Sky Larkin's The Golden Spike had to be one of our favorite pop records of the last few years, crunchy propulsive noise pop of the highest order, cool complex stop start arrangements, killer choruses, incredible vocals (like PJ Harvey crossed with Bjork, sort of), mathy and occasionally dissonant, loud and rambunctious, not really super weird or twisted, just super innovative and inventive and original with hooks galore, totally rocking, and packed with a clutch of all time pop classics ("Beeline", "Fossil, I").
Record number two from this trio is turning out to be just as good, a bit darker, a bit more subdued, not nearly as wild and wooly, but the songs might end up being even better. They're the sort of songs that take a few listens, but only a few, and then you're smitten, already we find ourselves returning to record opener "Still Windmills" again and again, a gorgeously intricate and super catchy chunk of minimal pop, with a cool stripped down verse, and a soaring sing along chorus, not to mention some incredible riffing, and some great drumming, and the vocals sound better than ever.
The title track is a slow burning builder, with some weird mathy arrangements that somehow do nothing to take way from the song's catchiness. "Tiny Heist" is equal parts twee pop, and fuzzy distorted noise pop, a delicate balance that perfectly suits the song, "Guitars And Antarctica" sounds like classic nineties girl pop, big guitars, moody vocals, gorgeous melodies, while "Smarts" is a cool lo-fi pop experiment, all guitar harmonics, buried drum thump, and some of the sweetest vocals on the record. "Landlocked" sounds like it could have been a B side from The Golden Spike, fuzzy guitar and wild loose distorted crunch, "Spooktacular" does too in fact, and actually, the more we listen to Kaleide, the less far removed it actually sounds from The Golden Spike, just maybe a better balance between brooding melodic introspection and crashing punked out noisy poppiness, which is most definitely a good thing.
Super smart classic pop, that's definitely a contender for pop record of the year, and WAY recommended like The Golden Spike, for fans of K Records, Kill Rock Stars, Helium, Slant 6, Jale, Quixotic as well as Grass Widow, the Sandwitches, Brilliant Colors, Yellow Fever, Wet Dog and the like...
Huzzah! San Francisco's idiosyncratic old school metal masters Slough Feg are back with a new record, already! We made their previous album, 2009's Ape Uprising, a Record Of The Week, and wrote, like, thousands of words about it. So we'll be a bit briefer here, whilst still giving this our highest recommendation. If you liked it when they Aped it Up, then you know what you're in for on The Animal Spirits. Kinda...
Slough Feg already did an album called Atavism, but THIS is their most atavistic yet. Their most '70s rock. (Heck, most Broadway too.) In part, heavy, ripping, raw. In part, majestically melodic. So very melodic, and often major-key, almost pop instead of metal. But not "pop-metal", no not that. And always, always, eccentric. Also epic, can't forget epic, though none of the songs are even over 5 minutes long. Speaking of epics, what metal band would do a song about somebody named Thor, on an ocean voyage, and have it NOT be about Vikings? Slough Feg, naturally, with this album's "Kon-Tiki", about Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's daring raft expedition across the Pacific in 1947. Another unusual, historical number is "The 95 Thesis", about Martin Luther and the Reformation, maybe the only metal song on that subject and certainly the only one to features the lines "Some hide in sophistry but you had the balls / to nail your thesis to the cathedral wall", as it's not so much about religious history as it is about someone being a badass.
So, perhaps even moreso than on other Slough Feg albums, expect the unexpected. Like the crude but cool b&w artwork, for instance, drawn by the band's vocalist/guitarist/mastermind Mike Scalzi himself. Or the Alan Parsons Project (!) cover they do, "The Tell-Tale Heart", which utterly sounds like a Slough Feg tune, Scalzi totally owning the vocal part originally sung by none other than Arthur "I Am The God Of Hellfire" Brown on the 1976 original.
It's also perhaps unexpected that this record would be released on cult avant blackened doom label Profound Lore (though they've lately been signing a lot of the Bay Area underground's best, it seems). Sure, PL has put out some somewhat "trad" metal before, like the last Hammers Of Misfortune double disc and the recent, recommended Dawnbringer opus, but this still has to be the weirdest release on Profound Lore ever... who, by the way, claim that Slough Feg are America's most important heavy metal band of the past 20 years!
Over those years, especially with their current lineup, Slough Feg certainly have earned a reputation as an incredible live act, really you won't see too many more impressive or entertaining performances from a metal band, or any band, these days. They're a band that rejoices in being on stage, that revels in the skill they possess and the power they wield, and they capture that spirit and energy and showmanship and sense of abandon with these new songs for sure. The Animal Spirits is lively, dare we say playful. Sometimes cryptically, cleverly humorous. Bold and brash and totally unselfconscious. So they can do rockin' tracks like the frantic boogie of opener "Trick The Vicar", or the thrashy closer "Tactical Air-War" (which features special guest vocalist, Bobbie Wright of another San Fran metal cult, Brocas Helm!!), and in between find room for a few numbers that are closer to musical theater, though still quite heavy.
We've talked about the unexpected, the other hand, you CAN of course expect plenty of guitar harmonies, shredding leads, bombastic vocals, and memorable riffs... they still sound 100 percent like Slough Feg (and thus a bit like Maiden, a bit like Priest, a bit like Sabbath, and a bit like Thin Lizzy). If you've ever said, nobody makes music like that anymore, well Slough Feg do. But they're original about it too.
Oh, and good thing they released this in time for Halloween, as there's songs about both vampires and werewolves on here. The latter, live stand out "Lycanthropic Fantasies", is a show stopper on stage, and one of this disc's best as well. The former, "Ask The Casket", is a ridiculously melodic dirge inspired by the cult '60s TV gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows.
Another of our favorite tracks is "Second Coming", which starts off acoustically, and features one of Scalzi's most emotive and heartfelt vocal performances, as well as (more) gorgeous twin lead guitarwork... like Slough Feg's earlier "The Sea Wolf", it's a song inspired by writer Jack London, but maybe 'cause the lyrics make reference to San Francisco, it seems like Scalzi's really singing about himself here, somehow.
Finally, by the way, unlike Ape Uprising, which did have a song or two about apes, The Animal Spirits is NOT about animals (or spirits). The title refers to an archaic philosophical concept that Scalzi finds amusing, and we don't think pertains to the content of any of the songs on here.
So what's a band to do when they're not playing their particular brand of crushing metal flecked noise rock brutality? Well, take on new identities of course. Offer up their masked visages and craft a whole new set of songs, under a different name, with an ostensibly different sound, but one that really is just a way poppier, stonier, spacier version of their band proper. Which is fine with us.
So the mysterious Snailface, who hail from right here in SF, are in fact, the alter ego of aQ faves Kowloon Walled City, and traffic in a sound that has more in common with Kyuss and Queens Of The Stoneage and Torche and other heavy pop combos than the AmRep-y sludge that KWC specializes in. And the funny thing, which happens with lots of side projects / one offs / joke bands, is that the band is super relaxed, having fun, no pressure, none of the big band worries that come with a 'real' band, so whether they mean to or not, they end up ruling, and writing killer songs, and coming up with songs that are not just fun and funny, but that totally rock and are catchy as fuck, and if that band was their actual main focus band, it might even end up being super popular.
Which is the case with Snailface. Sure, the songs have goofy titles, and silly lyrics, they're called Snailface, they wear costumes in the band photos, but you sort of forget all about it when you throw it on, big stonery riffs, super melodic vocals, catchy choruses, the sound epic and heavy and hooky, psychedelic and spacey, some killer leads, plenty of weirdness too, fucked up production, backwards vocals and guitars, field recordings, bizarre samples, but all that stuff just sort of decorates the songs proper, which RULE. The first record is way more blown out and desert rock, stonery and drug-poppy, while the second record, a concept record about Yetis. is way more classic rock / big production epic heaviness, with shades of Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult and Kiss added to the mix. But together, this doubleshot two-fer is fucking awesome. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as anyone into catchy groovy heaviness, this stuff will definitely hit the spot.
Comes packaged in a hand screen printed cardboard box, the tapes both with full color printed inserts, one of 8 different buttons, all nestled on a nice bed of Yeti fur (3 different kinds!). LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!
