Straight out of Orland, California it's another slab of hot wax psych rock scorchers from Nothing People. With Doug Pearson of Monoshock fame now a part of the band, these two songs find NP in fine form. Continuing their driving explorations in punchy and dirty rock that reminds us a lot of Chrome, Moon Duo, Hawkwind, Mission Of Burma, Naked Raygun, Wire, A Place To Bury Strangers, Oneida, and MX-80. What makes Nothing People so cool is that while so many other psych minded bands seem to really just narrow their focus on a very specific era of psych rock, Nothing People have found a way to bring together multiple elements from the last several decades into a punk spirited reverberation that doesn't come off like a simple imitation, but instead rings loudly with stripped down sincerity. The 7" comes in classy packaging with gold foil stamping and there were only 500 pressed so grab one fast!
This one is going to be a major contender for drifty/dreamy/droney record of the year! We really have loved everything we've heard (and seen!) from Sarah Lipstate (she is a great filmmaker as well as a blissed out drone music maker). And each release of hers seems to soar just a little higher and reach new levels of daydream hazy washed out perfection. Desert Fires might just be our favorite outing yet from her, as it drifts and drips with a drugged out disposition that wanders through the outer realms yet flows so totally serenely. It reminds us a bit of the more spaced out and glacial outings by Kawabata Makoto, Steven R. Smith and Roy Montgomery. It's remarkable the way she's able to use her guitar to create such an ethereal and tripped out ambience, similar to the sound and feel that folks like Tim Hecker and Emeralds create in their soundscapes. It's a record that makes you want to close your eyes and just get lost in its soft focus and hypnotizing waves of sound forever. Utterly beautiful!
Record number three from the duo known simply as On, made up of composer / producer Sylvain Chauveau and percussionist Steven Hess, a member of both Pan American and Haptic, all favorites around here, so it's no surprise that we dig On as well. And their recording technique has always been pretty cool, capturing various improvisations, song fragments, completed songs, various textures and sound experiments, and the handing the whole thing over to another musician to shape into whatever sort of record he or she imagined. Deathprod was the guest arranger/producer/assembler on the last album, and this time around, it's none other than long time aQ fave, experimental guitarist and soundscaper Christian Fennesz, and Fennesz definitely works his magic, assembling the various parts into sweeping smoldering minimal epics, gorgeous dronescapes and wide swaths of glimmering ambience. The record opens with a cloud of layered feedback, all high end skree, before gradually dissipating into something more delicate and tranquil, hushed chiming melodies, and crystalline overtones, give way to a much more soothing stretch of throb and thrum, wreathed in gentle static and subtle glitch, dark tones glide and shift, drifting through clouds of cymbal shimmer, fields of click and skitter, but all smeared into a slowly unwinding spiral of smoldering lysergic swells.
The record switches gears part way through, and becomes much more woozy and soft focus, muted tones, a warm washed out haze, and finally some stripped down skeletal drumming, the vibe almost krautrocky, simple and spare and propulsive, the background ever swirling and whirling, a softly lopped melody drifting in and out of earshot, the whole thing mesmerizing and hypnotic, before the drums eventually fade out, leaving a bleary landscape of slowly melting tones, and gently collapsing melodies, a hushed abstract, dreambliss outro.
Which makes the darkness of the next track that much more dramatic, churning buzzing muted riffage, looped and layered, wrapped in a cloud of delicate cymbal sizzle, subtly rhythmic, locked in an awesome groove, WAY too short at a little over 4 minutes, but that leads right into the epic 20 minute closer, mirroring the opening track, with another field of hushed and muted feedback, tangled buried melodies, the various bits of guitar, and barely there percussion woven into a slowly shifting gradually mutating dreamscape, sounding more and more like a proper Fennesz record, prismatic, kaleidoscopic, warm and lustrous, lush and fantastically abstract, very reminiscent of Oval, that sort of looped glitchery, but here, it's much more organic, much more soothing and entrancing, totally captivating and utterly lovely.
Everything about this cool little tape that showed up in the mail one day hit the spot, the bright red tape, with silver metallic lettering, the eye popping crocheted cover art... Everything that is except the band name, not sure why, but the name Oxykitten just had us imagining the music would be way too twee, to cutesy, too fey, a sort of Hello Kitty vibe, but in the interest of not judging a book by its cover, or a tape by its band name, we threw it on, and BAM. Or POW. Or KABLOW. Or whatever sound would indicate you that you just stumbled on the bad ass, old school electro synth lo-fi party jam of the summer. Or whenever. The opening track is a killer, with super buzzy synths, some simulated 'meow's, retro drum machines, thick deep ominous synth basslines, the melodies weirdly haunting, a weird combo of mysterious and groovy, creepy and funky, with some rad squiggly synth freakouts, very soundtracky, or like the music to the best video game you've never played. The closest reference might be Black Moth Super Rainbow or Tobacco, that sort of lo-fi 8-bit bastardized hip hop, but the sound here is way more retro, and weird. That aforementioned opener throws in some creepy John Carpenterisms too, as if Carpenter had scored Castlevania for the Sega Saturn.
The rest of the record definitely mixed it up, from super stripped down electro grooves, to goofy vocoder driven electropop, to fuzzed out Ed Banger style synth blowouts, to full on 8-bit videogame music, to wild and seriously damaged eighties party jams, to awesome, creepy soundtracky creepscapes, and on and on and on. Definite contender for party jam tape of the year, odds are a bunch of these songs will end up on summer fun mix tapes, or get blasted at full volume from car stereos, or at the very least, get pumped through those headphones, rollerskates, parachute pants and satin jackets optional.
Bright red cassette, full color eye popping covers, and a download code for those of you who no longer sport that walkman clipped to your belt...
Recent AQ Record Of The Week honorees Pan Sonic team up again with surprise partner Keiji Haino, the Tokyo psych shaman himself. More proof of the mysterious Finland-Japan connection. Previously the extreme electronic duo and the guttural guitar guru had collaborated on a live-in-concert cd for Blast First Petite, Shall I Download A Black Hole And Offer It To You, which we heralded as the next best thing to a Fushitsusha recording. Apparently only days after that show in Berlin, Pan Sonic and Haino went into the studio for another go-round. Again, drone and darkness are manipulated here by the masters.
As bombastic as Pan Sonic has been throughout their career, it shouldn't be a surprise that Keiji Haino is the dominant force on this record (he was on the live one too) with Pan Sonic sublimating their Tesla coil bursts of electricity into a reverberant tapestry of rumbling basstones and undulating frequencies. On only a few occasions will you find the Vainio / Vaisanen duo sequencing anything rhythmic, with Haino taking that opportunity for a rather clean-sounding guitar solo on the quintessentially Haino title "Without Doubt, An Attestation Written From That Time, Will No Longer Have Effect, Because The Wound Has Widened So Much." The pairing works much better when Haino channels voice, guitar, electronics, and drums through an abstracted slant on his existentialist poetics such as manifesting his lung-torn shrieks and obliterated guitar distortion in parallel to the dive-bomb electrical storms from Pan Sonic on "I Have Embedded It Approximately 2 Minutes And 7 Seconds Into The 4th Song, In Order To Return Here Whenever I Wish." Perhaps, this was originally conceived as an electronic recapitulation of Fushitsusha, but Synergy works best when evoking the shadowy ritualism of Haino's more ambient act Nijiumu to manifest this expressively infernal recording.
So, while Keiji Haino and Pan Sonic only managed a couple of days working together back in 2007, it seems that not a minute was wasted during that time, as they managed to make two great recordings together. We don't know why the live one was cd-only, and this studio album released as lp-only, but that's the way it is. Again, art/design by Stephen O'Malley, a deluxe package indeed, and quite LIMITED.
The return of thee only one man black metal band in the world!!! But wait you say, what abut Xasthur, and Striborg, and Leviathan, and... And you go on and on naming all the SUPPOSED one man black metal bands, but then we point out, that those bands are indeed populated by a single member, but they record like a band, one instrument at a time, the drums, then while listening to the drums, the guitar, and then the bass, finally the vocals, and they don't play live, because THEY CAN'T. That's what makes Pandiscordian Necrogenesis aka Lord Ephemeral Domignostika (also known as Mastery, the man behind the SF black metal monster of the same name, who have a double cd coming out any day now on tUMULt, and who was also the vocalist and bass player for Horn Of Dagoth), the only truly TROO one man black metal band, cuz he DOES play live, ALL the instruments at once, playing drums with his feet, riffing wildly with his hands, and of course spitting out some hellish vokills, and if that wasn't enough, it's all improvised, these tangled twisted, gnarled black metal blowouts are made up on the spot. Pretty incredible. Granted, some of the magic is lost on a recording, we're thinking a dvd or a VHS tape might be more appropriate, to watch this corpsepainted figure, hunched over his strange drum contraption, a snare with a kick drum pedal, and a bass drum with a DOUBLE kick drum pedal (he only just upgraded to double kick), while his hands flutter wildly over his axe, his contorted face spewing blackened vitriol into the mic.
