drone, everything wreathed in streaks of high end shimmer, all blurred into a burnished black guitar blur, washed out and hazy, yet surprisingly lush and heavy. The second half of the record gets a bit more Appalachian, with delicate finger picked guitars drifting over deep layered drones, stately melodies unfurling like the black tendrils of smoke from a recently extinguished candle, or the fuzzy fog of late afternoon, painted deep blues and reds by the fading daylight. The record builds to a soaring finale, that revisits that choral sound, and infuses it with an hypnotic ur-drone vibe, like some glorious hybrid of Sunroof! and Arvo Part. Hypnotic and transcendent.
Who would have thought? A new Burzum record, after his release from16 years in prison. Has it really been 16 years? And who would have thought the new Burzum would actually be really really great?! Certainly not us, especially after the last two stinkers, the made-in-jail, all-synth Daudi Baldrs and Hildskjalf. And the last one of those was more than 11 years ago! And let's not forget Varg's prison conversion, becoming a neo fascist, a Nazi, spouting white pride rhetoric, hell, this record was even originally titled "The White God", not to mention that he's in fact a convicted murderer and an arsonist. But it's always been like that with Burzum, and much of black metal, but in Burzum's case in particular, we try to not confuse/conflate the man with the music, and to be fair, for some that's not possible, no one could fault a person for not wanting to support a musician who espouses reprehensible views, and one way is by not listening to their music, and not buying their records. But as we've posited before, your record collection would begin to get pretty sparse, once you eliminated records made by assholes, and by people whose politics you disagreed with, but again, it's perfectly fair to do just that.
But for those of you who can in fact separate the music from the musician, then Belus is a pretty serious and solid return to form. Not so much Filosefem as Det Som Engang Var and Hvis Lyset Tar Oss. The same guitar tone, the same epic riffage, the same raspy vokills, for someone who was not allowed a guitar for the last decade plus, it's pretty amazing that in the space of less than a year, he somehow managed to come up with this. Granted some of these tracks are older, but for the most part this is a brand new record, could be that it was formulated over the past decade, the result of all that pent up emotion, this fierce and furious chunk of black buzz, weirdly melodic in places, very trancelike all the way through, with lots of spoken word mixed into the frantic riffing and blasting beats... The record is at its strongest when it's the most Burzumic, blown out buzz, frenzied riffing over loping midtempo rhythms, the riffing surprisingly layered and complex, check out "Morgenroede" with the relentless main riff shifting from fast picking, to dizzyingly looped arpeggiation, making the whole song swoon and warble, before lurching back into a buzz drenched lumber. The closing track, "Belus' Tilbakeomst (Konklusjon)" is pretty incredible as well, super intense and droney and atmospheric, the riffing almost static, building all sorts of tension, layer upon layer, various notes and overtones ringing out, the playing frantic and frenzied, but with very little forward momentum, almost like some weird sort of black raga drone, rendered in black buzz. There's lots of that sort of unlikely innovation going on here, every time we play this in the store, people come to the counter to find out what the heck it is, and then they can't believe it's Burzum. Or, rather, they might very well have thought it was Burzum, but can't believe it's the NEW Burzum.
It's too bad for Burzum, and for this record, that Belus will forever be saddled with so much non musical baggage, though it's his own damn fault, cuz once you dig through all the shit, get past all the politics, all the rumors and racist rhetoric, past all the expectations and the various scenesters and tastemakers, past the fact that he's really just a total fuckhead, if you can forget just for a second what led up to the creation of this record, Belus could very well end up being one of the best black metal records of the year.
NB. There IS vinyl, or rather WAS, but the first pressing is sold out, and the copies we got are long gone, but eventually they'll do another pressing.
We highlighted the vinyl last time, and now it's available on cd too!
It's funny to think that if you could somehow remove someone you probably have never heard of from existence how remarkably changed things would be. Case in point, British electronic composer and inventor Tristram Cary, considered by some "the father of electronic music" who gets this loving and long overdue retrospective treatment from Trunk Records (hopefully it's the first of many). Perhaps not as well known as Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, or John Baker, Cary made an indelible mark on modern music, not just for his soundtracks to such Hammer classics as Quartermass and The Pit, and his sound effects work for the first Dr. Who series, but one of his most important contributions was his role in the creation of EMS (Electronic Music Studios), the UK's first ever synthesizer company. Without their first major products, the VCS 3 synthesizer, the suitcase Synthi[A] and the Delaware, The BBC Radiophonic workshop, Brian Eno and Pink Floyd (just to name a few artists) would have had sounded completely different.
Born the third son of novelist Joyce Cary, Tristram Cary learned electronics not through artistic or musical means but as a radar operator in the Royal Navy where he first encountered modern German tape equipment. He soon became interested in working with recorded sound, and after studying composition and learning a few instruments, he started building up his first electronic studio. Subtitled, Works For Film, Television, Exhibition and Sculpture, the pieces included here are mostly from his commissions as an industrial sound designer creating sound pieces for industrial films and sculptural World Expo exhibitions. Highlights include "Divertimento" a piece that Olivetti commissioned for the grand opening of their UK training center in Surrey. Combining the cold sounds of Olivetti's business machines against the warmth of the human voice (represented here by the Ambrosian singers ) and a jazz drummer. "Shapes For Living", a short film about product design, premiered at EXPO 70 and most of the non-instrument sounds were created by enhanced and exaggerated recordings of bad packaging, poor design and users struggling with it. "A Hill, Some Sheep and A Living" was for a 1967 television documentary and features an instrumental ensemble. The final track "Narcissus", features a flute player and two tape recorders that starts off soft and pastoral and ends up all kinds of weirdly terrifying as the flute playing through the recorders gets more layered and processed and sped up. Cary died two years ago and Johnny Trunk had been working with him and Cary's son John on this compilation for a couple of years before, so it's nice that this retrospective highlighting a little known, but highly influential player in the development of British electronic music finally sees the light of day!
We don't believe this is a new reissue, but it's one of our favorite jazz records ever, a real classic, and this is the first time we've been able to get a bunch to list. Perhaps it's even our most favorite Don Cherry album, which is saying a lot since there are so many of his records we love (this is the third we've made a Record of the Week) and there's been much spirited discussion around here between this one and Orient, a former record of the week from, egad, eight years ago! But hell, they're both really amazing so if you dug Orient, or the collaboration with Latif Khan we made Record of the Week a year ago, you'll definitely want to get this, and if you have no Don Cherry in your collection, you might as well start right here. Why we've never been able to list this before is a huge mystery, but let's just make up for lost time and tell you why this is so great.
Released in 1975 on the A&M label, Brown Rice is just 4 songs clocking at about 39 minutes. It's as focussed as Orient was sprawling, mining the same African, Indian, and Arabic influences, but in much tighter and dynamic, almost rock-oriented arrangements. Penetratingly deep on a spiritual level but also engaging and propulsive in its accessibility, Brown Rice is a record that gets right to the point the second the opening electric piano riff and female wordless singing of the title track begin. With wah'd out guitars and electric bongos building up into a groove, this is Cherry at his funkiest with ghostly trumpet shrieks off in the background, vocalised rhythm syncopations and Charlie Haden's underscoring bass swirling around Cherry's whispered chanting. "Malkauns", the longest track at 14 minutes lays down a lackadaisical vibe with tamboura and bass slowly unfolding a wide ground for Cherry's plaintive trumpet to eventually arrive and build up momentum with Billy Higgins' drumming pushing the proceedings upward and outward, eventually floating down back to earth. The third track "Chenrezig" begins deep and solemn with bass rumbles, chimes and Cherry's low and shaman-like vocals sometimes delving into Tuvan throat level buzz and whispering, augmented by high piano tones and lilting trumpet trills before the energy unleashes, not so much in a blind fury as it is a concentrated and feverish ritual extraction of sound. The final track, "Degi-Degi" brings us back to the driving rhythms and grooves of "Brown Rice", with Cherry's whispered chants and some of his brightest and most lyrical trumpet playing really feeling the space.
We can't help but wonder how much of Cherry's soundtrack work for the film Holy Mountain had an influence on his direction for this record, as Brown Rice is that rare hybrid of jazz, rock and film score, one we could easily see visualized on film. In the same line as Bitches Brew, Herbie Hancock's Sextant, or the recent Love Cry Want reissue, but also with the same sort of deep spiritual core we treasure so much in records by Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra. Essential!
