We only just discovered one man UK electronica outfit Actress a few weeks ago, when we reviewed their (his) record Splazsh, and we flipped, proclaiming it electronic record of the year, describing it as "a dizzyingly varied and truly curious collection of post techno minimal skitterscapes, abstract rhythmic mystery, and playful electronic weirdness, looping and repetitive and hypnotic, truncated vocals worked into strange circular figures, and then laced over muted thumps and shuffling laid back pulses, fields of glitch and squelch rain down on glimmering fields of chiming melody and twisted Pop Ambience."
So of course we immediately tracked down the first Actress records, and goddamn if it's not just as good. Another tripped out assemblage of fucked up sounds and fractured beats, so weird and wonderful, in some ways we wonder how this stuff ever appealed to regular dance music / e-music folks at all, hell, maybe it didn't, or maybe we're not giving folks enough credit. Be damn difficult to dance to this stuff, but if you're in the market for some head nodding, psychedelic, warped electronic ear candy, then this is for YOU.
Right from the start, you can tell this is not a normal electronica record, with muted muddied loops swirling and whirling beneath mechanical skitter, and strange chopped up voices, constantly shifting, but never really going anywhere, but why would you want it to? It's a heady tranced out weirdo loopscape. Which leads directly into the appropriately titled "Hazylude" which is indeed a hazy blissed out dronedrift interlude, that segues into "Doggin'", a warbly, skitter-laced bit of woozy electronic ambience, sounding like the tape is warped, and the drum machine is malfunctioning, but it's all wrapped in a gauzy big of shimmer and whir, making it hypnotic and dreamlike as well as twisted and tweaked.
There's no real way to describe Actress except by going song by song, there is a thread that connects all the various sounds, but we're not sure exactly what it is, and even if we did know, not sure we could describe it. Probably better to just go with it, get lost, let the sounds push and pull, drag you wherever they may, whether it's some loping locked groove exotica, or some beep-click Rater-Noton style minimalism, or warm washed out hazy heroin house, or squelchy avant electro, or even blurred prismatic outsider IDM, it's all gorgeously twisted, and like Splazsh, we can't seem to get enough.
Now we have to figure out what year this came out originally so we can retroactively proclaim this the electronic record of whatever-that-year-was. Can't wait for next year now...
Singapore's The Observatory totally blew us away with last year's Dark Folke record, their fantastic debut, a difficult to describe sonic concoction of soft psychedelia, lush, dark mysterious free folk, all woven from synths and vocal harmonies and angular guitars and theremins, spare and minimal, slipping from slowcore dirge to psychrock freakout to dreampop bliss and back again, often in the same song...
So we were excited to discover that two of the folks from The Observatory had another band, whose record was coming out on Utech, and we only later discovered that it was a sort of concept record about one of our favorite places we've never been, Tiger Balm Garden, a decrepit former amusement park in Asia, that is filled with strange statues, and mysterious figures, and much of it is not entirely kid friendly, exhibits displaying various characters from Chinese folkore, including concepts such as death and hell, rendered in gory and creepy detail. A friend of ours visited when she was in Asia, and it seemed like the most surreal place on earth, due in part to its crumbling decay, but beyond that, what a strange and wondrous place!
So here, Arcn Templ, aka Leslie and Vivian from The Observatory, have composed a suite of songs, musical memories of visiting this strange land of demons and warriors and animals and mythical creatures, as children, reflecting how those memories affected them, fond memories, hazy and indistinct, laced with a certain amount of menace, lurking right below the surface. And these songs are in fact like that, mysterious hazy memories rendered in sound, gorgeous minimal folkscapes, acoustic guitars laced over whirring organs, spidery guitars unfurling minor key melodies, harmonica, minimal percussion, ringing chimes, bell like tones, a sort of doom pop, slowcore, dreamfolk, each track a faded snapshot, of not just this strange place, but Leslie and Vivian's fleeting place in it. Barring the occasional burst of cacophonous crunch, for the most part, Emanations Of A New World is a tranquil trip back in time, the sounds tempered by the years, giving everything a gauzy vibe, the sounds softly surreal, and so so lovely. Folks who dug The Observatory record should definitely check this out, as well as anyone into dark moody folk flecked doom-ed minimal pop music... And mark our words, someday we'll make it to Tiger Balm Garden to experience it for ourselves, but until then, we're happy viewing it through the mysterious musical memories of Arcn Templ...
What a long strange trip it's been for Ariel Pink. Going from total outsider weirdo pop secret to the man pretty much single handedly responsible for inspiring a legion of like minded left-field pop peddlers like Kurt Vile, John Maus, Gary War, Blank Dogs, Wavves, Ducktails, Brian Glaze, Night Control, Neon Indian, and on and on.
Now finally, after all these years, AP's finally enjoying the respect and attention he deserves, and he's been rewarded with his first big time and widely distributed release, on 4AD, of all labels!! Anyone who has seen him and The Haunted Graffiti play lately know that while there is still a total weird and warbly vibe to their sound, they are a much more song based outfit, and way more straightforward than their way more fractured and fucked up earlier sound. Not to fear though, Before Today is not some glossy makeover of the Ariel Pink we all know and love, but it is for sure the most coherent, produced and focused album he's created. From glam-like '70s rockers, to yacht rock on acid, to super colorful fuzzy pop bliss, this is a record that explores so many different sonic territories.
It's also, by far, the 'breeziest' record he's made, the sounds often has us feeling like we're swirling in pink tinged clouds while a '70s soft-rock radio soundtrack bleeds into something a bit more subversive, and all the while, candy coated cereal comes raining down from the skies. AP's been at it for about a decade now, way beyond the lifespan of most 'bands', carving out his completely singular idiosyncratic voice, and it really makes sense, that more and more people are embracing his twisted sound, and showering him with the love and praise he's been getting from folks like us for years...
(By the way, there is vinyl of this too, we ran out and when we tried to restock, the label was temporarily out... might have something to do with the fact that one of the lps we did get, turned out to have a Christina Aguilera record inside it, not the AP one! Almost seems like something AP would do on purpose... we'll keep you posted.)
Some of us here whose proclivities gravitate towards rare psych and folk have been bemoaning the recent flurry of "buried treasures" and "lost classics". It seems a day does not go by without a new release or re-issue of a forgotten or recently discovered artist rescued from obscurity passing before our attentive eyes and drooling mouths. Sometimes the "lost classic" status is not always deserved (not everything made in the sixties and seventies that didn't receive any attention is noteworthy, somethings are better off staying buried or lost), but it's sure keeping the reissue labels and revisionist musicologists busy as they map out an ever-growing expanse of the spheres of influence on music today. It's hard to keep up and also pay equal attention to all the great music that is being made right now. This makes us very happy on the one hand that amazing music continues to be discovered but it also drives us crazy us to see our paychecks quickly dwindling every week. Why just in the past month, we've seen re-issues from Bridget St. John, Kay Hoffman, John Jacob Niles, Kaleidoscope and Fairfield Parlour (all pretty amazing!) among others. And now on our plate are these previously unreleased home recordings of German underground folk singer, Sibylle Baier. We must admit when we first heard this, we suspected fraud. These recordings sound almost too contemporary to have been made in the early seventies. But after doing a little research, we found out this is no fraud. These intimate recordings fully deserve their "buried treasure" status, for whatever that's worth at this point. Baier, only previously known for a song on an early Wim Wenders film soundtrack, recorded these songs in her home from 1970-73 after a "spirit-renewing" trip through the Swiss Alps. She has the warm Sunday jam and tea voice reminiscent of Vashti Bunyan, but with the more spare guitar compositions and melancholy vocal delivery of someone like Chan Marshall. In fact, we sort of wish the new Cat Power or Beth Orton records were this good! Like Bunyan, Baier shunned what could have been a successful career in order to raise a family and it's because of her son, Robby, that these recordings are being heard at all. But unlike Bunyan, these songs don't derive from a back to nature hippie-folk aesthetic, but rather they come from a more delicate fragility where life's beauty and despair are interwoven with the tiny details of daily life. Beautiful! Totally recommended for seventies folk enthusiasts as well as fans of contemporary singer/song-writers.
Another new one from the always intriguing Utech label. This disc is a collaboration betwixt Marcia Bassett (of Hotogisu and Zaimph fame) and Jenny Graf of Metalux, two somewhat noisy gals who together construct a strangely compelling soundworld here, part frightened folk, part disturbing drone... The harrowing journey begins with "Zero As Sky", seventeen minutes that start with a dawning drone, eventually revealing gently layered and looped vocals... a girl's voice, singing something that sounds ancient and folky, but buried amidst a static-y keening buzz, and sudden reverberating sound effects. With severe bursts of distortion in conjunction with what sounds like Wicker Man chant and warble, this whole whispery wind tunnel of a track would be a shivery late night listen. Could be the electric moaning of malevolent spirits. Even the part in the middle that makes us think of a haunted video arcade enhances the weird mood! Just a bit spooky, yeah. And at its heaviest, competition for Urthona and Harvestman.
If that lengthy piece was akin to Bassett and Graf taking us for scary walk in the dark woods (with arcade detour), then the next is more like they're singing to us 'round the campfire. "Black Waters Glow" is a short(er) interlude, only six and half minutes, wherein the drones die down and the vocals rise up, quietly still, with gentle guitar slowly stalking along. The track is this disc's most melodic, sounding like a witchier Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, maybe. Or old timey Brit folk filtered through floorcore FX. Or even some strange Devendra Banhart/Richard Youngs hybrid.
That's followed by the disc's third and final track, the 15 minutes of "Phantasmagorical Mapping", another miasma of distorted drones and disembodied drifting vocals, with the addition, upon occasion, of some mechanical rhythms, gone a bit haywire... Again, messily mesmeric. Bassett and Graf have done unique good work here, and despite doubts about whether or not our sanity can stand it, we hope they continue to collaborate!
LIMITED TO 500 copies! Nice, slim, oversized Utech-style sleeve.