But hell, even minus the visuals, Cerebral Quasaric Lacerations is some seriously raw and grim blasting blackness, the guitars grinding and superdistorted, the riffing frenzied and frantic, the drumming fast and fucked up, laced with flurries of double kick, the vocals croaked and shrieked, the songs dense twisted serpentine arrangements, this shit is definitely primitive, seriously lo-fi, and way KVLT, and the crazy thing is, even though this stuff is mostly improvised, there's some incredible riffing, some super catchy blackness, some impossibly tight vocal/guitar/drum interplay, the songs slipping from old school classic thrashing blackness, to twisted Black Flag flecked BM gnarl, and back again, spitting out classic sounding black metal off the cuff, the sort of shit most black metallers couldn't come up with after months in a proper practice space.
Gloriously buzzy and black, twisted and demented and about as true and grim as it gets, like the first, long out of print cd-r, another fucked up chunk of bafflingly brilliant outsider blackness.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered and screen printed, the cover a weird snake sword brain intestine thing on a smeared blood red backdrop that actually IS BLOOD. The whole cover is in fact soaked / painted in actual blood! It looks amazing, every one is different, and they all smell a bit odd, not dramatically so, but enough to know this is in fact REAL BLOOD. Doesn't get much more grim than that. We got nearly a quarter of the pressing, but if the last record was anything to go by, these won't be around for long...
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Our favorite Finnish hypnorock band Circle, and related offshoots, are always both doing the expected, AND the unexpected. Expected, in that in almost all cases, Circle hew to the repetitive, rhythmic, krautrock-inspired "circular" grooves from whence they get their name. Yet, while adhering to that basic concept, they've managed to put out umpteen dozen upon dozen albums that are all completely different... some spacey and pretty, some heavy and riffy, some with Gregorian style chant, some with operatic metallic vokills, and all brilliant (ask anybody, but especially us!). Pharaoh Overlord, one of the more popular and prolific Circle "side projects", with a lineup almost (exactly?) the same as Circle, has pretty much followed the same path. Originally, ostensibly a "stoner rock" version of Circle (which you can definitely hear on the live lp we recently listed), they got even more truly metal with their last album, #4, maybe the ultimate "NWOFHM" statement from the Circle camp.
That said, this new, 5th album from Pharaoh Overlord is way more unexpected than the expected, content-wise!! Totally different from #4 for sure. There's three long, instrumental tracks here, and each of them is quite different too. The disc begins with the 22:33 of "Vesitorni", a seemingly improvised piece that's extremely quiet, abstract, mysterious. Sudden skitter of the drums. Chiming glimmer of the guitars. Shimmering cymbals. Pulsation of the bass. It's almost "onkyo" in its sparse, low-key, quasi-jazz loveliness. Really nice, and really not at all remotely "NWOFHM".
Then, wham! Maybe we shouldn't even warn you. Track two, "Valujuhla" (12:47) erupts with a frenzy of loud, chaotic, freeform freaking-out. Here is where we wonder, is Siluurikaudella the record on which the PO/Circle guys go free jazz? Seems like it. And it kinda makes sense. Up until now, they've been famed for their motorik, locked-in, precise clockwork rhythms. With this, it's like those clockwork gears have come unsprung, gone completely haywire, and everyone's playing everything all at once, anarchy reigns! It had to happen, something had to give. But, then this track too quiets down, and we can tell Pharaoh Overlord still have it under control.
Following that, the eighteen minute "Piirros" takes over the final portion of the disc. It shares some similarities with the first track, staying mostly quiet and abstract. But it's definitely got more of a propulsive groove-shuffle going on underneath. And rather than abstract jazz... it reminds us of an abstract, creaky, cavernous blues. Super moody and dark and weird. Probably our favorite of the three.
So, PO definitely surprised us with this one. Took a short while to get our heads around. But now we're definitely digging it. And think that Circle, Doktor Kettu, Keiji Haino, Nels Cline, Tetuzi Akiyama, even Jandek fans will totally dig it too. Improvised, instrumental, eccentric! Oh yeah.
Pigeons are a Northwestern husband and wife psych folk duo, augmented by members of No Neck Blues Band and other NNBB offshoots, and this is Pigeons full length number two, released appropriately enough on the always kick ass Olde English Spelling Bee label, and this is indeed a gorgeous chunk of psychedelic folk, dark and heavy and hypnotic, big simple motorik drumming, distorted psychedelic guitar leads, simple acoustic guitar strum and heavenly ethereal vocals, not to mention various keyboards, and bits of percussion, total Wicker Man seventies style acid folk, but definitely modernized, imagine a young hippy folksinger in the UK in the seventies, suddenly transported to now, hooking up with the new breed of lysergic bedroom folk pop alchemists, well, this is the most likely result, at its core, pure lilting dream folk, but all wrapped up in strange swooping backwards guitars, fluttering flutes, detuned doomy riffs, skittery percussion, glitchy electronics, buzzy swaths of processed effects drenched psychswirl, wild spidery melodies, tons of reverb, and strange little bits of sonic detritus, all blurred into gorgeously lush lysergic acid folk, at once timeless and classic sounding, but also weirdly modern, almost like a Karen Dalton or Vashti Bunyan for the warped lo-fi garage pop set. Which is just as good as it sounds.
Housed in super swank tip on style jackets, comes with a download coupon as well!
Really cool doomy layered folk by Nick Malkin, who is now a member of Sun Araw. Like a slowcore record covered with gobs of dirt and dust. We were only able to get a few of these from him when Sun Araw were last in town so grab one of these before they are gone.
We discovered this strange split lp via the always amazing WFMU in New Jersey, a freeform radio station we've collaborated with on numerous occasions in the past, most notably we shared a couple showcases at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas, which by the way was no coincidence, and it wasn't just because we're pals, it's also because WFMU constantly and consistently play the most amazing shit. We think we know about the craziest, most underground music, and then we tune into WFMU and routinely have our minds blown. And yeah, we blow their minds once in a while too, with stuff we recommend on our list, but pretty much every time we listen to WFMU, we have to have a pen and paper handy to jot down all the amazing things we need to track down, which happened recently with this here record. One track was all it took to know this was some serious aQ-worthy weirdness, dark and psychedelic, tripped out and bizarre and beautiful, on a label we love too, with a background story as cool and weird as the music itself. So we got as many as we could (it's limited to 300 copies!) but odds are they won't last, so grab one of these quick cuz once we describe it to you, we're pretty sure you're not gonna be able to live without one...
The oddly named Razen are a duo, who grew tired of the traditional rock band instrumentation, and decided to each pick a new instrument, one they had no idea how to play, which is how they ended up with a detuned santoor (like an Indian hammered dulcimer) and a drumset assembled from metal plates. And thus was born Razen. They've expanded their instrumentation to include still more instruments they don't know how to play (bouzouki, keyboards, horns), and have invited a handful of guests to contribute an even more impressive and bizarre arsenal of noisemakers, including bagpipe, chalumeau (a classical style recorder), sopranino (one of the smallest horns in the saxophone family), bass recorder, duduk (a Middle Eastern woodwind) and shenai (a North Indian oboe), and this is the result: a glorious, mysterious take on world music, dark and haunting, heavily percussive, cinematic, abstract and dramatic, the label mentions Moondog and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and David Lynch, but we also hear some Sun City Girls, some martial industrial music, while at the same time the sounds dip into African folk music and Indian style ragas, all rife with drone and buzz and strange melodies, lush textures, frantic rhythms, all filtered through Razen's distinctively non-world music perspective.
"Rammelaargong" begins with hypnotic tribal hand drumming, deep low end thrum, fluttering woodwinds, and haunting steel string shimmer, eventually building to a frenzy of howling horns, and frantic drumming, infused with plenty of drone and buzz, and a strangely motorik rhythmic pulse, with everything eventually dropping out, finishing off with a brief flurry of lo-fi percussion.
"Razen Zand" begins with a thick undulating raga like drone, rendered in glitchy electronics, before the drums kick in, and then the horns, and the sound is almost like a marching band playing some abstract African folk music, the drums and horns locked into staccato bursts, while in between those bursts, wild melodies are unfurled from buzzing steel strings, the sound manages to be epic, and majestic and HEAVY. "Richel" is all low end blur, and woozy snake charmer melodies, shimmery spidery buzzing strings, a sun baked sprawling raga-like drift, the vibe dark and emotional and intense, very cinematic, wild fluttering woodwinds flit above that mournful snake charmer cry, the track laced with sharp percussive strikes, and thick low end thrums, hummed chantlike vox, and swirls of metallic shimmer. "Rode Hond" too, begins with a deep metallic buzz, layered and lush, and those exotic intense snake charmer melodies, the percussion, spare and skeletal, but propulsive and rhythmic, the song growing more and more intense the drums more frenetic, the horns and woodwinds more tense, soaring and singing out, all the instruments slipping into a hypnotic groove, that we could listen to forever, and fades out way too soon.
So incredible, it's only 4 tracks, but they're so intense and detailed and blossom a little more with every listen, you might as well set your turntable to send the needle right back to the beginning, and let it play all night.