It's been a couple years since Citay's great sophomore outing Little Kingdom, and since then the band has experienced significant lineup changes which included the loss of former guitarist Jesse Reiner who left to concentrate on his awesome new band Jonas Reinhardt. Luckily Citay mastermind Ezra Feinberg was able to get some bigtime heavy hitters to become part of this new incarnation of Citay including virtuoso guitarist Sean Smith and the multitalented and super-prolific Josh Pollock (3 Leafs, Auricle, etc.), joining the already present guitar powerhouse that is Tim Green, who was the original cohort of Feinberg when Citay was first born.
So while this is in some ways a more beefed up and full sounding Citay, the elements that made us fall in love with them in the first place still shine so bright. Their ability to create songs that feel epic yet never indulgent. The way they are able to inhabit so many worlds at once while never feeling disjointed. Citay truly are a gateway band. They can lead you to heavier psychedelia, they can show you the intricacy and dreaminess of West Coast pop, they can take you to the woods, the sky, the forest, and the backyard yet every turn they take feels so right and true to their own unique vision.
Dream Get Together has a rushing current of lush and full sounds that makes you want to blast it so loud and just get swept up in its sound. Long passages without vocals that let their wide arrange of instrumentation take center stage and then Feinberg's wonderful expansive vocal delivery adds another layer of depth to the experience. Meryl Press and Thaliah Harbour add their beautiful voices throughout, maintaining that awesome balance of masculine/feminine that has been such a refreshing aspect of Citay's sound. There is also a really nice guest vocal by Merril Garbus of Tune-Yards. Citay really have carved out such an instantly recognizable and unique sound that is so much all their own. We could tell you that Dream Get Together kind of sounds like Heart hijacked by Robert Fripp and Dungen, but the truth is Citay continue to create music that has its feet in so many musical worlds that the sound they've created is undeniably deep and exists entirely in their own wonderful world. Highly recommended!
A pop lover's delight! Common Loon's debut album dishes the most marvelous of drowsy psych-tinged pop we've heard in ages. It seems to glow with the warmth of the '70s California sun despite the duo's homebase of Illinois. Oh so good! Their record label namechecks these artists as points of reference... Sparklehorse, Sebadoh, Spacemen 3, Grandaddy, Apples In Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control. Hmmm, there just happen to be plenty of aQ faves in there, n'est pas? Of those bands, we'd say that we concur with the inclusion of Grandaddy and O.T.C. most definitely. The rest are somewhat subtler nods. We'd actually add the Posies, early Quasi and Death Cab For Cutie to the list. Each song strikes a sweet balance of melodic hooks, hazy noise-pop guitars and mellow lulling boy vocals. This just might be the perfect antidote to cast away those lingering winter's chills and make way for spring. Needless to say, The Long Dream Of Birds has charmed us to no end! Recommended!
We recently reviewed the debut full length from this mysterious intercontinental doom combo, whose members are spread across Canada and Sweden, and who have never met in person, and thus obviously never been in the same room together, which made that record, and this new one, all the more impressive.
But perhaps proximity isn't critical to tapping into whatever sinister spirit inspires the sort of filthy doomic crust these guys conjure up. And the sound here is plenty filthy, crusty, AND doomy, and like the first record, a little industrial. Their sound borrows a little from the likely suspects, Winter, Khanate, Electric Wizard, Neurosis and the like, but Culted take those influences and filter them through some seriously blackened sludge, some avant post rock, some industrial crunch, and twists them all up into something gnarled and psychedelic and heavy as fuck.
The two minute opener, is a lumbering chugscape, that sounds like the slower bits from say Spektr or Blut Aus Nord, stop / start churning riffage, over swirls of filthy ambience, a machine like groove, super distorted vox, a black industrial juggernaut, over way too soon, which leads into the 10 plus minute, awesomely titled "Black Cough, Black Coffin", a slow smoldering creep, droned out downtuned guitars, glacial riffage, more hellish vokills, eventually building to a lumbering blackened plod, again, the rhythm almost industrial, the guitars distorted and crushing, the track allowed a brief bit of shimmery drone, before returning to the grim grinding sonic churn, the vocals growing more and more distorted, almost Ministry style, a pounding black doom dirge juggernaut. "Dissent" is a bit more poppy, but that's really relative, a little Jesu / Nadja infused into Culted's grim black crush, with some spaced out clean guitar, billowy clouds of washed out chordal blur, the vocals buried WAY down in the mix, a strange headtripping ambient doom drift, that lurches back into caveman plod, before finishing up all post rocky, with spare percussion, hushed ambience, spidery minor key guitars, a surprisingly lovely outro.
The record finishes with the sub 5 minute "Whore", a Swans cover, which in the hands of Culted becomes a seriously twisted black doom crawl, with a woozy slippery ascending main riff, some more seriously fucked up and harrowing vokills, the sound eventually shifting to something more traditionally doomy, but still infused with Culted's sick twisted take on Swans abject clang and crunch.
What would you expect from a band called Dark Ages? With cover art from some Hieronymous Bosch style painting depciting hell and misery and war and famine? With song titles like "Breath Of The Black Plague" and "Birth Of The Antichrist" and "Formulas Written In Blood"? A disc released on Supernal, the label that brought us Benighted Leams, Drudkh, Meads Of Asphodel, Hate Forest and the rest? What would you expect? Well, definitely not this. Dark Ages are not metal, are not even heavy actually, instead they offer up a series of dark ambient medieval dronescapes, beautifully creepy, dark and haunting and endlessly mesmerizing. There are definite sonic similarities to our favorite drone artists: Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Maeror Tri and the like, but Twilight Of Europe has a sort of looped hypnotic quality lending the sound a much more Jeck, Basinski vibe. But always cloaked in the tattered black cloak of the dark ages, a lonely sonic stroll through the ruins of a long gone Rennaisance Faire, a stroll that slowly shifts to an actual wander through a ruined post plague, European village, of grey stone walls, lit blue by the moonlight, casting shadows that dart and dance in the glow of torchlight, the blackened remains of fires long since burnt out, colorful tents faded by the sun now lay in ruined heaps, the stench of death and decay in the air. The sound is rich with resonant church organs, bells and buzzing strings, haunting chant like vocals all wrapped in gauzy fuzzy drones and subterranean rumbles, each track a dreamy repetition of a haunting, ghostly medieval loop. Over and over and over as you drift off, as the city around you crumbles and the sky above you darkens.
Today's Darkthrone is a totally different beast than the Darkthrone of old. Back in the day, Darkthrone conjured up visions of mysterious corpse painted figures, of epic Norwegian black metal, of vast fields of ice, of shadows dancing in firelight, they were THEE ultimate black metal band. Transylvanian Hunger, A Blaze In The Northern Sky, Under A Funeral Moon...
But at some point, the punk and classic metal influences that so obviously informed the music of Darkthrone, really took over, and the sound of Darkthrone, instead of being influenced by that music, began to SOUND like that music, WAY more punk, with smatterings of classic NWOBHM, which we definitely dug, and with that sonic shift, came a shift in, well, seriousness? Their public persona became goofier. Photo ops consisted almost entirely of shots of the group on camping trips. And there's drummer Fenriz, outspoken as always, consistently holding court, schooling the kids on cool metal records, weird obscure bands, to the point of filling cdd booklets with liner notes, comparing their songs to classic metal jams, as well as including a list of albums to buy.
So while a lot of troo grim black metalheads probably jumped ship by now, the rest of us can dig these crazy punk metal jams, the goofy lyrics, the over the top vocals, the squiggly guitar leads, totally retro, but all twisted up into something distinctly Darkthrone.
The sound here is less classic metal, and almost kinda more like any of those "NWOFHM" metal Circle side projects, Steel Mammoth, Mercedes Hell, Motorspandex, and well, let's let the track-by-track liner notes from Fenriz point out their actual sonic inspirations: Motorhead, Inepsy, Agent Steel, English Dogs, old Metallica, Deathside, Puke, old Slayer, Omen, Savage Grace, one song is even described by Fenriz as a "Mix of speed metal and hard rock, with 40s nostalgic notes in the verse-riff". Not sure what else to say. When asked in a recent interview if Darkthrone performed "extreme metal", Fenriz responded by saying that Darkthrone is "moderate metal. With UGLY vocals." Which pretty much nails it. It's heavy, punk as fuck, definitely metal, loose and sloppy, but super melodic, weirdly catchy, with some seriously killer riffs, some ridiculous and over the top vocals, and some of the best liner notes you'll ever read. Plus more bad ass Dennis Dread artwork. Recommended of course, but only for those of you who know what you're getting into!