Sometimes the stars just align so perfectly. The first time we got to hear Beach Fossils it was a breezy and sunny afternoon. The front door was wide open, the wind gently blowing through the trees outside, and the songs we were hearing couldn't have provided a more perfect soundtrack. Beach Fossils is a one man band, and there definitely seem to be legions of those these days. But damn, if folks can keep creating songs as good as these alone in their bedrooms, then we say who needs a full band! Beach Fossils stands out from so much of the recent lo-fi indie garage pop, being not so much about feedback and distortion and low fidelity. Instead, it's the amazing songs on the record that grab your attention. Lazy day, dazed & glazed pop gems that remind us of a wonderful sound situated perfectly betwixt Kurt Vile and Pavement.
There is something so authentic and fresh sounding in Beach Fossils' music. It compels us to let go and immediately give in to the soft breezes that seem to accompany the soaring washed out melodies on display here. Major contender for pop record of the year perhaps, and without a doubt another PERFECT summer album!
A new double disc of crushing slow motion space doom from UK doomlords BONG, and be warned, this thing is limited to maybe 100 copies, we tried to order half of those and ended up with more like a dozen. So normally we would highlight this, make a huge deal about it, and sell a ton, cuz this is exactly the format required to fully enjoy the epic glacial cosmic drift of Bong, 2 discs, 3 songs, an epic multi part blackened expanse of slowly unfurling low end doomdronesludge, spaced out and druggy, single riffs spread out to forever, meditative, mesmerizing, a sound somewhere between Electric Wizard, Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg and Bohren. Two originals on disc one, and the whole of disc two is filled up with an epic, ultra minimal cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", a surprisingly restrained, deep, dark, smoldering space rock slow jam, total late night chill out come down dream doom for sure.
So we won't make a big deal out of it, but grab one of these while you can, they're probably already out of print which means we most likely won't be able to get more...
Latest slab of sonic wonder and weirdness from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one from a duo called Chugga, a name that probably doesn't ring a bell, but most folks will probably know their partner in retro-sonic crime, musician/sound artist Terre Thaemlitz, the three have cobbled together this fuzzy, buzzy, old school assemblage of seventies disco groove, synthfunk, drug dub exotica, and while it most definitely sounds dated (it was recorded in the nineties after all), it's MEANT to, but real dated, as in seventies, not nineties, and it sounds pretty good alongside other contemporary retro groovers like Zomby, Martyn, etc.
Thick rumbling subsonic bass, woozy porno wah guitar, liquid basslines, simple stripped down drums, spaced out sci fi synths, cheesy electronic percussion, all woven into super rad instrumental grooves, some new wave-y and propulsive, others laid back and sexy and sultry, still others ethereal and skeletal, clouds of tangled melodies drift over warm low end rumbles, Latin percussion wrapped around lazy unfurling melodies, orchestral disco stabs, strings, organs, the songs slipping from lush and over the top, big production, to spaced out and sinister, spare midnight grooves. Killer old school dancefloor destruction for sure.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!
For the debut release of Kip Ulhorn's (of Cloudland Canyon) new label, Intercoastal Artists, two of our faves, Citay and Cloudland Canyon, both pay tribute to one of their seminal but less obvious influences, Galaxie 500, with two amazing interpretations.
Citay's take on "Tugboat" (also featured on their last full length, Dream Get Together) begins with what is perhaps a straight forward take until the end, where Citay's baroque dual guitar lines recast the warm glowing evocative sheen of the original into a whole new majestic light.
Cloudland Canyon's lovingly lysergic version of "Temperature's Rising" begins with what sounds like a Mellotron line from another song before the familiarity of the song abruptly jumps in and takes off. Being one of Galaxie 500's faster songs, the cover serves Cloudland Canyon well as a single, that is both exploratory and concise, allowing just enough room to allow some hypno-psych flourishes, but keeping the satisfaction of a good pop song well intact.
Very limited!!! We're not sure we'll be able to get more after we run out, so act fast. Each 7" includes a uniquely designed sleeve - no two are exactly alike. Look out for future 7" releases on this label from Pocahaunted/ Eden Express, Sun Circle, and The Alps!
If the earthy dusk beauty of Ms Cogan's most recent full length The Quarry charmed your ears, you won't want to miss this special treat... and don't dilly dally, this limited edition cassette is sure to be gone in a flash. Only 50 copies were made, and we got a scant five from the lady herself! So, once they're gone, it's most likely that'll be it.
Although a boggy mire sounds like a rather unpleasant place to be, we think it might not be so bad with Ora by our side. She exudes a quiet strength and warm presence both in person and on record. Here, she covers the songs of legendary country, folk and blues artists Elizabeth Cotten, Dock Boggs, Bonnie Raitt, Irma Thomas, Don Gibson and Skip Spence, as well as more recent numbers by Sonic Youth and Rio En Medio, and tucks in a couple of old traditionals too. Lovely stuff!
It's always a good day when we hear another new archival Phil Cohran and The Artistic Heritage Ensemble release. Not sure how much material is still out there to be released, but please keep it coming! Issued for the first time, this killer live recording from 1968 is one of his most intense, cosmic and out ensemble pieces to date, getting into some serious Sun Ra interstellar spiritual energy territory, as they delve into deep themes of the legacy of slavery, the atom bomb and the end of creation. Woah. The opener, "Motherless Child", sung by members of The Spencer Jackson Family, is slow and sorrowful, with just voice and a low rumbling of horns and drums that cascade around the singers instead of supporting them melodically, which leads into "The Creation of The Beast", an elephantine procession that revels in a sort of triumphant malevolence of marching brass and swirling leering horns. "The Window" is the most sedate of the five pieces, featuring a sparse but ominous frankophone riff that gradually interweaves with lilting horn motifs, while the longest and final track, "Armageddon" delves full throttle into the powers of the ensemble with battling and frenzied horns in a culminating fury of sound and vision that is as majestic as it is searing. Magnificent!
"Life Magazine" stood as one of the big hits from Cold Cave's incredible darkened synth-pop album Love Comes Close from 2009. With its squelchy synth lines and monomaniacal drum machines, this was also the song that curiously enough, appeared on a Radio Shack commercial shortly after the release of the record. Here, Cold Cave gets remixed by Arthur Baker, Optimo, Pantha Du Prince, and Prurient. The Arthur Baker connection is quite a nice coup for the band, as Baker was the producer who amped up many a New Order track throughout the '80s certainly influencing Cold Cave's retrogarde sound. Baker's remix stays true to the original, maintaining that amazing synth melody and the vocals from Jennifer Clavin. Optimo strips everything except for the vocals on this prickly techno workout. It's hard to pick much out from the Pantha Du Prince remix with his signature bells sliding over the post-Kompakt shuffling drum programs. Prurient has been moonlighting in Cold Cave's live ensemble and collaborated with Cold Cave on the awesomely bleak Stars Explode LP. This is not the sheer hellish noise facade of Prurient, but rather the one who must still be obsessed with Cold Cave's gnarled electronics on Painted Nails and Cremations. A dour two-note melody and mid-tempo galloping drum machine settle above a seabed of distorted gristle and Ms. Clavin's vocals. Gotta say that the Prurient and Arthur Baker mixes, as opposing as they can be, are the reasons to pick this up! Comes with a download card.
One of four new Root Strata cassettes we got in this week, William Fowler Collins debut release for the label is easily the darkest of 'em all. Trading in his electric guitar for a wholly different instrument, the shruti box (a hand-pumped acoustic drone instrument), Collins nevertheless manages to create a chillingly holistic composition that surges and delves into otherworldly realms while keeping the filtered feedback and power drones of his previous works intact. We have been huge fans of his work since his first release Western Violence and Brief Sensuality, and fans of his most recent dark desert doom epic Perdition Hill Radio released on Type last year will definitely need to get this. "Part I" has more of a cosmic upward momentum as the sped-up pulsations of the instrument seem to shimmer and float toward the sun. It's not necessarily heavenly as the composition seems to lose all air as it simmers and takes on more heat. On "Part II" however, things take a more earthbound turn. The drones grow thicker and more wooly, ringing with denser tones and urgent almost molten tonal pulses and sawtoothlike sparks of white noise. We can't help but think of Icarus, before and after his fall. A truly doomed epic. Limited to 100 copies. It'll be gone before you know it, so don't hesitate!
Doomhounds, arise from ye slumbers! The Shadow Kingdom label knows what you want, and have dug up yet another dismal dirge-like debut for your delight. Right on the spine it proudly says "English Doom" and indeed Crowned In Earth hail from that green and pleasant land, home of course to thee originators of doom metal, Black Sabbath. And so naturally Crowned In Earth echo Sabbath in spots, that's no surprise, most practitioners of the form do to some degree, from wherever they may come. But apart from Sabbath, the English Doom band this act most resembles is (early) Cathedral, especially on the disc's longest (by a smidge) track, "Miles I Walk", which clocks in at 8:59. Songs need to be that long when played with such solemn majesty (and at such molasses-like speeds). Crowned In Earth keep to a slow and plodding pace, mostly, though upon occasion they break, if not into a NWOBHM-ish gallop, at least into a spirited trot. Their sludgy but swinging riffs are adorned with singsongy vocal chant, delivered cleanly and nigh melodically, in a deep and phlegmy voice, which is one reason in particular for the Cathedral comparison. Again, we'll specify early Cathedral, circa the Soul Sacrifice ep, to get really precise. Along with the doleful guitars, the occasional touch of organ adds an extra measure of sombre regality, and brings up comparisons also to another English ensemble of doom, The Wounded Kings. While this breaks no new ground, the earth they're crowned in being far from freshly dug, this should appeal to fans of trad doom, especially Cathedral, and Reverend Bizarre, who we didn't mention already but are definitely hearing here.
By the way, it turns out that CoE are almost entirely a one-man band (but not the sort that, you know, performs that way, busking on subway platforms or whatever). Englishman Kevin Lawry, whom you'll see wandering in front of a castle with his girlfriend (?) in the cd photos, wrote all the music and lyrics, and performs the vocal, guitar, bass, and organ parts. He did however recruit a Yank to play the drums (well, both Black Sabbath and Cathedral did that too): Darin McCloskey, from Pale Divine, Falcon, and Sinister Realm. But otherwise it's all Lawry's show, and while maybe we think he could have used some help with the graphic design, he should be commended for being sooooo dooooomy all by himself. Hmm, heck, maybe that helps!
