There's just something about when amazing drummers/percussionists go it alone, those experiments and explorations can produce such adventurous and wonderful sounds. Lately we found ourselves spending LOTS of time with Glen Kotche of Wilco's solo records so weird, enchanting and diverse. And this solo outing by avant garde percussionist Jon Mueller is further proof that despite being the butt of many rock 'n' roll jokes, talented drummers and percussionist just might be the most innovative and creative musicians of them all. Mueller, has played with groups like Collection Of Colonies Of Bees and the Bon Iver side project, Volcano Choir, but it's on this, his Type full length where is creative prowess really comes bursting forth. With influences as wide ranging as Steve Reich's outstanding album Drumming, aQ fave Moondog, gamelan, Tibetan Buddhist rites, and even the creeping ambient elements of black/dark metal, The Whole is a fully realized excursion into the possibilities of percussion.
The lp version comes with a bonus cd, featuring 30 minutes of extra material NOT on the album proper.
Got just TWO copies of this, found tucked away in the closet here, originally released in 2003, looooong out of print, the label too is now defunct, this is some seriously epic, black hole, bottomless low end deepdarkdronemusic. Bleak and hushed, ambient minimal shimmer, cold and barren, cinematic and utterly ominous, shot through with streaks of crumbling distortion, the whole thing so gorgeously haunting and harrowing. Definitely for fans of Thomas Koner, and other masters of the grim black drone.
Packaged in an oversized dvd case, full color printed cover, and as mentioned above, out of print, last two copies EVER.
One of a handful of new releases on the always kick ass Starlight Temple Society, the new Temple Of Not, and the Void Of Reveries cds, both reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this, a killer collection of demos and rare and unreleased tracks, from Colorado's best black metal export, Nightbringer, whose previous two records were huge favorites around here, both Death And The Black Work and Apocalypse Sun, buzzing blasting works of black art.
This compilation gathers up various tracks from the last decade, two from a 1999 demo, two from Nightbringer's split with Serpentinam from 2004, and most excitingly, two unreleased tracks from the Death And The Black Work sessions. The demo tracks are awesomely raw, after a brief ambient intro, the band explodes into a serious murky sprawl of blackened buzz, the sound so lo-fi and murky, all the sounds blur into a glorious stretch of smeared blown out blackness. Laced with weirdly lush keyboard swells. The split tracks are a bit more produced, the first track raw and trebly, the sound epic and majestic, but still harsh and grin and hellish, the second more moody and atmospheric, midtempo, still buzzing and black, but with some cool weird keening high end guitar skree, and some doomy ambience, a pretty epic slab of lumbering crush.
The Death And The Black Works tracks are as epic as you would hope, unclear why they got left off the record proper, soaring, frantic, blasting buzzing blackness, pounding double kick drumming, intense insectoid riffing, raspy vokills buried in the mix, and some super cool parts where all the low end drops out, just leaving frenzied high end riffing soaring over chaotic drumming. The final track is another more doomy jam, the frantic riffing spread out over lurching lumbering drum plod, howled anguished vox, lots of swirling black atmosphere, and plenty of twisted dynamics, like guitars dropping out and then swooping back in, as well as some totally epic arrangements.
Killer stuff, especially for an odds and ends collection. Definitely recommended, for fans obviously, but also for disciples of the grim black buzz.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!
These days noise pop bands are a dime a dozen. And we could count the number of shoegaze bands popping up on one hand, if that hand had about thousands fingers, and to be fair, it's a sound we love, and so in many cases, we can be less than discerning, we just love hearing those thick coruscating guitars, the soaring melodies, the lush walls of sound, spaced out and dreamy and fuzzy and buzzy and blissy. So what is it exactly that makes a band stand out from the pack? Songs, sure, you can't be a pop band of any stripe without songs. But it's more than that. Something ineffable. Songs sure, and the sound, of course, but just as importantly there are a handful of intangibles that all have to fall into place perfectly. Or at least perfectly IMperfectly. And more often than not, it's not something that can be created consciously. All a band can really do, is to follow their hearts, create the sound they hear in their heads, and try their best to realize that sound, to render that sound in all the glorious shades and colors and textures it needs to become more than just music, to transcend and become something magical, something special.
And that happens more than one might think, or expect, enough monkeys with typewriters as the saying goes, or in this case enough punk rock kids with guitars and a 4 track. Most recently it was the amazing record by Bay Area outfit Weekend, whose record captured everything we love about this sound, and now there's this, the debut full length from female fronted shoegaze noisepoppers No Joy, which moniker be damned, is about the most gloriously joyful record we've heard in ages.
In some ways, No Joy's Ghost Blonde is the perfect compliment to that Weekend record, a distinctly feminine variation of the same formula, the overall sound is more dreampoppy and hazy, the vocals ethereal and ephemeral and is the perfect counterpoint to the bands thick wall of sound, infusing clean guitar jangle, a distinctly nineties indie rock vibe, all wound into a pretty perfect chunk of pure pop JOY.
If you're anything like us, it should only take about the first 60 seconds of album opener "Mediumship" thick crunchy jangle guitar wrapped in a field of wild tangled feedback, the vocals drifty and pretty, and then when the song kicks in, we're totally transported, crunchy, fuzzy, hooky, heavy, shoegazey-y, plenty of ooooh's and aaaaah's, the sort of song you never want to end, and that you'll find yourself playing over and over and over. Which pretty much applies to every track here.
There are definitely some broodier moments, and some abstract psychedelic ambient drift, even some slightly atonal Sonic Youth inspired guitar tangle, but those elements are smoothly woven into the group's hazy, softly noisy, girl groupish, crunchy, jangly shoegazey dream pop bliss.
Definite contender for pop record of the year, and a record which will no doubt send lots of folks scrambling to redo their prematurely finished year end lists! Rightfully so!
Managed to dig up two copies of this fantastically strange record, a concept record about Doctor Mabuse, the main character from Norbert Jacques' infamous novel, here rendered in sound, as a sprawling bit of cinematic ambience, equal parts post industrial drift, avant soundcollage, psychedelic samplescape and freeform radio play. Warm drones, mysterious martial percussion, lots of sampled German voices, rumbling distorted low end, bursts of blown out Merzbowian crunch, ominous cavernous thrum, layered loops and blurred samples, like the score to some mysterious lost German art film. So mysterious and creepy and weirdly beautiful.
We have just TWO copies of this. The cd is packaged in a full color gatefold sleeve, which is then housed in a full color 7" style jacket, includes various inserts AND a bonus cd-r with two extra tracks. Cool!
