Record number two from this all female power trio from Portland, don't let the hippy cover art fool you, this is some awesomely psychedelic and fuzz drenched Sabbathy stoner garage doom space rock fuzz pop. In our review of their first record we said it sounded like "Quix*O*Tic meets Pentagram, due in no small part to the soaring dramatic vocals (not to mention the heavy riffing), and this time around the same still applies, in fact the vocals are even more intense and emotional, which had us wanting to alter that description to now read "Sleater Kinney meets Black Sabbath", tough to argue with that, but then why would you want to. These ladies SLAY, unfurling groovy stonery riffs, unleashing thick swaths of metallic crunch, thick buzzing riffage, powerful simple drumming, rad psychedelic leads, the sound heavy and metallic, but laced with a witchy folky vibe, which the band fully embrace, sometimes ditching the heaviness entirely and weaving lush sonic spells of acoustic guitar and dreamy vocals, only to launch right back into some stripped down dirgey, doomy creep, some lumbering metallic downtuned crunch, or some groovy wah wah laced stoner rock. Awesome!
Not sure why we never listed the first record from these guys, but we figured record number two was the perfect opportunity to right that wrong. Quest For Fire are a band of psychedelic space rockers from Canada, who craft gorgeously brooding and occasionally explosive psychrock epics, slow burning string laden drifts that gradually build into explosive psychedelic squalls, or swirling shoegazey folk pop blowouts, equal parts Godspeed You Black Emperor, Spacemen 3, and Kyuss, or maybe Queens Of The Stoneage, since there is definitely a distinct pop element here. Unlike some of our other favorite psychedelic jammers, Quest For Fire seem first and foremost concerned with songs, sure the songs do often unfurl into extended spaced out megajams, but most of the tracks here barely crack the 5 minute mark, and a few hover around the 3 minute pop song mark. Those are definitely the most succinct and hookiest. "Set Out Alone" is a fuzz drenched stomper, the vocals weary and laid back, but the guitars crunchy and crumbly, the drums wild and propulsive, the song peppered with killer psych leads. "Strange Vacation" is strummy washed out psychedelic pop drift, sounding very sixties, while "In The Place Of A Storm" sounds a bit like some Monster Magnet / Spacemen 3 hybrid. We also hear plenty of Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun and other modern psychedelic sonic explorers throughout.
Then there are the longer songs, that manage to be the perfect mix of QfF's folky psych pop, and seriously in-the-red space rock psychedelia, like on the 9+ minute close "Sessions Of Light", which spends most of its time brooding and drifting and smoldering, driven by a stripped down loping rhythm, and gorgeous world weary Pink Floyd-ish vocals, but when the band finally let loose, it's epic, and heavy and intense and explosive! Definitely one of those times you wish the song went on for another 10 minutes, just so you these guys could go wild, and we could luxuriate in the epic spaced out shredding.
Seriously great stuff. Definitely recommended for fans of Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Comets On Fire and any of the current crop of like minded sonic explorers...
A few weeks back we made Andy Votel's amazing mix of prog/funk/jazz/acid rock from the Vertigo vaults our Record Of The Week. Now we're reviewing this, a recently-reissued-on-cd Vertigo album from, ta-da, 1971 that (we don't think) made it onto Votel's disc, thereby demonstrating that even by cramming dozens of little snippets of songs into a mix, he certainly couldn't fully encompass everything awesome that was ever released on Vertigo! This one's not heavy rock, nor is it freaky jazz fusion. Rather, Ramases was a unique one-album-only obscurity playing a kind of mystical pop-prog. I guess it reminds us just a little bit of Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come albums. But it's definitely its own thing, as you might expect from a mysterious psychedelic visionary from South Africa who (perhaps) believed himself to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian pharaoh, who performed these Space Hymns together with his wife Sel, and the assistance of others, including production and guitar licks (and sitar and Moog) courtesy of 10cc's Godley and Creme. The results are really rather catchy and quite strange. Maybe what the second Comus album would have sounded like, if it was a lot better than it was!
This new reish in Repertoire's Vertigo series (we hope to bring you some other titles soon) is nicely deluxe, packaged in a gatefold digipack cd jacket, adorned with Roger Dean's great church steeple/rocketship cover art. It boasts four bonus tracks as well (alternate mixes and b-sides). Recommended if you want to check out some unclassifiable cult tuneage, weird and folkish and electronically Eno-arty, with sci-fi hippy themes perhaps worth puzzling over.
Every new Jack Rose record is a cause for celebration around here, a master of post Fahey modern Appalachia, and an incredible player, fingerpicking, slide, the last time he played here it was magical to watch this big, un assuming guy, effortlessly create this massive and intricate sound. This latest Rose record though is bittersweet, it's of course fantastic, lush, and melodic, intricate and lovely, but it will forever be saddled with the added emotional weight of being Rose's last ever recording, as he sadly passed away in December of last year. Luck In The Valley, then is not just a record, but a gorgeous tribute to his life, his music, an elegy is sound, beautiful and timeless.
And it is beautiful and timeless, opener "Blues For Percy Danforth" is incredible, an intricately fingerpicked melancholy lament, accompanied by jaw harp and harmonica, the playing by Rose is some of the most fluid we've heard, a swirl of sweet melodies, warm resonant buzz, perfectly arranged into a sound classic and old timey, but still modern and original. This record is more of a group / full band effort, unlike many of Rose's other mostly solo discs, featuring lots of guests on tampura, banjo, tack piano, fiddle, harmonica and more. The tracks range in sound from bluegrass hoedown to brooding minor key folk to classic Appalachia, many of the songs have a raga like vibe (no doubt due to his time spent playing with drone rockers Pelt), others are rife with woozy weary slide guitar, which gives the proceedings an ominous haunting vibe, and those are our favorite tracks, the darker, more melancholy and introspective numbers, that make up about half the record, a good balance for the jauntier jams, which include a few covers / reinterpretations of classics from Blind Blake and W.C. Handy.
Fans of Rose will absolutely want this, it's as good if not better than his other records, fans of guitar music and Appalachia and classic bluegrass would also do well do give Rose a try, but really, this is just a gorgeous disc of amazing guitar music, beautiful songs, and one more chance to get lost in the magical sounds of a man who has hopefully moved on to someplace much more magical.
The cd comes in a cool 4 panel mini-LP style jacket.
The lp version comes in an old-style tip-on jacket with a hand-pasted letterpressed cover, with a free mp3 download coupon and is limited to only 1500 copies...