So cool! And cold wavey. A wonderfully produced piece of vinyl to replace those crappy downloads which have been bouncing around the internet for the past five or six years. Dark Day was the project spearheaded by R.L. Crutchfield, who first worked with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori in the earliest incarnation of the seminal No Wave band DNA in the mid '70s. By 1979, Crutchfield was striking out on his own as Dark Day; and at first, this band was an intentional reversal of roles within the trad-rock band with two women playing guitars and drums and a man behind the keyboards. The ladies for that incarnation were Nancy Arlen of Mars and Nina Canal of Ut; and they managed a few gigs and one hell of a great single - "Hands In The Dark" - which appeared many years later on a Soul Jazz No Wave compilation and has been covered spectacularly by the Chromatics. Canal and Arlen weren't terribly interested in continuing in the project, leaving Crutchfield to find likeminded folks with whom to work. The second (and last) Dark Day record was recorded in 1982, with Crutchfield going into the studio with a bunch of cheap electronics and toy synthesizers with Bill Sack to flesh out the accompaniments on similar instruments. Their interlocking arpeggiations are punctuated with blooping electronics that are equal parts Trio and Kraftwerk with an underlying dread to the spiralling songs that detoured from Kraftwerk's utopian vision of man-machine hybrids and down a paranoid vision of man being at the mercy of his machines, no matter how innocent their intent. Dark Day's songs are insistent and catchy despite their utterly simple structures. "Metal Benders" and "Danger / Dance" are probably the closest thing to being 'hits' on the album as weird / anti-romantic variations of Young Marble Giants with whip crack rhythms and spectral pre-X-Files electronic whistling melodies. Coming out of the NYC No Wave scene helped craft Dark Day into a something other than neo-Romantic post-punk outfit with electronics. This was a wholly unique band, who never got the attention that many of their contemporaries. Kudos to Dark Entries once again on a splendid reissue!
A beautiful document from last year's On Land festival, the Root Strata curated gathering of artists and sound artists and musicians. This particular set featured gorgeous home solarized super-8 film shot by John Davis throughout Northern California, while Davis and Maxwell Croy, one half of the duo that runs Root Strata, created their own complimentary soundtrack, a soft hazy dronescape of bowed strings, layered vibrations and hushed, barely-there melodies.
The images are really quite evocative, all washed out and softly distorted, like home movies, they have that sort of faded memory feeling, images of a lost time, and the solarizing process only further enhances that element, the slow shifting landscapes peppered with solar flares, deep red glows, the colors super saturated, flowers become miniature suns, fields of grass look like stained glass, or fields of green stars, all manner of foliage becomes more about texture and color, just softly swaying stretches of hazy burnt out shades of soft white, deep yellow, warm browns...
And the music perfect suits the images, tranquil and impressionistic, long tones underpin soft shards of melody, like a muted raga, the buzz blurred and smoothed out into gauzy streaks of sound, a koto gives the music a distinctly Eastern vibe, the tones like swells on a sonic sea, meditative and mesmerizing.
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! Housed in a cool oversized hand silkscreened jacket, with a printed insert and a strange accordion like inner dvd-sleeve.
One of the scary dudes from Watain poses for this month's cover, complete with dripping blood, foaming dry ice goblet, skulls, candles, facepaint, and one weird contact lens. A good cover subject for sure! Inside, also: Cannibal Corpse, Nachtmystium, Melvins, Enslaved, Enforcer, Karma To Burn, Rosetta, Across Tundras, Yakuza, and plenty more. Including, Type O Negative's Bloody Kisses album entering into the Decibel Hall Of Fame. Pete Steele, R.I.P.
As many of our favorite records have demonstrated, music is where you find it, anywhere, and more often than not, the most amazing sounds are waiting to be found where one might not always look. In the past we've had straight up field recordings of drag races, a life support machine, barking sled dogs, rutting deer, cowbells in the alps... We've also had the microscopic captured vibrations of Tsunoda, the voices from beyond of the Ghost Orchid, the singing telephone wires of Alan Lamb, and we could go on and on.�
Some adventurous listeners/recordists have set their sights on the sounds BETWEEN the sounds. The continuous applause of�A Compressed History of Everything Ever Recorded, Vol. 2: Ubiquitous Eternal Live, and of course multiple 'moments of silence' strung together by Jonty Semper, and now we have Christopher DeLaurenti's Favorite Intermissions, which is just what the title indicates. At various classical performances, during the intermissions, when most folks went to the lobby to smoke, or grab a snack, visit the rest room, DeLaurenti stayed put, or wandered through the partially empty auditorium, capturing all the wonderful sounds that exist when the musicians are not playing and the crowds are not hushed and listening attentively.�
There is of course the general hubbub, foot steps, the low murmur of conversation, papers being folded, the ruffling of garments, laughter, coughing, snippets of conversation, all blended together into a surprisingly pleasant hum, a minimal multilayered drone, which on its own would be quite an excellent listen. But the other element, that is maybe the most fascinating, is capturing the musicians -- who are normally quite disciplined, playing the score perfectly, following the conductor, striving for utter perfection -- with their hair down as it were, relaxed and sort of just messing about. Lots of improvising, which they are not afforded the opportunity to do EVER, and some subtly impromptu jams, percussion and horns, weaving elaborate little sonic tableaus, fragments of the pieces they just performed, or are about to perform, removed from their context and allowed to breathe. It's loose and spirited, ramshackle, but also amazing to listen to.�
The combination of the room noise and the random bits of orchestral music are totally fascinating and sound absolutely perfect together. It's hard not to hear these excerpts as composed avant garde pieces: Symphony Number 4 for laid back oboe player, screwing around percussionist, crinkled candy wrapper, shuffling footsteps, random conversation and occasional laughter....
Sometimes the sound is quite minimal and quiet, just a few players playing scales, a handful of scattered voices, other times it's intense and cacophonous, with nearly the whole orchestra jamming wildly on some theme or another, exuding more of a wild free Sun Ra vibe than what you might normally expect from typically reserved classical performers.�
A surprisingly complex super intimate portrait of every day sounds, interactions between people transformed into performance, the noise of modern life mixed with the the mostly ignored sonic events surrounding some of the most beautiful music on earth, revealing that once again, music truly is where you find it, even if you find it while all dressed up, sitting in a plush velvet seat, with the lights up, listening to musicians tune up and the folks behind you talking about their plans for dinner.
As you well know, we're really into that special Scandinavian subgenre of electronica known as skweee. In part, 'cause we were already into a lot of the sounds that inspired skweee, such as '80s electro, video game music, and funky old school hiphop. So, we were excited to see this disc recently repressed/reissued, Detroit electro act Drexciya's first full-length compact disc, originally released by German label Tresor in 1999. Also excited, 'cause we completely missed out on listing it back then, somehow! The rather idiosyncratic Drexciya can definitely be considered as precursors to the skweee phenomenon (skweee-cursors?). And indeed also as important, if eccentric, artists in the Detroit techno pantheon.
There's 21 tracks on this basically instrumental disc, most of 'em bearing some bizarre title that relates somehow to Drexciya's strange, sub-aquatic sci-fi concepts (the comic bookish artwork features squid shaped spaceships, and spacemen (spacefish?) that look a lot like Lovecraft's Deep Ones, or the Creature From The Black Lagoon, but in spacesuits. Sonically, these tracks range from the droning chant and mysterious voices heard in the introductory incantation "Temple Of Dos De Agua" to moody 4/4 techno atmospheres to synthesized future funk ("Funk Release Valve") to textural rhythmscapes to body-jerking fusion grooves ("Jazzy Fluids")... there's melodic keyboard soloing over jittery beats... squelching bass and lush synths... And dig the Kraftwerkian echoes on "Polymono Plexusgel" (and elsewhere). Pre-skweee or whatever, it's all awesome. This Drexciya disc is a bit of a classic, as far as catchy cosmic electro with fishy sci-fi fantasy elements, Detroit style, goes. And the connection with fellow Detroit space-travellers Dopplereffekt should be obvious. Check it!
These young spandex-clad Swedish shredders are back with their second strike of speedy, melodic, refreshingly retro '80s styled metal! Yeah, that's right, they make it seem fresh again somehow, they've got a lot of the right spirit, like their pals Helvetes Port, with whom they share the same fashion sense. However, Enforcer aren't so eccentric, seeming a bit more "pro" though. And the other thing they've got, that really counts, are cool songs! Not only do they go for the gusto with galloping guitars, high pitched shrieks, heroic choruses, etc. but yeah these are catchy, actual songs with a "pop" element like bands wrote back during the glory days of the early '80s, the era that so inspires these guys. Obviously NWOBHMers Iron Maiden is one influence, we're also hearing some Grim Reaper, and, crossing over to the USA, maybe Riot and Alcatrazz (the latter especially on the Japanese-themed "Katana", and remember, that band had a rather famous Swedish guitarist after all).
And, though they're definitely intent on staying "in genre", doing songs with titles like "Roll The Dice", "Midnight Vice", and "Live For The Night", with lyrics about sleazy fast livin', violent death, and so forth, it's not all formula, Enforcer provides some interesting surprises, like the way the title track starts off as an instrumental ripper before seguing by the the end into a drifting wordless la la la blissful outro, not what we were expecting.
Among today's crop of eighties metal revivalists, Enforcer, along with fellow AQ faves Cauldron from Canada (with whom they've toured), lead the pack amongst those who totally shred authentically -without- neglecting the pop, a rare breed!
One of two new Touch singles this week, this mysterious batch of 'incongruous harmonies' comes from Australian composer / sound artist / musician Lawrence English, and these two tracks were both composed and recorded for an installation called Regarding The Joy Of Others, and are both mysterious and amorphous, textural and abstract. The first is a series of gritty washes, deep swells pocked with streaks of crumble and crackle, buried melodies glowing from within a softly heaving surface of burnished thrum and muted static, bleary and blurred and subtly smeared, a gorgeous soundscape of indistinct harmony, quite Jeck-ian in fact, something very lovely, disguised by a gauze of soft noise, the two elements not competing so much as bleeding into one another and becoming a hauntingly beautiful melody infused, slowly unfurling buzz.