When we first heard Ireland's Solar Bears, for whatever reason we sort of pegged them as another eighties style retro Carpenter / Goblin worshipper, and while there is an element of that in what they do, and we of course LOVE that stuff, there's so much more going on, their sound at once futuristic, but also pastoral, droney and a little sci-fi, but also blissed out and a little new agey, organic and poppy, jangly and dreamy, an incredible mix of so many different sounds we love, which perhaps seem like they wouldn't work together, but somehow, She Was Coloured In ends up sounding practically perfect.
Beginning with a reverbed sample, laid over a murky lo-fi loop, and a skeletal bit of rhythmic skitter, the track blossoms with prismatic synth swirls, fuzzed out swells of distorted chordal shimmer, it's like some sort of shoegazey dreampop, before the track shifts into something almost funky, with fat fuzzy stuttery bass and some sci-fi soundtracky synth, which gives way to gorgeously hazy folky steel guitar strum, which in turn leads into some almost Ariel Pink sounding FM radio retro pop, all warm chiming melodies, vocodered vocals, low slung basslines and little flurries of guitar jangle.
As if it wasn't already good, starting with the third track, "Twin Stars", it gets even better, deep fuzzed out low end drones, thrum and throb, darkly melodic, then some programmed beats swoop in, looped and stuttery, some melancholy synth melodies surface, all very soundtracky, still more melodies, a counterpoint to the original melodies, all very emotional and intense and dramatic, until that gives way to swirly bit of Reichian synth loop shimmer that could go on forever. The title track begins with stately cellos, or cello-like synths, some woozy bass, lush melodic swells, and then the song transforms into some sort of post rock lope, chiming guitars simple drums, swoonsome strings, a little twang, a little psychedelic crunch, so lush and subtly epic, which leads directly into two minutes of glimmering new agey bliss in the form of "Head Supernova", which gradually transforms from muted murky thrum, to weirdly majestic pomp.
"Crystalline (Be Again)" is another strange hybrid, beginning as a minimal bit of subtle synth drift, before crunchy psychedelic guitars transport the track into the realm of propulsive space kraut drift, and then into tripped out new wave, more loping bass, swirling space age synths, looped riffs, building to a seriously soundtracky bit of retro futurism.
The record is so varied, and the sound so ever shifting, that it's difficult to describe without going track by track, yet for all of the record's varied sounds and songs, it all flows so perfectly, like the score for some lost sixties psychedelic film, or the soundtrack to some super strange European television show, so evocative and ethereal and atmospheric, but with moments of spaced out rocking, or blissy shoegazey drift, or hypnotic krautrock throb. Fluttering flutes intertwine with delicate Appalachian folk, strings soar and sing, tinkling chimes drift over sixties Stereolab style Europop, synths distort and crunch, and weave pulsing science fiction electronic groovescapes, with moments definitely reminding us of Zombi and Majeure, but then as quickly as those bits explode into action, they recede leaving gently lilting drifts of hushed new age folky ambience, or layered droney buzz, or even minimal soundtracky groovepop that reminds us of Rockford Kabine's audio experiments, elsewhere looped sixties vocals are layered over warped fuzz bass and shuffling percussion, strings slip and slide, house-y rhythms sink into thick swaths of sun dappled chordal crunch, and super sweet melodies swoop and soar above handclaps and clipped drum machine, a weirdly propulsive sunshiney electro space pop, and then finally, there's a gorgeously lush and somber closer, with reverbed piano, more flutes, simple strummed acoustic guitars, warm soft swells, building to a lush tangle of guitar melody and dark piano chord drift, eventually leaving just a bit of flute flecked layered and distorted dronemusic, finishing with the ka-chunk of the stop button being pressed on an old tape player, as if we were listening to some old tape, or even better, like we were listening to this very record, only in some alternate future, the future as envisioned by pretty much every eighties movie and TV show, one where where cassette tape technology was still the preferred method of audio playback, even in our flying cars, and automated houses.
We love this record.
Now available on vinyl!
Wow! This is probably the best thing we've heard on Kill Rock Stars in AGES. With totally spazzed out guitar playing and impassioned vocals, Marnie Stern has grabbed us by the throats and refuses to let us go. It makes perfect sense that Zach Hill drums on this record as Stern's herky jerky rhythms and relentless spirit share a similar aesthetic and approach to Hill's band Hella and folks like Lightning Bolt and Orthrelm. In fact Marnie Stern has hit the scene almost like a female counterpart to Mick Barr, with the same kind of manic and infectious guitar playing delivered with her unique vision and fist in the air vocals. Kind of like if Erase Errata or the latest Paradise Island e.p. we loved so much were even louder, faster and way more chaotic, or if Mary Timony were kidnapped by Load records. This album does what all the great Kill Rock Stars records of the past did so well, it makes you feel so alive and so young in spirit as your get to watch and hear someone so passionately realize their vision. Highly recommended!
As promised, Locust Music has just re-issued the Sun City Girls' Dante's Disneyland Inferno. Long out of print, and never before released on vinyl, DDI was originally released in 1996 along side the fabulous 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda. Unlike 330,003 Crossdressers, Dante's Disneyland inferno is less likely to appear on anyone's "Sun City Girls album to own if you had to pick only one" choice. DDI is pretty much the Girls "spoken word" album (though not without its share of singing, of which there is much on here to boot) and as such is generally only good for one or two listens, kind of like God Speed You Black Emperor. Dominated primarily by the voice of Charley Gocher and accompanied by himself, the Bishop Bros., Scott Colburn + some special guests, the album isn't necessarily bad, it just doesn't lend itself to many repeat listens. The musical accompaniment to Gocher's sordid and seedy tales run the gamut of the SCG musical experience: off kilter beat jazz, improv. skronkery, world music tomfoolery and gloomy-folk freak out. And the poetics / songs themselves are two parts Grimm's Fairy Tales, one part Current 93 and 1.666 parts Ethel Merman on PCP. The end result of which is like a seriously disillusioned Tom Waits or a satanically possessed Violent Femmes, take your pick. As a bonus, you lucky vinyl buyers get an additional photo of the Girls and a comic adaptation of the song "The Brothers Unconnected" within this deluxe, double gatefold sleeve edition.
We had long heard rumors that the Sun City Girls had been working on a cinematic album as something of a follow-up to Torch Of The Mystics and 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, two of our all-time favorite, classic albums from the Girls' idiosyncratic catalogue of punky psychedelia dissolved through Southeast Asian pop, free jazz, and Ennio Morricone soundtracks. But with the tragic death of drummer, poet, and polyglot savant Charles Goucher in 2007, it seemed that the Girls would end their career with the grand tease of an album of this sort never to be released. Fortunately, those recordings were not the stuff of urban legend or of unfounded fantasy, and the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop has finally completed the album with the help of long time SCG cohort Scott Colburn! So here it is, the final SCGs album, and it's a worthy (and really quite accessible) capstone to their idiosyncratic discography.
Morricone has long been an influence and inspiration for the Sun City Girls, and especially Alan Bishop. In fact, he's been responsible for some of the best Morricone compilations issued over the years (i.e. Morricone 2000 and the Crime & Dissonance 2cd on Ipecac). As much as Bishop had been infatuated with Morricone, the homages to Morricone had been heavily disfigured and mutilated within the playfully murderous aesthetic of the Sun City Girls, where nothing is sacred and everything is fair game with the Girls' crosscultural appropriation. But for Funeral Mariachi, the Morricone riffs are situated in beguiling songs wholly devoid of the Sun City Girls' curmudgeonly fuck-you stances. In other words, Funeral Marachi is a damn good record. So good that it will probably invite a lot more people to investigate the wonderfully frustrating and woefully inaccessible back catalogue of the Sun City Girls.