Two brothers from Humboldt County are RV Paintings - one is Brian Pyle, whose name should probably strike a chord as one of the principals in Starving Weirdos and recently has been generating some impressive work under his solo Ensemble Economique moniker; the other is Jon Pyle, who occasionally makes a guest appearance in the Weirdos but also operates in Nudge with Honey Owens, Paul Dickow, and Brian Foote. For all of the method acting from the brothers Pyle in getting stoned and jamming, they have been remarkably consistent and consistently good in all of their ruminations, with RV Paintings probably the best that they've mustered. The RV Paintings debut on Root Strata is three years out but is still a timeless, gorgeous dronesmear of bowed metals and elongated guitar; this was followed by a well-suited split with Taiga Remains on Blackest Rainbow, and now, they've got this stunner on Helen Scarsdale.
RV Paintings speak about, to, and from their own immediate surroundings: the moss, mushrooms, and mycelium of the awe-inspiring redwood forests, the heavy fog that hangs at the coast and from their bongs, and the weightiness of the Pacific Ocean just off to the west. The title Samoa Highway gives the impression that the two brothers were on their own trip during a cold, wintery day, gazing off to the southwest and pondering the warmer climate of American Samoa. But no, the Samoa Highway is located in Humboldt County, connecting Eureka with the small community of Samoa on the other side of the bay which was thought to resemble that of Pago Pago in the mid-19th Century. It's also the bridge that would get you to the Arcata/Eureka Airport.
So, the album begins with field recordings of airplanes lifting off on the jawdropping track "Millions," as sitar-like harmonics and ghostly, levitating drones emanate from the distance. It's a perfectly narcotized smear of echo and drift, hanging in space as the remnants of a particularly lucid dream or the foggy headspace from an afternoon of smoking pot and staring at the sun. This is a track that could spiral onward forever. So nice! Samoa Highway continues with "Mirrors" driven by melancholy looped melody from a cello that dissolves into a flurry of shimmered guitar fuzz, whose shoegazed mantra has been submerged under centuries of felled trees and lichens. Cyclical patterns of samples from dark yet pastoral orchestral passages rounds out the album. If it weren't for the delicate freeform clamor of the drumkit, tracks such as this wouldn't be that far removed from the 'pop ambient' cuts by Gas. Citations of Taj Mahal Travellers, Organum, Grouper, Barn Owl, and The Caretaker certainly hit the mark. Music for airports? More like Music for California airports! Fuck yeah!
And a download coupon is tucked within the sleeve as well!
Record number two from this grim doom sludge trio, named of course for the stepdaughter of King Herod, in the Bible, who was the one that requested John The Baptist's severed head on a platter, a fitting name certainly for the aural horrors these three deal in, and one of the three just so happens to be vocalist Katherine Katz, who also does time in genius grind outfit Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
Her time in AnB must have rubbed off on her main group, cuz things aren't nearly as slow and sludgey as we remember. That said, opening track "The Message" might have you thinking otherwise, a slow building sludgescape, all twisted electronics, and spare downtuned chug, we were prepared for some serious Moss/Monarch/Bunkur sort of dirgery, but then after about three minutes of abstract avant doom, the track kicks in proper, and the band unfurl something practically midtempo, a weirdly lumbering groove that is thick, and heavy, and awesomely brutal, with Kat's insanely harsh bellowed and screeched vokills. The 'verses' are way more stripped down, leaving lots of space for Kat's vox to be the focal point, draped over simple plodding drums and occasional chug, but then the song veers back into that more propulsive doomy groove. It's not as slow and sludgey maybe, but this is still some seriously brutal stuff.
And there are still more sonic surprises in store, the title track is downright mathy, with still more sludgey groove, and some killer start stop dynamics, sounding more like some Harvey Milk / Khanate hybrid. Which actually sort of describes the whole record, it's like they fused that sort of abject shrieking minimal doom, to something more 'rocking', cuz this is actually seriously rocking, way more than the last record, and it definitely suits them. The riffs are gnarled and blackened, the drums are crushing, and intricate, those vocals are incredible, slipping easily from Dubin-ish shriek to Cannibal Corpse like bellow, and instead of relying on mood and ambience, like a lot of doom/sludge outfits, these songs are definitely composed, and are complicated, and occasionally weirdly catchy.
We figured the 17+ minute "An Accident Of History" might be the album's centerpiece, and it still could be, although instead of more churning heaviness, it's a weird abstract drone piece, all static and hiss, shortwave radio, twisted feedback, bizarre samples, disembodied voices, glitched out electronics, malfunctioning effects, a pretty fantastic bit of audio experimentation, that somehow sounds like it belongs, dropped right there in the midst of Salome's complex math sludge heaviness. Awesome.
Housed in super striking embossed black & white, six panel digipak packaging.
By now, faithful readers of the aQ list know how into skweee we are, that twisted playful freaked out glitchy electronica that's equal parts 8-bit video game music, classic hip hop boom bap and eighties electro, all woozy synths, stuttery beats, lots of buzz and fuzz and bloop and bleep. We've listed tons of 7"s, a few full lengths, some killer comps, but this is the first long player we've listed from Swedish skweee scene king Daniel Savio, and it's a good one.
And unlike most skweee, which tends toward the fun and funky, Savio's Nekropolis gets downright dark. Well dark for skweee anyway. Savio calls it "Apocalyptic Skweee". The sounds are buzzy and fuzzy, the melodies minor key, the mood ominous and haunting, sure it's still playful, that's the nature of the skweee beast, but Nekropolis plays out like a compliation of the music from all the scariest levels from all your favorite eighties arcade games, remixed into creepy dancefloor destroyers. Bleeps and glitches are underpinned by thick swaths of low end buzz, jagged shards of upper register crunch, at times almost like Bernard Herrmann like string stabs rendered in 8-bit, the low end constantly creeping like some digital black fog. "Warhead" is an awesome Atari creepscape that manages to be both haunting and spooky, groovy and goofy; "Black Water" is John Carpenter's soundtrack to Escape From New York played on a Commodore 64; "Reanimator" is an old school electro jam constructed from chiptuned tones and laced with horror movie ambience, it's all so good. If there was ever gonna be a record that finally convinced the masses to bow before the skweee, it would most definitely be Nekropolis!
The vinyl, with tip-on art, comes packaged with a cd version of the album as well, which we way prefer to just a download code, thanks Losonofono!
Undeniably, this is a Matt Shoemaker recording. This Pacific Northwesterner has long been a favorite dronologist here at Aquarius with his ominous recordings spawned from electro-acoustic feedback systems, humid field recordings, tonebent mood engineering slanted toward audio hallucinations, dense guitar swarms, and elongated, zoner synth passages that give John Elliott a run for his money. Soundtrack For Dislocation is a self-evident title for Shoemaker, given how his work fractures temporal / psychogeographical planes, teleporting the listener from one opiated mirage to another. His process is just as interesting as the sounds that he produces, as he drives and controls feedback through a system of slinkies that act like something of a hybrid between a stereo spring reverb unit and an omnidirectional microphone, with Russian synths, VCO filters, and noise-aggregators positioned at various points on the feedback loop track. We had once thought that the pre-digital Merzbow recordings had developed into something of an organism that thrived on electricity, had an intelligence that dictated the course of the noise, and begrudgingly entertained a relationship with Masami Akita. Shoemaker's electro-acoustic contraptions seem to be approaching this Frankensteinian, electric organism on par with Merzbow's, although the architects of both projects have very different designs.