The flipside peels back some of the grit and grime, leaving something more serene and a bit more ambient, a darkened landscape of distant churning rumbles, shot through with shards of looped high end, almost like a mellowed out Wolf Eyes, but it's not really all that mellow, it's still ominous, and tense, and a bit haunting, a sprawling dronemusic that subtly throbs and pulses with some implied rhythm, while layer upon layer shift and overlap and intertwine, the track actually growing less and less dark, the low end fading away, leaving just the mysterious keening high end warble to drift like some alien distress call. So cool.
And like with all Touch releases, super striking design and layout by Touch Records boss Jon Wozencroft.
Ian Mackaye threw us all for an unexpected but delightful loop a couple years ago with the debut offering from his new project with longtime Dischord cohort Amy Farina (ex-Warmers). Fugazi and Minor Threat fans weren't met with loud guitars and screaming vocals but instead really insightful and melodic pop songs that proved turning down didn't mean losing spirit. In fact it once again demonstrates the sensitivity and awareness that was always one of Fugazi's best attributes too. Get Evens is the second album from The Evens and while the debut seemed to focus more on personal topics this time out politics rise right to the surface. But really if we're going to hear protest songs at a time like this we'll gladly listen to Mackaye's. Living In DC for as long as they have it would be impossible not to be reminded on a daily basis of your neighbors in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Ian and Amy would like many of those neighbors to go far, far away and it's certainly not hard to understand why. While we find ourselves a little more drawn to their debut, this is still a strong offering. With the future of Fugazi quite unclear we're happy that Ian's found a new outlet for his passion. And by all means go see the Evens live the next time they play an all-ages show in your town for six bucks. Their show a couple years back here in SF at the Swedish American Hall was such an uplifting and inspiring night that it still holds a special place in our hearts.
Pay no attention to the liner notes, as the text is ultimately meaningless when attempting to describe this incredible recording by Luc Ferrari. The French musique concrete composer is mostly known for his psychosexual contextualizations that 'telescope' tape manipulated environmental recordings dotted with fleeting whispers of female voices. Symphonic works, pieces with indeterminant scores, radiophonic broadcasts, and theater have all worked within the expansive ouvre of Ferrari; but very little of the work that we had encountered prepared us for what's found on Ephereme. Here are two lengthy pieces recorded in the mid-'70s that look forward to the grim expressionism of the '80s post-industrialists coupled with the drugged-n-droned psychedelia that has been flourishing today!
The first piece is grounded upon a set of low-end synth tones that oscillate and slowly spiral into dissonant harmonic patterns. A stream of disembodied voices emerges from within this grey wash, for a very ghostly shortwave radio feel, with some resemblance to Delia Derbyshire's Dreams or Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing. Along with these voices, a slow churning plod from a downtuned piano furthers the tension of the piece, which gradually dissolves by the end when Ferrari replaces the voices with some lovely Takoma-inspired acoustic guitar playing; and here, the work is really sympathetic to those collages from irr. app. (ext.). Brilliant stuff! The second piece (which clocks in at a whopping 52 minutes) is a much brighter affair, again with synth tones and percolations reflecting the kosmische aesthetic of the day (e.g. Cluster, Tangerine Dream, etc.). Given the extended duration of the piece, all of the revolving sounds are not in any hurry to further their progressions. It's quite enveloping and meditative, somewhat like the droned parts of Natural Snow Buildings or some of the sprawling Emeralds tracks. Again, the acoustic guitar becomes the central focus by the end of this piece. As you could imagine, this sounds nothing like Ferrari's seminal Presque Rien, but it is an amazing document that more than holds its own against anything in his impressive back catalogue. Wow.
The first we heard from Fistula was on a split with Bay Area sonic brutalizers Burmese, and as we mentioned then, it takes some pretty serious sonic balls to hold your own on a record with a band like Burmese, and these guys pulled it off big time. Unleashing a torrent of grinding downtuned doom drenched SLUDGE. So here's the latest from these Ohioan bruisers, a 5 song ep based on the story of Ohio serial killer Anthony Sowell (they found 11 decomposing bodies under his house!) a la Church Of Misery, complete with samples of news reports, but UNlike CoM, these guys are not about groove, just punishment and pummel, a thick, filthy, blackened crawl, Sabbath at 16rpm, howled demonic vox over caustic riffage and Neanderthal drumming, occasional bursts of frenzied crunch and thud, but always returning to that glacial grinding lumber.
Think Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Thou, Cough, Moloch, that sort of thing, but also more classic sludge doom outfits like Winter, Autopsy, Frost, but all filtered through Fistula's twisted and cracked sonic lens, the result a furiously brutal collection of blown out, in-the-red, slow motion, ugly chugging grim dirgery, that definitely belong in the doom-sludge pantheon alongside the above mentioned sludgelords. Fucking awesome.
Circle Of True Doom standard bearers The Gates Of Slumber just rumbled through town a couple weeks ago, on tour with Slough Feg. They stopped into the store, and we snagged a couple copies of their hard to find Villain, Villain double cd collection from 2007. Really, just a couple. So we're not gonna spend much time on this review! For those who might be interested, Villain, Villain (which of course takes its title and cover concept from Judas Priest's Hero, Hero) brings together a 16 early demo tracks, alternate versions, reedits, live songs, covers (no less than 3 of 'em songs by their heroes Saint Vitus!), etc. etc.
Obviously, this is for mega TGOS fans only, and you might already have -some- of this stuff in one form or other. But probably not all of it, especially if you missed out on some of their earlier, now out of print releases. You know how to use Encyclopedia Metallum, you can figure out what this has got that you do not, eh?
The cd booklet, in typical TGOS tradition, features notes on each and every track (except their Samhain and Manilla Road covers, for some reason) by guitarist/bandleader Karl Simon. Who, by the way, is a very cool guy, with a definite sense of humor for one so doomy.
We were all prepared to write this review thinking that this Ghast, from Wales, was in fact, the same as the Ghast whose last two split albums we had reviewed recently. The sound was quite different, but hey, bands do that all the time. Thankfully, we dug a little deeper and discovered that indeed there are two different Ghasts, one French Canadian, one Welsh!
This Ghast is the one from Wales, and since they are in fact not the Ghast we already knew and loved, they are totally new to us, but there's plenty of room in our shrivelled black hearts for two different Ghasts, which is a good thing as we're starting to think we love these guys too. Where the -other- Ghast traffic in a crumbling lo-fi slow motion blackened doom, the Welsh Ghast, on So May The Curse Bind, their first proper full length, up the black quotient quite a bit. Right out of the gate, opening track "Crawl, Blighted And Afraid" explodes in a flurry of punkish blast beats, harsh vokills and buzzing frenzied riffage, raw and primal and a bit lo-fi, this is definitely frosty and grim sounding, but before too long the band can no longer resist the black hole pull of doom, and the tempo slows to a lurch, the blast beat transforms into a pound, the riff churns and chugs, occasionally, spinning out into little squalls of furious buzz, the melodies minor key and epic, a relentless black doom dirge, that shifts back to blasting buzz to finish off in a blaze of blackened fury.
The rest of the tracks follow a similar path, veering back and forth between stumbling chaotic frenzy and lumbering doomic crush, buried within the murk and the mire though are haunting hook filled melodies and surprising guitar harmonies, which add a bit of texture and color to the blurred blackness. A few of the tracks slip into a D-beat pound, others stretch out into woozy seasick almost-waltzes, while "Pale Robe" slows everything waaaaay down for a weary depressive crawl through clouds of Burzumic buzz and spidery minor key guitar melodies, a sort of black doom ballad, melancholy, miserable, and weirdly beautiful.
Most folks who would be interested in something like this probably don't even need to read the review. C'mon, it's a 4lp collection of Akira Kurosawa soundtracks, that's Akira Kurosawa soundtracks ON VINYL, in a cool multiple gatefold sleeve, it includes the soundtracks to such classics as Roshomon, Seven Samurai, The Throne Of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Ikiru and Record Of A Living Being. To be fair, it's been a while since we've seen these films, but if we remember correctly, and we're pretty sure we do, the music was, and IS, incredible. AMAZING. Allan even had a friend of ours pick up a pricey Kurosawa soundtrack cd box for him years ago when she was visiting Japan, at the time the only way to get that music, but this is the first time we've ever seen these ON VINYL! We've only been ordering one of these at a time, cuz of the steep price, but every time we get one in, some one nabs it right away. So if you want one, by all means, order it, if we run out we should hopefully be able to get more pretty quickly. There's not a single person who works here who isn't insanely tempted to take this home. So probably better if someone out there buys it before someone here does!!!
Dronepsych trio Heavy Winged are definitely HEAVY, and have been getting moreso with every release, consistently unleashing thick blackened sprawls of psychedelic dronerock, churning guitars, and pounding tribal drumming, all wound into extended heart of a black sun freakouts / blowouts that manages to be textural and hypnotic while still being weirdly free and abstract, slipping from riffy crunch to total balls out free form heaviness.
These two new tracks find these guys pushing it about as far as it can go, ditching conventional song structure almost entirely (not that they were ever THAT songy to begin with), the A-side is all "Among The Maeori" and sounds like a supercharged, less pop Dead C, the drums a continuous anti-rhythm, almost more textural than rhythmic, while the guitars do very unguitar like things, weaving thick undulating layers of woozy drone, laced with soaring distant high end tones, the whole track seeming to pulse and throb, eventually those high end tones, leads perhaps, are transformed into dense atonal tangles, while the drums explode in a frenzy of freaked out tribal pound, up until that point everything was tight and muted and muffled but at this point the track explodes and the band stumbled into some lumbering avant doom, super in-the-red, like some space rock jam slowed way down and wreathed in buzz and skree and crunch, some seriously supreme heaviness.