Introspective, haunting, and at times beautiful, Funeral Mariachi opens with "Ben's Radio" where the Bishop brothers breakthrough a mid-tempo spy thriller number with a staccato duet of call and response avant-weirdness coupled with blurting atonal horns. Unmistakably Sun City Girls. In "Black Orchid", the group turns in the first of many Morricone references, where the Girls' are equally enamored by the incidental vocal melodies that worked throughout all of his scores. Here the Girls' offer a sad ballad for Richard Bishop's always stunning acoustic guitar and Alan's falsetto vocals bellowing his polyglot language. "Blue West," with its high-lonesome chorales, bad-ass guitar licks, and a mournful arrangements, could have been straight out of a John Ford movie. "Holy Ground" might as well be the Girls' answer to Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls to the Heart of the Sun" with Alan's caterwauling voice droning behind the diabolically chanted vocals, beautiful guitar leads, shadowy atmospherics, and weirdly playful calliope melodies. "Mineral Wells" and "El Solo" turn towards the more saccharine moments of the Morricone oeuvre with loungy piano, reverb whistled melodies, and actual female vocals (and not Alan mimicking a woman's voice). "Come Maddalena" is in fact a Morricone cover, from the 1971 Italian film Maddalena, perhaps known only for its soundtrack. Again, a rather moody atmosphere is set for plaintive, yet fuzzed out guitar melody. So fucking good!
The vinyl of Funeral Mariachi is undoubtedly limited, but a cd is scheduled for release later in October, we're told.
As most of you know, last week we were lucky enough to have the mighty Superchunk, perform a super intimate, and totally amazing instore, playing new songs, which sounded amazing acoustic, and old gems that were so great to hear (including their incredible version of Stephen Merritt's "100,000 Fireflies"). After the instore, they went across the street to Lost Weekend Video, where they screened the Superchunk tour movie Quest For Sleep, and then had a Q+A afterwards.
In honor of the Valencia Street Superchunk doubleshot, aQuarius and Lost Weekend had some super swank posters printed up, total classic old school rock posters, eye popping and colorful, art by Reuben Rude, screen printed on nice thick paper, blue and red, that sort of almost 3-D feel, they were limited to just 89 copies, each one numbered and signed, we sold most of them the day of the instore, but we have a handful left, and figured some folks who don't live in SF or couldn't make it, might still want one of these. They're pretty nice, and as they say "suitable for framing", we have 8 or 10 left, and that's all we'll ever have.
Also, if you order one of these with other stuff, they'll have to ship separately, in a tube (they're too nice to fold!), which means another separate shipping charge...
It's pretty much impossible to overestimate the importance of North Carolina's Superchunk on the indie rock landscape, by now most folks, even those with just the most fleeting interest in popular music, are probably familair with these scrappy punk pop indie rockers, heck, Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan was recently a special guest on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which is about as mainstream as it gets. Yet even now, playing festivals, headlining huge shows, showing up on NPR, selling thousands and thousands of records, the band still SOUNDS the way they did when they were a little DIY rock band from Chapel Hill, and the music is just as energetic and fun and crazy catchy, which makes sense really, Superchunk definitely did it their way, 20 years and still going strong, van tour after van tour, sweaty club shows, lots of 7"s that many of us still treasure, and let's not forget, launching, and to this day still running, one of the coolest (and one of the most important) indie labels around, Merge Records.
But as they say, it's all about the music, and holy crap, does Superchunk make some of the catchiest, hookiest, most rocking, supercharged indie rock around. STILL. But if there was a pantheon for greatest indie rock records of all time, up there alongside Slint's Spiderland, Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted, Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, Guided By Voices ' Bee Thousand, etc, we would most definitely have to include Superchunk's second and third albums, No Pocky For Kitty and On The Mouth.
While their 1990 self titled debut included the ALL TIME indie rock anthem "Slack Motherfucker", the band's first single and perhaps defining moment, everything great about Superchunk got even greater with No Pocky For Kitty. The sound tighter, more rocking, the songs EVEN CATCHIER. Every single track on No Pocky is an indie rock classic. The opening salvo of "Skip Steps 1 & 3", Seed Toss" and "Cast Iron" is pretty impossible to beat, the crunchy LOUD guitars, the pounding drums, Mac's high emotive vocals, and hooks, all over the goddamn place, so catchy it plays like a greatest hits more than an album proper. Jangly and bittersweet, gorgeous melodies, incredible lyrics, all of these songs destined for mixtapes for sure.
And remember when we said those first three songs were tough to beat? Well, that's only if you don't consider the rest of the record. Highlights include "Punch Me Harder" is a driving distorted rocker, with ridiculously hooky guitars, and a chorus that kills, and a verse that's just as catchy, and record closer "Throwing Things", which is just so perfect, midtempo and dreamy, with a keening main melody that will get stuck in your head forEVER.
Easily one of our favorite records ever, indie rock or otherwise!
It's pretty much impossible to overestimate the importance of North Carolina's Superchunk on the indie rock landscape, by now most folks, even those with just the most fleeting interest in popular music, are probably familair with these scrappy punk pop indie rockers, heck, Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan was recently a special guest on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which is about as mainstream as it gets. Yet even now, playing festivals, headlining huge shows, showing up on NPR, selling thousands and thousands of records, the band still SOUNDS the way they did when they were a little DIY rock band from Chapel Hill, and the music is just as energetic and fun and crazy catchy, which makes sense really, Superchunk definitely did it their way, 20 years and still going strong, van tour after van tour, sweaty club shows, lots of 7"s that many of us still treasure, and let's not forget, launching, and to this day still running, one of the coolest (and one of the most important) indie labels around, Merge Records.
But as they say, it's all about the music, and holy crap, does Superchunk make some of the catchiest, hookiest, most rocking, supercharged indie rock around. STILL. But if there was a pantheon for greatest indie rock records of all time, up there alongside Slint's Spiderland, Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted, Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, Guided By Voices ' Bee Thousand, etc, we would most definitely have to include Superchunk's second and third albums, No Pocky For Kitty and On The Mouth.
On the Mouth was Superchunk's third record, originally released in 1993, and was in the unenviable task of following up the near perfect and crazy iconic No Pocky For Kitty, but it's like the band was already totally prepared to wipe that skeptical smirk of the faces of all non bleievers, cuz right out of the gate comes "Precision Auto", maybe one of their raddest jams yet, fast and furious, with those immediately recognizable intertwining crunchy guitar harmonies, and then yeah, another chorus any other band would sell their souls for. And like No Pocky before it, the band basically dares themselves to keep the rest of the record as kick as and cartchy as the opener, and damn if they don't toally pull it off. Some of our other all time Superchunk faves are here, "Mower", a loping hook filled churn, with thick buzzing bass, crashing guitars a verse and a chorus both competing for the catchiness crown. And then there's "The Question Is How Fast", a ridiculously anthemic jam, as supercharged as anything they've written, but also subtly moody, with woozy serpentine melodies, more kick ass drumming, and a cool halftime lead-in straight into another killer chorus, and at the risk of getting way too repetitive, just more hooks and more catchiness...
Seventeen years later, and On The Mouth could have come out yesterday, and somehow still sounds better than about 99 percent of the the other indie rock out there...
Brand new tape from LA's� indie headquarters, Not Not Fun, this time a debut cassette from SF's own Swanox.� We've seen a couple live sets from Anthony Bourch, aka Swanox, and he's also a regular here at aQ, so we're happy to finally give this stellar, drugged-out, cosmic-pop opus a home in our humble tape case.
Dawnrunner unfolds with deep, distorted guitar ringing out into a wash of cavernous reverb, crumbling minor leads luring you further into utter darkness, sporadic riffs and low-end sizzle offer up the perfect dose of atmospheric haze.� A dash of light leaks from the cavern's end as a shimmering guitar line fades in, the piece shifts from dark to light as the sounds gradually grow into a dense cloud of Popul Vuh-ish bliss. Just when we thought Dawnrunner was solely instrumental, "Through the Alders" rolls along with looong, Daniel Higgs-type vocal chants, slightly discernible lyrics buried in layers of distorted organ (sort of reminds us of the organ on the recent German Oak album we featured last list), moments of spritely flute and layers of murky droning build into a wall of weirdness until a quickly picked, uplifting guitar lead lifts over the psychedelic wash, the perfect summit to this monolithic track. While there's a hefty dose of washed out weirdness and droning decay, there's also a catchy, pop undercurrent flowing throughout, each song perfectly crafted with just the right amount of structure, falling somewhere between Night Control and Flying Saucer Attack, definitely not your run-of-the-mill home spun tape.� Noisy, psychedelic and super distinct, this will no doubt satisfy your fill for far out, loner bedroom weirdness.�Limited to an edition of 100, you know these will be gone in no time, so don't miss out!