Hence, this is not a torrent of distortion, but a vertiginous path of drone, hiss, blur, shadow, grit, and decay. Placid atmospheres shimmer at times with all of the cinematic grandeur of Stars Of The Lid, only to dissolve, mutate, and crumble into hallucinatory slippages where flecks of environmental sounds breaking through, twisting once again into a metallic resonance on par with the most haunting of Nurse With Wound constructions. Thrumming tones pulse into skittering vibrations that build to rupturing crescendos that snap into near-silent voids of disquieting rumble. All of this comes together in another magnificent album from Mr. Shoemaker. Highly recommended!
We tried so hard to get our hands on the 12" Small Black released last year to review on the list, with no success, which was a bummer as it was really one of the best slabs of wax to come out of the then just blossoming chill-wave scene. Luckily those songs made it to the ears of a good range of folks via blogs and college radio, and Jagjaguwar were smart enough to sign the band and release this, their debut full length.
New Chain is brimming with awesome waves of Hacienda inspired pop, equal parts dream and dance. One of the things that has been making Small Black stand out over lots of their chill-wave friends is the fact that they are actually a full band, able to pull of live what they capture so well on their recordings. In fact lots of folks we know who saw them open on tour for Washed Out agreed that Small Black gave a way better live performance. They sit right near the top of the crop with folks like Washed Out, Neon Indian and Nite Jewel, in delivering lo-fi soaked sounds with such great hooks and inviting melodies. Hazy and blissful pop that hits the spot!
As the years pass after Elliott Smith's sad suicide, it's becoming more clear that his musical legacy will have the same impact and influence on future generations that Nick Drake's did a few decades before. He created such intimate and fragile songs that anyone with a heart (that's been broken) could relate to and find warmth, comfort and solace from. His songs have proven to be so practically perfect and seemingly timeless. He wasn't a part of any musical fad or trend. Instead he was one of those rare songwriting geniuses, the ones that only come along every few generations and craft songs that become the soundtrack to so many of our lives.
An Introduction To... is just that. A selection of his best songs spanning all his albums as well as a couple tracks from New Moon, the collection of B sides and demos during the era he was on Kill Rock Stars. We're sure the only problem the folks at KRS had with this collection was having to narrow it all down to fourteen tracks, as he did leave behind so many amazing songs. But we have to say they did an impeccable job choosing which songs and in what order to craft this ultimate ES mixtape.
There are also great liner notes written by Tape Op editor Larry Crane which gives a nice history and plenty of insight into the music of Elliott Smith. For any of our friends who somehow slept on his music in the past, we must INSIST this you at least pick this up, you'll soon be under his spell for sure, we can't imagine many lovers of music not finding so much beauty and richness in these stunning songs.
We miss you Elliott!
We've always been suckers for a ridiculous band name, usually the weirder and more twisted the better, Fuck I'm Dead, Bathtub Shitter, Tremor Of The Black Manx, The Shitty Listener, Ithdabquth Qliphoth, but for whatever reason, we never listened to Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin specifically because of that name. Maybe it's a fine line, ridiculously inspired versus plain old dumb, bizarre versus precious, but fuck it, we should know better, and when we somehow got over our problem with SSLYBY's mouthful of a moniker, we were treated to a seriously fantastic collection of lush, jangly, super hooky upbeat pop, rife with subtle unlikely instrumentation (banjo! Marimba!), intricate melodies and gorgeously hazy harmonies, it's tough not to love these guys and this record. Especially if you're already a fan of groups like the Shins, Death Cab For Cutie, Animal Collective, Phoenix and other similarly lush janglepoppers. Quickly becoming one of our new favorite pop records of the year. Although to be honest, we're still having trouble saying things like "You should really check out Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin", but we're working on it...
Damn, this might be our favorite slab of wax yet from these fabulous four women from right here in the Bay Area. We love how stripped down and raw these songs come crackling out of our speakers, making us think of a more melodic early Sleater Kinney, as both songs have such infectious hooks yet also have this total immediacy brimming under the surface. Along with the latest Grass Widow record, this 7" is bringing us back to the heyday of Kill Rock Stars, K, and Chainsaw Records glory in such awesome ways!
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!
The music of Kelley Stoltz has always given hearty nods to The Beatles, and on his latest album their influence is still felt in spades. Unlike many other artists who are content to copycat their heroes though, Stoltz consistently crafts fresh songs that are respectfully infused with the spirited energy of his forefathers. Don't miss the lilting sweetheart "Pinecone" or the comparatively feisty "Little Girl". Terrific! You can also hear a bit of The Cars, The Kinks, Nick Lowe, XTC and Electric Light Orchestra who themselves were hugely inspired by the Fab Four. Perhaps slightly a bit more angular this time, To Dreamers is nevertheless a warm, inviting pop album that would make a great spin alongside your Spoon or New Pornographers albums!
Damn we've been digging lots of stuff coming out of Australia lately. We made the latest from Fabulous Diamonds our record of the week a couple months ago and we've been getting really into Total Control and now Super Wild Horses are our newest Australian crush. We imagine you might get super smitten too for SWH's punky high energy fuzzy pop that is totally refreshingly unpretentious, super impassioned and brimming with an integrity that can't be denied. Funny that the record is named Fifteen, as it kind of reminds us a lot of the heyday of Bay Area pop punk with bands like Fifteen, Tilt, Crimpshrine and J Church. We're also reminded of some of our favorite and way underrated bands on Simple Machines from that era like Tuscedero, Scrawl, and Tsunami. In lots of ways SWH seem to connect the dots of that era to the current wave of rad lo-fi minded garage popsters like Brilliant Colors, Wetdog, and Grass Widow. So good!
Considering that Norwegian "death jazz" unit Supersilent began their recording career with a triple cd release entitled Supersilent 1-3, it's not so odd that they'd overwhelm their fans, these several years later, with the near-simultaneous release of both installments 10 and 11 in the Supersilent discography. As it happens, 10 features their newest recordings, while 11 consists of somewhat older material, tracks left over from the sprawling sessions that produced Supersilent 8 back in 2005. That's apparently why Supersilent 11 has been done as a vinyl-only release, while Supersilent 10 is on cd (and, eventually, but not yet, also lp).
Now, for those of you who already have a good proportion of Supersilent's 1 through 9, need we really say much about 10 and 11? Each numbered Supersilent release thus far has been brilliant, right? Yet each somewhat different, in representing Supersilent's unique style of electronic / acoustic improv, which can range from glacially paced, spacious ambient drift to fractured rhythmic glitch, from mellow melodic bliss to distorted noisy chaos.