And that's just the Razen side. The flipside is taken up entirely by a single track from Sheldon Siegel, which is not in fact a person, but rather a group, a Belgian abstract free jazz outfit, made up of cello, drums, percussion, sax, vocals, tapes and music box, and don't be expecting regular old free jazz, they are after all teamed up with Razen for a reason, and not because they're both from Belgium, it's more likely, that like Razen, the guys in Sheldon Siegel approach their music similarly, looking to subvert the old, and invent something new, to create a music that while made up of free jazz elements, is more than free jazz, and what they've come up with does definitely strike out from the confines of free jazz, sure, a quick listen will sound like free jazz on the surface, but as you dig deeper, and the song develops, thick grinding cello drones ground the sound, a thick undulating textural buzz, underpinning, stuttery skronk and little flurries of percussive skitter, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer. Over the course of the side's 25 minutes, the group shift gears dramatically, slipping into a seriously twisted dirge, with the horns super processed and sounding almost electronic, blissing out, and letting blurts of feedback and spurts of rhythmic sputter spar over mournful cello melodies, sounding super dramatic and intense, after some bursts of almost traditional sounding avant jazz, the sound winds way down, the tapes warble and whir, the other instruments are muffled and muted, a strange landscape of scrapes and thumps, of fragmented melodies, and abstract ambience, before finishing off with a strange stretch of stumbling loping jazz flecked skitter, and swirling droned out weirdness.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
If we had to pick a favorite rock vocalist, or more specifically VOICE, it would be pretty tough to not pick Dax Riggs. His croon is so intense and emotive and powerful, able to brood and croon, as well as howl like a banshee, or even shriek in full on metal mode. Having done time in the mighty Acid Bath, not to mention Deadboy And The Elephantmen and Agents Of Oblivion, Riggs' voice was always the defining element in all of those bands, beginning with Acid Bath, a serious metal band, whose sound was tempered by Riggs' incredible voice, transforming it into something totally unique, giving it a dark almost cabaret element that was lacking from most metal, most music. As he drifted from Agents Of Oblivion to Deadboy, and finally going it alone, the music got less and less heavy, the sound more and more dramatic, which definitely suited his voice. A voice that sits somewhere between Robert Plant, Glenn Danzig, Mark Lanegan, David Bowie and Jeff Buckley. Super expressive, super unique, and a little bit glammy. His solo records have tended toward the dark and bluesy, the stripped down, Say Goodnight To The World is no different, although the opening title track gets pretty fuzzy and heavy, and might be the most rocking thing we've heard from Riggs in a while, slithery and dark, the riff a little bit sludgey, but it's really just a showcase for his voice, and it soars and trills, and almost cracks, and gives you chills, goosebumps, all that, if there was ever a case of "he could sing the phonebook" it's Riggs.
Folks hankering for the heaviness of the old days probably won't be too into this new record, but if you're like us, and appreciated all the slower jams, the acoustic numbers, even as far back as Acid Bath, then Say Goodnight To The World will sound pretty darn sweet, broody and smoldering, and to be fair, pretty dang rokcing and heavy at moments, the new band is pretty bad ass, and at least half of these tracks get pretty fierce, but those tracks are balanced by some grim balladry, hell, there's even a cover of "Heartbreak Hotel", transformed into some sort of murder ballad, slowed way down, to a crawl, the melody changed quite a bit, the result something seriously harrowing and sinister and awesome. Which pretty much describes this whole record.
WAY recommended for anyone into sounds mysterious and passionate, bleak and intense, heavy and emotional, dark and dramatic...
You think Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti is weird, wait until you hear APHG offshoot Samps, who basically take all the fucked up retro FM radio-ims and tweaked yacht rock tropes of Ariel Pink, and tosses it all into a blender, chops it all up, twists it into crazy head spinning shapes and spits them back out in the form of the most fucked up, drug addled seventies coke party disco dance freak out you've ever heard.
From fat fuzzy funked out basslines, to stuttery sampled vocals, to blown out AM radio melodies, to record crackle crusted synthfunk grooves, to cheesy MTV style new wave pop, to creepy jittery collages of slap bass, wah wah guitar, fuzzy synth and electronic drums, but Samps fuck it all up, piling on layers, looping samples, sometimes into full on blown out blissed out almost shoegazey sounding sheets of ethereal buzz and shimmer, but just as often into some sort of stumbling, lurching, unfunky, eighties pop-funk free for all. It's cheesy as all get out, but it's so tweaked and twisted and fucked up, that it basically becomes a sort of low brow high art, a dizzying psychedelic sampledelic mash up that in some weird way transcends all the references, and creates something pretty bad ass out of the musical detritus we've all tried to leave behind.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one hand numbered, comes with a download coupon, we're not sure we can get more of these once they're gone...
Oakland's Shannon And The Clams are quickly becoming one of our favorite Bay Area bands. Their live shows are so fun filled and thrilling and their full length debut totally won us over the way it channeled old school rock n' roll, girl groups, garage rock, and RnB, all wrapped into a singular charismatic punk rock aesthetic. Recently Shannon joined the live incarnation of Hunx & His Punx or as they call it now Hunx & His Punkettes, and when you see them live you realize how much Shannon's vocals and playing really help make Hunx's live shows so much more satisfying.
Paddy's Birthday continues to show us why we love this group so much. Shannon is possessed with one of the strongest and moving voices of any vocalist around, she really owns every single note and word she sings. Like some awesome combination of Etta James, The Shirelles, and The Gits, this is a 7" that shows off a band that really is creating their own sound and doing it so damn well.
In the annals of the "early heavy", the Sir Lord Baltimore (from Brooklyn) is up there with the likes of Dust, Bang, and yes Blue Cheer. Too bad their two albums have been pretty much out of print for ages, the last official cd reissue, a two-fer, was back in the early '90s. But, proto-metal fans rejoice, 'cause now both SLB records are back in action, individually, on vinyl! 1970's Kingdom Come and the self-titled 1971 sequel, both of 'em essential slabs of heavy hard rockin' from this seminal band in heavy metal history.
The debut, with the spooky trippy "ghost ship" painting on the cover, alone justifies SLB's cult status. Very few bands in 1970 were this heavy (though, it must be said, Black Sabbath were on an other level entirely). Aside from the primly pretty, baroque ballad "Lake Isle Of Innersfree", this whole record is pretty much a frenzied fuzz blaster par excellance. And when we say fuzz, we mean FUZZ! Just check out the title track, a majestic six and half minutes mixing tripped out lyrics with savage bursts of ultra distorted guitar. There's definitely a sixties vibe to the proceedings; you can imagine bikers totally digging it. And it's as energetic as the proto-punk coming out of Detroit at the time, too.
The follow-up album is a little fancier, more diverse, and dramatic, the band expanded from a trio to a quartet, with extra instrumentation (acoustic guitar, organ). There's a 10+ minute prog epic called "Man From Manhattan" (which still gets heavy!), but also ragin' rockers like "Woman Tamer". And you get to hear SLB kicking out the jams in concert on the live track "Where Are We Going".
What's not to love about this band? They're a Sir, they're a Lord, they even have a singing drummer! So if you haven't yet been flattened by SLB's fuzz, time to add these to your collection, especially if said collection already includes the likes of High Tide, Tiger B. Smith, Highway Robbery, Leaf Hound, Toad, etc.
In the annals of the "early heavy", the Sir Lord Baltimore (from Brooklyn) is up there with the likes of Dust, Bang, and yes Blue Cheer. Too bad their two albums have been pretty much out of print for ages, the last official cd reissue, a two-fer, was back in the early '90s. But, proto-metal fans rejoice, 'cause now both SLB records are back in action, individually, on vinyl! 1970's Kingdom Come and the self-titled 1971 sequel, both of 'em essential slabs of heavy hard rockin' from this seminal band in heavy metal history.
The debut, with the spooky trippy "ghost ship" painting on the cover, alone justifies SLB's cult status. Very few bands in 1970 were this heavy (though, it must be said, Black Sabbath were on an other level entirely). Aside from the primly pretty, baroque ballad "Lake Isle Of Innersfree", this whole record is pretty much a frenzied fuzz blaster par excellance. And when we say fuzz, we mean FUZZ! Just check out the title track, a majestic six and half minutes mixing tripped out lyrics with savage bursts of ultra distorted guitar. There's definitely a sixties vibe to the proceedings; you can imagine bikers totally digging it. And it's as energetic as the proto-punk coming out of Detroit at the time, too.
The follow-up album is a little fancier, more diverse, and dramatic, the band expanded from a trio to a quartet, with extra instrumentation (acoustic guitar, organ). There's a 10+ minute prog epic called "Man From Manhattan" (which still gets heavy!), but also ragin' rockers like "Woman Tamer". And you get to hear SLB kicking out the jams in concert on the live track "Where Are We Going".
What's not to love about this band? They're a Sir, they're a Lord, they even have a singing drummer! So if you haven't yet been flattened by SLB's fuzz, time to add these to your collection, especially if said collection already includes the likes of High Tide, Tiger B. Smith, Highway Robbery, Leaf Hound, Toad, etc.