The B-side, "The Hum Of The Universe", begins with a huge downtuned crash, only to fade out, leaving a strange haunting buzz (either bowed bass or viola), until the band begins a super spare, spacious doomic trudge, the drums MASSIVE, the buzzing drones getting louder and more intense, the background hum and thrum billowing like black sonic smoke, the lurching abstract slowcore doom, not heavy so much as thick and dense, the guitars layered into black hole streaks of pulsing sound, the drums a demonic throb, the various background tendrils, druggy and psychedelic, impossibly heavy and atmospheric at the same time, it's only 17 minutes, but these are the sort of sounds that surround and suffocate, you get lost and emerge on the other side, feeling exhausted and exhilarated, trancelike tripped out psych space doom drone bliss for sure!
The first batch of lps include a bonus disc, an actual cd (not a cd-r) called Infinite In Every Direction, which features another nearly 40 minutes of heavy psych jams, recorded live in the studio, the first an extended slab of psychedelic kosmische krautdrone featuring Dave W. from White Hills, the second a full bore heavy rock jam, that is way less doom and atmosphere, and way more crushing, a relentless heavy Hawkwind blackpsych drugrock freakout, that RULES...
LIMITED TO 994 COPIES, includes a download coupon, and while they last, the lps are paired with the above mentioned bonus disc (Infinite In Every Direction), which itself is limited to 434 copies, so grab one of these quick!
The ranks of the Bay Area's true metallions continues to expand, kick ass band by kick ass band. Old timers like Brocas Helm and Stone Vengeance are finally seeing a whole new generation take up the '80s metal torch, like Saviours and Space Vacation. Locals HOT FOG now join the cause, making their debut with this limited edition, vinyl-only five-song 12" release - of which we've got the SUPER LIMITED (100 copies) red colored vinyl, while they last (there's 400 more on black vinyl). It's 180 gram, 45 rpm, with cover art by psychedelic San Francisco poster artist Alan Forbes. Nice. One side of the insert bears the lyrics, the other is decorated with a dungeon map appropriated from an old D&D module! (And there's a picture of an owlbear from D&D as well, gotta love that!)
We also can't help but love the punning title. As with any true metal band in this day and age, it may be that their tongues aren't entirely removed from their cheeks. Without being utterly ironic, you can still have a sense of humor about this brand of D&D metal (you maybe have to). Doesn't stop it from ruling though. And they're definitely SERIOUS about loving medieval metal and kicking ass. Having fun, drinking beer, all that, but not taking the piss to the extent of a band like Boyjazz (who, we gotta say, were pretty killer, silly though they were).
What it comes down to it though, all you need to know about Hot Fog is, do they rock? And more to the point, do they slay? We'd say yea, and verily. Like a fist in the air, the vocals scream and soar. The galloping guitars storm to attack. It's 1983 all over again, and in your face! The riffs are all instant headbangers, dished out with practically punk energy. It's hard for us to decide which song is the most catchy, maybe the Cat Scratch Feverish "Blood Wedding", which reminds us of another local act, Night After Night (RIP).
Their biggest influence is probably (or, should we say, obviously) Iron Maiden, a fact confirmed by their singer/guitarist, who also told us that early Metallica has been sneaking into their songwriting as well... but he's adamant that they shouldn't ever get too thrashy. As he says, you've got have choruses "for the ladies". He also gave us some insight into the band's creative, artistic process: they got drunk and made a long list of cool if nonsensical names for songs (like "Dwarf King Of The Sovereign", "To The Helm", "Blood Wedding", "Death Killers", and "Gloved Vengeance", which happen to be the tracks here). Then, later, whenever someone would come up with good riff, they'd get to pick which song title to use. And the singer then had to write lyrics to fit! Something of a challenge, but he managed to do it, and with flair. Hey if it works for them... maybe that's what 3 Inches Of Blood do too?
If you want to check 'em out in person (we haven't yet had the pleasure, but are looking forward to it), they're playing tomorrow night (that's Saturday, June 19th, 2010 as we write this) opening the "Parkerzalooza VI" at the Bottom Of The Hill, with Earthless, Carlton Melton, and Dirty Power. All those bands are cool, but Hot Fog will definitely be the most METAL of 'em!
One of two new releases this week from Belgian synthscaper Hans Dens. Innercity's In Fetal Aura, released on Oneohtrix Point Never's Upstairs label, was a dizzying assemblage of garbled and processed voices, fractured super distorted beats, and of course hazy washed out synth drones, and on the misleadingly titled Cop Killer, Dens offers up more of the same, but the sounds here, while an obvious continuation of In Fetal Aura, manage to be even more dense and layered and tripped out and chaotic.
Beginning with a tangle of sped up voices, the sounds soon veers into crumbling crunch, distorted and blown out, before slipping back into something a bit more hypnotic and woozy, sounding almost like a synthier Avarus, looped melodies, random clattery rhythms, layer after layer of pulses and shimmers and drones, the vibe definitely future retro, the sound super abstract, a little sci-fi, very mesmerizing, and then it slips even further off the rails, swirling squalls of franticly buzzing electronics, swirls of sped up sound and a return of those voices that opened the record (and again intoning comically sped up profanities).
The flipside starts out much more mellow, a sort of nursery rhyme style space age music box, unfurling corroded melodies over thick rumbles and metallic groans, slowly shifting, the melodies seeming to drag, as if the track was gradually melding before your very ears, only to eventually morph into a gorgeously murky muddy pulsescape, warped and warbly and hauntingly beautiful, almost like some sort of Chain Reaction heroin house filtered through a more modern lo-fi psych-drone-synth-wave aesthetic. Cool.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Full color covers, each with a tiny numbered insert...
Of all the currently operating cd-r microlabels, we're tempted to pick RuralFaune as our favorite, no offense to any of the other labels we love, but Bruno P. and his weirdo label have unleashed some serious and awesome sonic strangeness over the last few years, all sorts of free folk and drone music, outsider soundscapes and minimal abstract weirdness, but then he went ahead and launched Faunasabbatha a RuralFaune offshoot specializing in extreme heaviness, the fringes of ultra doom and damaged black metal, blackdrones and grimnoise, and if that wasn't enough, there's now a new series, the Synth Series, or as the label puts it "the new new synth age", which makes sense, all of these blossoming and burgeoning krautdrone synthscapers need a home, and why not Ruralfaune, with a whole stable of synth unknowns, but among these unknowns, lurk some serious aQ faves, like Innercity, aka Belgian synthscaper Hans Dens, whose sound is like a twisted, more fractured take on groups like Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never, case in point, the twisted dizzying synth driven freakout that is the Cop Killer tape reviewed elsewhere on this list, but for his contribution to Ruralfaune's Synth Series, Dens has dialed back his penchant for freakiness, and delivered some seriously hypnotic and mesmerizing synth minimalism, not at all like the above mentioned groups, instead, a strangely gnarled synthesized dronemusic, lush layered loops, stretched out into gorgeous hazy warped landscapes of sound, some like weird processed burbling brooks wreathed in softly static whir, others like tangles of complex melody looped into stuttering rhythms, almost like Avarus samples collaged into alien dronefolk, while still others sound like the buzz of swarming bees, others like some sort of woozy ambient chamber music, and others like twisted IDM filtered through super lo-fi heroin house. Somehow Dens has managed to craft a sound that bucks all the conventions of the current kraut-drone-synth craze, while creating a unique sound that somehow still manages to fit into the very same movement, albeit awkwardly, which continues to situate Innercity as outsiders in an already outside sonic subculture. So great.
LIMITED TO JUST 70 COPIES!!! We got 20 of those and that's it!!!
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We're beginning to think if it wasn't for Planet Mu, we wouldn't be hearing any dubstep at all... Can't really figure out why more labels aren't getting more of that stuff over here, hundreds, maybe thousands of killer 12"s, DJ mix tapes, proper albums, and only a trickle actually makes it over here, bit the folks at Planet Mu obviously have great taste (or at least taste a lot like ours) cuz the stuff they do put out is the cream of the crop: Starkey, Vex'd, Distance, Milanese, Legion Of Two, Boxcutter, Pinch, Virus Syndicate, MRK1 and now Ital Tek. Not sure how we missed the last Ital Tek record, cuz this one is a doozy, not super dark or sinister, instead this definitely falls somewhere closer to stuff like Clubroot, Ikonika, Zomby, Burial, Shackleton, warm and fuzzy, the beats low slung and laid back, the usual dubstep bass warble toned way down, still thick and fuzzy, just less warbly, disembodied female vocals adding a subtle soul element, some of the tracks are super lo-fi and 8-bit sounding, others are more new wavey and sound a bit John Carpenter-ish, while others are dark and skittery, and still others are haunting and nearly ambient, but Ital Tek's unique vibe is the thread that runs through all the tracks, a little washed out, a little eighties, dreamy and dubby, shimmery and skittery, the lighter side of dubstep, with just enough darkness to keep things interesting...
Most readers of the aQ list won't need much more in the way of a review here than simply this: NEW PHILIP JECK. That's the way we are certainly. Easily our favorite turntablist / sound sculptor / soundscaper, every Jeck record a new fuzzy, warbly exploration of some forgotten otherworld, the magic of his music in part due to the fact that his sounds are not so obviously created with records and turntables, like Strotter, or the Caretaker, his sounds exist as ghostly songs, broadcast from another time, or place, their construction, while fascinating and wondrous, are not critical to the enjoyment of the sound, and what a sound, warm, and lush, sepia toned, softly blurred, out of focus, woozy and warbly and daydreamy. But by now, you like us, are indeed appropriately obsessed with the music of Philip Jeck, and thus are as excited as we are about THIS. Two new songs both record live at The Museum Of Garden History in London, Jeck is teamed up with keyboardist Marcus Davidson, who we first heard on those Spire releases from a little while back , live recordings of various performances in acoustically unique spaces, often churches and cathedrals, hence Spire. The two are a perfect match, their sounds blending seamlessly into a shimmery organic whole, it's impossible to tell where the keyboards begin and the turntables end, or if that's Jeck playing bass, or just some warped old piece of vinyl, or if those washed out swirls of notes are being pulled from grooves or actually played by Davidson, but again, it hardly matters, the sound is ephemeral and spectral, slow swells of softly effected chordal swirl, fuzzy indistinct textures, a barely there rhythmic pulse, serene and so so lovely.