Out of jail, on the cover: Burzum! "Facing off with metal's most controversial figure". Also in this issue of America's foremost glossy extreme metal magazine: Dillinger Escape Plan, Tom G. Warrior's Triptykon, Hour Of 13, Hooded Menace, White Wizzard, Immolation, Autopsy, and, among other things, Motorhead's Ace Of Spades inducted into Decibel's Hall of Fame, with the usual fascinating the-making-of article.
Another Captured Tracks band, whose recent 7" had us all in a tizzy, with its reverby jangle and slouchy sad boy indie rock shuffle. We compared that Dignan Porch release to Sebadoh and Guided By Voices, which totally hit the spot.
The full length offers up more of the same, but with some subtle changes, a swirling folky, jangly swirl of weirdo distorted vocals, heavily effected guitars, short short songs, most hovering around the two minute mark, the vibe melancholy and minor key, the sound raw and rough and lo-fi, the hooks subtle, but definitely there, the indie jangle of the 7" infused with more of a dour doom folk vibe here too, with lots of acoustic guitar, hazy reverb, washed out ambience, the songs lilting and darkly personal, with vocals that shift from cockney croon, to distorted howl, to high keening falsetto, the tracks laced with buzz, a patina of grit, layered and murky and mysterious, and definitely poppy, but almost as if the poppiness was an accident, a byproduct of this soul baring, home brewed folk pop, a darkly dreamlike, bedroom-recorded, old crummy cassette, late night, druggy, summery mixtape, of strummy, starry mystery. Whew!
After a few singles and an awesome live cassette on PlusTapes, Chicago psych dudes Disappears finally unleash their proper debut album, and it's something that should find itself at home in the record collections of people who enjoy groups like Wooden Shjips, Thee Oh Sees, and the Fresh & Onlys. In fact, your initial reaction may be that Disappears could be at home here in San Francisco with those bands, but closer inspection reveals a dark grit that is perfectly evocative of the Windy City.
The band features Brian Case, from cult faves 90 Day Men and more recently, the Ponys, and there is definitely a bit of a post-punk influence on display here, but Disappears inhabit a darkly psychedelic world with steady rhythms and lots of reverb that hits the spot pretty dang well. They never lose themselves to insane psych rambling, and these songs are nice and compact, averaging around the 3 minute mark. This allows the band to craft actual songs, and they are clearly a tight, well oiled machine of swaggering psych goodness with a nice bluesy touch. The overall sound here is very, ahem, organic, and it has a nice analog feel. There's just something about the sound of old guitars and tube amps (duh), and that sound can't be replicated by a quick stop at Guitar Center. What we're meaning to say is that this album just SOUNDS great in addition to be catchy as hell while still coming off as kind of dark and mysterious. Recommended big time.
We fell in love with the Dum Dum Girls at first listen, back when we heard their self titled 12" from a year ago, it was this awesome blown out girl group inspired garage pop that just totally satisfied. With their/her jump to Sub Pop they have cleaned up their sound a bit, but oh my god we think it's totally for the best. When it comes down to it, the songs have to stand up for themselves. You can pour all the reverb and lo-fi glory on top of your music but if that's all you got it's going to get old and tired pretty quick. Luckily that's not all Dum Dum Girls are about. I Will Be shows that what they are about is totally heartfelt, addictive and impactful songs. But don't worry, it's not like its gotten all slick or smoothed out, it's still totally immediate, rocking, punchy, sassy and also so sincere.
Dee Dee (who as it turns out is pretty much the fiery force behind Dum Dum Girls) recorded all these songs at home and then sent them to the legendary producer and hit maker Richard Gottehrer, whose resume is pretty damn drool worthy. In the '60s he wrote totally amazing songs that have become party of our cultural landscape like "I Want Candy" and "My Boyfriend's Back", and in the '70s he went on to produce the debut records by both Blondie and The Go-Go's as well as being a cofounder of Sire records (home of The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Dead Boys, etc.). So awesome to see how this collaboration turned out so damn perfect. Gottehrer knew it wasn't his job to sugarcoat or generically polish the Dum Dum Girls songs, but instead he did use his wisdom to help them jump out with so much vibrancy and color.
While his contribution can't be overlooked, it's still all about Dee Dee's songs and charisma. Whether she's totally rocking out, or melting hearts with her cover of Sonny & Cher's "Baby Don't Go", there's an authenticity and unhinged passion that can't be denied. She's also so smart and economic about her songs, no fat, no wasted notes, just the good stuff. The album is over before you know it but it works out just fine because all you're going to want to do is play it right over again. This one is going to be a strong candidate for record of the year!
After about ten years of existence, and a bunch of limited vinyl-only documents, including a fairly recent LP with Nana April Jun, also on Touch, the mysterious dronological entity Eleh releases their first ever compact disc. Eleh's aesthetic of low frequency, (often) low volume drones fits in well on the Touch label. On Location Momentum, there's an hour of Eleh's vibrations, five tracks, all but one quite lengthy, some barely audible. At low volumes, Eleh's "minimalist noise" will slowly, almost imperceptibly insinuate itself into your consciousness, it becomes part of the surrounding sonic environment, instead of something you're specifically listening to. Track one, "Heleneleh", is a subtle, slowly evolving, stretched-out presence, less heard than felt. A hum, a throb, a wavering drone. It's meditative, like a subliminally sensed Buddha machine loop, under a microscope... But turn up the volume, and it becomes physical, starts squeezing your head just a little bit. Near the end of this 20+ minute track, before it fades, Eleh decides to start modulating the pitch up and down, getting jiggy with it Eleh style, or maybe just saying, something's happening, almost done, waving goodbye. But really it's only the beginning.
The next track, the shortest one here, does a backwards-sounding whip-whip-whip for about two and half minutes. It becomes lulling quite quickly, and you might wish it was still doing its slowly stuttering thing when track 3, "Circle One: Summer Transcience" starts up, utilizing a temporarily annoying high pitched test-tone sound, but that's soon joined by deeper pulsations, and begins to get interesting. This one's for the Ryoji Ikeda fans out there! A subtle bassy thump-thump-thump picks up the pace, your heartbeat perhaps quickening along with it, the test tone become more of a buzz, some white noise wind sound also enters the mix in the background, and with such simple elements Eleh creates a compelling 13 minute, 33 second composition, for those willing to take the time to absorb it. Actually, a lot of this disc reminds us of Ikeda, also Alva Noto most definitely, and Mika Vainio and the like.
The disc continues on with two more tracks of similar length, but their own identities, some elements louder and more overt than what's come before, some more "clicky" in Geiger counter fashion, yet again, there's a spooky, "is that sound coming from my stereo or outside or somewhere upstairs or inside my brain???" aspect to these.
As with so many Touch releases, recommended!
Fenn O'Berg is the on-again / off-again collaborative project between Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, and Peter Rehberg, who had made their last splash into the realm of glitched-out electronics back in 2002. All three of these artists have involved themselves in various laptop improvisational ensembles with sporadic success (certainly nothing as wondrous as their individual solo recordings), and the previous two Fenn'O'Berg albums were simply spliced collages of live presentations. In Stereo was recorded in Japan over a couple weeks, entirely in the studio. There's a bit more of a structured sentiment emerging from the perpetual motion of digital effects and obliterated samples, setting it apart from the earlier albums. There's plenty of Rehberg's wracked digitality, splattered through ring-modulated, time-stretched deconstructions and digital cluster bombs of pixilation; there's episodes of those amniotic, post-guitar washes that Fennesz has gracefully produced for years; and Jim O'Rourke ever the chameleon fits his multi-tasking production well within the poles of his collaborators. Amidst the pantheon of digital effects, the trio are not averse to working in analog tones, repetitions, and sweeps. The fourth track on the album (titled "Part I") begins with an interesting set of cylon drones before the trio unleashes a percussive frenzy of glistening piano and tumbling drums that could almost have come from an Alice Coltrane composition. Outside of this expressive outburst, In Stereo for the most part comes across as something of a kosmiche-digital-psychedelic hybrid that might fit between Klaus Schulze and Oval.
NB: The vinyl is out of print on this release (oh so quick!), but we might have one or two copies kicking around. Just ask, you might get lucky!