Sometimes a record can hit you in the face like a punch, other times the music can pierce you like a needle, sinking deep into a sensitive place without you even realizing it's still in your flesh. Tamaryn's debut album, The Waves, is like the latter. It's so light, pain and tension melt away while you listen, but also so sharp and brilliant, you can't get it out of your head. Strongly evoking the slowcore brilliance of My Bloody Valentine, the layered reverb on the guitars give the effect of distance while at the same time the dreamy vocals keep the listener close. A veteran of many outstanding bands (Vue, The Audience), Rex John Shelverton's guitar playing is tempered perfectly throughout the record, never seeking to override the vocals, filling in gaps and expanding outwards in huge planes of reverb wash. At times, like the song "Haze Interior," the atmosphere is hazy and slightly chilled, a frustrated plea for understanding from a loved one whose language you can't quite understand. The next song "Sandstone" builds from a punctuated guitar riff into a driving bass and drum beat that manages to make you nod your head while still leaving plenty of room in the mix for layers of vocals. If Beach House's Devotion and Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See were to have some sort of precocious offspring, the result might very well be The Waves. Highly recommended.
Killing Joke on the cover. Inside, also, for your extreme metal reading pleasure: Enslaved, Swans, Hammers Of Misfortune, Dimmu Borgir, The Sword, Death Angel, Moonsorrow, Gama Bomb, and plenty more. And not one but two free cd samplers included inside the shrinkwrap.
A blurry blast of noise-rock-space-garage-what-the-fuck distorto rock from this Michigan weirdo, the opening track is an in-the-red chunk of amp melting blown out Stooges style riff rock swagger, the vocals in your face, snarling and mewling, while the drums pound, and the guitars swirl and smolder, run through an arsenal of pedals, flanger, phaser, wah wah and DISTORTION, captured on a busted 4 track, totally psychedelic and maniacal and awesome!
That's only one facet of Timmy's twisted sonic Organism, a schizophrenic sound that flits from off kilter garage rock groove to damaged glam trash blooz, to gorgeously tripped out lo-fi dream pop ambience, to crusty ramshackle fuzzed out indie rock, to full on abstract pop experimentation, the whole thing constantly on the verge of collapse, little bits of perfect melody emerging from fierce squalls of noise drenched heaviness, Joe Meek like production wrapped around full on noise psych brutality, Chrome-like sci-fi space rock gives way, to drawled Jandekian reverb bedroom folk, which transforms into some sort of synthwave weirdness, before finishing off with a gorgeous bit of lush epic and majestic indie pop mood music. Weird as fuck, and all over the map, but definitely total bliss for anyone with a sweet tooth for totally cracked pop and unhinged lo-fi noise rock weirdness.
Two new reissues of badass obscure African '70s garage fuzz rock on this list, hot damn! One from Witch (whose album Lazy Bones!! we were already big fans of) and this record from Nigeria's Tirogo, one of the bands who appeared on that rad Lagos Disco Inferno comp. Tirogo were labelmates with the band Blo, and ought to appeal to folks into Blo, Ofege, Sjob, and others from the Nigerian scene, as well as "Zam Rockers" like Witch, Amanaz, and the Ngozi Family from down in Zambia. Originally released in 1977, Tirogo's Float, their debut, is a stoned masterpiece of psychedelic garage groove with authentic African vibes. Seriously, at this point, can't we just say, if you like those others, you'll like this? 'Cause you will. Stinging fuzz guitar leads swirl and sizzle over seriously funky, energetic rhythms, as the vocalists chant about girls and the devil... yeah! The sort of thing that when you're listening to it, you can't help but think, "this is the best shit ever!"... and it's kinda true!!
Dunno how many more records like this they can dig up, it's hard to imagine, but we're grateful for what's been reissued thus far, winners like Tirogo and Witch, wow. And they do it right, the cd booklet includes an extensive, interesting interview with original Tirogo lead vocalist and bassist Wilfred Ekanem, conducted by African music collector and Now-Again head honcho Egon, who coordinated these reissues.
Brand new blast of spaced out prog-tastic heaviness from this Brooklyn quartet, and holy shit, everything we loved about their last one, A Raining Sun Of Light & Love For You & You & You, is even MORE this time around, more heavy, more proggy, more keyboards, the songs way more epic, total cosmic super distorted loud as fuck space prog metal bliss out, like ELP crossed with the Fucking Champs, stir in some Comets On Fire, Tarantula Hawk, Crime In Choir, La Otracina (with whom they share members), and of course some Yes and Osanna and New Trolls and loads more of that sort of '70s stuff, cuz this time it's definitely the prog that has been cranked way up, synths all over the place, every song like a non stop synth / guitar / drum battle to the death, totally exhausting and exhilarating and over the top, epic and majestic and complex and intricate and melodic and somehow catchy as hell.
Barring the 3 minute synth interlude "Synthasaurs", which sounds more like some sort of Goblin / Tangerine Dream / John Carpenter hybrid, the other 4 tracks are total progged out super jams, almost entirely instrumental, the melodies constantly mutating and intertwining, the keyboards unleashing wild flurries of notes, the bass and drums holding it all together, dense and thick and powerful, the guitars wailing and flailing and howling, constantly parrying with the keyboards, there are organs too, thick and fuzzy and gloriously distorted, like a supercharged Deep Purple, Titan are like the prog version of all those Hawkwind worshipping space rock groups, who take the psychedelic tripped out outros and stretch them into whole songs, Titan seem to do the same thing with prog, taking short bursts of classic prog, adding all sorts of metallic chug and modern psych rock crunch and stretching them out into gloriously endless sprawling epics, this stuff is so fierce and frantic and the pace so relentless and dizzying.
This stuff RULES. Heavy and spacey and proggy and mathy and fucking incredible, pretty much everything we could possibly want in a band. Comes in a swank diecut digipak too!
For whatever reason, we could just never get into Aussie garage rockers Eddy Current Suppression Ring. And we wanted to, really, lots of folks we know swear by em, but they just never hit the spot for us. THIS, however DOES, big time. Featuring members of ECSR, Total Control is a modern version of classic synth punk, think Screamers, Units, Nervous Gender, that sort of thing, short sharp furious blasts of pounding angular synth driven punk rock, distorted and snotty and snarky, raw and in-the-red, hooky as hell, the songs averaging about 90 seconds, the verses chuggy and new wavey, the choruses explosive and heavy, shards of synth pop punk crush that totally kick ass. Every time we throw this on we end up playing it like 10 times in a row. Definitely a new favorite. So good that it has us thinking we might have to give the Eddy Current Suppression Ring another chance. But until then, we'll just go ahead and listen to this again. And again. And again...
Originally released way back in 2007, and available only to attendees of the two Thrill Jockey 15th Anniversary shows in Chicago and London, we're listing this now 'cause one of our distributors got a handful of these killer mixes, a collaborative DJ mix from Girl Talk and Trey Told 'Em, constructed exclusively of tracks culled from the Thrill Jockey archives, and including a couple of mega mixes which make the whole thing kind of essential.
The proper mix includes tracks from Bobby Conn, Gaunt, Pit Er Pat, Eleventh Dream Day, Giant Sand, Dolomite, Trapist, John Parish, Nobuzaku Tekemura, The Fiery Furnaces, Califone, Chicago Underground Duo, Mouse On Mars, Freakwater, Frequency, Sam Prekop, The National Trust, Extra Golden, Arbouretum, Radian, The Sea And Cake, Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake, Lithops, Directions In Music, Aki Tsuyuko, Howe Gelb, Tunng, Isotope 217, Archer Prewitt, The Zincs, Sue Garner & Rick Brown, Adult., Exploding Star Orchestra, Brokeback, Town And Country and Microstoria (what, no A Minor Forest?!). And it's not just the song selection, the way they're mixed, results in an awesome, ever shifting soundscape, that is so good, we found ourselves even digging the tracks that we didn't think we liked. Out of context, some of the songs here have us all fired up to revisit some of the groups we may have ignored or just missed.