It was pretty impossible to not want to hate this band. The hype was unprecedented, they didn't even have a record out, and blogs and magazines and newspapers were hailing them as not just the next big thing, but the only new band that mattered. M.I.A snapped them up and signed them to her Mom + Pop label, and every tastemaker that mattered were singing the praises of this 'electro-metal' duo, so of course anyone with a punk rock or subversive anti-mainstream bone in their body, recoiled, and already knew, somehow, that the record would be a piece of shit. But guess what, it's totally not. It's actually pretty great. Listening to Sleigh Bells now, it's easy to see why people were freaking out, with nothing but live shows to go on, this stuff is total hipster dance party manna, big beats, stuttering and loping, big crunchy super distorted riffs, swirling synths, and woozy sing songy almost double-dutch style vocals. The similarities to M.I.A are undeniable, the same sort of beats and vocal cadences, makes a lot of sense they would find each other, and no doubt anyone who digs M.I.A. will probably like this too. Fun and funky, hooky and a little bit heavy, rambunctious, sweaty, groovy, definitely a perfect party record, we can almost imagine the sorts of herky jerky YouTube dancing this stuff will inspire, but you know what, fuck it, fuck the haters, this stuff is awesome, it's maybe not as important and genre shattering as some folks might want to believe, but it killer, and whether we wanted to or not, we find ourselves listening to this a LOT.
Still seems so strange though that one half of the Sleigh Bells duo is the guitarist from metalcore combo Poison The Well...
Second album from this great energetic San Francisco pop band, who pack lots of nice twists and turns into their sophomore outing. With infectious keyboards fueling the songs alongside driving guitars and beautiful vocals, Social Studies have developed a sound that's punchy, catchy and intimate. Listening to Wind Up Wooden Hearts makes us think of so many of our favorite interesting indie pop peddlers. Like if Hanne Hanne Hukkelberg was backed by Casiotone For The Painfully Alone; or The Finches doing Broadcast covers; or Wye Oak, Mates Of State, Feist, The Postmarks, Dirty Projectors, and Victoria Bergsman all jamming out at a fun filled pajama party. There is such a brightness to the sounds that Social Studies create, full of color and wide eyed possibility. It's refreshing when so many bands seem to be going for detached cool, and layers of fuzz to hide their songs, to hear a really good pop band very upfront and comfortable with creating songs that make your head bop and heart pound, the perfect soundtrack for a long stroll with that special crush, soft serve ice cream cones in your hands, and these sweet sounds in your head and a carefree breeze defining that moment. So nice.
We really can't think of one bad Superchunk record. Really, not one lousy ep, 7", comp track, etc. They've been putting out records for over twenty years now and not one release has been less then spectacular. While their output has slowed way down in the last decade, last years ep. Leaves In The Gutter was vintage Superchunk all the way, reminding us all why we all fell in love with them so hard in the first place. These two brand new songs continue to do the same. Punchy, poppy, catchy and full of impassioned fire. No one writes hookier and more satisfying pop gems than Superchunk. And both of these two songs show off their undying spirit and peerless chops so damn well. With a brand new full length promised for later this year (it's been nine years since a proper long player!) this is whetting our appetite big time for the full on return of these indie rock legends.
This long out of print cassette, from one of our favorite practitioners of gorgeous and haunting grimdrone doomfolk, finally reissued on cd and vinyl! And with a whole extra chunk of unreleased music...
Penpals Forever proper begins with a flurry of percussive guitar thrum, tons of reverb and buzz, a shimmering black forest of metallic shimmer and deep rumbles, all woven into what up close is a dizzying swirl of sound, but step back and the pattern is evident, a slow sprawling minor key melody, a haunting horror movie creep. A roiling black sea of huge slabs of glacial low end, that blot out the sun, swallowing the various guitars beneath it, moving like massive deathships, the shadows only allowing brief glimpses of the melody beneath. Truly ominous and cinematic. Eyes closed, these are the kind of sounds that would give the weak hearted nightmares, while the rest of us luxuriate in its thick blackened drone drenched buzz.
The unreleased bonus tracks, which are like a whole 'nother record tacked on, are just as good as the original tape. Three long tracks, all flowing together, the first a Philip Jeck like creepscape, all woozy and otherworldly, warbly tones, warped guitar buzz, everything stretched and smeared into languorous layers, while a fog of distant melody hovers in the distance, peppered with soft focus harmonies, drifting and reflective. Which gives way to a thick heady swirl of muted fuzz and slowed down sound, like some mysterious cityscape field recording played at 16rpm and wreathed in a haze of drone and buzz. Until finally the side finishes off with another smoldering dronescape, beginning quietly, while layers of grinding distorted guitars unfurl heaving blackened whirs and rumbles over a backdrop of streaked feedback and strange sounds buried in the murk.
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Latest batch of grim drifting blackness from these Portland low end necromancers, two side long tracks, still using Earth's classic 2 album as a template, but taking that churning glacial riffage and stretching it even further out, infusing the sound with more ambience, more subtle electronic flourishes, adding space and strange shifting textures, a glancing listen will still conjure up visions of robed axemen, and fog drenched walls of glowing amplification, but Tecumseh offers up the sort of ritualistic heaviness that rewards total subjugation, each track an immersive world of black buzz and rumbling creep, rife with mysterious melody, and all manner of sonic wonder.
As with past releases, the band strike a perilous balance between suffocating crush, and blackened mesmer. The A-side here is the perfect example, lumbering low end thrum, pulses and throbs, underpinned by wheezing ephemeral synths, a shimmering texture barely audible through the wall of crumbling riffage, but then it gets even heavier, and more dense, as layer after layer are piled on, and the various strands of rumble and buzz, coalesce into a seriously crushing, massive funereal dirge, corrosive, distorted, but still strangely tranquil and hypnotic, the whole track locked into a woozy soporific lop. So minimal, the sounds is more drone than metal, the undulating riffscape warm and liquid, laced with sweeps of muted electronics and buried bits of whir and glitch.
The second side starts off much more eerily, with distant voices, streaks f feedback, the sound of some overheard ritual, wrapped in cavelike acoustics, subterranean and haunting, eventually, peals of lower register buzz begin to surface, and again the track builds gradually, thickening and growing darker and blacker and heavier, slowly slipping into another expanse of rumbling glacial dirgery.
And while this was meant to play at 45, give it a spin at 33, even more abstract and minimal and dronelike, the heaviness and crush transformed into something way more abstract and psychedelic.
LIMITED TO 333 COPIES, housed in super swank, 3 color hand screened jackets, with printed cardstock inserts.
Once again, Planet Mu steps up to the plate, to single handedly provide us with our grime/dubstep fix, this time in the form of Power Grid, a brand new ep of avant abstract griminess from mysterious producer Terror Danjah, who mixes classic rave sounds and playful melodies, with blown out buzzy bass warble, warped stuttery beats, clipped vocal snippets, spaced out FX, fuzzy squelchy synths, into something simultaneously cosmic, groovy, melodic, yet rough and gruff and a little bit aggressive.
"Space Traveller" is all synth and minimal, sounding a bit like Ital Tek or Zomby, but then "Menace" swoops in, sounding, well, menacing, with a woozy atmosphere, swirling melodies, dramatic strings and orchestral stabs, all sent skittering, maybe one of our favorite electronic jams in recent memory.
"Twisted" is another killer, that drops big beats, over buzzing FX drenched warped synth swirl, some twisted (yup) toasted vox, a clinical two step beat, all wound up into some seriously tense dancefloor damage. "Horror Story" is haunting and harrowing and skeletal, the beats cloaked in grit and buzz, the track laced with weird haunted house ambience, the rhythm sliced and diced, sped up vox, all creepy and crawly, but still fuzzy and funky.
This stuff is so goddamn good. Can't imagine it'll be too long before Terror Danjah finally gets the same sort of hype as folks like Zomby and Benga and Skream and the like, especially considering the fact that this stuff is SO much cooler and weirder...
The Wire magazine of Metal magazines. As far as we're concerned. From England, a must read, etc. This issue... Watain are the cover stars, looking like they just stepped out of a "troo grim" version of Time Bandits. Also, inside: Skyforger, Annihilator, Keep Of Kalessin, Armored Saint, Jucifer, Karma To Burn, The Howling Wind, and the delightfully named Dew-Scented. Plus lots more, like Grand Magus in the studio, Ivar from Enslaved making a mix tape, and a Roadburn report. Plus reviews... and the bonus free cd sampler on the cover.
Hmm, got two issues to review this list! Either Terrorizer's publication schedule is screwy, or ours is. Probably ours! Well, twice the Terrorizer won't hurt, you like to read, right? This issue features such worthies as Grand Magus (on the cover this time), Nachtmystium, the Melvins, Ramesses, Harvey Milk, Lair Of The Minotaur, and much more, including a studio report from Torche, a label profile of Bindrune Recordings, and a eulogy for Ronnie James Dio. Plus a free cover-mounted sampler cd. As always, essential for the metal fan who wants to keep informed.