In the case of 10, it's tilted toward the hauntingly atmospheric, following on from the minimalistic approach of Supersilent 9 (wherein the group, without their former drummer, all played Hammond organ). These twelve (also simply numbered, as usual) tracks make evocative use of Arve Henriksen's limpid, moody trumpet solos, Stale Storlokken's sparse, somber Steinway grand piano, and the quietly droning, slightly gritty "audio virus" of electronics expert and producer Helge "Deathprod" Sten, who also plays electric guitar (whilst the other two in the trio contribute on electronics as well). Intriguing, gorgeous, suspenseful soundscapes are the result, replete with fragile melody and distant drone, and Supersilent 10 thus rates a 10 with us. So if you're just encountering Supersilent now, this would be a fine starting point, and then working backwards from 10 wouldn't be a bad idea.
Fans of course, at least the turntable enabled, will want 11, too. Apparently the studio sessions for Supersilent 8 resulted in a lot more music being made than they could fit on one cd, and after editing, there was enough good stuff left over that they felt they should eventually also release (in fact, they almost just made 8 into a triple cd), and indeed they were right. That 8th Supersilent we recall as being possibly their most "rock" effort, and also a quite varied one, and 11 could certainly be considered utterly worthy "bonus tracks" to that effort, and in addition it's a lovely limited edition fetish object, 180 gram vinyl, lots of room for the artwork (hahaha, that's a joke, since as with all Supersilent releases, the Kim Hiorthoy cover design is a solid color with white Helvetica text... looks great though!).
Considering that Norwegian "death jazz" unit Supersilent began their recording career with a triple cd release entitled Supersilent 1-3, it's not so odd that they'd overwhelm their fans, these several years later, with the near-simultaneous release of both installments 10 and 11 in the Supersilent discography. As it happens, 10 features their newest recordings, while 11 consists of somewhat older material, tracks left over from the sprawling sessions that produced Supersilent 8 back in 2005. That's apparently why Supersilent 11 has been done as a vinyl-only release, while Supersilent 10 is on cd (and, eventually, but not yet, also lp).
Now, for those of you who already have a good proportion of Supersilent's 1 through 9, need we really say much about 10 and 11? Each numbered Supersilent release thus far has been brilliant, right? Yet each somewhat different, in representing Supersilent's unique style of electronic / acoustic improv, which can range from glacially paced, spacious ambient drift to fractured rhythmic glitch, from mellow melodic bliss to distorted noisy chaos.
In the case of 10, it's tilted toward the hauntingly atmospheric, following on from the minimalistic approach of Supersilent 9 (wherein the group, without their former drummer, all played Hammond organ). These twelve (also simply numbered, as usual) tracks make evocative use of Arve Henriksen's limpid, moody trumpet solos, Stale Storlokken's sparse, somber Steinway grand piano, and the quietly droning, slightly gritty "audio virus" of electronics expert and producer Helge "Deathprod" Sten, who also plays electric guitar (whilst the other two in the trio contribute on electronics as well). Intriguing, gorgeous, suspenseful soundscapes are the result, replete with fragile melody and distant drone, and Supersilent 10 thus rates a 10 with us. So if you're just encountering Supersilent now, this would be a fine starting point, and then working backwards from 10 wouldn't be a bad idea.
Fans of course, at least the turntable enabled, will want 11, too. Apparently the studio sessions for Supersilent 8 resulted in a lot more music being made than they could fit on one cd, and after editing, there was enough good stuff left over that they felt they should eventually also release (in fact, they almost just made 8 into a triple cd), and indeed they were right. That 8th Supersilent we recall as being possibly their most "rock" effort, and also a quite varied one, and 11 could certainly be considered utterly worthy "bonus tracks" to that effort, and in addition it's a lovely limited edition fetish object, 180 gram vinyl, lots of room for the artwork (hahaha, that's a joke, since as with all Supersilent releases, the Kim Hiorthoy cover design is a solid color with white Helvetica text... looks great though!).
Why the heck aren't these guys (this guy?) huge? Their debut record, released on Merge a while back, was a practically perfect slab of nineties style indie pop jangle, lush and hooky and rife with glorious Elephant 6isms, and this follow up ep is more of the same. These tracks were mostly recorded lo-fi bedroom style, straight into a laptop, and somehow, even though it's noticeably more lo-fi, it still sounds surprisingly lush, and still catchy like crazy.
And how about that title? Sound tongue twistingly familiar, at least stylistically? It's cause this record is sort of an homage to Guided By Voices, the band having become newly obsessed with GBV's Alien Lanes, and to further that point they offer up a fantastic take on "Game Of Pricks" from that very same record. And it definitely speaks to the pop genius of Telekinesis that the originals barely even pale in comparison. There's also a killer cover of "The Drawback" by the pre-Joy Division outfit, and somehow here, even that chunk of dour buzzsaw punkiness comes out all fuzzy and crunchy and jangly and sounding like a Telekinesis original. So great!