This gets us so excited for a new full length from Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, which we're hoping will grace our ears sometime MUCH sooner than later. These two songs are for sure up there with the band's most satisfying and addictive slabs of sweeping dream pop glory! "Heart In Your Heartbreak" sounds like a classic even the first time you hear it. Like the best of their songs it takes you to this place of carefree bliss, yet evokes memories filled with crashing waves, epic sunsets, and car-rides you hoped would last forever. The B side "The One", starts off with a rad Superchunk-like guitar riff and then mutates into a Creation records sort of sound which they have totally perfected and somehow made their very own.
Comes in a nice sturdy sleeve with beautiful cover art by Winston Chmielinski that was so immediately striking, it sent us in search of more of his work, realizing we had just discovered one of our new favorite artists!
What more can we say about Pulse Emitter that we haven't already? We can't seem to get enough of his gorgeous and epic, sweeping, soaring, krautdrone new age synthscapes, but unlike the relative tranquility of the last few PE releases (the 4 volume Meditative Music series), Cosmic Images is a much more spaced out and kosmische affair, channeling Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze as well as modern synthspace explorers like Zombi, Oneohtrix Point Never (who supplied the album artwork), Infinite Body, Innercity, and the like.
A five part song suite, each focusing on different planets and star systems and galaxies, each one a sweeping expanse of modular synth swirls and mesmerizing keyboard melodies, warm and lush and layered, slipping from propulsive and psychedelic and almost blown out, to hushed and shimmery and minimal. A series of perfect solar system soundtracks, much of the record sounding like the background music for some seventies documentary about the universe, with long droning tones, and soft shifting ambience, hazy melodies over soft muted buzz, but with a couple tracks sounding way more aggressive and distorted and tapping into a love of Carpenter and Goblin, the opener, "Eagle Nebula" is a pulsing, throbbing buzzscape, the tones sharp and distorted, lots of crunch and thrum, still spacey and dreamy, but much more intense. And the final track, "Jupiter", offers a sonically similar bookend, taking the ambient cosmic drift of the in between songs, and adding a serious dose of rumbling low end bass buzz, turning the otherwise blissy sound into something much more sinister, adding various other melodies, swirling sonic squiggles, and thick swells of distorted thrum, the perfect brooding, buzzing coda, to a fantastically epic collection of kosmische drift.
Purling Hiss's Public Service Announcement was our Record of The Week a while back, a fantastic and unexpected collection of lo-fi eighties style power pop, super catchy bedroom brewed folk, and lazy, lysergic psychedelic drug rock drift, all sounds that were apparently at odds with their 'normal' sound, which was a heavy blown out super in-the-red psychedelia, which was on full display on their s/t lp on Permanent, which indeed was white hot and freaked out and heavy, and awesome, just WAY different then PSA.
So we really didn't know what to expect with this 4 song ep, and we were surprised to discover, that while it definitely leaned sonically more toward their heavy psych, they also managed to infuse plenty of pop into these jams, the result being a sound that is essentially a mix of the two. The guitars are heavy, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums pounding, the sound looped and repetitive and hypnotic, but within this Stooges-y / White Heaven rocking out lurk all the little things that made PSA so killer, hooks, melodies, the opening track "Passenger Queen" is pretty heavy and swaggery, but then the sound shifts and the band whip out a brief bit of total tangled pop, only to slip right back into it. Obviously folks who are looking for more of the introspection and hushed strum and folkiness, or even the lo-fi psychedelic space jams, might be overwhelmed by the rock, but we're digging this big time.
Check out the second track "Whipple Dam" with an absolutely killer, super stonery main riff, accompanied by ooooooh-ing vocals, another glimpse of the hidden poppiness, before the moaning reverby vocals and mathy almost tech riffing take over. "Space Roots / Limerence" is more of the same, heavy, psychedelic, subtly poppy. The record finishes off with the slithery blues boogie of "Down On The Delaware River" which sounds like s super blown out, lo-fi, in-the-red take on classic Bowie, a little bit glammy, with more oooooh's and some seriously bad ass leads. Awesome! Maybe not immediately as catchy as PSA, but way heavier, and crazy hooky in its own way.
Thus, RECOMMENDED!
Another excellent reissue of the work of French experimental / pop musician Thierry Müller (who we know from the reissues of his pre-Ruth albums under the Ilitch moniker, one of which we recently reviewed). Fast becoming a unanimous staff favorite, Ruth's
Remastered with three lengthy bonus cuts from 1982 and 1984 that teeter on more experimental ground, like Müller's celebrated work as Ilitch, which was more of a dark, droney, experimental prog guitar / synth project.
We love The Sandwitches and are totally digging how they have developed this warped sort of split personality. They can create songs so warm, tender and haunting, while also able to whip up jams that are way more playful, childlike, and seemingly lost in a dusty daydream. This new split does a great job showing off both of their wonderful sides. At first we thought the A side was going to be a cover of a song by their pals The Fresh & Only's (the ladies in the Sandwitches add their warm vocals to many Fresh & Only's songs) but instead it's one of their most spirited tracks, mixing elements of gospel, garage and a warped pop sensibility. The B side is the one really finding its way into our hearts, showing that warm and glowing side to their sound but laced with just enough of a haunting vibe to keep us totally enchanted and under their spell.
Wow. This new 'zine is not only full of awesome readin', looks great, and comes with a button, but also is dirt cheap! Just $4. Real goddamn fanzines are few and far between these days, kudos to editor Cory Linstrum and friends for putting this one out, and making it so killer too. It shows those blogs a thing or two. Savage Damage Digest is all about music that you don't really read about all that often, and all in one place, thought the artists covered all make total sense together here, you'll see: Link Wray, Teenage Head, Jean-Pierre Massiera, Dave Kilgour & The Clean, Hanoi Rocks, Tank's Algy Ward, Nick Lowe & Brinsley Schwarz! And this debut ish features the only article we've ever come across about the uniquely Australian youth sub-culture of "Sharpies", outside of the liner notes to those Coloured Balls cd reissues, fascinating stuff. 70 pages, lots of vintage photos and magazine ads, nice use of spot color inside, and rounded corners, it's a handsome 'zine all right. Totally recommended to anyone interested in semi-obscure music from the '60s 'til now that ROCKS. Or is weird. Or both.