But if that wasn't enough, there are three megamixes, the record opens with a killer Trans Am mix that reminds us why we love those guys so much, and then finishes with a Tortoise megamix, and then an Oval megamix, that purports to contain EVERY single Oval song ever recorded. Pretty cool. And crazy limited. Only 4000 copies made way back in 2007, and we only got a tiny handful, so act fast if you want one.
We first discovered Scott Tuma when he was playing guitar for stoned Chicago slowcore country cosmonauts Souled American, his distinctive sound helping to shape SA's totally idiosyncratic music. And after Tuma parted ways with Souled American, he seemed to mark the event by jettisoning traditional songs completely, instead crafting a series of gorgeously gauzy country dronescapes, like an organic folk version of Tim Hecker, his lush landscapes, blurred and gauzy, washed out smears of impressionistic country music, evoking lost loves and bygone eras, his music utterly timeless and totally unlike anything we'd heard.
So every new Tuma releases is definitely worth celebrating, and Peeper is no different. A five song suite that captures everything we love about Tuma's music. The opener is a barely there stretch of gauzy sun dappled shimmer, which gives way to a stretch of slow motion Appalachia, the notes left to float weightless in wide open stretches of warm whirring ambience, a creaky, glacial bit of old timey drift, like a broadcast from some other time, playing through a busted old radio on a rickety old porch, the sunlight glimmering through the branches of the trees, the summer fading ever so slowly. Like on past records, Tuma is joined by members of Zelienople, and as the record progresses, the trio begin to unfurl fuzzy stretches of soft noise, of industrial creak, and layered grey drones, peppered with bits of percussion, clatter and whir, growing noisier and more propulsive, more like some murky psychedelic outfit, a haunting melody laced noise drenched creep, that's both caustic and lovely, eventually dissipating and leaving more hazy hushed dreaminess, what sounds like harmonium, piano, lazy and warm and languid and so sweetly beautiful.
The flipside of the tape, as far as we can tell, features a reinterpretation of Tuma's music, or maybe Tuma's sounds are sampled, or perhaps it's simply an homage, but the oddly named Brothers Pus (aka Johnny Kember & James Provencher), weave a thick sea of layered bass rumbles, of keening distant high end streaks, of tolling bells, a dark industrial dronescape, infused with bits of melody, that gradually fades out and gives way to something more folky, the industrial whir dialed back, while guitars pluck out melancholy melodies over the top, a dark droning country drift, that had we not known better, would have assumed it was Tuma himself.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Already sold out, we have less than 20 copies and that's IT.
We LOVED the previous Umberto album, From The Grave, and are stoked that he/they/it have finally returned with another full length packed with oodles of Goblin-y goodness, just in time for Halloween!!
But the sound of the Expo 70-associated Umberto is not strictly that scary, at least not all the time, in fact, like Goblin and other '80s Italian fright-film soundtrackers, most of the scary stuff here is really just an *underlying* un-ease, a sinister suspenseful undercurrent over which more "groovy" stuff gets down. And way more groovy this one most definitely is, some serious haunted dancefloor action, or horror movie disco, or whatever you want to call it, but Umberto has for sure upped the funk/groove quotient, lacing the usual cocktail of thick, tense, pulsing synth throb, minimal motorik rhythms and heavy ominous drones with plenty of funky basslines, crunchy modulated keyboard buzz, soaring synths, chanted voices and propulsive grooves... Here and there, the sound gets all stripped down leaving just gurgly, crumbly distorted low end peppered with spaced out booming rhythms, or creepy ambient atmospheres, but the songs tend to slip quickly back into haunted shuffly rhythms, woozy horror movie atmospherics, ominous strings laced funky grooves and dark descending bass blarp.
The second side begins with one of those tracks that sounds like the music that always introduces us to the main character in all those seventies thrillers, the little girl playing with her dollies, the old woman in the garden, the sound is tranquil but subtly sinister, here it's a music box like melody, plinking dreamily beneath haunting strings, and soft swirls of creepy voice like synth, total horror movie soundtrack shivers for sure.
After that it's back to wah guitars, chiming bells, groovy Italo funk haunted dancefloor grooviness, but this time with some cool washed out M83 style female vocal textures, a shoegazey gauze over that propulsive Goblin-y groove.
If we had to pick a single song that was THE ONE here, it would probably be "Someone Chasing Someone Through A House" which sounds exactly LIKE THAT, pulsing throbbing synths, electronic squelches, deep ominous drones, dark swells, foreboding and creepy and tense and SCARY!
The album ends with an upbeat track entitled "Everything Is Going To Be Ok", all sun-coming-up, yay we survived the zombie onslaught good cheer & cheesiness. The sort of music that plays over the closing credits, or even better, over the final shot which lulls you into a sense of false security, before a decaying hand bursts through the ground, or a beast explodes from the water and drag our heroine out of the boar, some sort of shock to let you know that evil won't stay buried... which of course usually leads to a sequel, and we are definitely looking forward to the next installment of groovy Gobliny sonic scares from Umberto!
Now on vinyl!
Analog Africa does it again! The hardest working Afro-beat reissue label brings us another amazing comp of psych-tinged, long-lost Afro-beat, this time from Ghana and Togo recorded between 1972-1979. Raw, sultry, and totally ass-shaking, pretty much all of the tracks have never been released outside the region. Funky Latin rhythms, organ-driven psych, and cosmic soulful percussive trance-outs by 11 bands. Comes with amazing 44 page booklet with pictures and histories. Wow, deluxe package, incredible music. We can go on, but do we really need to? Analog Africa hasn't let us down yet. 100 percent Solid! Trust.
This is a super strange compilation, seemingly curated to document a scene, it's just hard to say which scene that might be. Witch house, nu-gaze, chill wave, there are lots of micro genres happening these days, and lots of these bands fit in more than one, while some, seem to us, to not fit in any of them. But unless you're overly concerned with how to label a certain band or sound, then the important thing is the music, and while this comp is most definitely crazy varied, it's also crazy good, with lots of faves, and even more new discoveries.
Balam Acab, ostensibly witch housers, offer up their awesomely haunted minimal electro workout "See Birds", a fuzz bass drone ambient groovescape, that has to be one of the best tracks we've heard from the witch house scene; Washed Out offer up some of their hazy retro chill out pop, all hazy and dreamlike, and well, washed out, laid back and summery; Animal Collective should need no introduction, and their "My Girls" is already sort of an indie anthem, but definitely represents the more popular / commercial side of this scene's (or these scene's) sound; Crystal Castles team up with Health for some awesome electro new wave, fuzzy and a little bit 8-bit-y; oOoOO deliver more witchy mystery, looped and murky and glacial and chopped and screwed, a buzzing electro chill wave ghostly ballad; Bear In Heaven inject some electro pop shoegaze into the proceedings, and that's pretty much for the bands we've heard before.
But like all good comps, it's the unknowns that definitely impress and surprise, Baghdaddy's track sounds like an outtake from recent Record Of The Weekers Salem, which is in no way a bad thing, thick and warped and synthy and tripped out; Small Black reimagine eighties new wave as some buzzy lo fi electronic pop; Truman Peyote take house music and wrap it in hypnogogic loops, and a swirly shoegazey gauze; Raw Moans offer up some twisted hazy pop flecked electronics, dreamy and blurred and blissy; Pictureplane get all M83 with their fuzz drenched dream pop; Hideous Men craft a head spinning bit of smeared pop psychedelia, with lots of fuzzy synth and angelic ethereal vocodered vox, and so it goes, on and on. It's pretty much all good, and even though the sounds do vary quite a bit, they somehow manage to flow nicely as a whole, which does in a way speak to the pointlessness of all these super specific microgenres, but f*>k it, like we said, it's all about the music, and this is a killer comp, and there's definitely some amazing stuff here that merits further investigation.