This one probably needs very little in the way of description, a new archival release from guitar/laptop maestro Christian Fennesz, the latest from limited edition UK tape label Tapeworm, gathering up an eclectic collection of samples, which were used to create various recordings from 1989 until 1996. Which means maybe some of these will definitely sound familiar, even here in there yet to be Fennesz-ed state, offering a glimpse into the creative process for sure, but functioning fairly well as an album proper, albeit a somewhat fragmented album, short sonic selections, from murky glistening shimmer, to strange creaks and glitches, to warped acoustic guitar strum, to skipping stuttering electronic dronescapes, to psychedelic textural noise blowouts, to haunting loops, a dizzying array of sound and texture and timbre, many of these pieces already sounding practically finished (if it weren't for their brevity), gorgeous and hazy and melodic, mysterious and otherworldly, others simple, obvious building blocks for a bigger whole, the (perhaps hundreds of) fragments seamlessly sequenced into a constantly shifting, ever evolving, fractured and fantastical soundscape, that would also appeal to fans of Philip Jeck, with its weird sensation of skipping and glitching and recontextualization, the short sample format reminiscent of flitting from record to record, but this is obviously essential listening for Fennesz fans, a perfect companion for his records proper.
LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES. With cool Savage Pencil cover art!
Is your coffee table sturdy enough to support this book? 'Cause it's HEAVY! It's not just that it's a lavish, oversized, hard cover tome, with 290 glossy pages, weighing in at almost 4 pounds, but it's also about HELLHAMMER, and the very early daze of the band Hellhammer morphed into, the late great Celtic Frost. Anyone into death, doom and/or black metal should be salivating.
Tom G. (with the assistance of fellow former Frostie Martin Eric Ain, and quotes from others) delves deeply into the history of this seminal extreme metal entity, the text accompanied by a plethora of amazing vintage photos, you've never seen so many studded armbands, bullet belts, and draped chains in your life! There's also lots of fliers, demo tape covers, stuff like that. Total eye candy for any metalhead.
There's always been all this mystique about Hellhammer, and now for all diehard fans it's incredible to get this book of pictures and stories that really put you into their teenage Swiss bunker making all that unholy noise. Also, it's wonderfully ironic for a band widely considered at the time to be TERRIBLE, so raw and primitive, to now be considered so influential, true pioneers (cf. Gallhammer, also reissued on this week's list!) and be honored with this totally over the top deluxe coffee table book - they definitely got the last laugh!!
You probably already know if you want this or not, we knew as soon as we heard about it, and it lives up to expectations and then some. So cool.
NB. For shipping purposes, if you're a domestic mailorder customer, please note that this will have to go at the UPS rate, or the cheaper media mail way. No fitting it in one of our priority mail flat rate boxes, that's for sure!
Issued once again on vinyl, it's great to see this beautiful record available once more. Released in 1974, L'Incendie is an amazing collection of avant-folk French pop songs. Not as difficult as some of her other recordings, the songs here are rather simple and short, with spare arrangements of guitar and percussion, with occasional electric guitars and other studio effects coming into play. Both Fontaine and Areski sing together and the blend of their voices work the best here than on other recordings they did together. Fans of Emmanuelle Parrenin, the recent Francoise Hardy cd we reviewed, La Question, or Nico's more pop-folk moments should definitely check this out!
Lately it seems that between Captured Tracks and Sacred Bones, there's some sort of label competition to see who can release the most stuff. It's definitely a close race, with both constantly churning out record after record, the weird thing is, it's pretty much all great. This latest one from SF's own Fresh & Onlys though, just might be the best yet. It's definitely the best F&O record so far, the songs, the vibe, the sound, the production. Everything that was hinted at on past records seems fully realized here. It's short, a 6 song 12" at 45 rpm, but it's plenty.
As always, the songs are ace, catchy and hooky, the guitars jangle and crunch, the vocals wrapped in reverb, the drumming propulsive, the bass fuzzy, but it's a lot darker and more minor key that past F&O records, it's also the lushest and loudest recording, which all contribute to making this the perfect F&O to end up on Captured Tracks.
While still jangly and poppy, it's also a little gloomy, a lot new wave, with buzzy Joy Divison bass, squalls of wild psychedelic guitar, plenty of ooooh's and aaaah's, tribal drumming, angular riffing, a perfect mix of sixties jangle, and cold/new wave gloom. The production is lush, but also weird, and tripped out, ethereal and gauzy, and this time around the sound reminds us not just of other likeminded contemporaries, but also of darker groups, like the Wipers, Abecedarians, Kommunity FK, that sort of thing, albeit filtered through the F&O's perfect pop jangle. It's heady and hypnotic, kick ass and catchy, but also haunting and moody and a bit murky. That and the fact that these might be the best songs Tim Cohen and company have written so far, make this a definite contender for year end best ofs, even though it's only April. WAY recommended.
Hmmm... This band should be an easy sell, really. Start with this: DOOM. A la Hellhammer (Tom G. Warrior's adolescent pre-Celtic Frost outfit that helped pioneer death/doom metal from a basement in Switzerland back in the early eighties), Eyehategod, and maybe Corrupted too. They're Japanese (so we can make more Corrupted comparisons). And this trio consists entirely of girls. One of our distros described Gallhammer thusly: "All female Japanese Hellhammer worship Band. Not ugly girls doing ugly, ugly music!". The high-contrast black and white photo on the back cover of band members Mika Penetrator (guitar/vocals), Vivian Slaughter (bass/vocals), and Risa Reaper (drums) reveals that "not ugly" comment apparently to be correct, with some vaguely corpse-paint-like mascara adding to their sex appeal. Not that that should be the selling point. After all, listening to this, you'd have *no idea* they were female. Throaty, demonic screams belch forth amidst pummelling drum battery and distorted, feedbacking guitar. Female? Male? They don't even sound human, really. Though the emotions expressed are all too human. Nihilistic bleak hateful depressive stuff. It's raw, primitive doom that captures that Hellhammer vibe by following a similar learning curve as those guys did back in the '80s -- Gallhammer's offical bio on their website states: "Feburary 2003: We start Gallhammer" followed by "Feburary 2003: Each member start to play instrument." And then Gloomy Lights was recorded in 2004. Yep, what Gallhammer does is simple and effective: heavy, plodding music and rough, croaking vocals, with plenty of ominous ambience in the breaks and build-ups. There's eight grim and spooky tracks here culminating in the 10-minute "Color Of Coma", which features a great deal of atmospheric drone. Think Hellhammer meets Angelblood, perhaps.
Look out for a new Gallhammer album this year to be released by Peaceville.
First proper full length (after a super limited cd-r), of gorgeously blissed out post rock from this Bay Area ensemble. Lush and textured, rhythmic and hypnotic, slow burning and sprawling, epic and super rocking, these guys take that nineties sound we love so much and make it their own, the songs smolder and pulse, before exploding into dense roiling Godspeed / Mogwai style blowouts. Meandering prettiness, gives way to loping mathy minimalism, chiming guitars, simple spare drumming, looped melodies, a slow build to near metallic crush, the bass throbbing, the guitars tangled up in psychedelic squalls, the drums muscled and propulsive. The sound moody and minor key, cinematic and soundtracky, brooding and intense, heavy and emotional and harrowing. If you dig stuff like Mogwai, Aereogramme, Mono, Pelican, Grails, Explosions In The Sky, Magyar Posse, Red Sparowes, Snowblood, that Temporary Residence instrumental rock sound, that heavy post POST rock, well, Glaciers does it as good if not better than most of your favorites. Not sure how these guys slipped under our radar, since they're from right here in the Bay Area, but it's time to right that wrong, RIGHT NOW.
Pressed on gorgeous ice blue vinyl, comes with a download coupon, and yeah, it's probably limited too...
Awesome new 12" from one of our favorite seductive late night dance floor duos. What makes this 12" extra cool is that it's not just one song and throwaway unessential different versions of the same track, instead the record features two brand new new totally melt worthy tracks, the stand out and weirdest one being "Covered In Bugs" which is a demented paranoid sensual freak out, complete with some sexy screaming from Ida No, and a wonderfully stretched out and hypnotic instrumental ending that gets locked in a smoked out hazy trance. And that ending is kind of a preview for what comes next on the scene-stealing flipside of this 12". "Shine Like Gold & Diamonds" an instrumental track that really shows off how damn talented Johnny Jewel is, the track is like some amazing version of someone like Oneohtrix Point Never covering an instrumental passage from a classic Kraftwerk track. The next two tracks are also mostly instrumental versions of two of the songs from the first side, but totally given a different feel and sound. Beyond suave and seductive. At over 26 minutes of music, this is a total must have for Glass Candy fans, and even those who might not always love the the vocals, as the majority of this wax is about Johnny Jewel's ability to capture such a specific vibe and feeling with the beats and music he creates. So good!