Another issue of our favorite monthly metal mag. Well Decibel comes close, but we've been reading England's Terrorizer for YEARS. On the cover this time, Southern heavies Kylesa, representing the "Dirty South" in this ish's "Dixie Metal" scene report, which also features The Sword, Zoroaster, Torche, Arson Anthem (Phil from Pantera and Mike from EHG) and others. Also: Melechesh, Cephalic Carnage, Wolves In The Throne Room (doing the Invisible Jukebox thing), Sahg, The Crown, Malevolent Creation, Spiritual Beggars, Absu, and more. There's also part 3 of the Terrorizer Top 200 metal albums of all time... and all the usual reviews and news and stuff. Plus, on the cover, a cd sampler, with Kylesa, Tank, Dimmu Borgir, October Tide, Hail Of Bullets, etc. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! A SUNNY DAY IN GLASSGOW "Autumn, Again" (self-released) lp 15.98 ANBB (ALVA NOTO & BLIXA BARGELD) "Mimikry" (Raster-Noton) cd/2x12" 17.98/25.00 ASHBY, DOROTHY "Hip Harp" (Prestige) lp 12.98 AVEY TARE "Down There" (Paw Tracks) cd/lp 14.98/17.98 BIRKIN, JANE "Di Doo Dah" (Light In The Attic) cd 16.98 BLACK ANGELS "Phosphene Dream" (Blue Horizon) cd 13.98 BLACK HEART PROCESSION, THE "Blood Bunny / Black Rabbit" (Temporary Residence) cd/lp 12.98/14.98 BOW WOW "Charge" (Rock Candy) cd 14.98 BOW WOW "Super Live" (Rock Candy) cd 14.98 BRAINBOMBS "Urge To Kill" (Load) lp 14.98 BUGAJ, ADAM "Wave Of Tears" (Deep Water) cd-r 6.98 CALL BACK THE GIANTS "s/t" (Kye) lp 16.98 CARISSA'S WIERD "Songs About Leaving" (Hardly Art) lp 13.98 CARISSA'S WIERD "Ugly But Honest: 1996-1999" (Hardly Art) 2lp 14.98 CARISSA'S WIERD "You Should Be At Home Here" (Hardly Art) 2lp 14.98 CLOUD NOTHINGS "Leave You Forever" (True Panther) 7" 5.50 DARA PUSPITA "The Garage Years" (Groovie) lp 32.00 DOLPHY, ERIC "Out To Lunch" (Blue Note) lp 12.98 DRUDKH "Slavonic Chronicles" (Season Of Mist) 10" 14.98 DRUIDS OF STONEHENGE "Creation" (Axis/Sundazed) cd/lp 17.98/21.00 DUM DUM GIRLS "Bhang Bhang, I'm A Burnout" (Slumberland/Sub Pop) 7" 5.50 FALL, THE "The Wonderful And Frightening" (Beggar's Banquet) 4cd box 27.00 FJELLSTROM, MARCUS "Schattenspieler" (Miasmah) lp 19.98 FUCKED UP "Year Of The Ox" (Merge) 12" 10.98 GARDEN SOUND "Black Summit" (Digitalis) lp 14.98 HANDGJORT "s/t" (Silence) cd 34.00 HOLTKAMP, KOEN "Gravity/Bees" (Thrill Jockey) lp 14.98 HOWELL, PETER & JOHN FERDINANDO "Tomorrow Come Someday" (Acme) cd+dvd 17.98 HUUN HUUR TU "Ancestors Call" (World Village) cd 21.00 INTERNATIONAL HELLO "s/t" (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98 INVADERS "There's A Light There's A Way" (Fresh) cd 17.98 JEFFERTITTI'S NILE "Hypnotic Rivers Of Sound" (Jnile) lp 9.98 LAZER SWORD "Batman" (Innovative Leisure) 12" 9.98 LAZER SWORD "s/t" (Innovative Leisure) cd 15.98 LESSER / MATMOS / WOBBLY "Simultaneous Quodlibet" (Important Records) lp 17.98 LUNGFISH "Pass And Stow" (Dischord) cd 12.98 MADLIB "Medicine Show No.10 - Black Soul" (Madlib) cd 17.98 MELECHESH "Epigenesis" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98 MERRY-GO-ROUND, THE "You're A Very Lovely Woman / Live" (Sundazed) lp 21.00 MUELLER, JON "The Whole" (Type) cd/lp + cd 15.98/22.00 NADJA "White Nights / Drone Fields" (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2xdvd 22.00 NANOS OPERETTA "Those Not In Our Circle Are Blind To Our Venture" (Three Drops Of Blood) cd 11.98 NECROMANDUS "Orexis of Death & Live" (Rise Above Records) cd 24.00 OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD "Blanket Universe Duo" (Don't Fuck With Magic) cd-r 14.98 OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD "Dogstar White Ka-pow!" (Don't Fuck With Magic) cd-r 14.98 OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD "Greychant Glitter Seven" (Don't Fuck With Magic) cd-r 14.98 PHANTOM PAYN DAYS "s/t" (De Stiijl) lp 17.98 SCIENTISTS "This Is My Happy Hour" (Cherry Red Phonograph) lp 33.00 SEEFEEL "Faults" (Warp) 10" 11.98 SEGAL / VANDAMME "s/t" (Saxon Gregory Production) lp 7.98 SISTOL (VLADISLAV DELAY) "Remasters & Remakes" (Phthalo / Halo Cyan) 2cd 14.98 SOFT MACHINE, THE "s/t" (Sundazed) lp 21.00 STELLAR OM SOURCE "Trilogy Select" (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 17.98 V/A "Dr. Boogie Presents: Wasawasa" (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98 V/A "Great Googly Moo" (Ace) cd 16.98 V/A "I Love Techno 2010" (Lektro) cd 17.98 V/A "Oyun Havasi! Volume 1" (B-Music / Dublab) cd 12.98 WEEKEND "Sports" (Slumberland) cd/lp 10.98/17.98 WHITE CAR "No Better" (Hippos In Tanks) 12" 9.98 _______________________________________________________________________ Please place your order via our website. 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Tom G. Warrior is definitely BACK. First there was the successful (until they broke up, again) Celtic Frost reunion. And then, the debut from his new act, Triptykon, also almost universally praised by metal critics and CF fans alike. Now, not so long after that full-length, Tom & Co. bring us a new ep, Shatter, featuring 3 new songs plus two bonus live recordings, running close to about a half an hour total time. The new songs are in the vein of Eparistera Daimones: dark, doomy, disturbed, with a slight gothic/industrial vibe. The first two are both chunky, sluggish to mid-tempo offerings of Teutonic heaviosity, with the opening, title track offering up a tad more melody, while the lengthier "I Am The Twilight" is an epic, heads down grind, that kinda bridges the likes of Isis with black metal. Tom's vocals switch between angrily gargled vokills and a Type-O Negative croak, accompanied on "Shatter" by female vox as well, in a sort of Hammers Of Misfortune mode. Those two are followed by the other new song, "Crucifixus", a quietly haunting, ambient metal (mostly-) instrumental. Eerie and engaging enough, that if Triptykon were to do an entire extended album of just that sort of thing, we'd surely sell a bunch, it could maybe be released on Miasmah or Editions Mego!
Then there's the live tracks. Not just any live tracks, but Triptykon versions of two old Celtic Frost classics, "Circle Of The Tyrants" and "Dethroned Emperor", recorded at Holland's Roadburn festival earlier this year. Death grunt in full effect. And, there's a special guest Nocturno Culto of Darkthrone singing on one of 'em! Hey wait a sec - Allan was at Roadburn, caught part of Triptykon's set, but doesn't remember seeing that. Must have gone off to see another band on another stage. (Kicking self....)
Brand new blast of lo-fi noisy punk rock garage pop from this Detroit outfit, who seem to have shed much of the twisted weirdness that infused most of their past releases in favor of a blown out in-the-red urgency, short sharp songs, most clocking in at less than 90 seconds, rife with crunchy distorto guitars, pounding drums, distorted vocals, the record opener is about as poppy as it gets, with some sing-along gang vocals, and a killer main hook, that sort or reminds us of Home Blitz, snarky and loose, a little chaotic, but catchy as heck.
Most of the record hews to this formula, a couple riffs, simple and stripped down, the sound raw and primitive, but listen close and these seemingly simple tossed off jams reveal a whole lot of hookery beneath the surface, it took a few listens, but most of these songs are now lodged pretty seriously in our skulls.