The cover story on Link is all about his "lost years" in the early-to-mid '70s, albums that tend to get ignored but, having read about 'em here, we want to hear! It's super in-depth, enthused and informative, like all the other articles here. This is sort of 'zine that will definitely turn you on to stuff you need to know about, and we can only hope that issue #2 isn't that far off. This has a lot of potential to be a favorite new regular read... For those who miss the likes of Black To Comm, or Motorbooty, or Fuzz (not to mention Bomp! or Creem)... check this out!!
Like Fahey before him, local solo guitarist Sean Smith finds solace and inspiration through traditional holiday music. Recorded at Grace Cathedral, Smith mines classic carols and hymns as well as some meditative improvisations of his own. There's even a stunning take on Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here". Festive and celebratory with an unforced joy that reflects a quiet peacefulness, this is our favorite kind of holiday music.
Now we've got a nice Japanese cd reissue of this (previously, but no longer, available on the somewhat shady Radioactive label). It's more expensive but better. Our review of it before ran something like this:
Some fairly heavy (maaaan) stoner psych blues rawk action here from 1971. Yep, seventy-one. We won't try to tell you that the lone album from Japan's Strawberry Path was one of the best rock releases of '71, 'cause of course there were so many great albums out that year. But if you're a fan of heavy rock of the era, especially the weirder stuff from overseas, you should check 'em out. There's plenty of wailing guitar and jammin' organ on here, but also some mellow moves too so it's maybe more '60s than '70s sounding, and VERY Jimi Hendrix influenced. And we'd guess they were also into such Western acts as Steppenwolf, early Deep Purple, Grand Funk and possibly Black Sabbath. In the realm of early '70s Japanese hard psych they're on par with Speed, Glue & Shinki and Foodbrain, but not quite as as solid as the best Flower Travellin' Band or Blues Creation. These guys (a duo of Shigeru "Jimmy" Narumo on guitars and keys, and Hiro Tsunoda on drums and vocals, helped out by various guests) went on to form the even heavier Flied Egg, who released an LP on Vertigo, a track from which is heard on Andy Votel's Vertigo Mixed disc in fact. This is totally in that Vertigo vein, with classical flourishes of flute and strings, hard-rockin' boogie blues riffage, wild vocals, kickin' drum breaks, acoustic interludes... it's an acid-prog mix that isn't always in the proto-metal direction we might want but we'll take what we can get. Plus you've gotta love the song titles, which are either really cool and weird like "Maximum Speed Of Muji Bird (45 Seconds Of Schizophrenic Sabbath)" or totally indicative of what you'd expect like "I Gotta See My Gypsy Woman" and "Mary Jane On My Mind". Woah, yeah.
Recently we've reviewed the two excellent Flied Egg albums, reissued on cd by Universal Japan, as is this -- if you dug those, Strawberry Path is also up your alley (Path?).
It's always pretty amazing when reissue labels continue to set high standards with rediscovered music. Especially when you think the well has surely gone dry, that they must have to heap loads of praise and hyperbole on a record that no one has heard of to get folks to buy it, only to have it not be as good as one hoped. That's what we were expecting going in to this 1969 private press Jim Sullivan record, when the label was describing it as a cross between Fred Neil and David Axelrod, two of our favorite musicians. While the description is somewhat apt, we couldn't help in our excitement over what we were hearing to come up with better comparisons like the Memphis swamp-folk of Tim Rose, the string-driven downer folk-blues of Tim Hardin or the lysergic folk-pop of Hoyt Axton (especially his debut, My Griffin is Gone). Needless to say, we are loving this record!
U.F.O. is a unique hybrid of Southern-fried world-weary folk with classic top-notch LA studio production sheen. Backed by the legendary Wrecking Crew, Sullivan's earthy but wide-eyed existentialism is cradled in stunning atmospheric orchestral arrangements that give deeper scope to the song's melancholic luster. Why this wasn't a major studio release at the time is a mystery because it sure sounds like one. But mysteries seem to have dogged Jim Sullivan throughout his life, as he strangely disappeared in 1975 in the New Mexico desert. His belongings abandoned, his motel room untouched.
Light in the Attic has done an incredible job of piecing together Sullivan's backstory and disappearance, but with no definitive resolution except for the legacy of one of the best lost folk records we've heard in a long while. Highly recommended!
Not sure why we had this marked as out of print on our website, well, it IS actually out of print, but we still had 7 or 8 tucked away in the closet, so last chance to grab a copy of this gorgeous chunk of ultraminimal guitardrone ambience....
Taiga Remains is the solo guitar project of Students Of Decay label head honcho Alex Cobb and The Nothing And Nowhere is just that, a 40 minute expanse of the sound of nothing and nowhere. Almost. With just an electric guitar and some effect pedals, Cobb transforms his axe into some sort of drone producing dream machine, unfurling wispy, vapor trails of abstract melody, of glistening midnight shimmer, long drawn out tendrils of sound that seem to be on the verge of dissipating and disappearing completely.
Like Spacemen 3 with all the rock sucked out, leaving just a ghostly trace of that buzzing raga like guitar, let loose to drift foglike over moonlit landscapes. Or Loren Connors, playing at the bottom of a well, the sounds just barely making it to the surface, and by then, more soft shadows of the sound than the actual sound itself. Dreamlike, delicate and so completely captivating.
Packaged in a full color sleeve with a printed insert and sealed shut with an actual TWIG (note: some of our last copies may not have a twig)!!
LIMITED TO 95 COPIES!! Out of print at the label, but we've still got a few...
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The last we heard from industrial black ambient terrorist Temple Of Not, was on a split with black metallers Nightbringer, which makes perfect sense as the man behind ToN, Alcameth, also fronts Nightbringer. But in ToN, Alcameth crafts gorgeously grim expanses of heaving blackened drones, and decaying industrial crumble, the tracks on the split with Nightbringer definitely bucked the black ambient trend by adding all manner of fucked up sound, noise and texture and samples, and on this new one, the method seems to be similar. In fact we were sort of expecting some shimmery black drift, but ToN offers up a sound much more corrosive and aggressive and creepy than typical black ambience, with thick streaks of howling horror, or crumbling distortion, alien voices, inhuman howls, pounded atonal piano, industrial creaks and groans, sounding more like the orchestral black doom weirdness of Gnaw Their Tongues. Sure there are stretches of hushed shimmer, and creeping black sprawl, but those are just brief respites between squalls of sonic crunch, stretches of undulating black terror, clouds of haunting ghostly voices and heaving slabs of blown out buzz.
LIMITED TO ONLY 150 COPIES!!