Yes, this week we do have releases on our list by both Conan, and Thor! How 'bout that. In "real life" we imagine that Thor, being a god, could beat up Conan, tough as Conan is. In fact, we think that Marvel once issued a comic book about that very match-up. And in even more real real life, we're also pretty sure that Jon Mikl Thor, former bodybuilding champion and cult '80s heavy metal icon, could probably wallop the three guys in the doom band called Conan reviewed above. Or at least bend their big ol' horseback battle hammer into a pretzel with his bare hands. Sonically, however, Conan's sub-bass SUNNO)))-like sludge riffage is definitely heavier than the more traditional heavy metal rockin' of Thor and band. Yet, if you're into '80s metal, you'll agree, Thor kicks ass. Certainly Jussi from our fave Finnish band Circle thinks so - this is the third Thor reissue he's put out on his Ektro label so far! And we think so too. Especially when it comes to this album, 1985's Only The Strong, generally considered to be Thor's best. It contains his biggest "hits", and a lot of 'em, beefy kitsch metal classics like "Knock 'Em Down", "When Gods Collide", "Let The Blood Run Red", "Ride Of The Chariots", and best of all, "Thunder On The Tundra". Songs that Thor definitely still sings even today, heck they're likely encore material.
We said Ektro's reissue of Live In Detroit, also from '85, was the one Thor to get if you were to only get one. Well, that's perhaps been superseded by this release. If you're ready to rock, and want do it to in the company of a musclebound he-man, this album should definitely get you pumped up. Bombastic, catchy, straight up very very metal!
Nicely done reissue, with slickly designed booklet, complete with a back cover photo of a vintage Thor logo patch, and the slogan "Beware The Fury Of The Ice Viking", which sounds like something one of Jussi's NWOFHM bands like Steel Mammoth would use as a song title. The disc also includes a bonus bonus live track, "Warriors Of The Universe", boasting impressive crowd sing-along action only possible in Europe, recorded at Sweden Rock Festival we think in 2009, with original Only The Strong guitarist Steve "Lightning Lord" Price in the band!
Where does Dark Entries find all this stuff? Sure, Dark Day was certainly a known quantity; but before the label reissued the Eleven Pond LP, had any one really heard "Watching Trees?" Ditto for the Second Decay album? Those Attractive Magnets were a band that the world forgot, except for the discerning ears over at Dark Entries, who compiled this album from a handful of tapes produced in the late '70s and early '80s. And yes, it's another great piece of archival synth-wave! This primitive synth driven / new wave outfit was from small village of Tamworth, located in the English midlands, but their heart seemed to be directed north to Sheffield where the likes of the Human League, The Future, Clock DVA, and Cabaret Voltaire were blossoming at the same time. Those Attractive Magnets revolved around the charismatic frontman Rikk Quay, who had been inspired by the punk class of 1977 but wanted to channel that spirit through electronics. Joined by a couple of like-minded musical partners from Tamworth, Quay propels his urgent tunes along surprisingly catchy minimalist synth melodies, whose darkened atmospheres were amplified in futurist bleeps and alien bloops; but it's Quay's voice that is really key to making the band work, as he does what he can to emulate an early Phillip Oakley (of the Human League) without sounding too smug or contrived as Oakley was want to do. Recommended for any and all keen on the resurgence of the minimal wave aesthetic!
Like all Dark Entries releases this is limited to a pressing of 500 and comes with an 11x17 poster of artwork, lyrics and liner notes.
We've always thought there was something special about To Rococo Rot, we've heard moments on their records that really show they can reach next level brilliance in their ability to merge such a pronounced feeling and mood with their deep grooves and beats. Before dubstep and any of the other new electronic subcategories, To Roccoco Roc were already making super rich, moody and nuanced sounds that didn't conform to one single style. Speculation is their first album in many years and it finds the Berlin trio in top form. The album opens with Cluster-like pulsations and as it organically moves forward with a post-kraut-rock sensibility, the sounds shift and sway, going back and forth from a tense and haunting sensation to something more free and exploratory. There are moments where they tap into the kind of sound we imagine Tortoise and Mouse On Mars might create if they collaborated, yet there is something a bit more sinister and seething just under the surface of To Rococo Rot's sound. Their sonic versatility really sets them apart from so many of their peers. So nice to have them back!
Wow, is this record ever bizarre, not at all what you might expect from the same label that released the record of Pajo Misfits covers or Paz Lenchatin's gorgeous country drone folk record, but like those records, Tonetta's 777 is truly unique and weird and to some ears perhaps also wonderful. Incredibly strange music for sure...
Some folks might recognize the name Tonetta (or Tonetta 777) from his various videos on YouTube, and no doubt some of you were probably forwarded them as they are truly truly odd and were becoming a sort of sensation. So we were trying to find a simple succinct way of describing Tonetta, and decided to turn to the online source for all things freaky, Freakipedia (oddly enough there was no entry for Tonetta on Wikipedia) where Tonetta's entry described him as "an incredibly gay older man on YouTube who dances half naked to songs he pre-recorded. While most of the music sounds the same in his videos, his lyrics largely differ dealing with sexual fetishes such as pissing and pooping, larger women and men, and ass to mouth." Which does pretty much sum it up. Tonetta dresses in strange ripped Flashdance style outfits, g-strings, torn sweatshirts, bustiers, weird masks, sometimes pantyhose over his head, wigs, dresses, whatever, sometimes he's practically nude, he shimmies and shakes, in a diamond shaped frame surrounded by trippy colors, in front of a backdrop that looks like it's probably in his basement, white curtains, a black sheet hung on the wall, a bunch of balloons, and we haven't even gotten to the music yet, simple primitive drum machines, looped disco basslines, blown out guitars, everything in the red and blown out and distorted, the vocals either a deep croon, or a weird almost falsetto trill, the sound warped and warbly alternatingly funky, groovy, and/or psychedelic, sometimes the music sounds like some underground post punk lo-fi disco, other times it sounds almost like Ariel Pink or John Maus, and then there's the song tiles and lyrics, which as the Freakipedia entry alludes to, are subversive and sexual and bizarre and problematic and pretty goddamn funny: "My Bro", "Still A Slave", "A Really Big Cock", "Toronto Is Starting To Stink", "Metal Man", "Peeping Tom", "Drugs Drugs Drugs", "God Treats You Right", "I'm Gonna Marry A Prostitute", and on and on. Fucked up and freaky, but weirdly addictive, and as skeptical as we may have been about a whole album of this stuff, after seeing a bunch of his videos, we find ourselves digging this a whole lot, and listening to it more than we ever thought we would, which pretty much says it all!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, housed in a super nice thick cover, adorned with a 2 color serigraph, and comes with a cd version of the record as well.
Another batch of sonic mysteries from UK tape label The Tapeworm, and if you didn't think the Tapeworm was eclectic already, these two will undoubtedly convince you. Johnny Remember Me is not a band, or really a record, instead, it's actually a book on tape, written by UK author Cathi Unsworth, who has a pretty serious resume (Sounds, Bizarre, Mojo, Uncut, not to mention a handful of novels), and besides writing about music, also writes about crime, but through a pop culture, new music filter, a hip hybrid of bands and artists and gangsters and criminals, which is what you get here. Unsworth is teamed up with musician Pete Woodhead, from the group O Yuki Conjugate, who did the music for awesome Rom-Zom-Com Shaun Of The Dead, for a pretty straight reading of Unsworth's novel Johnny Remember Me.
It's a pretty cool story, rife with pop culture references, loads of music, and yeah, some criminal activities, with Unsworth and Woodhead each tackling half the story, both with appropriately thick UK accents, which gives Unsworth's tale the perfect British crime novel vibe.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. With killer cover art by Savage pencil.
Even if we weren't already aware that the early '70s output of the German record label Kuckuck was pretty darn cool, being a significant part of the whole incredible krautrock thing, we'd be eager to hear this new compilation, following as it does B-Music's other recent celebrations of labels like BYG in France (The BYG Deal comp) and Belter in Spain (the Absolute Belter comp), all of 'em awesome. This well-researched collection, part of the B-Music / Finders Keepers "krautsider music" series, is a tribute to the vision and dedication of the Kuckuck label's founder, Eckart Rahn (about whom several fascinating pages of the text and photo filled cd booklet are devoted). Presented with distinctive graphic style, Kuckuck's always adventurous and ever eclectic roster made records ranging from progressive pop to acid folk to out there kosmische electronics, in other words krautrock at its finest.
There's nine bands represented across the 20 tracks here. You get, among others, the heavy blues rock of Armageddon, the proto-New Age bliss of AQ fave Deuter, Antiteater's soundtracks to Rainer Werner Fassbinder films, the brilliant minimalist hypnorock of Out Of Focus (another AQ fave), the Moog synthesizer experimentation of American composer Sam Spence, and proggy pop pioneers Ihre Kinder (plus various spinoffs), and more. Of the several artists we hadn't ever heard before, Sam Spence was particularly intriguing, especially since the liner notes explain that his Moogs were paid for by the National Football League, for whom he made film soundtracks! We'd be curious to hear more of his Kuckuck recordings based on the two tracks from him included here, which sound something like a more tripped out Perrey and/or Kingsley.