We know we aren't the only ones crazy for the sounds of Chicha, at least judging by the number of copies we sold of the first Roots Of volume, not to mention the amazing collection of songs by Juaneco Y Su Combo. It's pretty much impossible to be into a wide range of music and not be floored by the rad sounds of Chicha. Fuzzy and psychedelic, washed out and surfy, all wrapped in the sounds of cumbia, carimbo and Peruvian traditional music. Barbes is doing such a great job with this series helping expose the truly amazing music coming from this scene in Peru from 1968-1981. It not only has such a cool sound that tons of bands today wish they could recreate, but the songs also have such a sense of soul that makes this one of those records that gets everyone in the store shaking gently back and forth and tapping their toes and we have lost count with how many times we get asked what is playing when this is on as its a record that appeals to such a wide range of tastes.
It shows how rich this scene was that Juaneco Y Su Columbo aren't even on this volume, yet all the other bands included we would kill to hear more from. We know if this was on Sublime Frequencies we would sell even more of these, so c'mon if you love amazing sounds from different parts of the globe you've got to get on the Chicha train!
One of two new comps from one of our favorite reissue labels, the Omni Recording Corporation, and while the other one, The World Is A Monster fits squarely within Omni's country/folk/bluegrass focus, this one does NOT. Instead of lost recordings, rescued from plundered record label vaults or transferred from scratchy old records, instead of Dolly Parton or Porter Wagoner, instead of twisted country or bizarre bluegrass, Russkie Wig-Out! finds Omni collecting various recordings from the last ten years of "Demented Surf / Electro / Exotica From Behind The Iron Curtain". Which is as good as it sounds.
Some folks are probably familiar with Messer Chups, whose records have been issued stateside, and who we remembered as being more a sort of modern rockabilly outfit, but this comp kind of knocked our socks off, and not only features a handful of Messer Chups tracks, but also the various post Messer groups, offshoots and solo records. And the sound here is not at all rockabilly really. Instead it's crazed sample driven Joe Meek like exotica surf rock weirdness.
Twangy guitars, wild fluttery Theremins, lots of synths, groovy percussion, haunting Halloween melodies, and loads of samples, like some twisted hybrid of Les Baxter, Joe Meek, Perrey & Kingsley, Tipsy and Aavikko, this comp is like the ultimate party record. Just check out "Gitarkin Fast Food Empire", with its groovy horn riff, its counted off "1,2,3,4" vocal sample, culminating with a hurl like "BLEEEARGHHHH", not to mention the cool weirdo sort of scatting, the exotic female vocals, so good.
Or check out "Bukva F" which is essentially a Perry & Kingsley cover, right down to the weird animal calls, but here it's revved up a little and given some extra vibe melodies and strange vocals.
The whole record is totally fun and wild and ridiculous and catchy, it's sort of the music we'd imagine the house band on the Flintstones would play, or some fifties version of Pee Wee's Playhouse, or an alternate reality version of Gilligans Island, if Gilligan ran a seedy bar on the island. Totally far out, and totally recommended.
The third incredible volume of outerworld music from lands and peoples past and lost. Twenty-four tracks from Matabaleland (once Southern Rhodesia), Samarcand (central Asia), Poland, Spain, China, Epirus, Angola, India, Russia, Turkey, Arizona (Navajo), Mongolia, Dominica, Congo, Nyasaland, Burma, Tuscany, Persia, England, Albania, Laos, Tunisia, and Kiwai Island. Brought to us as always in a nice gatefold package with plenty of notes and information about the traditions and tribes of the people who made this incredible music. A must have!
Another fantastic compilation from the seemingly infallible Omni Recording Corporation, this one focusing on hillbilly music, specifically from the vaults of Columbia Records, between 1948 and 1959, and all focused around a Dallas recording studio run by a man named Jim Beck, and had the winds of fortune blown a little bit differently, and had Beck not died prematurely, then perhaps the recording industry in Nashville would have actually ended up based in Dallas. It's an interesting story, told in great detail in the copious liner notes, as are the stories of all the artists and their songs, and oh, what an awesome collection of singers and players, most of which we'd never before heard or even heard of.
A selection of some of the best hillbilly sides recorded for Columbia in the forties and fifties, lots of songs about drinking, and about women, and of course drinking AND women: "Beer Bottle Momma", "Drinking All My Troubles Away", "Red Hot Momma And An Ice Cold Beer", "There's A Bottle Where She Used To Be", "The Barroom Girl", "I'm The Devil Who Made Her That Way", and like all Omni comps, there's plenty of weirdness, howsabout "Ugly And Slouchy", a track about the joys of having a less than attractive lady friend cuz there'll "never be no fear of her loving someone else", or the darkly creepy cabaret of the title track, with it's refrain "The world is a monster, its food is man's heart".
And then of course there's just a stunning array of incredible unsung country classics, from heartfelt tales of loneliness, to bittersweet ballads, super rambunctious bluegrass hoedowns, rife with wild fiddling, earnest crooning, boasting and bragging, begging for forgiveness, wondering where it all went wrong, even some yodeling, fantastic stuff.
And as with all Omni stuff, there's a massive booklet with tons of rare photos and ephemera, and extensive liner notes.
Finally available, only on cassette, the second, and final, unreleased record from East Coast black metal merchants Vegas Martyrs, featuring Dominick Fernow, he of Ash Pool, Cold Cave, Prurient and Hospital Productions.
We dug the first VM record a lot, a twisted chunk of buzz drenched heaviness that to our ears straddled the line between noise rock and black metal. Raw and pulverizing, but still weirdly melodic and subtly poppy, and while record number two seems, at least on the surface, to be a bit more grim and harsh, those elements still loom large. The opener sets the stage with some serious hateful lo-fi blackness, definitely for fans of Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Ancestors and the like, it's the next track that reveals the group's soft white underbelly, with a long sprawling bit of looped melody, wreathed in electronic crackle and laced with minimal bits of percussion, a stretch of brooding hypnorock that could have been some weird Circle outtake, that is until the song explodes in a flurry of heaving riffage, crashing drums and bellowed vokills, but that looped melody still drives the song, giving it an AmRep noise rock vibe, albeit a few shades blacker.
And so it goes, the whole record a blurred dizzying barrage of tangled melodies, of mathy rhythms, of looped riffage, of fragmented shards of pop music buried under a continuous avalanche of crumbling electronics and feedback, wreathed in reverb and echo, tense and intense, all wound into tight yet, sprawling blasts of pop flecked avant math/noise/black metal weirdness. Awesome.
Here's a pretty stellar set of classical minimalism from the San Francisco based composer Tashi Wada. "Direct" repeats a series of five detuned notes on a violin, and with each repetition, Wada interjects incremental steps of harmonic overtones and dissonance. The rasping, singing drones build into an incredibly complex, yet wholly acoustic swarm that eagerly applies the classic strategies of the '60s minimalists (e.g. LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad, Alvin Lucier, and of course, Tashi Wada's father Yoshi Wada). The B-side contains "Retrograde" an exact reversal of the "Direct" composition, and through the act of flipping the record over and over again, there's an infinity loop / Moebius strip of harmonic drones that begins to evolve through the speakers.
Yik Yak pressed-up Alignment to be spun at 45 rpm. So, of course, we spun this at 33 rpm and fucking loved it! The raga-drones crawl slower, the overtones ring a little longer, and the whole mood of the composition is all the more ominous. Wada may not care for this bit of instruction on our part, but it's gotta be mentioned as it just sounds so good at that speed!
Featuring members of now defunct SF outfit New Thrill Parade, and loosely affiliated with the now seemingly hyped to death 'witch house' movement (due mostly to their cd-r on witch house flagship label Disaro), Water Borders have evolved into one of the strangest and most fascinating bands in the bay area. On their last record they sounded a bit like Coil, but on this 4 song ep, they sound, well, like pretty much nobody else.
The title track is a thick miasma of glimmering high end, lush synth swells, looped percussion, haunting 'witchy' ambience, and deep crooned vocals, and a sound that grows more caustic and corrosive as it goes, the vocals following suit, getting more manic and maniacal, the sound suffocatingly intense and explosively freaked out. "Rome" features Glasser guesting, a creepy post industrial dronescape laced with fuzzy synths and crumbling melodies, Glasser's ethereal vocals locked in a doom-ed duet with those creepy bellowed WB vox, a gorgeously twisted electro-doom-cabaret ballad, melodic but also mesmerizingly damaged. That same track gets remixed and blossoms into something simultaneously more washed out and psychedelic, and more driving and propulsive, whirring loops, repetitive melodies, a low slung dubstep beat, some thick fuzzed out bass, some weirdo processed vox, all very spacey and groovy, sounding like a jam that some enterprising DJ might use to confuse the fuck out of a dancefloor.