More metal reading for you, buckle down!! This ish has UK thrashers Evile on the cover, plus Opeth, Cradle Of Filth, Gnaw Their Tongues, Monster Magnet, Dimmu Borgir, Atheist, Firewind, Sargeist, Hail Of Bullets, Warbringer, John Garcia, Atlantean Kodex, Ghost, Diamatregon, Father Befouled, and more! Lots of reviews, bonus Goth magazine section, free cover mounted cd sampler, etc.
Wow, 2010 really turned out to be an amazing year for electronic music. And not just one style or passing trend. We loved the resurgence of truly creative artists making such varied and dynamic sounds in the world of electronica, reminding us of those special times in the mid '90s when we really fell for this music so strongly to begin with.
From Demdike Stare and Pantha Du Prince to Luke Abbott and Actress, there has been so much awesome and varied and super unique sounds to get lost in during this year.
And now comes yet another major contender for electronic record of the year courtesy of Norway's Bjorn Torske. For all the attention his Norwegian peers like Prins Thomas and Lindstrom have received, we really hope this amazing album starts getting him the wide praise he so rightfully deserves. On Kokning, Torske demonstrates an amazing ability to create graceful and elegant sounds while also still allowing those sounds to be playful and exploratory. The album really does flow so perfectly from beginning to end, exploring many different sounds and soundscapes in the process. Like the electronica we will always love most, Torske is not just a one note artist, he can create the most tender and beautiful of songs while also traveling though left-field dancemusic brimming with African drum rhythms and ecstatic cosmic revelations. We're deeply addicted to this record right now and we've got a strong feeling you will be too!
Ever hear of the TRMRS? Neither had we. Not until a couple scruffy looking dudes came into the store and dropped off a copy of their new cd-r, a hand painted, home made little gem, that definitely had us wondering what might be inside. And shit, if what's inside doesn't make these guys the next big thing, then we'd be pretty goddamn surprised.
Think Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Sic Alps, Waaves, Surfer Blood, Soft Pack, that sort of jangly, super hooky, slightly surfy psychedelic garage rock, and while there is definitely a glut of folks going for that sound, these guys do it way better than most, and totally make it their own. Self described as 'trash pop', that's pretty much what this sounds like, trashy and poppy, and loose and super rocking, the guitars are crunchy and jangly, the vocals a melodic yelp, the drums propulsive, reverb all over the place, and the songs are hooky as hell. More garagey and raw, than purely poppy, but that raw garage is infused with plenty of poppiness, reminding us a bit of a slightly more song oriented Coachwhips, you can definitely tell that live these guys probably have the crowd bouncing and sweaty and losing their shit. And it's easy to hear why.
Definitely a new favorite. And we'd be shocked if these guys didn't get snapped up by Mexican Summer or In The Red or Woodsist or even Captured Tracks or Woven Bones, and if any of that stuff is your jam, then these guys just might be your new favorite band.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each one in a super fancy hand painted, silkscreened, collaged cover, every one unique, and all hand numbered!
While previous albums from this extreme Norwegian instrumental ensemble could be kinda be considered (skronky) jazz, and their previous cd release, 2007's Conditions For A Piece Of Music had its moody, Morricone-ish elements, this one is not so jazzy and not so melodic, coming closer to bass player Kjetil Brandsdal's noiserock act Noxagt in brutal effect. Make no mistake, jazz instrumentation (sax, vibraphone) is still present, but takes a back seat to the heavy duty, and ultimately hypnotic, repetitive rhythmic assault laid down by the bass and drums, over which the synth, electric guitar, sax, and vibes provide additionally apocalyptic coloration, but never truly sidetrack or slow down the chaotic yet cyclic rumble and tumble of these six lurching, long tracks. If it's jazz, it's droog-stomped jazz, muscled up with crunching low-slung bass, and martial, punishing drum beats... imagine maybe if 16-17 and Supersilent teamed up to do something that sounded like Circle... but scary. There's skree and squall, for sure, but it's all focused on the rhythmic imperative, and damn if this isn't as utterly enthralling as it is urgent and ugly. Except that it's not really ugly, just distorted and oppressive. As Rune G's "jazz" bands go, Ultralyd is the one for those who hate jazz, and love hate. Or something like that. Recommended to all you sickos, go on, get it out of your system!
Here's a cool comp of rare vintage '60s garage psych gems, that itself is a reissue of a long lost album, Acid Dreams having first been released back in 1979 on vinyl in an edition of just 77 copies, we're told. Apparently that record was compiled by the owner of a record store in Berlin, who thought that the then-current crop of new wave punk rock fans needed a lesson about the original wave of snotty, freaky, DIY "punk" from the previous decade... And indeed the nameless compiler picked some killer cuts from his collection of U.S. '60s psych singles for inclusion here, full of distortion and attitude ready to go toe-to-toe with the class of '77. Loads of fuzzed out guitars, urgent drumming and trippy lyrics burst forth across the 18 tracks here, most of 'em energetic yet moody 2-3 minute blasts, including songs from Zakary Thaks, Faine Jade, Music Machine, Mystic Tide, Painted Faces, Balloon Farm, Outcasts, Beautiful Daze, Caretakers Of Deception, Teddy & His Patches, Minds Eye, White Light, Remaining Few, Stereo Shoestrings, Unrelated Segments, Velvet Illusions (who get not one but two tracks on here, both awesome), and Vejtables (who were from San Francisco - hmm, could the spelling of their name maybe have been an inspiration to Wooden Shjips?). As you can see, all acts for the most part pretty obscure outside the collectors' realm, really. Poppy stuff, but probably too freaky for the masses, though it's not all hard acid wah wah guitar frenzies here - when not stormin' and stompin', Acid Dreams provides plenty of pleasant psychedelic swirling jangle as well.
Reissued now on cd by the same label that brought us the Electric Asylum comp listed last time, the no frills design of the original private press LP has been augmented with photos and brief liner notes on each and every track in the cd booklet.
It may not be Spring, but love is in the air. Or if it's not in the air, it's most definitely sealed up in these three discs, collecting some of the all time classic love songs, from the golden age of the love song, the '20s and '30s.
A collection of blues, country, bluegrass, big band, jazz and old timey numbers, chronicling the eternal quest for love, and sex, and intimacy, as well as the sometimes equally neverending quest of avoiding parties which one perhaps does not wish to share any of those things. Cleverly separated into three volumes, love, lust and contempt. Very few names we recognize, but a selection of song titles might convince you what a great, fun, and funny collection this really is: "It's Shame To Whip Your Wife On Sunday", "Wimmin-Aaah!", "He Went In Like A Lion (But Came Out Like A Lamb)", "I'm Wearin' The Britches Now", "You Gonna Look Like A Monkey When You Get Old", "She Ain't Built That Way", "I'm Gonna Kill Myself", "The Gal That Got Stuck On Everything She Seen", "Minnie The Mermaid (A Love Song In Fish Time)", "Pussy", "Let Me Play With It" and on and on and on.