The nearly 5 minute "Outer Limits" might be one of our favorite jams here, with a distinctive stop start riff, some rad guitar harmonics, and urgent yelped vox, and a super melodic bridge/chorus, not to mention an awesome 2 minute long droned out creepy sci-fi ambient outro. "Underwater To" is another good one, the punky crunch woven around some jangly guitars and a distinctly seventies power pop feel, with some awesomely hooky guitar melodies over the top.
Not as immediately freaky and fucked up as past Tyvek's but we're beginning to think that's not such a bad thing after all, and with every listen we're digging this more and more!
Psych reissues are a dime a dozen these days, no matter how you classify or organize the songs and groups, specific certain years, a particular sound, or scene, or whatever, there's no way to spin it, there's just too too too much. And plenty of those tracks, well, like lots of reissues, could very well have just remained undiscovered. It takes more than just cramming a bunch of tracks on a record and putting some cool psychedelic artwork on the front, it requires knowledge of the music, as well as a knack for making mixes. Some folks definitely have it. Andy Votel obviously, and of course Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond, who has been releasing killer reissue comps on the Psychic Circle label. And there's whoever put together these Chocolate Soup For Diabetics comps, which gathered up some of the coolest UK psych rock from the sixties, originally released only on lp, now finally available all gathered up into a single 5cd box. And holy shit, no matter how tired of this stuff you might be, if you're anything like us, this stuff will immediately get you excited again. Fuzzy, tripped out, super rocking, jangly, space-y and most definitely PSYCHEDELIC. A few bands we already dug like Tintern Abbey, The Misunderstood and Wimple Winch, but so many new (old) discoveries: The Voice, Nuchez's, The Fresh Windows, The Fire, Graded Grains, Felius Andromeda, The Syn, The Tickle, Dantalian's Chariot, odds are the psych obsessives out there are probably a bit more well versed in UK psych obscurities, but for the rest of us, this stuff is blowing us away.
Take the first track on the first disc, "The Train To Disaster" by The Voice, after a purloined sample of Arthur Brown's "God Of Hellfire" intro, the track explodes into a fuzzy, super distorted stomp, that sounds ridiculously heavy for the time, hooky and fuzzed out, catchy like crazy, and those guitars! Raw and fiery and fuzzy and bad ass. The next track by the weirdly named Nuchez's, begins all jangly, but quickly builds momentum, some proggy organ wrapped around the guitar chug, some moody crooning, woozy guitars, and then some awesomely distorted fuzzpsych leads, and the song is transformed into something that sounds more like the Monks. We could go track by track for sure, but you probably get the picture. 5 discs, 5+ hours of super rocking, fuzzy psychedelic garage rock bliss, from jangly and trippy to crunchy and heavy, we just can't stop listening to this stuff. Wow.
Comes in a nice full color box, each one machine numbered (LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES), each disc in it's own full color sleeve, and includes a massive booklet with tons of photos and liner notes...
A while back, we went a little crazy for a series of three limited edition (and now long out of print) 7"s, a series of Hawkwind tributes, by some of our favorite modern psych rock heavies, tracks from Kinski, Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, White Hills, Mudhoney and Mugstar, all of them amazing. So now finally, those 7"s have been compiled onto a cd, including not only all of those original tracks, but also some bonus tracks to boot, more Hawkwind covers by Moon Duo, Magoo and *another* cover by aQ faves Mugstar. More on those in a moment, first, let's talk about those original singles, and of course the mighty HAWKWIND!
Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind.
So if we were to pick bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked exactly these, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were simply a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was.
So how does each band fare? Pretty marvelously in fact, let's run through the track shall we?
Kinski are up first, and they definitely get their Hawkwind on, covering "Master Of The Universe", not so much making it their own, as transforming themselves into a vessel through which the spirit of Hawkwind can flow, and flow it does. That main riff is such a killer, all the band have to do is ride it out, adding plenty of freaked out effects and psychedelic leads, the vocals buried in the mix, not getting in the way of the endless spacepsych jamming.
Bardo Pond add female vocals to their take on "Lord Of Light", the vocals drifting ethereally, over a roiling black cloud of FX drenched guitars and some seriously pounding drums, even a bit of flute (we think), and maybe more than any of the others managing to meld the sound of the original with their own, plenty of wah wah guitar, loads of effects, most of the track spent drifting through space, cloaked in blown out super distorted psych guitar and shimmering outer space ambience. Surprisingly heavy and totally blissed out.
Acid Mothers Temple are an obvious choice to pay homage to a band who was doing the AMT thing 30 years ago, and in true AMT fashion, Kawabata and company go for it, covering "Brainstorm" although it's difficult to tell, as it's buried under sheets of wild freaked out psych guitar and blown out space rock effects EVERYWHERE. It really doesn't sound all that different from any number of other AMT jams, but that's basically because every AMT jam is a tribute to Hawkwind, isn't it?
NYC's White Hills ditch much of their usual spaceiness for something a bit harder, tackling "Be Yourself" with crunchy chugging guitars, pounding drums, wild tangles of distortion drenched leads over the top, the band not so much covering the original, as transforming it into an endless psychedelic hard rock loop, the band churning and grinding out a steady stream of psychedelia over that endless main riff, before drifting off into a cloud of glittering soft psych shimmer.
Mudhoney tackle "Urban Guerilla" and totally make it their own, so much so, that minus a little chunk of extended droney space rocking in the middle, those not well versed in Hawkwind would certainly be forgiven for thinking it was a Mudhoney original.
And finally Mugstar throw their space rock hat into the ring, and are a DEAD ringer for Hawkwind, their sound murky and muddy, squalls of psych guitar, clouds of swirling spaced out FX, droned out jams, all tangled up and slowly unwinding into a long sprawling space rock jamscape. Hawkwind would be proud.
Phew, even without bonus tracks, this would be a serious killer, but for the cd reissue there are three! The one most folks seem to be super excited about is the Moon Duo jam. Moon Duo, for those not in the know, is the two piece drum machine driven space kraut offshoot of SF psychedelic rockers Wooden Shjips, and they take Hawkwind's "Hurry On Sundown" and stretch it way out, skeletal drum machine, woozy organ drones, reverbed Suicide like vox, dark and hypnotic and spacey, only to erupt about halfway through into something way more rocking, grinding distorted tendrils of psychguitar smolder wrapped all around that unrelenting motorik groove.
Magoo, who we don't know too much about, tackle "Space Is Deep", and stay pretty true to the HW formula, thick fuzzy bass, fiery effects drenched guitars, stripped down and minimal, the vocals sounding very Geddy Lee, eventually the track builds to a seriously spaced out fuzzguitar stomp, unleashing that wild chaotic heart of the sun Hawkwind style extended outro that pretty much WAS the hallmark of every incredible HW space jam, and they nail it.