The flipside starts out with what we can only assume is Jeck's bass, spaced out and spidery and slooooow, a warm languid creep, the low end pulsations ringing out into the ether like ripples on a pond, until near the end when the bass(?) gathers a bit of fuzz, unleashing some softly warped crunch, and some effected synthy squelch, like a disembodied dubstep warble, slowed way down and stretched way out and allowed to undulate lethargically before settling back down into that warm washed out warble.
As always, fantastic, and again, beautiful design and layout courtesy of Touch Records head honcho Jon Wozencroft.
A swarmingly beautiful, miasmic piece of psychedelic drone folk! Juppala Kaaplo is the husband & wife duo of Carole and Hitoshi Kojo, the latter of whom had released a number of spectacular drone-smear constructions under the moniker Spiracle. Minimalism is certainly a key component to the Juppala Kaaplo sound, but it's the kaleidoscopic trills that you'll get from Terry Riley rather than the steely suspension from Organum or Phill Niblock. Certainly, Spiracle's last affair - the daydreaming ambient record Ananta - was a much friendlier form of minimalism, but we were still not entirely expecting the shimmering, prism-shot psychedelia of this album. A hypnotizing mass immediately emerges from the lp with lengthy repetitions of Carole's vocal that is equal parts Liz Harris and Tara Burke, haunting the forest-dwelling drones from various bowed instruments that Hitoshi stacks into sinewy passages. Throughout, long breathy gasps of aerated noises push to the foreground alongside a revolving set of church organ trills and arpeggiations that faithfully play homage to Terry Riley's classic Rainbow In Curved Air. The second side is a slightly more somber affair with violin and piano gliding out of an aggregate drone from those two instruments. Like the A-side, it's a wonderful bliss-out number albeit sodden from a rainy night out in the Finnish wilderness. Limited to 450 copies and highly recommended!
Another release in the continuing series of archival releases of Indonesian popular music brought to us by the always awesome Sublime Frequencies, this one comes from Koes Plus, the "Beatles of Indonesia", perhaps the most beloved pop group ever in Indonesia, who began life as Koes Bersaudara, and whose music was collected on another recent Sublime Frequencies compilation, but for all the promise shown by the controversial Koes Bersaudara, who were jailed for covering the Beatles, it's when they streamlined their sound, and became Koes Plus that they EXPLODED, recording more than 40 albums throughout the seventies, even going so far as to record albums in specific styles catering to fans of different genres. And it all paid off. According to the liner notes, TODAY, there are Koes Plus fanclubs in nearly every city, there are more than 60 Koes Plus cover bands on the island of Java ALONE, there are multiple radio shows dedicated to the group's music, all that and they have remained relatively unheard and unknown outside of Indonesia.
This collection compiles their first two insanely rare albums, Dheg Dheg Plas and Volume Two, both fantastic examples of the group's mastery of Western pop music, the Beatles comparisons are definitely apt, but they did more than ape their heroes, these songs are fantastic, catchy and melodic, jangly and dreamy, vocal harmonies, intricate guitar playing, it's not just the Beatles they're indebted to either, the Byrds, the Bee Gees, and judging from "Pent Juri Hati (Heart Stealer)", even the Monks, it's a DEAD ringer, fuzzed out guitar, wild drumming, and howled vocals that sound JUST like the Monks, definitely the odd track out, but it hints at where these guys could have ended up had things been a bit different.
But for fans of classic garage rock, and sixties / seventies psychedelic pop, Indonesian music of all stripes, this stuff is really fantastic, it's still difficult to believe virtually no one outside of Indonesia has heard this stuff until now. Some folks have suggested that had these guys been based in the UK or the US during the sixties or seventies, they would have been one of the most popular bands in the world, and listening to them now it's not hard to believe.
Housed in a fancy 6 panel digipak, with a huge booklet, packed with liner notes and loads of rare photos.
Here's the second of three vinyl reissues of the early, seminal work from Thomas Koner, who alongside Andrew Chalk may stand as the greatest drone artist from the past few decades. Teimo is an album that was originally released as a cd on Barooni in 1992. Like its predecessor Nunatak Gongamur, Koner had sourced much of Teimo from recordings of gongs, using contact microphones and hydrophones to capture an unusual assortment of resonance, timbre, and decaying frequencies from his gongs. In these recordings, Koner was investigating what he qualified as an 'aesthetic of decline' shaped by the processes of decay, thermal cooling, and any gradual event that will achieve stasis. Water seeking its own level. Glaciers amassing in frozen landscapes. The metal fatigue of submarines, cracking under the pressure of an entire ocean. The long sustained metallic resonances of the gong is an apt tool for his conceptual framework, with Koner further manipulating his sources into elegant passages of subharmonic rumblings that utter subtle melodic phrases whilst shaking the bottom of the seafloor. Amidst the low-end drones and allusions to barren landscapes, Koner takes great care to keep the sounds immersive without imbuing them with terror. Yes, this is 'dark' ambient music, but his aesthetic of decline is far more clinical than say the theatrical drama that Lustmord can muster through his deadly recordings. Koner's quest is for the sublime, filled with awe and beauty simultaneously; and he has effortlessly achieved that quest throughout his career, certainly including this masterful record. Limited to 500 copies.
From the very first notes of Assume Crash Position, we're immediately transported right back to Kinshasa in the Congo, a bustling town square, people going about their business, cars zooming past, children playing and shouting, people sitting at tables on the sidewalk drinking, eating, catching up, birds perched in the trees, chirping, just a regular bustling African city, except maybe for a certain group of musicians, creating their own soundtrack to daily life, conjuring up a gorgeous, rhythmic, hypnotic and strangely psychedelic racket, equal parts classic African folk music, High Life, and junkyard percussion. The musicians are wielding a strange array of hand built instruments, there's lots of rusted metal, car batteries, old cracked loudspeakers, various drums, and most notably, some fantastic looking, and even more fantastic sounding amplified thumb pianos. By now, regular readers of the aQ list most likely know we're talking about the truly amazing Konono No.1, quite possibly one of our favorite African ensembles ever, past or present. When we first hear them a few years ago, we were blown away, the super distorted thumb pianos spitting out clouds of rapid fire chiming notes, tangled melodies, all locked into super hypnotic drum driven grooves, call and response vocals, simultaneously festive and danceable, dark and mysterious, raw and feral, primitive and DIY, lush and melodic and like nothing we had ever heard before.
When we first threw on Assume Crash Position, our first thought, was that very little had changed, and to a certain degree that's true, all of the above mentioned elements are still present, the wild thumb pianos, still the focal point, their sound curious but so warm and sweetly melodic, the call and response vocals, the tribal percussion, the groovy rhythms, but from the first track it IS in fact evident that some things have changed. That opening track, "Wumbanzanga", is far more melodic, far more pretty and almost more like some of the other traditional African music we've heard in the past, with great female vocals, the vibe super festive, but those thumb piano melodies definitely add a distinctly Konono vibe. Then the next track, "Thin Legs" explodes in a frenzy of whistles and tribal drumming and vocals, that's it, but it too manages to be super melodic and totally effusively celebratory.
It's not until "Mama Na Bana" which opens with that Konono style stop start THRUMP THRUMP THRUMP, where the whole group locks in, before launching into classic Konono, it's really hard to describe, but those fuzzy buzzing metallic melodies wrapped around the repetitive rhythms and the super emotional vocals, the whole rest of the record is classic, albeit a bit more polished and melodic, Konono junkyard Congotronics...
Some of the highlights this time around include "Makembe", with its buzzing melodies, crooned vocals, and the sounds of kids playing and birds chirping, before there's a BIG crash, apparently the sound of a concrete wall collapsing, a wall the vocalist was moments earlier leaning against, and then the band launches into one of the best jams on the disc. Or the gorgeous closing lullaby of "Nakobala Lisusu Te", with muted thumb pianos, super tangled melodies, and a sweet soulful croon, so dreamy and blissful, the perfect way to unwind after a wild, sweaty, funky, groovy, Congotronic workout.
The packaging is cool too, with tons of photos of the local scrap yard / junkyard, where the band gather up most of the material they use to build their instruments, not to mention a shot of that collapsed wall that crumbled mid-song. As with past Konono's, utterly and absolutely wholeheartedly recommended!
A new batch of tapes from the always awesome Root Strata label, this one from Canadian space-drone-synth sculptor Roger Teller-Craig, aka Le Revelateur, whose sound is a gorgeous wash of kosmische haze, all gently lapping new age synths, softly propulsive space kraut rhythms, lush and layered and so hypnotic. The vibe sun dappled and shimmery, total dream drift sonic bliss. Fans of Expo 70, Pulse Emitter, and other retro krautsynth combos will flip.
The tape begins with a sprawling motorik opener, clouds of arpeggiated melodies, soft focus flurries of reverbed synth swirl, all over a looped hypnodrone kraut groove, a bit like Neu! but WAY more blissed out and ethereal, which drifts right into the much more dramatic second track, again anchored by a sci-fi synth pulse, but laced with streaks of subtly ominous melody, and thick squalls of buzz and washed out skree, very haunting and cinematic.
The second side begins with something much more hushed and ephemeral, softly smoldering loooooong tones, laced with chiming harmonics, and strangely processed melodic fragments and the occasional bit of rhythmic skitter, a gorgeous druggy drift, which all slowly builds, a sound like the sun emerging from behind the clouds, everything begins to sparkle and glisten and reflect, all bathed in a fuzzed out prismatic bleary eared softly psychedelic glow. The record closes with another stretch of cinematic synthy mystery, almost orchestral, lush and majestic, like the soundtrack to some slow drift through another galaxy, everything wreathed in alien starlight, a blurred expanse of cosmic sonic energy. Incredible.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, housed in super nice, thick offset printed covers.