There are horns, banjos, yodeling, scatting, fiddles, barrelhouse piano, ukuleles, all manner of voices, rough and raw, sweet croons, male, female, and the lyrics... from honest and heartfelt, to saucy and bawdy, to downright nasty, another winner from Dust-To-Digital, definitely one of our new favorite old timey reissues, and as with all D2D releases, gorgeous packaging, a full color 8 panel digipak, with tons of photos and paintings, and really funny liner notes by Nick Tosches.
Forget about making your own eclectic mix of edgy proto-punk rock and pop, you don't need to, it's been done. It's all here, folks. Well, enough of it anyway, spread over two cds or four sides of vinyl. 33 alternate-universe "hits" (or 23 on the vinyl version), from underground bands in the '60s and '70s who, if not always properly punk, were still actually punker than most punk bands EVER. That is, if someone had asked us to put together a compilation revealing the gnarled roots of "punk" back in the '60s, and then branching into an examination of some left-field, outside manifestations of the same in the '70s, we couldn't do it any better than this, compiled by Kris Needs, who used to edit the UK rock mag ZigZag back in the '70s. He knows his stuff.
From Detroit, NYC, London, LA and elsewhere, there's slicked back '50s rockers, '60s psych garage, '70s prog singer songwriters, downtown NYC art-noise, pub rock, krautrock, and even reggae... connected only by attitude and/or artistry... some cuts being rare and wondrous one-off flashes of genius, other simply displays of what the band in question was capable of doing all the time. Some tunes you'll have heard before, of course, but need to hear again. And there's probably more than a few that might be new to you too. A definite primer on a secret history of rock n' roll we wish wasn't so secret. Some of it's harder, some of it's poppier, some it's glammier, some of it's weirder... but it's all good.
Some big names/usual suspects: Suicide, Silver Apples, The Stooges (with a distortion-filled, 12 minute long live track, "Do You Want My Love?"), Flamin' Groovies, The Monks, the New York Dolls, The Seeds, T.Rex, even Sun Ra - demonstrating the outside jazz influence on the MC5, with his "Rocket Number Nine", which the compilers follow with the Five's "Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)"... About the only obvious band missing, and we can only imagine it was due to a licensing issue or somesuch red tape, are Radio Birdman, but The Saints are here to represent the Aussie punk explosion. The comp even includes recent discoveries Death, from Detroit, nice to see them now written into the aforementioned secret history, a few years ago they were too unknown even for that. Others in the lineup: The Standells, The Deviants, Pink Fairies (doing "Do It", later covered by the Rollins Band, y'know), Gene Vincent, Jook (who dey?), Mott The Hoople, Zolar X (yay!), The Up, David Peel & The Lower East Side, The Silhouettes, The Last Poets, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Third World War, Dr. Feelgood (with "Roxette", if you look it up a performance on YouTube you might get your mind blown), Peter Hammill (of Van Der Graaf Generator), Can, Red Krayola, Rocket From The Tombs, The Dictators, The Hollywood Brats (doing a Kinks cover, previously unreleased on cd), and Culture. Not bad, eh?? Ok, maybe if there was a third disc we'd expect to also hear Crushed Butler and Amon Duul II and Angel Face and Les Rallizes Denudes and The Sonics and the Imperial Dogs and Gaseneta and the Edgar Broughton Band and a few others, but heck, this is a pretty good start!
And it comes with a HUGE booklet (76 pages) filled with detailed info from Needs on all these artists, crucial and obscure (or both). Really well done. You want a Xmas present to immediately up someone's hippness quotient (or impress them with yours)? Try giving 'em this comp, as well as a copy of Savage Damage Digest zine, also reviewed this list.
FYI, as alluded to above, the double lp format has fewer tracks (lacking, feristance, that Stooges number) and no huge booklet, but is still a good spread of stuff, and comes on 180 gram vinyl, for those that want some proto-punk 'tude for their turntable.
Can there ever really be enough Cambodian Rock?
Don't answer that yet. Because while this double lp compilation does feature the stars of the genre featured on other Cambodian rock comps: Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, and Pan Ron, it also has plenty of others including the heavy psych groove of the Thra Kha Band who have two amazing tracks that are totally worth the price of admission. Plus it's a double vinyl gatefold with copious liner notes about the amazing music and tragic legacy of many of the music's star figures. Rarely does music seem so truly hauntological. Sunny, fun, and grooving on the surface, but layered over tragic notions of the political brutality that would come later. We've covered that history in plenty of previous reviews, so we won't go down that rabbit hole here, but this is a worthy selection of psych rock and garage gems, that didn't immediately sound like the others. So if you're new to Cambodian rock from the sixties and seventies, or would like a really well put together compilation on vinyl, now's your chance!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
One of two new fantastic compilations released on Portland's seemingly infallible Mississippi records, one is a collection of pre-war country blues and gospel called The Rain Don't Fall On Me, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and there's this one, In The Storm So Long, a selection of raw gospel music from Georgia in the sixties and the seventies, all originally released on Savannah Georgia's Pitch / Gusman label, which began life as a record store, before expanding into a recording studio and a full fledged label, documenting the various gospel quartets and singers in the area.
The sound and songs are incredible, rough and raw, soulful and passionate, alternately rocking and reverby, joyous and exultant, the guitars fuzzy, the pianos pounding, but it's gospel after all so it's the vocals that steal the show, heartfelt and emotional, from solo crooning to full congregation sing alongs, fervent testifyin' to sweet sweet serenades. So good.
Includes lengthy liner notes, discussing the life of Jones and the history of the label and the store, here presented as a faux issue of the Gospel Observer, a free bi-monthly newsletter Jones self published in the seventies. Housed in a heavy old style tip-on jacket.
Psych. Funk. India. The '70s. Yes it's gonna be awesome. Sitars and Bollywood stars, badass grooves and acid rock guitars. This excellent new collection comes from the same folks (deeeeeeep diggers they are) who brought us that incredible international Psych Funk 101 comp a while back. They are EXPERTS. It's not entirely a joke that they present these comps in the guise of academic coursework, their research is extensive and if you pay attention you're gonna learn somethin'. According to the liner notes, Psych Funk 101 is considered a pre-requisite to this new "seminar", which is subtitled "Aesthetic Expressions Of Psychedelic Funk Music In India". Fortunately they don't carry the academic gag too far, and keep grad school jargon to an amusing minimum. (By the way, if you don't have Psych Funk 101, well, we figure you can still audit this course... though we DO recommend picking that one up too).