Finally, Mugstar gets another go, and they take on "Paradox" and like their version of "Born To Go", they might as well just fess up to being the reincarnated spirit of Hawkwind, cuz holy shit, for all thebands who ape that Hawkwind sound, few capture the mood and spirit and vibe and SOUND as well as these guys, crunchy fuzzy guitars, super melodic basslines, vocals buried in the mix, everything wrapped in swirling streaks of whooshing sci-fi effects, slipping easily from blissed out almost krautrock style groove, to fierce almost metalic crunch, culminating in, yes, another gloriously blown out, extended hypnotic space rock freak out finish.
It may be a comp, and it may be all covers, but this is still most definitely a contender for freaked out, psychedelic space rock record of the year!!
THE BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR of music made entirely with vegetables. Well, almost entirely. This extremely healthy twelve person ensemble's raison d'etre is indeed the use of instruments constructed from vegetables... they've designed carrot flutes, celery bongos, and something called the cucumberophone! We've been fans for a long time, but some of you might not be familiar with the Vegetable Orchestra, it's been a while since their last proper album (this is their third, or fourth if you count a remix disc). Years and years ago, back in 2003 when they were more formally known as the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra ('cause that's where they're from), we made one of their early albums a Record Of The Week. That's long out of print now, so we're pretty excited that the Vegetable Orchestra has at last sprouted a new disc. Even Andee here at AQ, who is infamous for NOT liking vegetables, loves the Vegetable Orchestra (finally, a decent use for vegetables, he thinks... yeah he'll listen to vegetables, just doesn't like to eat 'em).
The VO has definitely kept perfecting their techniques and exploring new possibilities of vegetable-based sounds, this album displays a lot of variety (and not garden variety, even though it belongs in a garden). There's the tracks that sound like minimal electronica... also poppier ones, and darker, ambient soundscapery... also some thumping techno beets, er, beats, and onionoisy outbursts. In the past they've done some covers, Kraftwerk among 'em, but these 12 tracks are all homegrown tunes. Rhythmic and textural, not only is the MUSIC enjoyable, but there's the added enjoyment of the intriguing way it puts your imagination to work, trying to conceive of what possible manipulation of what possible vegetables could possibly result in these sounds??? It's amazing, there are tracks here that manage to remind us of everything from Pan Sonic to Konono No.1 to Matmos to the big salad we had for lunch yesterday. And listening to these organic, "crunchy" sounds, some of the time it would be easy to think this really belongs in our field recordings section. The rhythmic pitter patter of rattling legumes, or the snapping, rustling of celery stalks (we're guessing?) can sound like rain, or surf... other veggies mimic the sound of our faves, frogs! And the blowing of horns carved from root vegetables (again, we're making assumptions) can sound like larger mammals, or fog horns.
Some of the tracks are calm, others rambunctious, all interesting. It's groovy, and experimental. Track ten, a short one entitled "Krautrock", gets positively NOISY, loud, distorted, industrial, as if the latter-day Faust took over the vegetable instruments.
Look, going full circle here, it wouldn't matter WHAT their instruments were made of, vegetable animal or mineral, if the resulting sounds and songs weren't good. These are. Creative, curious, even kinda catchy. The nutritional benefits are just a bonus.
Now that they've got this new disc out, we really hope they come play here in the States. Would love to see 'em live. They could do a tour of farmer's markets!
Comes in a nice digipak with poster. Recommended!!! (As part of a balanced diet... c'mon, Andee!)
Brand new three song single from psychfolk troubadour Kurt Vile, this one a teaser for his upcoming full length, which finds Vile in full on American singer/songwriter mode, channeling Springsteen and Big Star, lots of acoustic guitars, softly reverbed crooned vocals, plenty of jangle, simple spare drumming, a definite sort of seventies/eighties classic rock / power pop vibe, the opener especially has that Big Star feel, heartfelt and just a little bit melancholy, peppered with lush bursts of swirling melody, but for the most part a sweet slab of stripped down, sunshiney old school FM radio pop. The A side finishes off with a little bit of acoustic balladry, softly brooding and darkly dreamy.
The B side lands somewhere in between, offering up big jangly guitars like the A side, but set amidst strange almost eighties sounding drums, drawled vox, and woozy minor key melodies. The track is laced with gorgeous moody tendrils of Beatlesesque guitar filigree, and that pop sweetness is offset by some subtle dark droney elements, and an overall mood of melancholy mystery. Nice stuff as always. Definitely has us looking forward to the full length...
Ever since their Exquisite Corpse ep from a while back, we've been pretty much totally smitten with Warpaint, a witchy, washed out, slowcore female four piece from LA, whose sound plays like a much more mysterious and mature take on the whole hazy reverb heavy dream pop that seems to be so ubiquitous these days.
Like on that ep, the sound on The Fool is gorgeously languid, dark and haunting, the music is muted and minimal, guitars unfurl lazily, the drums mostly simple, but occasionally augmented by extra percussion, little flurries of tribal rhythms, and the vocals, so emotional and ethereal, drifting wraithlike over jangly guitars, spidery melodies, and soft billows of bass, hints of Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead, the Breeders, surface here and there, but it's usually in the form of a borrowed bit of guitar sound, or a stray bit of melody, the sound of Warpaint manages to sound lush, while remaining washed out and woozy, pop songs blurred into impressionistic sonic smears, drum machines churn out muted beats, while guitars chime over the top, almost-krautrock grooves become blissed out dreampop drifts, acoustic guitars swirl and shimmer, gnarled bits of angular riffage collide with powerful dramatic croons, the whole thing a constantly shifting songsuite of gloriously dour, folk flecked, minimal dreamdrift downer rock. Breathtaking.
Rejoice O Doomlords! From the venerable Rise Above comes this heaving slab of UK true doom, the debut from Witchsorrow, an immediately classic sounding hunk of lumbering heaviness, of downtuned mournful melodies, of plodding rhythmic thud, totally raw stripped down monolithic doooooooooom.
Channeling the spirit of Cathedral, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and other doom purveyors, into a sound that falls quite close to that of their sonic brethren (and sistren) in Electric Wizard, Witchsorrow don't go so much for groove or Sabbathy swing, as they do for churning crush. Occasionally, like on the 6 minute "Hail To Guy Fawkes", they crank up the tempo, and unleash something that sounds more like Trouble or Acid, a sort of doom-ed speed metal, but even then it's peppered with bits of slow motion dirgery. And there are moments where the distortion gets dialed back a bit, leaving a bit of mopey meander, but it never lasts, an avalanche of crumbling distorted doom-ed riffage is never far away.
No reinventing the wheel, nothing super fucked up and far our, Witchsorrow traffic in TRUE doom, for true doomlords, who just need it to be slow and heavy and epic and majestic, all of which this most certainly is.