Killer 4 way split of extreme outsider heaviness, most folks will probably grab this for the two new Gnaw Their Tongues tracks, but will probably end up digging the other three bands nearly as much.
But since GTT might be the reason most folks are here, let's talk about those tracks first. No huge departures, just more of that same, grim, apocalyptic, industrial, cinematic doom. "Crawl" is just that, a harrowing sonic crawl, with blown out distorted drums, heaving downtuned guitars, moaning miserable melodies, hysterical shrieks, shimmering strings, dense drones, a freaked out apocalyptic soundtrack to the death of mankind. "Paleness" is more of the same, but more metal, the main riff a blurred bit of undulating buzz, the vocals insane, the drums and industrial plod, long stretches of creepy ambience, the final half of the song a dense, thick, layered bit of blackened slow motion dronemusic, that is as weirdly hypnotic as it is hellish. Definitely worth it for fans, to get those two tracks, but there's much more metallic misery to be had.
The Arm And Sword Of A Bastard God (killer name!) are a Southern California doomkult, and traffic in plodding blackened doom, minimal and murky, big guitars, pounding drums, and some sick slowed down death metal style vocals. Halo Of The Sun contribute their own bit of UK style doom-ed blackness, a frantic bit of black metal laced with wild squiggly guitar harmonies, harsh vox, a definite Cradle Of Filth vibe, weirdly melodic, but way more lo-fi and underground, the track breaks down into a lurching doomy trudge, there are even some weird processed clean vocals, but it's soon back into the dense black grind and churn. Cool stuff for sure. Definitely be into hearing more from these guys.
And last up, from LA come The Slaughtered Lamb, who also do the black doom thing, their sound way more akin to Gnaw Their Tongues, super distorted, almost industrial, the guitars crumbling and nearly formless, the vocals dripping in effects, a filthy abject sonic crawl through broken glass and bloody entrails, leading to the 26 minute closer, an sprawling bit of epic and dismal black ambience, from hushed shimmer, to distorted thrum, to black buzz creep and back again.
All four bands impress, so buy it for the Gnaw Their Tongues, but stick around for the Slaughtered Lamb!
A very welcome return to form for Goldfrapp. Sometimes it's best to know what you do best and just take it to its highest level of excellence. And what Goldfrapp do best is create total modern day disco delights that flow with such ease and pleasure. We hadn't been too crazy about their last couple outings which found them trying to veer in a more folk and rock based sound, but Head First is making us fall in love with them all over again. Songs that take off high to the sky and float in clouds of smoke with such an infectious glow. The first time we played this in the store one of our customers nailed it, saying "It's like the best part of the '80s with better production." And for sure there is a very nice '80s feeling on Head First, with so many folks going back to the detached and cold side of '80s glory, it's really nice to hear the more colorful and pure fun side of '80s dance glory updated in such a wonderful way. Listening to Head First makes you feel like you are dancing in the ending credits of Fame, or amidst all sorts of beautiful people in a fantastical club with Xanadu being projected onto the sparkling dancefloor while Giorgio Moroder is on the decks, the confluence of all these sights and sounds sweeping you away. Welcome back Goldfrapp!
Now available on vinyl!
One of our favorite tracks from Flying Lotus's excellent Los Angeles record was the penultimate track "Testament" that featured a singer we imagined was discovered in some remote smoky opium den in Morocco. The voice felt ancient, a weezing whispering mixture of Jimmy Scott and Billie Holiday that we thought could have been a sample from an old dusty recording. Well, it turns out that voice is one Sumach Ecks (aka Gonjasufi), a San Diego based yoga instructor and one-time rapper and DJ who in a chance meeting with The Gaslamp Killer and Flying Lotus in Las Vegas, struck up a bond with the two producers and they started working together. A Sufi And A Killer is an amazing debut, a perfect fit between the dark off-kilter beats of Flying Lotus, Burial and King Midas Sound. But it also surprisingly displays a lot of vocal and musical range, moving into some rockier moments, tripping out on short interludes or sometimes delving down strange, mysterious but always interesting sonic tangents. Supposedly it took much longer to mix than it did to record, showing a dedication to detail that is truly rewarding to listen to. Highly recommended!
The Great Northwest combine hazily effected guitar textures, clean acoustic pick'n'strum, chiming toy box melodies, and sleepy head vocals into one lush, lullingly lovely listen. So inviting, you can't resist melting into these warm, drowsy songs. Each one is drenched with dreamy atmosphere, but never drifts too far from its central pop song structure. Grand and expansive. Whimsical and intimate with a gentle plaintiveness. We sense that the band draws ample inspiration from the Beatles and Pink Floyd as well as the unmistakably '70s west coast soft rock. Thus, they fits in splendidly alongside bands such as Radar Brothers, Sparklehorse or their labelmates Fredrik. Speaking of which, this was released on The Kora Records who treated us to the sounds of Fredrik and Stricken City a few months back. With such a wonderful recent one-two punch, we figured we'd better pay closer attention to this fine label who also put out the Aidan Baker Scalpel cd and a couple of Gregor Samsa albums a few years back. What a terrific track record so far! So yeah, we're backtrackin' a little bit, but figure even though this came out in 2008, it's still new to us and perhaps to you as well. Very recommended!
We made the debut full length from this Bay Area one woman dream drone outfit Record of the Week a while back, and ever since, have been waiting patiently for another slab of her beautifully dense ghostlike soundscapes. Since then, it seems like any one with a microphone and a delay pedal has decided to make some atmospheric vocal based drone record. And while some of those have indeed been quite good, few can come close to the utter abstract beauty of Liz Harris and her Grouper project.
When describing Grouper, the most mentioned comparisons seem to be Arvo Part and Morton Feldman, Part no doubt because of the vocal/choral aspect, and Feldman because this is definitely a sort of dreamlike minimalism, but Grouper is definitey something else entirely. A murky dreamworld of shimmering guitar and indistinct voices, swirling clouds of smeared melody, drifting whirls of warm thick delay, and dense layers of mumbly reverb. It's the sonic equivalent of wandering through some ghost town, almost everything obscured by thick fog, the streetlights, like distant lightning bugs, warm orange glows, staining the fog like a child's fingerpaints, even sound can barely travel so you exist sonically in a tiny muffled and muted cocoon, like listening to the world around you with ears full of wet cotton. Drifting disembodied vocals drenched in thick dubby FX are spread out paper thin into nearly transparent sheets of gauzy whir, like a chorale of ghosts, singing in some vast underground cavern. Within all of this murk and fog, lurk heartbreaking melodies, perfect little melancholy pop songs, but almost completely obscured from view, so instead of hearing songs, it's like barely remembering a little melody, or getting a tune stuck in your head only to have it fly away moments later, and struggling to remember just how that song went. A strangely emotional sonic trigger for lost memories, and indescribable landscapes, amorphous sounds, and a world both familar and completely alien.
Unlike her freenoise / dronerock / whatever contemporaries, who are happy to just make a big loud sound, or push a few buttons and start a low rumbling drone, with Grouper, it's more like the songs started out as proper songs, verses, choruses, sweet little melodies, gentle lilting vocals, but those songs were left in a corner, and allowed to get dusty, then set outside where they leaned for weeks, propped up against the side of the house, getting rained on, dappled with morning dew, they began to rust, and decay, weeds grew up around them, small animals made nests in them. Eventually, they were collected, and placed in a dusty old wagon, where they spent the majority of the journey, getting bumped and jostled, pieces breaking off, bits smearing into other bits, becoming less and less obviously songs, and more like the decayed husks of songs, still beautiful, and lovely in their own way, but lonely, and forgotten, until one day, they were all gathered up and placed in order, dusted off, polished up until they glow with some dim inner light, and thus they become Wide, and we close our eyes and listen...
We dug the recent Hanoi Janes 7" on Captured Tracks, two killer tracks of hooky jangly distorto garage pop, reverby and psychedelic, catchy as all get out and so crunchy and fuzzy. We've played that single about a million times since we got it and have been DYING for more. And we're happy to report that the full length is just as kick ass as the single, every track a warped chunk of jangly fuzz pop that could very well end up stuck in your head for ages. The songs on the full length seem a bit more, well, quirky for lack of a better word, the arrangements more herky jerky, the vocals more sing songy, the hooks weirder and thus somehow hookier, not obvious at all, wrapped around, weird stop / start bridges, bouncy warbly keyboards, twisted warped effects, the new wave vibe cranked way up which totally suits the sound. Listening to this, you'd never guess it was a one man band from Germany, the sound so fun and sunny, we were picturing a bunch of shaggy haired, West Coast slackers, which should give you more of an idea of what's going on here. Definitely a perfect fit for Captured Tracks, but on the sunshinier side of their roster, more Beets than Blank Dogs, more Gary War than Silk Flowers. And fans of Nice Face and Night Control, past aQ Records Of The Week, will probably dig this too, as it's similarly fragmented quirky and catchy noise pop, and is quickly becoming one of our new favorites.