Dunno why they didn't include some Murphy Blend, too, but it's a fine comp anyhow! Any Finders Keepers follower or krautrock fancier should be keen on this. Can't go too wrong with Kuckuck.
Okay grind bastards, time for round 4, another awesome collection of some of the best grind that Japan, and the rest of the world, has to offer. But like on past installments, this is not the grind you know and love, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Last Days Of Humanity, Discordance Axis, Hayaino Daisuki, Brutal Truth, Pig Destroyer, Nasum, that's all mainstream by comparison, this is the grind underground, some names you might know, you might even have records by Unholy Grave, whose label Grind Freaks is responsible for this mayhem, or Total Fucking Destruction, and then there's a bunch of bands you probably only know from past installments of Grind Bastards like Mortalized, Fortitude, Little Bastards, and in addition this time around a there's whole new crop of bands we'd never heard 'til now: Vulgaroyal Bloodhill, Zomba Green, Disgunder, Diborce, Ada Max, Black Ganion, and more more more.
This isn't really for dabblers though, this is sort of the grind version of grim, kvlt, true, the sounds here insane and ultra aggressive, over the top, a relentless assault on the senses, a crushing barrage of grinding buzzsaw riffage, blasting hyperspeed drumming, crazed vocals that yelp, howl, grunt, screech, the songs ultra proggy, a million parts and tempos crammed into the space of a minute or two, the sounds vary from blasts of blacknoise, to groovy almost classic metal, to white hot blasts of old school grind, to twisted effects drenched grinding avant metal freakouts, to galloping fastcore, to helping almost Melt-Banana sounding hypergrind, to epic war grind, to some almost poppy grind, some seriously gurgling goregrind, a few tracks get into 3 and 4 even 5 minutes, while others blow by in seconds, furious and frenzied and frantic and fantastically fucked up, this is some of the raddest, heaviest, most brutal and inventive grind you'll hear, anyone into fast and heavy, blasting brutality, this will kick your ass big time, and like past volumes, this would be a pretty epic grind primer, and like those volumes, this couldn't be more recommended.
Killer packaging too, a massive fold out punk rock poster, with each band getting their own little panel of liner notes...
As of late anyone with even a passing interest in the blues has had plenty of reasons to rejoice. Almost every list we are blessed with something vinyl on Monk or Mississippi, but even with the wealth of material available, there are still plenty of lesser known artists who will go unheard, due to their obscurity, lack of recordings, or inability to fit comfortably within the predominantly white myths that have, for better and/or worse, shaped the history of blues music and its legacy. That's why it's so great having this awesome new comp focusing on some of the less influential but still powerful bluesmen. With a whopping 24 tracks, this collection spans from 1923 (with, reportedly, the first recorded use of a guitar slide, or more appropriately, knife, as wielded by Sylvester Weaver) to 1929, one of the most noteworthy of years for recorded blues music. Some of these musicians you may recognize, like Ishman Bracey (whose Suitcase Full Of Blues we reviewed not too long back), but many of them are just names we've read about, and others still are completely new to us. No matter, it's all prime stuff carefully selected to help show us what we have been missing. Carrying on in the tradition of legendary labels like Yazoo and Arhoolie, Sub Rosa has done us a great favor with this one, and we're hoping even more labels will take a cue and excavate essential recordings from the past. Highly recommended.
This cultural exchange of sound artists from Australia and France was curated by sonic ecologist Eric La Casa and the electro-acoustic composer Philip Samartzis, having presented a series of performances and installations in both countries, exploring secret channels of communication through post-concrete composition and experimentation. The compilation as a whole is a fantastic listen, dynamic presentations of field recordings, found object manipulation, tuned instrumentation, and/or pure acousmatic works, with contributions from plenty of exceptional artists (e.g. Tarab, Cedric Peyronnet aka Toy Bizarre, Camilla Hannan, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Thomas Tilly, Thembi Soddell, etc.). From an overhead view, many of the tracks seamlessly blend together in the rustlings of damp earth and scrabbled soil juxtaposed with drones engineered out of environmental sources, cut with decontextualized snippets of language. It's hard not to see the connections of all of artists - both Australian and French - to the early '70s concrete pieces of psychologically agitated collages and concrete constructions. Throughout the compilation, there are some inevitable highlights. Tarab, as always, delivers a gem of a piece, overlaying rusted water drips upon a spatialization of huge objects being wrangled in a vacant architecture. Not surprisingly, these sodden sounds originated from the Estonian netherlands of post-Soviet crumble and toxic ruin. Cedric Peyronnet's aggressive drones spiral and collapse like the best minimalist pieces of Charlemagne Palestine or Jim O'Rourke. By contrast, Lizzie Pogson's layered atmosphere from harpischord is hauntingly beautiful. Philip Samartzis's composition of breath and aerated sound is at once creepy as hell and strangely seductive. One of the best things we've heard from him since his days in Gum! Camilla Hannan's insectoid miniatures extracted from the Amazon begins with delicate clicking of beetle shells and ant thoraxes and blossoms into a huge organic chorus that transitions nicely into Eric La Casa's buzzing swarm of processed bees. Like we said, an excellent listen through and through, showcasing the best and brightest coming out of the French and Australian sound communities these days.
Haitian Rara music is the strange street festival music heard in ritual celebrations and processions often during Easter Week, commemorating the African ancestry of Afro-Haitian masses in a celebration that combines elements of Catholicism and Vodou in frenzied, ecstatic and often confrontational musical performances. Instruments are often bamboo trumpets, or metal pipes called vaksen, that are rhythmically struck while being blown into, and drums, metal bells and other percussive elements are combined in a trance inducing call and response of rhythms, horns and voices.
For this release, the folks at Soul Jazz ventured to Port-Au-Prince and recorded roving rara groups during Kanaval. The performers often stop traffic and demand money before moving on. Accumulating more followers as they march along, it's a truly communal experience that anyone can join who has any stick or bucket to bang on. Raw and anarchic, a fury of beautiful noise made by people. No amplification necessary!
No doubt we've loved so much of what Italians Do It Better has released recently, in so many ways they really helped reignite the love of dance music in indie culture. With different shades of smoky, slow burning spaced out disco, techno and house music, their roster really reads like an exciting list of some of our favorite synth heavy late night dance floor favorites. Solid Gold is a collection of tracks from 12" singles IDIB have released over the last few years by folks like Invisible Conga People, T&K, Bottin, Twisted Wires, and even Beyonce's sister Solange. We dig this collection so much because as much as we like so much of the Johnny Jewel fueled sounds that have come from the Italians Do It Better camp (Glass Candy, Chromatics, Desire), it's nice to hear a set of songs that have a bit of a different angle and perspective to dance music, than just one group/guy's vision. From total spaced out ravers to cold and thrilling chillers we've been listening to this loud and nonstop ever since it came in to the shop. We even noticed that folks who are usually a bit dance music shy are getting way into this as there are so many awesome prog and psyched out synth moments on this record.
Much like their last compilation After Dark, Italians Do It Better have once again provided us with a seamless compilation that flows so perfectly from start to finish and is making us move in the most sensual and satisfying ways. So smoking!
Yay, skweee!
The vinyl 7" single may be the preferred format for the damaged DIY Scandinavian electro funk music called skweee that we love so much here at AQ, or at least, we've certainly seen a lot of 7" skweee releases come through here recently. But actually, when we're listening to skweee, we don't want to stop (to get up and flip the record, y'know). So a compact disc mix is much more OUR preferred skweee format. And that's what we have here. In the tradition of other skweee cd comps like The Museum Of Future Sound (vols. 1 & 2) and Skweee Tooth, comes The Internalization Of Massy, a mix on the Helsinki label Massy, put together by skweee artist Spartan Lover. He's on here, along with some others we know (the great Randy Barracuda among 'em, with an effervescent cut called "Sex People") and many more we don't. 14 tracks, 12 artists, 49 minutes. Glitchin' and poppin', slippin' and slidin', there's a wide range of skweee happenin' here. To mention just some of it specifically, well... The mellow woozy zink-zonk of "Bjhbj Nkknkn Kl" by Coco Bryce is quite pleasant and vaguely suggestive of some sort of mechanical accordion music. Boston's Stickem drops some haunted bass on "Hoi Poloi". Compiler Spartan Lover contributes an edit of "Silk Smooth Skin" that's got a nice layer of distortion on it, a real fuzzy sheen. Motem's track "Unexact" has some quasi rap vocals, generally a rarity in the mostly instrumental world of skweee. Hybakusha turns in a nicely disjointed groove called "The Number Of The Glitch". Whereas both Mother North and Beatbully go a more shimmery disco-friendly route, we could almost imagine their tracks coming from Italians Do It Better, or on one of those Milky Disco comps. Much darker and creepier is Jyrkka Pajulasskso's "Twisted Bar Game". And even more messed up (but still groovy) is the flutter-stutter and frog-like croak of V.C.'s "Jello On Springs", which appears to be a Mesak remix. And that's not all. So, if you like skweee, or think you might like skweee, this disc is quite recommended.
We've noticed that most skweee releases tend towards minimal art/packaging, and this is no exception, the disc coming in a cardboard sleeve with a simple but nice graphic of waves... and a shark fin?