And finally, the title track gets remixed by Petals, which just so happens to be former aQer Cameron, and whose mostly unheard recordings rule, it's only a matter of time before some big label catches on and so does the rest of the world, but for now, revel in this grim, freaked out, darkly psychedelic reworking, all low end thrum and pulse, some feral grunts and growls, everything gauzy and blurred and even more haunting that the original, a black ambient electro gloom creep, that builds to a thick industrial pound the whole thing held together by a fragmented melodic loop, that will stick in your head like crazy.
SO recommended. We definitely need to hear more Water Borders, and heck, more Petals while we're at it...
Not one, but TWO brand new records, brand new BANDS in fact, from the man behind avant black metal weirdos Pyramids, Sailors With Wax Wings and White Moth, both heavy and weird in their own way, and both featuring incredible ensemble casts, not so much guests and collaborators. In some ways it does both of these records/groups a bit of a disservice to lump them together, as most reviewers (including this one) do, but it's sort of unavoidable, for as different as these two records may sound, there are quite a few similarities conceptually and even sonically.
For those unfamiliar with Pyramids, we've been pretty smitten with these guys ever since we first heard their double disc debut on Hydra Head, a dizzying sonic concoction that infused black metal blasts with washed out shoegaze glimmer, swirling dreamy ambience, blurred slowcore drift, actually it might be more accurate to describe Pyramids as some sort of blissed out shoegaze slowcore outfit that flecked their dreamy sound with bits of black metal buzz, but either way, the sound these guys cooked up was heady and psychedelic and pushed our buttons BIG TIME. Everything we could want in a weird heavy band seemed to be all smeared into this gorgeously indistinct entity called Pyramids. And the interesting thing about that debut, is that it already sort of foreshadowed the genesis of these two new projects, by including a discs of remixes/reworkings featuring Swans drummer Ted Parsons, Toby Driver of Kay Dot, Colin Marston of Behold the Arctopus, James Plotkin of OLD and Khanate, Justin Broadrick of Jesu / Godflesh and French industrial black metal crushers Blut Aus Nord. And the recent 5 cassette box seemed to be another sign pointing at Pyramids' mainman R Loren's restlessness, and need to keep creating and collaborating, featuring hours and hours of interpretations and reimaginings. Which brings us to Loren's latest projects, a simultaneous release of two different record, by two different groups, each sonically disparate, yet inexorably linked, Sailors With Wax Wings, whose sound is like a more abstracted shoegazey Pyramids, and White Moth, whose sound has been described by Loren as "digital hardcore", but also infuses its drill and bass and industrial crunch with plenty of Pyramidal blissed out black metalisms (including vocals from John Gossard of Weakling and Asunder!).
White Moth is just as awesomely tripped out and confusional as Pyramids, with a lineup of collaborators as similarly expansive and eclectic as Sailors With Wax Wings: Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot), Shelby Cinca of Frodus (!), Lydia Lunch, Ashley Scott Jones (Treasure Fingers, Evol Intent), Sam Hillmer (the Zs), Jacob Kirkegaard, Christoph Heeman (H.N.A.S.), Colin Marston (Krallice, Behold�The Arctopus), Dalek and of course John Gossard (Weakling, Asunder)...
White Moth splits its focus between textures/atmospheres/ambience, and beats, BIG gnarled drill and bass beats, mean hard heavy, self described 'digital hardcore' beats, but the opening track is surprisingly lovely, with its shimmery dreamy droney intro, its lush cascading guitars, a blissed out beat-heavy chunk of electronic pop, which is pretty much how the next few tracks play out, and to a certain extent the whole record, for all its purported black metal and digital hardcore elements, the resulting sound is electronic, and shoegazey, lots of buzzing guitars, but the buzz is muted and dreamy, giving the songs a more sort of washed out hazy glow, a surface of prismatic shimmer under which, beats and riffs churn and roil. It's not until the third track, that things get HEAVY, and even then, it sounds less like digital hardcore, and more like some sort of electronic flecked noise rock, howled almost emo vocals, soaring guitars, all on a bed of relentlessly stuttering squalls of sputter and crunch, occasionally slowing down to a doomy lumber, before smoothing out into a thick stretch of droned out guitars, and then finally some hushed ambient shimmer. "Shoot The Clock" features Dalek, and is a thick noisy swirl of guitar heavy hip hop skitter, that's definitely a perfect match, but then after all, it's the guy from Pyramids making this record, so he throws in some blown out saxophone, and layer after layer of throbbing psychedelic guitar buzz. The next three tracks are all cut from the same cloth, soaring swirling squalls of epic black metal guitar, over frantic frenetic beats, hovering somewhere right between blissed out prettiness and blown out electronic chaos, definitely leaning toward the former, even at its most extreme and punishing, it's like Loren has some pop gene, that no matter how hard he tries to subvert it, manages to worm its way into everything he does, but hell we're not complaining, it's precisely what makes this stuff so compelling, and listenable. We're all for a blackened wall of grinding beats and buzzing guitars, but when they're deftly assembled into something laced with melody and texture, even better!
The final track "To The Cathedral" is the one that features something you probably never thought you'd hear, the vocalist from Weakling, shrieking and howling over a bed of spastic electronic beats, all wrapped in gauzy streaks of blurred melody. and laced with dreamy crooned clean vocals, all tangled and chaotic and wonderfully blown out, the guitars here again are sort of black metal, but the buzz is more dreamy than grim, and you gotta listen close, cuz Gossard's vocals are buried WAY down in the mix, almost just another layer of buzz, and then it's all over in 3 minutes, a gorgeous blown out blast of hazy blackened metallic bliss pop electronica, which dissipates leaving a softly shimmering cloud of soft whirring ambient dronemusic to finish things off.
On first listen, White Moth sounds like a huge departure from Pyramids, and well removed from sister project Sailors With Wax Wings, but it only takes a few more plays to reveal that perhaps the differences are not as great as they seem, both White Moth and SWWW are buzzy and blissy, freaky and far out, psychedelic and atmospheric, brutal and beautiful, and while like Pyramids, both are probably WAY too far out to appeal to the true grim hordes, for everyone else, this is some bafflingly brilliant and abstract heaviness.
Record number two from these British neo-pagan black metallers, who along with Fen, Wodensthrone and a few others are fronting a new wave of British black metal, one that is lyrically concerned with nature and Anglo Saxon history, but that sonically is mostly concerned with crafting buzzing majestic blackened epics, which they do here big time.
Even more fully realized than their debut, The Mercian Sphere offers up sprawling epic after sprawling epic, right out of the gate, a brief bit of chanting leads into some furious heaviness, soaring melodies, buzzing guitars and some intense and complex drum pound, the arrangements are serpentine and intricate, the band swerving from lighting speed blast, to loping midtempo march and back again, melodies spiraling skyward, the vocals powerful and gruff, not screechy like most black metal, and as this is pagan BM after all, eventually, the clean vocals come in, which can be embarrassing in many cases, but here it's masterful, moving and emotional, not that far removed from Enslaved or the like, but maybe even better and more melodic here. In fact, the sound of Winterfylleth is a bit like some strange melding of Enslaved, Negura Bunget, Ulver and Drudkh, but with their own Decidedly British bent.
There are plenty of interludes, folky breakdowns, acoustic guitars, strings, haunting ambience, but unlike lots of bands, the atmosphere doesn't reside exclusively in the interludes, the songs themselves ooze atmosphere, the clean vocals, the chanting, over churning downtuned chug and crashing bombast, as moody and epic as anything. And beyond the blast and the buzz, Winterfylleth are capable of crafting some supremely sublime and melodic metal, "Defending The Realm" offers up what has to be the catchiest bit of black metal we've heard in ages, butted right up against some blazing flurries of insectoid buzz, "The Ruin" on the surface is all blackness and fury, but it's infused with all manner of melody and texture, pathos and anguish, the vocals especially tortured and intense, more like Neurosis or a band like that then typical black metal, the closing track perfectly encapsulating the power and energy of the band, beginning with a long stretch of warm folk strum, before a stretch of grim blasting blackness, only to slip smoothly into another impossibly catchy and melodic part, that is groovy and hooky, without losing any of its brutality or intensity, only to finally wind down with a mix of the two acoustic guitars, chugging riffage, and more of those gorgeous clean vocals.