This was a nice surprise, just showed up in the mail one day, and knocked our fucking socks off. These Richmond Virginia noisemakers kick out the face melting, head spinning jams, equal parts gnarled Voivod-ish math metal and grunge infused Amrep style noise rock, the guitars chug and howl and churn, the drums pound, the vocals are all over the place. From howled feral shriek, to punk yelp, to weirdly melodic croon, all wound up into killer, sprawling, epic SONGS. Catchy, tangly, dense, and so heavy.
From pounding midtempo dirges, all Jesus Lizard swagger and lurching Ved Buens Ende lope, to chugging nineties style post rock math metal, the Voivod-ness on tracks like "Lunatic Sun" are undeniable, but they're all tangled up with more modern noise rock like Young Widows or Daughters, a sound at once familiar and retro, but forward looking and utterly headbangable.
"Black Skeleton" opens with a flurry of tangled riffage and chaotic drumming, before locking into a stuttery groove, the vocals wound around the constantly shifting arrangement, and somehow, while all this weirdness and complexity is going on, it manages to be CRAZY catchy and super rocking.
"Godheads Full Of Candy", the 8+ minute centerpiece of the record, unfurls a weird, lumbering, almost Godflesh sounding industrial dirge, with some cool gnarled chug, flurries of double kick, clouds of tripped out processed guitar, eventually launching into some twisted, super mathy angularity, and for the rest of the track, flitting back and forth between the two, with some surprisingly melodic vocals, and yet another bunch of weirdly irresistible hooks.
The second half of the record, sounds weirdly way poppier than the first, to these ears, which is in no way a bad thing, hints of Bleach era Nirvana for sure, especially on record closer "Vivisection", as well as OLD Queens Of The Stoneage, but all twisted up with plenty of the aforementioned noise and math, the result a killer collection of convoluted pop flecked mathy and metallic, noise rock bliss, that we find ourselves unable to stop listening to...
Without much fanfare, The Helen Scarsdale Agency may have just released one of the best drone records of 2010 with this collaborative outing from Manu Holterbach and Julia Eckhardt, two relatively obscure sound artists from France and Belgium, respectively. The only other time we had come across anything from either of these artists was by way of an mini-album that Holterbach had released through the ill-fated Clouds Of Static label, showcasing an ingenious instrument that Holterbach built out of modified wine glasses whose stems had been hollowed out, so that the water in the glass harmonica could be raised or lowered, thus changing the instrument's pitch while playing the rims of those wine glasses. The resulting sounds were absolutely stunning constructions of tonebending arches of pure drone - just dissonant enough, but wholly beautiful nonetheless. Since then, he has begun the process of sifting through Eliane Radigue's archive, being responsible for the Triptych and Vice Versa discs which came out in 2009. Julia Eckhardt comes from more of an academic / classically trained tradition, and has performed in a number of avant-garde string ensembles over the past few years, including a stint or two performing with Phill Niblock. Those two titans of minimalism certainly loom large in this exceptional Do-Undo recording, with both Holterbach and Eckhardt strong enough in their own right to further those heavy-minded drone constructs with their own agenda.
For some time now, Eckhardt has been collecting recordings of her long-passages for droning viola performed exclusively in the key of G, and she had been presenting those recordings to various artists to repurpose those sounds as they see fit. Holterbach had met Eckhardt at a residency program in Belgium, the two hit it off, and Eckhardt gave him the initial recordings that went into constructing this album, which was completed through Holterbach's production and very impressive field recordings.
The slow repetition of a temple bell being struck opens the album, gradually accompanied by a tactile scrabbling produced from branches scraping together during a windstorm. Eckhardt's viola elegantly moves from the event horizon to the foreground in the form of a radiant if rasping sustained drone whose acceleration in density hits those headwrangling harmonics and overtones that Tony Conrad, Niblock, Yoshi Wada, LaMonte Young, and Charlemagne Palestine have promoted for a decade or four. Holterbach doesn't linger much upon a crescendo with this thickened drone mass, gradually pulling back upon those tones to reveal further field recordings of that aforementioned windstorm alongside a quiet buzz from a chorale of crickets. Shockingly beautiful and shockingly simple. And that's just the first half of the record.
The second piece grafts field recordings of various electrical phenomenon onto Eckhardt's viola drones, with Holterbach taking considerable care in collecting buzzes, hisses, pierced tones, vibrations, and rumbles which were already in the key of G. It's pretty fucking crazy to think that Holterbach is going out and collecting field recordings from power substations and Parisian subways, but only those which were tuned to G! Here, the composition is a bit more reductivist in the use of those sounds advancing into several glacial movements of sustained tonal vibration. Pure transcendence.
Fans of Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough, BJ Nilsen, Thomas Koner, Organum, Harry Bertoia, Brendan Murray, and any of those aforementioned proponents of 20th Century minimalism we mentioned earlier should definitely take note of this album.
Very nice letterpressed artwork, in an edition of ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
We don't list a lot of death metal, really. But when it's on Profound Lore, comes from Finland, sounds more like doom metal, super slow and sludgy, is obsessed with cult horror cinema of the '70s, and features the dude (Lasse "Leper Messiah" Pyykko) from Acid Witch, we do!* And recommend it, too. This here's the second album from Hooded Menace, eagerly awaited by many ever since their 2008 debut on the Razorback label (who also released the amazing Acid Witch album Witchtantic Hellucinations, as well as a couple of the prolific Pyykko's other projects, Claws and Vacant Coffin), and it's a doomful, deathly doozy.
Never Cross The Dead plods forth with such wonderfully wretched heaviness, there's an immediate "this is for me" or "this isn't" reaction you'll have, needless to say, we're in the former camp. Pyykko's crushing guitar tone is massive yet morose, sounding quite Cathedral-like its despairing doomishness, also possessed by some of the buzzing bite of that old school Swedish death metal Sunlight studios sound. We're talking about early Cathedral (the UK doom metal band), circa Forest Of Equilibrium, yeah!!! Which is akin to Sabbath at their most molasses-like, guitar parts warped under their own weight, weeping and creeping, leaden and lachrymose, over which Pyykko's guttural crypt-breath exhalations (aka singing) put the ill in vokill.
Hooded Menace revel in riffs that trudge like the midnight procession of a coven, or hopelessly heave (metaphoric, musical) shovelfuls of earth like a victim compelled to dig their own grave... though they'll also often break into a gallop, or bust out some soloing, with melodic old school metal fervor, clawing forth like undead attackers from that very same grave! And as you can guess from our purple prose in this review, atmospherics are important, and indeed there's a palpable eeriness over it all, if not utter seriousness, horror fans having a sense of humor y'know (by the way, we noticed Pyykko happens to be wearing a hoodie in the band photo under the digi tray, wonder if that's intentional, ha).
Never Cross The Dead concludes with a cover of Anton Garcia Abril's "Theme From Return Of The Evil Dead", a lot more metal than the version that originally appeared in that 1973 film, for sure! Return Of The Evil Dead, aka Return Of The Blind Dead, aka El Ataque de los Muertos Sin Ojos, being the second in the "Blind Dead" series of Spanish horror films directed by Amando de Ossorio, featuring evil, hooded, zombie-like Knights Templar risen from the dead to terrorize humanity, from which Hooded Menace take their name, and inspiration for more than a few songs, though they also celebrate the likes of Hammer Horror flicks ("The House Of Hammer"), Frankenstein ("Terror Castle"), and other good things. If you like horror, you like heaviness, you like metal, Hooded Menace is for you. And thus for fans of the following, too: Cathedral, Hellhammer, Incantation, Winter, Acid Witch, Skeletal Spectre, etc.
FYI, Profound Lore is doing a special sale deal with us on these, so they're $2 cheaper than normal (regular price would be $13.98) for the next two weeks!
*Heck even just two of those attributes will do, the doomy death of another Profound Lore act, Vasaeleth, also getting the nod from us a couple lists back as well, even though they're not Finnish and take a more serious, less cinematic approach to the occult than Hooded Menace and those other Razorback acts...