So, what's this Sa-Re-Ga! all about? 20 tracks, all killer no filler, circa 1970-1983, that showcase several "key figures / movements in Indian Psych Funk", from the garagey late '60s Sgt. Peppery stuff you'd expect from a former British colony (and from anywhere else in the world the Beatles had made their way), to the work of genius Bollywood composer R.D. Burman (and his eventual wife, the famous singer Asha Bhosle), to the Go-Go stylings of brothers Kalyanji Aalyanji Anandji, to hard rock bassist Keith Kanga's "wild beat group" Atomic Forest and related acts. Much information is provided about all of those artists and more in what must be the BIGGEST damn cd booklet we've ever seen. 52 pages!! The digipack sleeve can barely contain it. Packed with tons of dazzling full color graphics and learned text. Totally gettin' your money's worth with this one. (It's packaged like the Forge Your Own Chains comp, equally fat and deluxe.)
But even without the frills, just the music alone would make this a must. You can't listen to this without getting a gleeful smile on your face, from the get-go it's great and then somehow each song manages to top the one before it, with insistent propulsive percussion, bombastic orchestration, impassioned vocals, musique concrete techniques, and indeed some heavy, Hindi, FUNK. We're having trouble picking individual tracks to single out, only because they're ALL so good. But we gotta mention just a few of the super standouts, one of 'em being a live version of the classic "Dum Maro Dum" performed Bhosle and Burman and band at the Royal Albert Hall in 1978. That's a song you've heard before, most likely (the Kronos Quartet even recorded it, on their 2005 album with Bhosle), and it helps to realize that not only does a lot of the music on this disc seem like it oughtta be the most popular stuff in the world, in many cases, it really was quite popular, and not just in India. This rendition of "Dum Maro Dum", which means "Take Another Toke" by the way, was their concert's deliriously ecstatic, well-received finale. Then there's "Freak Out Music", another R.D. Burman number, that couldn't have been a hit, but is certainly Freaked Out. (And it's not even the one here by him that combines the sounds of strings with that of smashing glass.)
We also were excited to hear more from Atomic Forest, a band that provided the title track to the great international fuzz compilation Obsession a few years back (now out of print). They do a cover of a Deep Purple tune, "Mary Long", and of course laden it with extra fuzz. Another one for classic rock fans would be Bappi Lahari's "Everybody Dance With Me", which sounds suspiciously like Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" given an exotic Indian disco makeover, with bongos and wild wails... And, conversely, as an early example of Indian groove filtering into the West, the compilers have included a track by krautrocker/fusioneer Klaus Doldinger, "Sitar Beat", which is indeed just that, and must have been a highlight of the 1969 spy movie soundtrack on which it originally appeared. Which is interesting, 'cause the entry by Indian garage band X'Lents, "Psychedelia", originally from the Simla Beat 70 compilation, sounds like it would be perfect for a James Bond style spy movie too.
So, in sum, quite a lesson, and definitely a fun one. We'd go so far as to say this should be a required course/comp. We've been lucky lately with the quality of comps and other archival releases coming out, documenting vintage music from (for us) far off lands. We recently made the Soundway's The Sounds Of Siam a Record Of The Week, now this Sa-Re-Ga! is making us so happy... and we've got our eye on an upcoming Now-Again comp devoted to '70s Indonesian rock and funk, called Those Shocking Shaking Days, we've got high hopes for that one, it promises to be rad too. The vaguely connected network of collectors and DJs who are responsible for these comps, true labors of love, deserve all our thanks!!
As we said, the compact disc version boasts a massively thick booklet, and the swank double vinyl comes with a large 20 page one too.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Yet another incredible compilation of blues, country and gospel from the fine folks at Mississippi, this one functioning as a sort-of sequel to the all time fave Last Kind Words (which is sadly out of print), focusing on pre-war country blues and gospel, and like all Mississippi collections, featuring a good balance of familiar faves and new (for us, and maybe you) discoveries.
The Rain Don't Fall On Me offers up a few tracks from folks like Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White, Memphis Minnie and a few other names we knew, but fills the record out with rarities from unsung blues greats like Willie May Williams, Lulu Jackson, Texas Alexander, Sonny Boy & His Pals, Garfield Akers, Bayless Rose and more.
Unlike other Mississippi comps, there's virtually no information with this one, no liner notes, no history, nothing about the artists or the songs, so instead of a well researched archival collection, it's more like a mixtape from a friend with possibly the greatest country and blues record collection EVER. Obviously there's a whole legion of Mississippi Records obsessives out there who will buy anything they put out, and we definitely count ourselves among them, but even beyond all the hype, these guys know their stuff, and they prove it every time, with every release.
The Rain Don't Fall On Me is no exception, from Gary Davis's gorgeously grizzled super emotive vocals on "You Got To Go Down", to the almost fifties sounding croon and fantastic guitar playing of Sam Hopkins on "Needed Time", to the fluttery flute intro on "Bull Doze Blues" (borrowed/stolen/covered later by Canned Heat), to the frenzied fiery "Don't Want To Go There" by Willie Mae Williams, with its kick ass slide guitar and intense vocals, to the slithery soulful gospel of Texas Alexander's "Levee Camp Moan", to the woozy backporch boy girl harmonies of the title track, every jam here a total gem. And as with pretty much everything Mississippi puts out, absolutely recommended.
Yet another killer dubstep comp, this one focusing on the Bristol scene, which may not mean anything to you, until you get a gander of the folks on this comp: Pinch, Peverelist, Appleblim, Joker, Guido, RSD, Headhunter, Gatekeeper, names anyone into dubstep is familiar with, but a whole bunch of lesser knowns like Hyetal, Dubkasm, Gemmy, Jakes, Forsaken, Shortstuff, Wedge, Shadz, Dubboy, Komonazmuk, Atki2 and more.
There are extensive liner notes about the scene, and one of our favorite quotes, courtesy of Pinch,which pretty much sums up what's so awesome about dubstep, the Bristol strain specifically:
"I knew straight away that this was a sound that would fit perfectly in Bristol. There is a lot of tension in the music that carries a satisfactory darkness with it but it's also lazy music. You don't have to dance hard to move with it. It was born with a reefer in its gob."