Olympia, Washington's black metal titans Wolves In The Throne Room follow up their acclaimed Two Hunters album with this lengthy two song vinyl only ep, the first to feature their new lineup, and the band's most focused and hypnotic creation to date. The formula has not changed, it's just sounding, well, better than ever before. More insular. While Wolves in the Throne Room has always possessed a talent for wrapping majestic melodies within relentless black metal riffing, Malevolent Grain most successfully blurs the distinction between blissed out beauty and brutality. The band is shrouded in an ever present haze of melancholy and despair that is just so much more genuine and effective than guys prancing around in corpse paint like some sort of old school black metal tribute act. They speak as a unique voice in an international scene where so many bands are preoccupied with their bullshit fairy tale take on satanism. All the while, they are heavy as fuck. A Wolves In The Throne Room song plays out as an expansive journey of multiple chapters before fading away into eternity. There is tons of ambience and atmosphere along the way, complete with gorgeous, clearly sung female vocals (courtesy once again of Jamie Meyers, formerly of Hammers of Misfortune), somber melodies, and warm waves of creeping distortion, but ultimately this is total BLACK METAL. Yes, all caps. "METAL" being the key word, the band never falls short on the blazing riffs, unstoppable drumming, and rasping vocals that they built their name on.
In keeping with Southern Lord's reputation for visual, as well as musical, awesomeness, Malevolent Grain comes housed in an appropriately hallucinatory jacket featuring blurry images of lush forest untouched by humanity and the band's new candelabra-esque logo embossed in stunning gold foil. Those who act quickly may be of the lucky few (er, lucky thousand, apparently) to receive the ep on cool "Dark Forest Green" vinyl. Oh, and a quick note, this record is to be played at 45 rpm. Considering how much we were digging it at the wrong speed for over six minutes, you know this comes to you highly recommended.
Previously known as Pussygutt, this male/female duo from Idaho continue to craft grimly powerful blackened folk flecked dronescapes that defy easy categorization. The name Pussygutt probably put off plenty of people, and while Wolvserpent perhaps better captures the group's ominous tone and black metal leanings, it still leaves much about the music, and its makers, quite mysterious.
Two sidelong sprawls, the first a haunting bit of dirgey folk, laid over lush shimmery drones, a gorgeous funeral lament, that only hints at the abject brutality these two are capable of, instead, simply invoking a darkly melancholic mood, eventually guitars drift in, plucking out simple sad melodies, while the strings continue to swirl and soar, gorgeously tense and intense, cinematic and soundtracky. It's not until nearly the nine minute mark that the drums come in, as do the electric guitars, laying down a sort of skeletal doom framework, a different kind of downtuned slowbuild creep, pounding drums, muted riffage, the strings and Sunroof!-like drones growing in intensity, a super intense bit of droney tribal drift, but with an odd start stop arrangement, peppering the lush droning plod with little bits of more traditionally metallic riffage. Eventually some shrieked vocals swoop in, and the song stretches out into a strangley psychedelic epic, a bastardized mix of Godspeed like post rock, avant ur-drone drift, funeral doom, and glacial black metal buzz, all muted and blurred as if mixed by Tim Hecker.
The flipside takes up right where the first side left off, long layered high end tones, a lush undulating upper register dronescape, haunting and hypnotically shimmery, before finally lurching into some seriously metallic crunch, a lumbering doomy dirge, buzzing riffs, caveman drums, all wrapped in swirling swaths of reverbed vocals and superdistorted streaks of ambient melody, erupting into occasional blasts of uptempo chuggery, but always slipping back into that stuttery creep, and constantly wreathed in a lush otherworldly sonic haze.
Like Pussygutt before, Wolvserpent continue to hone their unclassifiable sound, a melding together of dark hushed folk, minimal drone music, and blackened dooooooom. Their name change probably won't really make 'em much more commercially appealing, but who needs that, when you're ruling the darkened otherworld of psychedelic avant heaviness???
There was a time, when we were getting in a new Wooden Wand record every week, for years it seemed like, and over the course of all those release, the sound of James Toth and his Wooden Wand gradually shifted, from ramshackle free psych and obtuse abstract folk, to something more singer/songwriter, culminating (for us at least) in the very Dylan-esque James & The Quiet, which for all its good qualities, seemed to not connect the way past records did.
Since then, there's been a few more records, but by then we had sort of given up, or if not given up, ceased to be all that interested.
But our curiosity was piqued with WW's return to Michael Gira's Young God label, with what was purported to be an actual proper country record. We were a bit skeptical, but wow, is this great, like Wooden Wand via Townes Van Zandt, TvZ being a particularly apt comparison for these songs, as they definitely owe much to him in terms of melody, arrangement and phrasing. "The Mountain" sounds like it could almost BE a Townes Van Zandt cover. But Toth definitely has found his muse, whether it's TvZ or not, these songs are gorgeously dark and bleak, simple and stripped down, but augmented with occasional female vox, whirring organs, little flurries of psychedelic shimmer, some of the songs are lush and expansive, but our heart belongs to the more intimate numbers, darkly skeletal and super intimate. There are still moments that remind us of Dylan, or Jandek, but once those are woven into the tapestry of Death Seat, they're a natural fit with the more melancholy country dirges and wistful twang flecked ballads. A fantastic surprise and a definite new favorite.
Four albums in, and Georgia's Zoroaster have established themselves as more than just a band of bearded Southern boys with bad attitudes getting sludgy, Eyehategod style. They certainly started out that way, and we liked 'em then too, but quickly a penchant for spacier, more psychedelic exploration sent them off in a variety of interesting directions, mostly all of 'em still quite HEAVY though. Synth-drone, slowcore, stoner riffery, that's all part of their trip... dunno if we'd even really call them doom (or dooooOOOOoom) any more. They're just way "poppier", and spacier, and also more experimental than you might expect. There's mantric dirges here totally worthy of Om at their finest, other parts where they freak out like Acid Mothers Temple... or rock out like the good ol' Southern boys we mentioned that they indeed are. But it's just as "Eastern". Tracks like "Odyssey" sound like Buddhist monks zoned out on Hawkwind, with someone from a Tokyo Flashback act on lead guitar, or maybe Stephen Wray Lobdell... Sometimes these songs are storming, sometimes they're slow and languid (well, a lot of the time), no matter what though, Matador is an heavy-lidded yet uplifting listen, with an oxymoronically "urgently relaxed", stoned vibe generally absorbed via throbbing waves of synthesizer, low end guitar, leaden battery, and sometimes even a bit of (heavily effected) vocal melody.
Zoroaster are the "sludge" band we'd recommend to White Hills and Wooden Shjips fans. Likewise if you like UFOmammut, US Christmas, Litmus, Los Natas, Boris and even a bit of Baroness too...
This new one was produced by Sanford Parker, heaviness studio guru de jour for good reason. Probably, uh, "420 friendly" but you don't need any help to get a high from this, just turn it on up!