Epic, majestic and fucking great.
Cryptic composer Jennifer Walshe is this issue's striking cover star. Inside, you'll also find a Primer on "techno enigma" Drexciya, AMM pianist John Tilbury doing the Invisible Jukebox, interviews with Bjorn Torske, Wim Mertens, and more... there's a scene report from Beirut, lots of reviews as usual, and Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier writing about the cover art of one of her favorite Jorge Ben albums...
Been waiting for this one. Shadoks (or Normal, or Q.D.K. Media, or whatever they're called) reissued Witch's awesome Lazy Bones!! album a while back, then did this one on (crazy expensive limited) vinyl, now here at last is the much more reasonably priced cd, yay! Along with a reissue of Tirogo's Float, also reviewed this list, both of which should make all fans of '70s African garage psych action super extra ultra happy...
Witch's Introduction was, as the title suggests, this Zambian band's debut, originally released in 1973, and it's such a damn delight, living up to the high hopes we had for it. "Zam Rock" at its best - not that we've ever heard any Zam Rock we didn't like, so far the reissues have been uniformly rad! As with Witch's later Lazy Bones!!, the fuzzed out wah wah'd guitars run rampant, the rhythms are infectious, the organ playing unrestrained, the English language lyrics charming (song titles include "Feeling High", "Like A Chicken" and "See Your Mama"... how could this record NOT be good?). Need we go on? If Lazy Bones!! rocked your world, this should be enough of an introduction to Introduction! While '75's Lazy Bones!! is a bit heavier, any fan will dig this too.
The cd booklet includes vintage photos, plus liner notes by Now-Again / Stones Throw's Egon, who was instrumental in making these legit Witch reissues happen. From those liner notes, we learn that the name Witch was actually an acronym, standing for We Intend To Cause Havoc! How cool is that?
We were so obsessed with the first Woe record, A Spell For The Death Of Man, a black metal record that was strangely melodic, and peppered its blast and buzz with post rock melodies, and referenced Husker Du and Bastro as much as it did black metal. So not only were we thrilled that this one man band got signed to Candlelight, but that there was a new record on the horizon, which was revealed to be this, the enigmatically titled Quietly, Undramatically, which as you might imagine is neither.
Much like the first record, Quietly begins about as unblack metal as one could imagine, keening guitars, pounding tribal drums, definitely way more math or post than black, but the slow building tension was gradually ratcheted up, some guttural vocal bellows, the whole thing so melodic and epic, and then POW, a classic metal break and the record explodes into some of the fastest most furious black buzz we've heard, constantly shifting into something almost punkish, or slipping in little bits of classic metal, but barreling along ferociously, peppering the blasting buzz with some incredible drumming and some twisted gnarled riffage.
The title track is 8 minutes of pure melodic black bliss, exactly what we loved so much about the first record, sure it's heavy and the drums are blasting, but the melodies soar, and the harmonies are gorgeous, reimagined, this could have been some sort of indie pop song, but here it's something totally other, epic and majestic and so heavy, slipping into midtempo breakdowns that are just as melodic as the main body of the song, relentless but so catchy, 8 minutes is way too short.
The rest of the record is also melodic, but not so obviously so, although "A Treatise On Control" definitely comes close, with its soaring melodies, and super intense crescendos, sounding almost emo at times, super passionate and emotional, a noise rock / screamo / black metal hybrid that totally slays, and while still definitely black metal, manages to elevate the usual tropes and create something distinctly unique.
Lest the true black hordes be discouraged, the final two tracks are way more more furious and frenzied, but even at their most frantic, those songs remain infused with Woe's masterful melodic sense, and a pop element that seems to underpin the otherwise grim proceedings, although perhaps it's not so noticeable that it would distract the casual black metaller. But for us, it only further cements the fact that Woe is making some of the coolest, most distinctive and innovative black metal around, and thus this comes totally and unequivocally recommended to anyone who likes their black metal to not necessarily sound like all the other black metal out there.
Another literal warehouse find, from the same place where we found the (now all gone) Leningrad Blues Machine cds listed last time, and it's another one for you Japanophiles, being a compilation released in 1994 of tracks by various and sundry bands that Ruins mastermind drummer/vocalist Tatsuya Yoshida had played in, up 'til then. Since Yoshida was (& still is!) such a crucial part of the Japanese psych/prog/noise underground, the list of bands is kinda nuts. Here's the entire lineup: Ruins, YBO2, Dissecting Table, High Rise, ZOA, Torture Garden (John Zorn's Japanese version of Naked City, also featuring Eye Yamatsuka), Gerogerigegege, Vasilisk, Malinconia, Phaidia, Aburadako, Tairikuotoko vs. Sanmyakuonna, Koenjihyakkei, Zeni Geva, and one more we couldn't figure out the English name of, plus two solo tracks by Yoshida in one-man-band mode (including the very first track, home-recorded by Yoshida way back in '83). Wow. So as well as being a Yoshida collection, it's also pretty good sampler of the Japanese underground circa '83-'93.
Obviously, in many cases, these weren't all HIS projects, the way Ruins are. Yoshida's just such an amazing drummer, that lots of bands wanted him to play with them - even the infamous masturbating Gerogerigegege! Yoshida's mock-operatic vocal stylings also come into play upon occasion (and he plays bass in one band, instead of drums). Although as you might expect, technical prog stuff is a big element of this, the range of styles is surprising, and hard to define, it includes avant-punk, gothic cabaret music, screaming hardcore skronk, industrial noise, garage doom-psych, chaotic RIO funk, and alt-alt-alt-J-pop... We're pretty sure almost all the tracks are exclusive to this comp, almost all of 'em recorded live, not taken from albums. In many cases, they may be the only recorded documentation of Yoshida playing with a particular unit. The songs we did recognize (whether live or the actual studio versions) are all from pretty rare discs anyways. And of course this out of print cd itself is rare too. We checked online, and there's places selling used copies for around $50!! So, Ruins/Yoshida/Japanese music nerds, you'd best act fast! We only found a few... And yes, we'll keep digging at that warehouse and see what else interestin' we might get lucky and discover.
Crescendo. That's the word that most aptly fits Valusia, the latest ep by wunderkind Nika Rosa Danilova, aka Zola Jesus. Building layer upon layer upon layer of synths and drums and vocals, Valusia, honestly, gets better the more times we spin it. Her career is on the upswing as well, with no signs of a de-crescendo: tours with Fever Ray, Wolf Parade, among other big names. The four songs on this 18 minute record stand with the best Zola Jesus has released. The "cleaner" sound of the Stridulum ep carries over into this new recording, with some slight throwbacks into the dirtier drum machine sounds of The Spoils. "Poor Animal" opens the ep with swishy synths that jump straight into a pulsing four-on-the-floor kick drum beat. This expands into something a bit bouncier, and the layers of synths and vocals just keep coming until it's almost overwhelming. Just when your head rolls back in sonic ecstasy, however, she pulls back a bit, only to punch back in with a perfectly timed and executed outro. The sounds on "Tower," the synths especially, sound closer akin to The Spoils: a bit gothier, crunchier, less poppy, her voice drenched in reverb. A slow dirge dedicated to gothic loneliness. The chorus of "Sea Talk" is so catchy and sad it hurts to listen to it, but it hurts more NOT to listen to it. Finishing out the four songs is "Lightstick", what one aQ-er has affectionately dubbed "goth girl piano recital." Almost droney, it bangs out the same basic piano riff for four minutes, with layers of synths and vocals fading in and out to provide the landscape. Any fan of Zola Jesus' work to date needs this record. Any of you that haven't heard of her (really?), this release is an excellent introduction to one of the most talented young songwriters working today.