Performances from irr. app. (ext.) are rare spectacles, often sporting bizarre costumes and crumbling masks, staged rituals with mutated / mutilated stuffed animals, audio collages spiralling about found object mistreatment, outer-space / prog-tastic guitar explorations, ashen black takes on scatological humor, and a choice cover or two. Josephine & Elsewhere documents the results from three performances that irr. app. (ext.) foisted upon the Seattle public in 2009, at the request of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer (who have employed irr. app. (ext.) figurehead M.S. Waldron as a producer from time to time). What's quite unique about these recordings is that Waldron did not recruit from his reliable pool of California miscreants to assist in the performance, choosing to perform alone. In pairing everything down to a guitar, a ukulele, a drawerful of kitchen utensils, some effects pedals, and some backing tracks, Waldron has done quite well to achieve the same density of sonic eccentricities and surrealist intentions found on his ever impressive recorded output.
Many of the irr. app. (ext.) live 'standards' are present including Waldron's Tuvan-throated vocalisations accompanied by the motorized purr of a vibrator rubbing against his bald head, Waldron's diabolical growls and squeals in duet with a miniature scrabblings (which here really resemble the guitar freakouts on the Nurse With Wound debut Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table), and his uncanny use of field recordings - notably a man screaming his head off in erratic bursts which doesn't seem to phase the incessant chatter of birds. Very odd. While Waldron focuses mostly upon the abstract and expressive through these atypical sonic juxtapositions, the one cover he presents is something to witness: a clippedy-clopping cover of the Aphrodite's Child tune "The Four Horsemen." Limited to 200 copies only!
Seems like only yesterday we were listing a Jabaldav record... Well it was in fact the last list, but where that one was a Buddha Machine driven drift of dreamy dronemusic, Trostlosigkeit finds the Jabladav sound moving back to the Burzumic black buzz we love so much. And Burzumic is right, the first track begins as a sprawl of slow moving glacial buzz, laced with a haunting, very Filosefem sounding synthesizer melody, haunting and dreamy, but it's not long before Jabladav swing back into his Weakling meets Black Flag gnarled blackness. But the sound here is much more melodic, and blissful, lots of acoustic guitar woven into the proceedings, more midtempo then blast, and that synthesizer melody resurface throughout, giving the opening track a definite woozy melancholy vibe. "Loss" is similarly dark and dreary, like Jabladav got a depressive black metal makeover, spidery guitars give way to a muddy, murky dirgey doom-ed black buzz, more dreamy synth, the overall sound is way more lo-fi than usual, but it definitely suits the new mood and sound, weirdly pretty, but still grim and mysterious and heavy.
The title track is a sprawling 19 minute doomscape, all tangled glacial guitar, muted chug, hissed hellish vox, super spare drumming, lots of space, almost ambient really, peppered with bursts of insectoid riffing and buzzing black blasts, but always slipping back into that lugubrious doomdrone crawl, the guitars especially distorted, a weird warped bit of blackness that definitely ranks with the best we've heard from Jabaldav.
But if you though 19 minutes was epic and sprawling, prepare yourself for the record closer, "Reflection", clocking in at a hefty 33 minutes, no black metal to be found here, just some serene tranquil shimmering dronemusic, washed out and ethereal, a dreamlike drift, trancelike and meditative, and really quite lovely.
As always with Jabladav stuff, EXTREMELY LIMITED. This one to ONLY 50 COPIES, of which we got about half, housed in a DVD style case, with a full color cover, inside there's an elaborately folded insert, sealed with wax, the case also features a wax seal, the liner notes, case AND disc are all numbered and signed, grab one of these before they're gone, cuz these will blow out of here...
Ah, the glory that was NWOBHM! (Do we need to spell it out? The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, a wondrous musical phenomenon of the late '70s/early '80s, yeah, you know.) A couple lists back, in our review of the killer Wolfbane disc released by Shadow Kingdom, we mentioned there were several other cool recent NWOBHM reissues we'd be listing soon, here's one of 'em, also on Shadow Kingdom, an archival collection of material by this fairly obscure Birmingham band (named for a historical incident from the Boer War) who never made proper full-length record but nonetheless did put out some cult classic tracks, including a contribution to the Metal for Muthas II compilation. For some reason, that one's not here, but you do get 14 tracks taken from various eps and demos, etc., among them the three songs from Jameson Raid's 1979 debut single, starting off with the triumphant "Seven Days Of Splendour" (a positive story about a UFO encounter, which, for those of you who were paying attention to our Roxxcalibur review a while back, was one of the songs covered by that NWOBHM tribute band on their highly enjoyable album). The other two are the punky "It's A Crime" (which reminds us of Crushed Butler!), and "Catcher In The Rye" (that's right, inspired by the J.D. Salinger novel). While this band boogied hard for sure, they also apparently liked to have their songs be -about- something, it's thinking man's NWOBHM in a way, quite melodic too, and a bit garagey, really more '70s hard rock proto-metal than anything '80s metallic, harking back to early UFO and Thin Lizzy. Good stuff, and all the tracks here share these charms, some of the songs with sad and weary vibe derived perhaps from Lizzy, others rockin' out like greasy AC/DC...
Packaged with a thick cd booklet stuffed with lyrics, liner notes (including reminiscences from original band members), vintage photos, etc.
Monk Records continues their winning streak with these amazing late '20s recordings from Delta Blues legend Tommy Johnson. Johnson was the owner of a unique set of pipes capable of hitting high falsetto notes as well as reaching the gravelly depths you would expect from Mississippi's finest. At some points, Johnson's voice resembles that of Blind Willie McTell, and we wouldn't be surprised if his style may have had an impact on Devendra Banhart, whose falsettoed warbles bear more than a passing resemblance to Johnson's. Other songs feature a more restrained and down and out vocal approach. Johnson's take on the blues is quite unique, perhaps a bit more refined than some of the other Delta bluesmen, maybe a bit more composed and less fiery in its delivery. Strange then, that Johnson was not only known as an irrepressible boozehound, but also rumored to have dabbled in some dark matters with the devil.... something about selling his soul or something (and no, we're not confusing this with the story of Robert Johnson, to whom Tommy was not related.) The recording quality varies but is always great for the songs themselves, the crackling pulses on the second record in particular give you the impression that, yes, this is some OLD stuff from a world that no longer exists. Some essential listening here, and right up there with the best blues.
Happy, peppy, catchy, sugary, colorful and cute. Those are all words that have probably NEVER been used to describe Sigur Ros. Yet the band's front man, Jonsi, has proven to be a person of many sides and personas. Last year he and his boyfriend put out a really nice and subtly drone based soundscape record called Riceboy Sleeps, and now Jonsi is ready to really go and branch out on his own in another totally different direction.
Go is a total catchy, upbeat pop record. Filled with lush instrumentation and electronics, we hear the sunnier side to Jonsi's voice and songwriting. Much more akin to folks like Sufjan Stevens and The Postal Service. And after years of singing in a made up language, he sings in both his native tongue and English on this record, as it really does feel like he's not interested in making things seem mysterious but instead he's laying his heart on the line and making the kind of sweet sounding pop record he's probably been wanting to get out of his system for years, especially after spending so much time creating such epic and shoegazing sounds with Sigur Ros.
We had never even heard of Jooklo Duo until recently. Even though they have oodles of records and cd-r's out, many of them on their own Troglosound imprint. No use kicking ourselves, all we can do is dig in and catch up, which we're doing big time. Not only do we have this kick ass, super limited tour only cd-r, available only at shows on their current US tour OR from aQuarius, nowhere else, we're copresenting their show at Cafe Du Nord on April 21st (more on that elsewhere on this week's list), we're also hosting a Jooklo Duo instore on April 20th (also more about that elsewhere on this list). So by all means, come to the instore, go to the Du Nord show, and buy one of these cd-r's before they're gone, you won't regret it.
So for those of you, like us, who are relatively new to the magic of the Jooklo Duo, are the Italian duo of Virginia Genta on sax, flute and voice, and David Vanzan on drums and percussion, they're sort of free jazz, but also just sort of spaced out avant improv, as at home jamming with Burnt Hills or No Neck as they are on a jazz bill, maybe more so. They incorporate all sort of haunting vocals and chants, into their constantly shifting skittery improvised mystical sound explorations. Eastern melodies, Gamelan sounds, it's free, and improvised, but also mystical, occultic, spiritual, the sound of revolutionary sixties free music, channeled through the spirit of today.