Belgium 1982 or Brooklyn 2009? Dust On Common is one of those albums that could herald from either time and space with its dark-eyed synth-pop aesthetic complete with a wardrobe of black jackets and skinny ties. Yes, Led Er Est are New Yorkers of today, reclaiming the forgotten future with considerable aplomb and fitting in very nicely next to Cold Cave and fellow Wierd recording artists Xeno & Oaklander. The Led Er Est trio are quite deft at the synth melody, building terse and catchy, if minor key, tunes out of repetition & difference, and grafting those melodies onto uptempo mechanoid rhythm tracks. Guitars, bass, and vocals also make themselves known throughout the album, but the synths are the dominant machines at hand, marching along with icy detachment, primitive sparkplug buzzing, and occasional bursts of cinematic grandeur. Fad Gadget, Xymox, early Skinny Puppy (i.e. Bites), Dark Day, Chris & Cosey, and Cabaret Voltaire are all within the sonic vocabulary of Led Er Est. Another excellent release from Wierd. Vinyl only!
Originally released on cd back in 2001, An Un World was Andrew Liles' first album proper after a string of cdr releases. It has recently received the deluxe limited edition vinyl treatment - clear vinyl, only 300 pressed! The double record also features two tracks which did not appear on the previous cd incarnation. Liles, perhaps best known as a member of Nurse With Wound for the past many years, has been a prolific solo artist and multi-instrumentalist for well over two decades. His music falls under the expansive umbrella of experimental soundscaping, incorporating a myriad of processed found sounds and electronics. He ventures through the peaks and valleys of Surrealism, Dada, dark ambient and post-industrial, with a morbid black humor snaking its way throughout. These densely detailed early compositions conjure grim unravellings and profound despair. Seriously, the album envelops the listener in atmospheres that are bleaker than bleak. Not for the faint of heart! But so good...
For a while there, barely a list would pass without something new from Machinefabriek, but it's been a little while now since we've gotten something new to review, and while this is not strictly a new release, it does feature ONE brand new track, and collects a handful of older, out of print tracks, which were previously available on either cd-r or vinyl, and gathered here, all the tracks, new AND old, play out like an album, all woven together into a haunting sepia tone dronescape, fans of folks like William Basinksi and Philip Jeck and Leyland Kirby who have yet to discover the magical sonic mystery of Machinefabriek would do well to start here.
The new track is based on original recordings of Richard Skelton, aka A Broken Consort, deep rumbling mournful cellos, woven into haunting dronological landscapes, melancholic and gauzy, dusty and washed out, Machinefabriek takes the cellos and adds a patina of soft focus blur, pulling notes into long stretches of mesmerizing shimmer, creating a truly haunting, and truly lovely soundworld of loss and reflection.
"Flotter" was originally released as a 3" cd-r and is a single track, 22 minute mini-epic, a sweeping cinematic trawl through murky dreamy drones and blown out soft focus buzz. A slow building, constantly shifting, tidal like drift. Huge black swells wash over glimmering glistening shimmers, distant keening drones and a pulsing low end rumble. It's like some sort of Pop Ambient, slowed way down, the fuzzed out dreaminess becoming granular, each note, each layer, every element of the music becoming tiny visible microscopic musical molecules, madly vibrating in little clouds, wreathing the proceedings in an ever mutating swirl of ambient blur, like wisps of smoke, or little clouds of insects...
While beneath the surface lurks something dark, a melodic malevolence that permeates the whole disc, ominous, minor key, mournful, a washed out sorrow, a strange haunting creepiness, lending the track an air of sadness, of loss, but at the same time, the sound manages to be strangely warm and inviting, a little alluring, the soundtrack to some dark personal tragedy long forgotten, a sound that lulls you, pulls you under, and leads you off to some strange land, long after your eyes have closed and your spirit has been loosed. The whole track culminating in an ultra minimal coda of near silence, but close listening reveals all manner of barely audible filigree, lowercase buzz, muted crackle and gauzy melodic shadows...
"Koploop" too, was originally a 3" cd-r, and once again utilizes a strange arsenal of sound making devices: memo recorders, mixing deck, effects pedals, guitar, banjo, organ, laptop as well as violin and cello (provided by guest musicians), Machinefabriek weaves a breathtaking world of tranquil ambience, all summery shimmer, warm wispy warble, soft languorous drones that flow and pulse like the tides. Near the end it opens up and becomes some impossibly expansive sprawl, almost choral sounding, like some homespun piece by Arvo Part, the strings emerging to flutter and flit, like butterflies after a rain storm. So lovely.
"Onkruid" was originally released as a split lp on A Room Forever, as an expensive and deluxe boxset, featuring actual art photos on the cover, and pairing up two artists, given a side each, one for music, the other field recordings. Machinefabriek's musical contribution is definitely one of the dreamiest most beautiful pieces we've heard from him, a distant glistening shimmer, over a warm whir of slow surfacing melodies, muted buzz, and breathless soft focus drift. A looped landscape of pastoral shimmer. Part way through the track builds in intensity to a sort of soft cacophony, but quickly drifts back into bleary eyed dreaminess. The track goes on for what feels like forever, ending with a stretch of serene low end murmur, laced with muted sonar pulses and a deep ominous blurred melody that sprawls right beneath the surface.
And finally, "Grom", which we never even managed to get for the store, was another super limited 3" cd-r, and combined lapsteel, loop pedals and effects into a haunting almost Morricone-esque driftscape, all atmospheric twang, hushed barely there thrum, a slow building smolder, that builds to something like Nadja style doom, briefly, before shifting back into more dark tranquility.
An incredible collection, and for most folks, it might even be the first time hearing most, if not all of these tracks, and even if you did manage to get some of the cd-r's, this proper cd collection, with the new track, and the gorgeous packaging, is like a still well worth it and totally recommended.
Essential dreamdronedriftmusic for sure.
This most recent collection of work by Angus Maclise is culled from a collection of over 50 tapes discovered over 20 years ago and rescued from probable destruction. Maclise was instrumental in the formation of LaMonte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music as well as the first incarnation of The Velvet Underground, and continued to explore drone music, Eastern music and electronic tape music until his death in 1979. This two disc set features early electronic experiments, some epic ambient/drone pieces including performances from John Cale and Tony Conrad, and 2 recordings of Maclise reading his poetry, of which there are apparently very few recordings. While we are not much for spoken word around these parts, the two pieces here are actually quite nice. Maclise's poetry is strange and pretty wonderful and is delivered over a background of drone and hum and buzz. The rest of this collection includes the above mentioned short pieces for electronics, a bunch of short instrumental explorations and three 30 minute pieces of ambient clatter and ur-drone. Gorgeous and spacious, free and transcendental. Think No Neck Blues Band meets the Dead C meets Stockhausen. Great stuff!
MPEG Download: "Trance #2" [/audio/maclisetrance2.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Trance #2" [/audio/maclisetrance2.m3u]
Now on vinyl - AGAIN!
Finally, the long awaited solo acoustic live set by Neutral Milk Hotel's beloved Jeff Mangum, about whom I simply cannot be objective - the two NMH records *still* make me cry everytime I listen to them, they're that lovely and touching and brilliant. This 1997 concert was performed in an Xmas-light-filled room with an occasional baby enthusiastically chiming in alongside Mangum's super earnest vocal delivery. If you've ever seen Neutral Milk Hotel in concert, you already know that Jeff will deviate often from the recorded versions of his music, sometimes stretching out a multi-note wail for much longer, sometimes speeding up or changing a rhythm. That's what makes this live disc worth it - for the variations he introduces, super sweet but just different enough to keep it fresh for those of us who have listened to the two NMH records hundreds of times already.
This show is super lo-fi (the venue is a coffeehouse), but the performance is quite focused and heartfelt. Contains songs that will be familiar to NMH fans, plus a few others, a cover of Phil Spector's "I Love How You Love Me".
Previously listed on vinyl, now finally available on cd, another fantastic release from Mark McGuire, a member of psych synth drone aQ faves Emeralds, this a cd reissue of two loooong out of print cassettes, consisting of four long tracks, of processed and looped guitarmusic, a gloriously kosmiche hypnotic and repetitive space rock kraut drone, beginning with an odd, somewhat out of place sample, but as soon as the guitars kick in we're immediately transported to some strange other world of crystals and prisms, the sonic sunlight unfurling glorious sheets of color, stuttery looped tangles of spidery guitar gives way to thick swells of crumbling corrosive fuzz, warm and lush and billowy, a wall of metalgaze blur that soon shifts back into a dizzying swirl of looped and layered melodies, that shifts and undulates and morphs from muted blissful smears to straight up folky strum.
The second track is another gorgeous loopscape, chiming guitar harmonics, and short sharp bursts of static, simple subtle melodies underneath, almost poppy sounding, until it collapses into a soft swirling tangle of layered synths and dizzying serpentine melodies, only to again to return to something much more traditionally strummy, a simple moody guitar figure layered over electronic chitter that sounds a bit like crickets in the fading afternoon light.
Track three beings with flurry of chiming high end guitars, like fireflies, they swirl and flit, the almost-melodies constantly in motion, the sound growing ever more lush and complex and dense, so hypnotic, loop after loop laid atop the loops that came before, a lovely slow build, that eventually joins the twinkling looped melodies with subtle guitar strum, and washed out string-like swells, the whole thing growing more and more hazy and distorted and metallic, dissipating in a lovely tangle of decaying loops.
Finally, the record ends with some heavily delayed and looped minimal guitars, muffled and muted, chiming and percussive, very Reich / Riley sounding, again blossoming into lush latticeworks of overlapping melodies and overtones, it's not until near the end that the guitars begin to become effected, the guitars seemingly transforming into synths, a buzzy, fuzzy, but still fantastically mesmerizing finale.
Man, is The Tapeworm tough to figure out. But maybe we don't want to figure them out. A label, a CASSETTE ONLY label, that traffics in an insanely wide range of sounds, how they're all connected we're not sure, field recordings, seventies style disco funk, obscure trip hop by super models, gorgeous soundscaping, avant outsider sound art, spoken word, turntablism, strange women reading Baudrillard, heavy drones, solo piano, interviews with artists, faux sixties psychedelic jazz, lost new wave... All we know is there aesthetic kind of reminds us of... well, OURS! Which is maybe why we're so in love with this label, and pretty much everything they release. This week elsewhere on the list you'll find some nineties recorded but seventies style dubbed out weirdo disco funk, and then there's this right here, a collection of field recordings from Daniel Menche, two side long tracks, each a recording of a waterfall in the Oregon mountains, and both weirdly lovely. Knowing that these are in fact recordings of waterfalls, makes it easy to identify the sounds the second they start, but after a few minutes, the sounds become less and less obvious, and if you were played this recording with no knowledge of the source, you'd likely just assume it was a collaged soundscape of white noise and muted hiss, blurred fuzz and swirls of static, a weirdly hypnotic abstract, totally random and ever shifting soundscape of muted white noise, almost like a Merzbow record, dialed WAY down, all the edges smoothed, into something strangely serene, a sound that while totally natural, when removed contextually from nature, sounds manmade, even though it's a sound we've all heard, camping, hiking, and which once again demonstrates that much of what we discover and create, already exists in nature, which is both incredible and incredibly humbling. A fantastic sonic document. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!