No need to dance, just sit back, bliss out, and let the music wash over you. And this comp is full of the perfect sounds. Dark and minimal, skeletal and skittery, for dubstep obsessive, you probably already have a handful of these, but there are probably plenty you don't. Moody and mysterious, dark and haunting, some of the tracks are hushed and muted and murky, others are fully dubbed out and drenched in reverb and echo, while still others, our favorites, and thick, and buzzy, with huge warbly bass, and minimal stuttery beats, Headhunter's "7th Curse" is a killer, a sort of grim sci-fi slow motion groove, RSD gets all jungle-y with his "Pretty Bright Light", Smith And Mighty unleash some serious ragga dubstep on "B Line Fi Blo", Joker lays down some synthy buzz and big ass bass warble on "Holly Brook Park" and Hyetal gets all videogame electro, weaving 8bit melodies and swirling synths into a seriously cinematic sprawl of futuristic stutter and pulse, throb and buzz. So good. Pretty much every track here slays, another unanimous AQ fave for sure, getting crazy play in the store...
Vanessa Van Basten is not in fact a person, but an oddly named Italian band, a duo in fact, who collaborate with an ever shifting extended musical collective to create, lush, sweeping, super melodic, epic and majestic slow building moody post rock. Somewhere between Mogwai and M83, Explosions In The Sky and Jesu, these guys craft sweeping landscapes of propulsive rhythms, of chiming guitars, spidery melancholy melodies, big booming drums, lush layered atmospheres, sometimes laced with female vox, piano, occasionally super heavy, churning riffs and grinding crunch, electronics, programmed beats, all woven into a surprisingly emotional and organic whole. There's even sax once in a while that transforms the sound completely, turning into some weird retro classic rock, before slipping right back into something more mathy and almost metallic, or something lush, epic and Godspeedy, or something blown out and superdistorted and shoegazey.
Think Isis, Godspeed, Pelican, Mogwai, M83, Explosions In The Sky, Jesu, Nadja, Snowblood, that sort of thing, super varied, but at its core, epic emotional melodic post rock. And be sure and stick around for the hidden track, a super processed, totally distorted, blown out, heavily effect, digitally fucked with dirge metal freakout that might be the best thing on the record!
Alright, this is a confusing one, but we figured that Velvet Cacoon obsessives, and we know there are lots out there (ourselves included), would definitely be into this. A reissue of the very first Velvet Cacoon record, which was already reissued on Full Moon Productions, with a bonus disc, featuring 70 minutes of extra material, all ambient. BUT, they left two tracks off the record proper. Not sure why, but there you go. So Khrysanthoney has reissued Dextronaut, sans the 'superfluous' ambient bonus disc, but with the original record restored to its proper 10 song length. In addition to that, the new version of Dextronaut is UNmastered, so while it sounds quite similar, it's definitely a bit more raw and brittle, which actually suits VC quite a bit. So yeah, if you missed this the first time around, you NEED this, and if you already have it, and LOVE it, and need those extra tracks, well, hell, $9 for 9 minutes of extra music, not a bad deal really, and the extra songs are pretty kick ass, "Starlit Seas Of Angel Blood" has some of the sickest vokills ever, over frantic buzz and wild drumming, loads of reverb and all sorts of bizarre sounds (most of them vocal we think), while "When The Purest Flesh Is Alive", is super distorted and heavy on the effects, sounding like the bands blasting through a field of glitchy electronics, the sound weirdly melodic, and those vocals, still sick and inhuman and alien, everything dripping with buzz and fuzz. Still no idea why they left them off, but here's your chance to get the 'complete' Dextronaut. But be quick, it's limited to just 150 COPIES!!! Here's what we said about the Full Moon version, which all still pretty much applies, just everything is a tad more brittle and buzzy, and there are those two extra tracks (much of this is background on VC, since it was their first record and everything)...
Very few bands have as convoluted and controversial a back story as Portland's black metal weirdos Velvet Cacoon. First the name, Velvet Cacoon. Spelled C A C O O N. According to the band "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music." It also happens to be the seed from some tropical vine. But let's continue. There was also the band's political alignment, supposedly they were some sort of super reclusive, "eco-fascist" collective. Okay, sure. Then there's the sound. And it's the sound that really matters. And oh what a sound, an impossibly lush orchestra of black buzz, thick and mesmerizing and blurry, the fuzziest buzz we had ever heard. But how does a band achieve that sort of impossibly glorious buzz? Well, by inventing and playing an instrument called a "dieselharp", a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. So okay, how could we not love them, the sound was black buzz nirvana, and they were some weird eco forest freaks. Supposedly. _A little time passes, and it comes to light that it was all a scam, not the music obviously, but everything else, the politics, the dieselharp, all designed to fuck with the black metal community. The band is revealed to be one guy and his girlfriend. He's got short hair, they listen to Nina Simone and drink tea, and black metalheads are pissed. We of course think it's hilarious, and while we were duped as well, so what, it's a great joke, and fuck, the music still totally destroys. At one point if you went to the VC website, all you got was a link to an Air MP3?!? And still the only photos are of a woman in candlelight (presumably the girlfriend). And there were various reports that some of the songs were stolen from another artist who was uncredited and not compensated. Phew! It's the sort of story that would ALWAYS be on the cover of the black metal version of US magazine!! If there was such a thing (oh why oh why is there not?!?!).
The record begins with a dreamy bit of pastoral ambience, before bursting into some ultra fast, blown out black buzz drenched black metal. Melancholy and moody, but swathed in super thick swirls of BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. If anything, the stuff on Dextronaut sounds a bit more traditional than either of the other two releases, but a more traditional VC is still leagues weirder than most other BM outfits. Most of the tracks are blurry smeary buzzscapes, the melodies and drums and vocals, smothered under gloriously suffocating layers of, yep, still even more BUZZ!!! The best track, and also the weirdest, is the loping midtempo "Perched On A Neverending Peak". A blast of Burzum-worthy buzz, the guitars dense squalls of blown out fuzz, and all of this buzz and fuzz wrapped around an impossibly sad melody, but with a series of strange drop outs, where all the fuzz abates, only briefly, giving us a brief glimpse behind the veil of buzz, before it's quickly swallowed up again by the black wall of fuzz. How many times can we use 'buzz' and 'fuzz' in a single review. LOTS!