NOW ON VINYL!! Separated into two volumes, both a bit pricey sorry to say, but might just be worth it for vinyl fiends, one of the best Afro-funk-psych compilations in recent memory! Plus each volume has TWO bonus tracks not on the cd version! Here's more or less what we said about that:
This one's pretty much an "add to cart" no-brainer; the subtitle says it all, "Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970s Nigeria". And it's on the wonderful Soundway label, who've brought us such prior treats as Nigeria Rock Special, Nigeria Disco Funk Special, and Ghana Soundz. Really, do you need to know more? There's 32 killer cuts spread across the two cds here, from almost as many bands, exuberant electric guitar wielding garage acts most of 'em, and funky too, super funky. Anyone eager for a sequel to that Nigeria Rock Special in particular, start freaking out now! Some of the names here are familiar from that comp or other reissues, but we don't think there's any overlap songwise. Others are way more obscure to our ears. So you get Ofege, Ofo The Black Company, The Mebusas, The Hygrades, Colomach, and The Action 13, alongside, among others, P.R.O. (People Rock Outfit), Chuck Barrister & The Voices Of Darkness, The Thermometers, The Comrades, The Ceejebs, The Funkees, The Hykkers, Bongos Ikwue, The Lawrence Amavi Group, The Ify Jerry Krusade, Sonny Okosuns & Paperback Limited, Cicada, The Identicals, and even a band called The Semi Colon! The Semi Colon's song is pretty badass, by the way, with Moog-y "Blow Your Head" style synth and wicka-wicka chicken scratch guitar, shades of The JB's for sure, James Brown's backup band probably a big influence on a LOT of these groups, along with psych rock from the West as well, especially various Frisco ballroom jammers. While there's variety, there's definitely a Nigerian scene "sound" of the era on display here, and that scene must have been a pretty competitive one, these bands are HOT. While there's some lovely, mellowed-out moments (like PRO's laidback ballad of "Blacky Joe"), mostly this collection consists of uptempo, dancefloor filling groovers, full of percolating percussion, wild wah-wah, and soulful vocal exhortations. A few have horns, there's a lot of funky electric organ, and in all cases, the rhythms are, not surprisingly, first and foremost the focus, driving these songs into your heart, mind, and soul via the involuntary head nodding, foot tapping, get up and get down reaction your body will have to 'em...
The compilation takes its name from The Black Mirror's "The World Ends", found on part 2. Meanwhile, "Soundway" by Wrinkars Experience, from part 1, could be the theme song for the label! Kinda akin to a Nigerian "Nuggets", this is indeed yet another awesome Soundway comp, one of our faves from them so far and that's saying a lot. Can't argue with music this funky and fuzzed, though!
NOW ON VINYL!! Separated into two volumes, both a bit pricey sorry to say, but might just be worth it for vinyl fiends, one of the best Afro-funk-psych compilations in recent memory! Plus each volume has TWO bonus tracks not on the cd version! Here's more or less what we said about that:
This one's pretty much an "add to cart" no-brainer; the subtitle says it all, "Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970s Nigeria". And it's on the wonderful Soundway label, who've brought us such prior treats as Nigeria Rock Special, Nigeria Disco Funk Special, and Ghana Soundz. Really, do you need to know more? There's 32 killer cuts spread across the two cds here, from almost as many bands, exuberant electric guitar wielding garage acts most of 'em, and funky too, super funky. Anyone eager for a sequel to that Nigeria Rock Special in particular, start freaking out now! Some of the names here are familiar from that comp or other reissues, but we don't think there's any overlap songwise. Others are way more obscure to our ears. So you get Ofege, Ofo The Black Company, The Mebusas, The Hygrades, Colomach, and The Action 13, alongside, among others, P.R.O. (People Rock Outfit), Chuck Barrister & The Voices Of Darkness, The Thermometers, The Comrades, The Ceejebs, The Funkees, The Hykkers, Bongos Ikwue, The Lawrence Amavi Group, The Ify Jerry Krusade, Sonny Okosuns & Paperback Limited, Cicada, The Identicals, and even a band called The Semi Colon! The Semi Colon's song is pretty badass, by the way, with Moog-y "Blow Your Head" style synth and wicka-wicka chicken scratch guitar, shades of The JB's for sure, James Brown's backup band probably a big influence on a LOT of these groups, along with psych rock from the West as well, especially various Frisco ballroom jammers. While there's variety, there's definitely a Nigerian scene "sound" of the era on display here, and that scene must have been a pretty competitive one, these bands are HOT. While there's some lovely, mellowed-out moments (like PRO's laidback ballad of "Blacky Joe"), mostly this collection consists of uptempo, dancefloor filling groovers, full of percolating percussion, wild wah-wah, and soulful vocal exhortations. A few have horns, there's a lot of funky electric organ, and in all cases, the rhythms are, not surprisingly, first and foremost the focus, driving these songs into your heart, mind, and soul via the involuntary head nodding, foot tapping, get up and get down reaction your body will have to 'em...
The compilation takes its name from The Black Mirror's "The World Ends", found on part 2. Meanwhile, "Soundway" by Wrinkars Experience, from part 1, could be the theme song for the label! Kinda akin to a Nigerian "Nuggets", this is indeed yet another awesome Soundway comp, one of our faves from them so far and that's saying a lot. Can't argue with music this funky and fuzzed, though!
By now, you probably don't need to be told again how much we love dubstep, that beat, that killer thick bass wobble, and for all the mutant strains of dubstep that have been popping up, we still love the hard stuff, dark and haunting and mysterious, the beats massive, the bass thick and corrosive, the sort of thing that played loud enough would set off all the car alarms in the neighborhood. And judging from how many folks we get coming in looking for more dubstep, well then we're not alone.
We raved about the awesome second volume in the This Is Dubstep series, always bummed that the first volume was not released as an actual physical release, just a download, but lo and behold, that digital release has now been made flesh, or at least aluminum and plastic, and it's just what the doctor ordered. Assuming he ordered some rib cage rattling tinnitus producing bass heavy crunch.
Which is precisely what you get here, some of the biggest baddest dubstep jams of the last few years, light on the diva vocals, or the good time raviness, heavy on the beats, and even heavier on the bass. Pretty much every track here, even the lighter ones, at some point spit out a huge slab of speaker shredding low end, total headphone / car stereo blasting / club destroying dubstep BLISS.
Right out of the gate, with Joker's classic jam "Tron", it's on, a lurching lumbering stuttering groove, with some buzzing synths and yeah some bad ass bass, and so it goes, lots of names you probably know Distance, MRK1, Cyrus, Pinch, Kromestar, and a bunch you maybe don't, YET.
But some of the jams here are MASSIVE, Chasing Shadows' "Dr Sin" features some of the meanest buzziest bass ever, warped and caustic and so awesome, Cyrus & Distance offer up their own bit of low slung groove, more minimal, but still dark and ominous and hard, Macabre Unit's "Sunshine" is anything but, instead it's a creepy soundtracky basscape, all minor key melodies, and thick swaths of buzzing synth rumble, not to mention some cool vocals, Truth's "Burglar" is another one that's all about the bass, had our speakers crying uncle, even with the bass dialed all the way down. We could go on and on, track by track, needless to say, this is maybe the darkest, heaviest, buzziest dubstep comp yet, and for folks who have been hankering for more of the hard stuff, this will definitely hit the spot. Includes two discs, one mixed, one unmixed, with slightly different track listings. WAY recommended.
Finally, these two legendary records from the late, great Porter Wagoner get a well deserved 2-on-1 cd reissue courtesy of the amazing Omni Recording Corporation, who've done some other Wagoner releases, including the Rubber Room compilation.
By the early 1970s, Wagoner's career had stumbled a bit as the charts shifted their focus to the hairier, more socially irredeemable characters within the outlaw movement. Wagoner, however, maintained the regal image he always presented with sparkly nudie suits and his giant golden pompadour. With his skills still fully intact, his personal struggles helped to create an amazing and dark album with What Ain't To Be..., which includes the timeless and depressive ode to losing your mind in "The Rubber Room". Released in 1972, the album also features the amazing "Waldo The Weirdo", which some of you may remember from the recent Troubled Troubadours comp (also on Omni) and a slew of tunes that somehow manage to incorporate a mild but undeniable element of psychedelic weirdness to the affair.
Originally released in 1971, Porter Wagoner Sings His Own is more traditional in its execution but no less enjoyable, with tunes like "Albert Erving", "The Agony Of Waiting", and "Be A Little Quieter" all focusing on the personal torment explored later on What Ain't To Be...
This massive 30 song collection also features 10 bonus tracks, including "I Haven't Learned A Thing" with Merle Haggard and an ill-advised but still enjoyable foray into clavinet/synth driven funkiness with "I'm Gonna Feed 'Em Now". All in all, another great reissue from one of country music's greatest and most respected ambassadors.