Robert Millis is a man of many talents: a Climax Golden Twin, a collector '78s resulting in the impeccable Victrola Favorites book & compilation, purveyor of searing avant-scum-noise-rock in AFCGT, a world traveller in search of esoterica for Sublime Frequencies, a field recordist of frogs, birds, blue jeans salesmen, etc. etc. etc. Despite his many activities, Millis' recorded output has almost entirely been by way of collaboration, making this self-released gem of a solo album all the more special. This is closer related to the collage work that Millis has contributed to the Climax Golden Twins, bridging all of those aforementioned interests in a polyglot of psychedelic drone smear pocked with snippets of conversation, poetic extracts from his collection of '78s, and a judicious amount of vinyl crackling. An album such as this would easily be confused for the hermetic revelations that Philip Jeck extracts from his rough shod vinyl and turntables; but Millis seems to counterpoint the crackle and the clean with more drama than Jeck, almost positing the crackle like a punchline in a joke that breaks through one of Millis' blissed out shimmers constructed from loops and drones from guitar, bells, and glass harmonica, where haunted melodies from times long gone whisper through the mix. But at another instance, Millis leaps geographically from a field recording of loosely played Thai temple music into a shortwave burst of noise seamlessly mixed through a cloud of insects and back into one of his sleepy drones. The logic of the album may seem absurd from afar; but the internal logic is peculiarly sensible, as if Millis were tapping into some stream of consciousness that subcutaneously connects all of these intermingling sounds. Limited to something like 50 copies, but maybe we'll be able to get more... maybe not. Very highly recommended no matter how you slice it.
Within the last few years we have witnessed Chicago's Nachtmystium evolve from a grim exercise in nihilistic, kvlt as fuck black metal to a group that seems to be completely ignoring the accepted rules of the genre and pretty much surpassing all the competition. It would be flat out stupid to deny the blackness on display here, and yet it is so much more than just a black metal album. We've always loved Blake Judd and his cohorts (featuring here, in addition to long time guitarist Jeff Wilson and synth lord Sanford Parker, Will Lindsay of Wolves In The Throne Room and the incomparable Wrest of Leviathan on drums) but with the release of Addicts: Black Meddle Pt.2, it is now abundantly clear that they are one of the best metal bands in operation. The songs venture all over the place, never failing to surprise with their unique structures and brutal instrumentation, and the greatest success here is the fact that these are, get ready: some of the catchiest, blackest, and most psychedelic POP SONGS we have heard in forever. This album is just as amazing as the recent Twilight record, and not surprisingly, three of the players had a hand in that as well. And while Twilight caused some jaws to drop with things like emo breakdowns and beautiful choral vocals, the sick minds in Nachtmystium have found even more ways to astonish. Oh, and it's a bit of a concept album about, you guessed it, the fun and timeless subject of drug addiction.
Beginning with intro "Cry For Help", in which creepy, guttural voices spell out a negative statement (we won't ruin it for you) that sets the tone for the album over echoed drumbeats, the band then kicks into "High On Hate", a thick whirlwind of classic black metal riffs flying around some darkened vortex. It's melodic and catchy, but also terrifying and uncompromising, and Judd's vocals are as killer and harsh as always. It's surprising how many interesting ideas Nachtmystium is capable of injecting (ha!) into their songs, which take you on a crazy black metal journey in generally 5 minutes or less. Nothing here is formulaic, especially the next number, "Nightfall". Your first reaction will be along the lines of, "Holy fuck! Is that a tambourine?" It is, and by the end of the song Nachtmystium has also thrown in an awesome woah-woah gang vocals (wonder if they're Naked Raygun fans, being from Chicago and all) and a giant classic rock guitar solo. You may wonder where they can take things next, but then they hit you with the biggest mindfuck on the album, "No Funeral", which will be described as "new wave black metal" until a better term comes to light. The song is carried by Parker's spacey synth melody and a heavy industrial dance beat that is so damn poppy we kinda can't believe it. There's some mind altering progginess on display, like on "Blood Trance Fusion," but thankfully things never get too academic or concerned with shit like time signatures. Instead, synths squiggle like parasites worming through your veins and blast beats jolt you out of your trance as the band holds things down like it's what they were born to do. "Ruined Life Continuum" resurrects the, um, new wave black metal we heard earlier, another too catchy to ignore number, before ending on a suitably bleak note with "Every Last Drop", where acoustic guitars and throat singing are consumed by a lumbering dirge and some soaring clean vocals courtesy of Yakuza's Bruce Lamont. When the sounds of an oscillating synth note bring Addicts to a close, you will probably be just as blown away as we were.
So yeah, once again, these guys have furthered the cause and raised the bar higher for anyone who thinks they are up for the task of making black metal in 2010 and beyond. If there's a Part 3 in the works, we're down for it, if not, we can't wait to see what Nachtmystium cooks up next.
We have to admit, with all the super limited vinyl, weird 7"s, rare reissues, and all the other cool stuff that was being specially released to celebrate Record Store Day, we were (not so) secretly most excited about a new record from long time faves and two time aQ Record Of The Week honorees Nada Surf. A new record from these guys is always a thrill, and a full length is long overdue, but this is not the new Nada Surf, instead, it's a total Record Store Day release, with the band covering a bunch of their favorite songs, some we dig, some surprises, and some we'd never heard of.
Probably the most amazing thing about this collection, is if you weren't familiar with the songs being covered, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume they were Nada Surf originals, these guys take the originals and OWN then, totally make them their own. Even songs you've heard a million times, like Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence", get enough of a Nada Surf makeover to sound like an original, but fans will still dig hearing their old song reimagined.
Their Bill Fox cover ("Electrocution"), is total sunshiney harmony Byrds worship, and again, sounds like it could be from an old Nada Surf record. They do a Go-Betweens song, that again is a perfect match, it makes sense that they would pick these songs, it's almost the perfect sonic representation of the influences that created Nada Surf. One of the big surprises is the Arthur Russell (!) cover, a gorgeous hushed bit of lap steel laced minimal twang pop, WAY too short at just over a minute.
The rest of the record finds the band tackling The Dwight Twilley Band, Kate Bush, Spoon, The Moody Blues (!), recent aQ faves Soft Pack, Coralie Clement (another obscure choice), and then they finish with two total random covers by bands we had never heard of, Mecromina, their version a lush string laden slab of jangle pop, and the Silly Pillows, never heard the original, but the cover is a carnivalesque bit of piano driven pomp, to finish things off.
Totally fantastic, we've listened to this record about 100 times, and while it's definitely tiding us over, it also has us dying for a proper new Nada Surf record!!
The latest release on the Substantia Innominata label, an offshoot of Drone Records label run by Stefan Knappe of Maeror Tri and Troum, comes from uber prolific aQ faves, doomdrift duo Nadja, whose contribution is a sprawling 40 minute single track, split into two movements and two sides, the first half, beginning with barely there skeletal guitars, hushed vox, a creepy ethereal drift, a sort of doomic slowcore, abstract and dark, the programmed drums come in, but the track continues to creep, and crawl, more melody drifting in, the sound very reminiscent of Codeine, but even slower and lethargic, quite gorgeous and haunting. It's not until the flipside that the doom drops, and instead of being crushing or heavy, it's gauzey and washed out, very My Bloody Valentine, but WAY murkier, the drums remain skeletal, the vocals still hushed, just everything is now wrapped in a heaving halo of effulgent buzz, shot through with soaring melancholic melodies, epic and majestic, doom for sure, but soft shoegazey dreamdoom, and the doom begins to fade about 7 or 8 minutes in, before winding back down to the same slowcore crawl that started things off, growing ever more hushed and soft focus, until the last few minutes, a blurred layered outro of muted backwards guitars, and looped layered melodies, all washed out and whispery, but even near the end laced with haunting, slightly ominous low end melodies, before finally fading out completely. As always, gorgeous and minimal, haunting and heavy.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on thick metallic gold vinyl, and housed in a super swank full color jacket with some seriously stunning artwork.
It's tough to argue with this pairing, Canadian doomdrone driftduo Nadja, and German dronescapers Troum! While each group definitely has their own distinctive sonic trajectory, there is definitely a lot of overlap, and you'll hear the two groups explore and expand these commonalities live in the studio, with three extended tracks of smoldering slow motion dronemusic that as one might imagine touches on barely there hushed ambience, lumbering glacial downtuned crush, and dreamy drifting shimmer.
The first track is a slow building subterranean creep, creaking, and groaning, the sounds muted and muddied, laced with bits of brilliant melody, and underpinned by constantly shifting layers of low end, but soon those buried melodies become the focal point, drifting to the fore, creating a haunting ghostlike expanse, ominous and cinematic, building to a somewhat harrowing climax before fading back to a dolorous drift.
The second track comes out swinging, big distorted drums, weirdly processed and dubbed out, stuttery and lumbering, the sounds around the rhythm growing ever more intense until they're matching the doomic plod with their heaving swells of blurred riffage, intense and epic, the muted heaviness augmented by mysterious minor key melodies swelling and swooping, the while track in constant flux, as if the drum machine was misfiring, and the band were following right along. Finally, the record finishes with a 25+ minute dronescape, that floats spectrally from warm blackened whirs, to tripped out psychedelic swirl, to hushed almost choral sounding shimmer, to majestic Godspeed like epic...
Packaged in a super beautiful gorgeously designed 8 panel matte finish digipak.