On High, available only at aQ and at shows, the duo are on fire, maybe one of their most intense recordings ever, the sax is blown out, in the red, fierce and fiery, the drums, wild and octopoidal, the two instruments, dancing around each other, frenzied and frantic, and about as heavy as free music gets, they're heavily influenced by Coltrane and Ayler and Cherry and Coleman, and it's easy to hear that on High, it's like post post POST bop, the sax is a lethal weapon, the drums laying down suppressive fire, a totally transcendent, epic, mind blowing, next level, free jazz blowout. WAY recommended, as are the upcoming shows.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. We got about half, you can only get them here at aQ, or at the shows on this tour, they're packaged in super swank paste on cardstock sleeves, with a super striking miniature full color version of the SF show poster inside. For more on the tour, the SF show, the other bands playing, the cd-r, and the Jooklo Duo in general, go here: http://troglobloger.blogspot.com
We're always so pleasantly pleased to receive music from and by our mailorder customers from around the globe! K is from Portugal. In case you couldn't tell from the album's title, this is some intensely ominous music. Rolling swells of dank guitar generated drones dominate the seven tracks. Industrial grindings and IDM-esque rhythmic sequences occasionally emerge from the deep smothering roar. Chill-inducing and apocalyptic.
It's on kick ass Japanese reissue label EM. It's a cd reissue of a 1978 Indian private press lp of far out and freaky Indian psychedelic funk. And it RULES! Really what else do you need to know?
One of our favorite EM releases in a while, every time we play this people flip out and need to figure out what the heck it is. And what it is, is a fantastical, dizzying collection of wild percussion, fluttery flutes, reverbed guitar jangle, chaotic drumming, heavy fuzzy bass, sexy grooves, wheezing organs, surf guitar twang, skronky horns, awesomely twisted Moogs, all wound up into totally off the hook seventies Indian party music, lots of influences from the US, from the Middle East, from Latin America, Eastern melodies wind around more traditional rock and pop, Indian folk music gets tweaked and twisted, old fashioned Indian pop gets a Joe Meek style kitchen sink makeover, guitars are distorted, processed, reverbed, melodies are playful and sunshiney one second, murky and mysterious the next, the sounds are festive and funky and so fun, definitely reminiscent of Dengue Fever's Cambodian pop, of some of the Sublime Frequencies collections, but somehow, more freaky and far out and psychedelic. We seriously can't stop listening to this. One of our favorite reissues this year so far...
Along with folks like J. Lesser and Matmos, Kid 606 has been one of the key figures in bringing the world of techno and electronica to a more punk minded listenership. And over the years the music of Kid 606 has taken many twists and turns, never one to shy from diversity and eclecticism he's put out everything from hardcore four on the floor techno to drill n' bass to ambient blissed out dreamscapes.
We have to admit we haven't always been the biggest fans of all his releases, but he's hit us with enough moments of total musical bliss and magic that we make sure to at least check out every new release he puts out. And while we weren't in love with the last few, we are beyond BLOWN AWAY with what he's created on this deliciously smart-ass-titled new outing. In fact there is something to be said for how smart ass the title and back cover artwork on this record is, because for as clever and mindfucking as Kid 606 can be, it's sometimes the problem with his music. Fortunately he's gotten the snarkiness out of his system via the non musical aspects of this record, and allowed the sounds within to just totally flourish in immaculately crafted, wide ranging electronic sounds.
The albums opener, is almost like some amazing lost kosmiche kraut gem, tones that are so rich, patient and inviting. We were immediately reminded of some of our favorite Kid 606 releases from the past that get overlooked as they show off the non techno side of his musical leanings and are more about creating rich atmospheres with true emotion. Records like The Soccer Girl EP, PS I Love You, PS I Love Me, and the utterly beautiful Resilience. As the record unfolds, Kid 606 still shows that he can draw from a wide range of electronic palettes but it never veers into techno land, instead it reminds us of those glorious days when IDM actually meant something. Those records by Oval, Aphex Twin, Matmos, Autechre, that made so many of us embrace a form of music we had for so long no relationship with.
But this isn't just some kind of IDM rehash, Kid 606 also shows that he can soar, drone and bliss out with the best of them. As there are so many amazing moments on this record that you could think was coming from AQ favorites like Emeralds, Tim Hecker or Oneohtrix Point Never. He also works in some influences of some of our favorite 20th century minimalist composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich, especially on one of the album's hypnotizing standout tracks "Periled Emu God". And fear not, for those who like a bit of dissonance with their electronica, the Kid still interweaves some more challenging sounds into these tracks, yet manages to do so in a way that creates something larger and organic instead of just being difficult for the sake of being difficult. While there are brief moments with an almost Mego vibe (mostly just on the album's closer) the record while touching on many shades of electronica has an overall unique viewpoint that just sound so so perfect. This is the kind of electronica we haven't been able to find lately. Sure we love dubstep, space disco and drone, but we've been craving the kind of innovation and nuanced composition that so many of our favorite electronic albums of a prior age intoxicated us with. Somehow channeling both the best of electronica's past and creating a vision of its future at the same time, Kid 606 has proven that someone who has created something you love in the past, is surely capable of doing it again. Totally stunning!
Oof. Already out of print from Arbor, but we've got as many of these as we could!
It makes perfect sense that a selection of the early experiments from Kowalsky's ongoing collection of Tape Chants would end up as a cassette release. More of a method of working than a complete body of work, the Tape Chants material involves a bunch of drones, tones, and clustered notes that are played back on an arsenal of handheld cassette decks in any given performance space. The spiralling web of crossed frequencies and compacted echo patterns always make for one hell of a good performance, and they made for a pretty damn good album as well, like the one Kowalsky released on Kranky in 2009. This tape is a collection (as the title suggests) of his earliest manifestations of his Tape Chants, selected by Darwinsbitch. For the most part, Kowalsky presents grey smears of pedal driven feedback tones and electrical sinewave drones that are caught in loop patterns and abraded with some occasional distortion (possibly an effect, possibly an artifact of overdriven 4-track compression). There's one extract on the first side that is more percussive in nature, with Kowalsky gently tapping out pseudo-Gamelan rhythms on various bells, gongs, and resonant metals. Limited to 125, and as we mentioned already out of print.
Memphis blues legend Furry Lewis was one of the first of the original bluesmen to reach wider recognition with modern audiences, thanks in part to, well, not dying first of all, and secondly, for his decision to come out of retirement in the '60s and share his tunes with a new generation, including stints opening for the Stones and playing on the Tonight Show.
The songs collected here are from Furry's initial run, with recording dates spanning 1927-1928. The first session, recorded in Chicago, features some additional musicians providing guitar and mandolin to Furry's powerful vocals. These songs are cool, slow but steady, and kind of easy going. It basically sounds like a bunch of guys hanging out just playing for the fun of it, and it's really likable stuff. But things take a darker, and frankly, way better turn when Lewis goes at it alone. Thankfully, these songs make up the bulk of this collection. Songs like "Rock Island Blues" move with a sinister vibe, while "Jelly Roll" rides at a nice lazy pace. Lewis also offers his take on classics like "Stack O'Lee" and "John Henry", all featuring some impressive guitar work and a classic blues drawl. Then you have songs like "Furry's Blues", with such timeless themes as killing your woman and leaving home in the lyrics. Classic stuff for sure, this nice looking double lp is presented in Monk's always striking packaging and comes highly recommended.
"The spookiest work I've ever done," states Francisco Lopez. His work very rarely embodies much in the way of emotional resonance, instead there's more often than not a manipulation of field recordings into stoic monuments of grey drone reflecting the physicality of sound. If there is a 'coldness' to his work, it's usually by way of his rather dry, often disembodied aesthetics which draw heavily from the conceptual models of musique concrete and acousmatic musics. So, it's quite unusual for Lopez to arrive (intentionally or otherwise) at this bleak recording on this isolationist label with this title (Amarok is the Inuit name of a monstrous wolf who destroys anyone foolish enough to hunt alone at night). The album is a single 64 minute piece, that like many a Lopez production begins in near silence for about two minutes; but slowly the first of three major movements begins through a slow acceleration of low-end rumblings that coalesce into an aerated growling that builds out of wind-whipped drones only to fade to black after a rather tense 18 minutes or so. The rest of the album is much quieter affair with the clatter of ice, metal, and distant voice hung in an evocatively black space of Lustmord / Koner shadow. A Promethean plod of slowly churning rhythmic subsonics introduces the slow finale of Amarok with distant moans and howls that could be human or lupine defaced by frigid Arctic winds. It's certainly spooky, and fortunately, Lopez is deft enough of a composer to avoid some of the ham-fisted theatrics that tend in many of the lesser dark ambient / isolationist practitioners. Recommended, for sure!