Local duo Water Borders makes their debut with this 6 song ep, and anyone with a sweet spot for electro-goth weirdness will find plenty of reasons to rejoice. These guys earned their stripes in the enigmatic New Thrill Parade, whose status at this time is uncertain. Whatever the case, this stuff is right up our alley and sure to appeal to anyone digging the current revival of all things gothy, and yet Water Borders' take on things seems much more effortless and not concerned with racking up scene points. The songs seem to swirl within the self-contained atmosphere, with spooky keyboards and simple but incessant throbbing rhythms forming a nice cocoon for the dramatic and crazed vocals. Some of this stuff reminds us of Coil, while other numbers bring to mind a more, cough, "organic" version of Six Finger Satellite circa Machine Cuisine with more of an emphasis on actually singing. The sounds are both noisy and surprisingly majestic, and we are definitely digging the demented dance floor vibe on songs like "Even In The Dark". Limited to 100 copies, so don't snooze on it. A nice surprise, we can't wait to hear what these guys whip up next!
One of two new strange sonic artifacts this week from the seemingly bottomless vaults of The Tapeworm, a UK tape label trafficking in the strange, the mysterious and the bizarre, this right here, an interesting bit of sound art based on the concepts of race and gender and sex and politics, and how those inform the works of artists, and what's at stake for artists as they try to push the boundaries and strictures of art, especially in terms of the above powerful themes. These references are however not so obvious on a purely musical level, Watkins weaves a slowly undulating dronescape, of deep sonic swells and muted electronic buzz, utilizing analog synths, guitars, drums and percussion, cassette, Casio, bass, and of course SuperCollider(!). Those deep swelling drones, grow more and more corrosive, the buzz intense and crumbling, building to a SUNNO))-like squall, but shot through with streaks of glitch and crunch, all draped over swirling clouds of hiss, and haunting undulating melodies before slipping back into a more tranquil stretch of deep resonant dronemusic. The piece is somehow based on a cassette tape Watkins found of a lecture by scholar and musician Bernice Reagon, a member of vocal group Sweet Honey On The Rock, which Watkins sometimes incorporated into live performances, though we don't hear it here. Definitely recommended for all the drone lovers out there, had this been a super limited cd-r, in mysterious black packaging, with some name like Blackened Blood Sphere, all you grim heavies would be all over this, so maybe that's actually what the dripping oozing crucifix cover is all about, and the title, cuz these are indeed some seriously grim black sonic spirituals. And are thus, as with pretty much all Tapeworm stuff, totally recommended.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. With cool dripping crucifix cover art by Savage pencil.
The bands that you really end up loving and having life long relationships with are often the bands who you follow through all their incarnations, from their most primitive and noisy to when they flesh out and refine their sound, removing all the extraneous layers and creating something seemingly far removed from that first chunk of raw sound, but in reality, to you, it's just another side of that amazing artist. And it's the bands who you love in all their various sonic shadings and with all the twists and turns that become the ones who are the soundtracks to our lives. Guided By Voices, Pavement, Jawbreaker, all bands who we have loved from their sloppiest and most raw incarnations to their most poppy and catchy outings.
Wavves seem to be on the way to joining that elite crew. After unleashing two smoking records of way blown out garage pop burners, Nathan Williams has returned with a much more refined, up front and catchy gem of a pop record. As much as we loved the sound and aesthetic of the first two Wavves records we knew that the reason it struck such a chord with us was because we could tell this was a kid who had the gift of writing memorable and catchy pop songs, no matter how obscured those songs were by fuzz and crunch.
King Of The Beach ditches most of the blown out distortion and trades it in for even more colorful hooks, addictive melodies and songs that will be stuck in our heads for the rest of the summer and beyond. It's not like it's all totally slick or overproduced, in fact there is a really cool washed out sound that glides through much of the record, but instead of it being about going all into the red, it flows more freely, creating a perfect beachside vibe of an album. Williams is still singing about boredom, girls, the betrayal of friends, being a fuck up, etc., all long standing ingredients for some of the best mischievous pop of all time.
It hit us the other day why we love this record. It reminds us so much of so many of our favorite bands who injected punk spirit into such memorable pop songs. Bands like The Descendents, Screeching Weasel and Lifetime, who represented the great possibility of pop-punk. There is that same kind of impassioned, snotty, smart and spirited side to King Of The Beach that's been making us jump up and down in pure wide eyed grinning joy when we listen to it blasting as loud as it can.
The record also offers up the most varied collection yet of Williams' recordings, songs that evoke '50s girl groups, hand clapping head shaking ecstasy and stoned and whirling garage pop ravers. Start to finish this is an undeniably great pop record. Total contender for record of the year!
Special RnB issue. 2 different covers, Barry White or Gil Scott-Heron. Back covers too, D'Angelo or Erykah Badu. Inside, all those folks, plus plenty more, including "An Oral History Of The Wah-Wah Pedal".
First we've heard from sampledelic South London producer Paul White, whose new album for Now-Again ought to appeal to everyone who liked the Madlib Medicine Show No. 6 disc we listed last time (which was a crazy DJ mix of vintage psych/funk/prog from around the world). Paul White likewise takes a chopped-up, dial-spinning, hiphop approach to quite similar, psychedelic material coming from but ONE source: the records of cult Swedish psych purveyor ST Mikael (who records for the Subliminal Sounds label, same as Dungen). Sampling, editing, looping, and layering snippets of ST's stuff, Paul also contributes additional synth, percussion and vocals, constructing a veritable psychedelic fantasmagoria, 25 delirious and delightful tracks that mash n' meld hiphop beats, popsike melody, Eastern string zing, folky strum, freaky electric guitar, odd sound FX, head nodding funky grooves, mystical atmospheres, non sequitur spoken bits, etc.
While we must admit we were only passingly familiar with the work of ST Mikael (and what we'd heard, or maybe it was just his record covers, seemed a bit cheesy, in an aging New Agey hippie sort of way, he's from the '90s after all) but Mr. White's hiphop makeover of Mikael is definitely cool. The results are a bit like the aforementioned Madlib, also remind us of When albums like The Lobster Boys and Pearl Harvest, as well as the likes of DJ Shadow, BMSR, and Rockford Kabine. Dreamy and druggy and definitely A.D.D. Recommended for sure. YOUR brain will be purple by the time you're through listening.
The cd version comes in a cardboard wallet, the vinyl in deluxe "paste-on" jacket, and in addition, the vinyl version includes a bonus 12" (first 1000 copies only) featuring Paul White together with Guilty Simpson.
We had kind of lost track of Windsor For The Derby over the years, we weren't even sure if they were still around but when this new record arrived we realized that they've been at it all along, releasing a new record every couple years. This doesn't stray too much from what made many of us here dig them so much. Intimate and breezy indie rock with a a dreamlike shoegaze vibe. We really love when they get more into the atmospheric side of of their sound, conjuring up such beautiful hazy and wistful states. Against Love divides its time between those dreamy atmospheres and a more straight ahead intimate indie rock sound. Cool.
On the cover, field recordist extraordinare Chris Watson (a marvelous photograph featuring him getting up close and personal with an array of butterflies or moths)! Inside, also: Chicks On Speed, Terror Danjah, Julian Lynch, Surgeon, an essay on/overview of cosmic disco, and plenty more...
Minimalist techno maven Robert Hood on the cover. Also: Actress, Oval, Mount Kimbie, Diskjokke, De Tropix, and more. Including lots of ads for electronic music making gear and software (the full-page one for Roland's AX-Synth being our fave).
Just like clockwork, a killer new issue of long running magazine Yeti, shows up on the day of the list. So instead of giving a detailed rundown, of all the stuff in the new Yeti we've read about and the killer Yeti cd we listened to as we dug deep into Yeti number nine, we'll have to give you a thumbnail version, since it literally showed up about 10 minutes ago, although once the list is in fact done and sent, we will of course, be taking Yeti home and digging in for real.
So number nine is here, featuring visionary Australian singer/songwriter Pip Proud, two interviews with American musician/installation artist Maryanne Amacher, some rare writings from The Fugs' Tuli Kupferberg (R.I.P.), photos and observations on tour from Dean Wareham, comic artist James Turek, some fiction from Mimi Lipson, comic artist Lizz Hickey, Indian music scholar and crazy record collector VAK Ranga Rao, new artwork by Arrington De Dionyso, artist filmmaker Bruce Conner, musician Alasdair Roberts, new art by Alissa Wessler, writings by Joaquin V. Gonzalez, comics and illustrations by Beatriz Monteavaro, and then as always, a bunch of ads crammed into the back of the mag.
Also as always, included is a companion cd, this time featuring rare and exclusive recordings from Pip Proud, Teenage Panzerkorps, US Girls, Plankton Wat, Spencer Moody, The Art Museums, Human Eye, Fantastic Palace, Bobby Charles, KO + Friends, Rhythmical Wright Singers, Rev. Lonnie Farris, AIAS, Bishop R. McDaniel, Arrington De Dionyso's Malaikat Dan Singa, Geoff Soule, Reading Rainbow, X-Ray Eyeballs, Marisa Anderson, Modern Women, and a bunch of awesome Indian music from VAK Ranga Rao's 78 collection, selected by Rob Millis!
Needless to say, as always, totally recommended. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