We just got in a whole batch of new releases from Starlight Temple Society, home to Velvet Cacoon, Clair Cassis, Lonesummer and others, and Canadian one man black metal horde Void Of Reveries sounds right at home, an epic slab of blasting depressive atmospheric blackness, the sound murky and washed out and heavily reverbed, the drums simple and solid, the guitars a blurred black mass, the vocals, anguished and dripping with effects. The end result is something less grim and buzz, than sort of shoegazey and drifty and softly smeared, give it a moodier less metal vibe, which is not at all a bad thing. Our pals at the Chronic Youth blog posit that VoR sounds like a nineties screamo band gone black metal. Which makes sense, it's got the same sort of depressive, super emotional, gut wrenching urgency, but to these ears if that's true, it sound more like an Orchid 7" slowed way down, to a doomy blackened crawl, and then when the band does crank the tempo, they somehow manage to speed that Orchid record back up, but without shifting the pitch, so it becomes a gloriously blurred sprawl of black blur and super emotional buzz and blast.
Raw and minimal, lots of frantic distorted buzz, but also plenty of spidery clean guitars, and hushed ambient interludes, the perfect balance between grim miserable buzz, and dark contemplative shimmer. We dig!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!
This just showed up in the mail one day, and we weren't really sure what to expect from a band called Wild Wild Geese, or a record cover that looked like a kindergartener drew a picture of an octopus attacking earth with fingerpaints, but we were definitely pleasantly surprised. Some super hooky nineties style indie rock, reminding us of Sebadoh, The Memories Attack, Dinosaur Jr, Built To Spill, Afghan Whigs... Plus they're from North Carolina too, which makes lots of sense, Superchunk, Polvo, the gnarled riffage definitely smacks of Polvo, and pre Built To Spill outfit Treepeople (not North Carolina obviously), and the super blown out leads sound like they could be courtesy of J Mascis, but the band don't just skate by on their influences, they've honed a pretty killer sound, at once looking back to the good ol' nineties college rock days, but also, firmly rooted in the now, with plenty of fuzzed out guitars, lazy drawled vox buried in the mix, garage rock crunch, and a serious heft and heaviness. But those melodies, and the band's arrangements are so reminiscent of the stuff we grew up with, that it makes these jams hit the spot even more. We've been cranking this like crazy, and have no plans of stopping any time soon!
Originally released as a super limited edition cassette, Blood In The Coffin is now available as both a cd and an lp, and is most likely the first glimpse most folks will get of Winter Drones, aka Leon Dufficy, whose day job is playing guitar in Hush Arbors, a group better known for psychedelic hippy folk space jams, and while some of that sound is definitely still present in Dufficy's solo project Winter Drones, the sound is stretched WAY out, blurred and smeared into gorgeous expanses of buzzy shoegazey bliss, murky moody psych pop, swirling ambient ur-drones, and all the various combinations and permutations inbetween. From hazy ethereal crystalline drift, to pounding rhythmic tribalism, WD shift effortlessly from loose, free sonic exploration, into blissy, noise drenched shoegaze perfect pop. "Winnie Coopers Bones" sounds almost like the Swirlies, with its muddied vox, smoldering guitars, tangled Sonic Youth like melodies, and the sweet soaring harmonies. But just as soon as you're riding that sweet pop wave, the gears shift again, and you're set adrift in a sparkling landscape of gauzy new age shimmer, or buzzing, warped and warbly Hecker/Jeck like ambience.
The 10+ minute "Stiff Wizard" begins as a brooding, rumbling bit of SUNNO)))-like creep, all distorted and menacing, growing more and more ominous and distorted, the sounds crumbling, and wreathed in tense high end drones, before finally the drums kick in, and the song begins to lift off, bliss out, and blossom into some sort of psychnoise space rock shoegaze blowout, somehow impossibly getting prettier and prettier and poppier and poppier without shedding any of its buzz and crunch.
Two shorter tracks finish things off, one another dreamy bit of lysergic drift, the other, a gorgeous lilting bit of buzz drenched indie pop psychedelia that wouldn't be out of place on Elephant 6. AWESOME!
It's that time again, the Wire's year end Rewind issue, always a good one, packed with year end lists, reflections from writers and musicians, always a good read, and a good way to discover lots of great music you may have missed.
But besides all that, the usual batch of far out sounds, this time around: Detroit rockers Death, Dutch composer Antoine Beuger, London video artist Weirdcore, Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset (the guy who made all those awesome musical ice records!!), Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle (R.I.P.), Lichens (who just played an amazing instore here), musician Pat Maherr (Indignant Senility, Expressway Yo-Yo Dieting), Global Ear on Leeds, Japanese sound artist and longtime AQ fave Toshiya Tsunoda, Invisible Jukebox with Scanner, EVP (aka electronic voice phenomena), electroacoustic composer Giuseppe Ielasi, and of course the usual massive batch of reviews, records, cds, films, videos, performances, installations, books and more more more... ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
It's been a while since we've heard from avant black metal weirdo Wrnlrd, and it seems a few things have changed since the last record. The band, formerly a mostly one man project, has expanded to include a handful of other players, contributing a strange selection of instruments (strange for black metal, but not necessarily for Wrnlrd, whose bluegrass roots managed to shine through no matter how buzzy and black proceeding got in the past), including accordion, piano, pedal steel, female vocals, and Dwid from legendary hardcore heavies Integrity even makes a guest appearance. And as we mentioned in the past, the Wrnlrd website offers very little in the way of proper info, but does feature a strange series of numerological sigils and strange diagrams, which would seem to indicate, that this just may be the second to last Wrnlrd record EVER. Which would be a shame, cuz this is definitely the most gloriously fucked up Wrnlrd yet.
Sonically, it's not all that far removed from the last few records, but it's somehow, just MORE. The guitars are filthier and crunchier and more distorted, the arrangements are more bizarre, stumbling and abstract and confusional, the instrumentation, as mentioned above, elevates this WAY beyond black metal, into some sort of tripped out blackened avant noise rock, or something.
Beginning with some gnarled detuned riffage, lumbering bass blur, and some monstrous gurgling vox, the record doesn't explode from the speakers so much as ooze, sounding like a death metal 45 at 16rpm, a furiously ominous creep, before slipping into more 'typical' Wrnlrd territory, which means gloomy low slung bass, big pounding drums, swirling electronics, super distorted buzz and chug, and of course super dramatic almost operatic female vocals, balancing more of those gurgling death metal grunts, the result is impossibly both beautiful and haunting, fucked up and grim, underpinned by super cinematic synths.
"Midnight Ride" is about as traditional as it gets, with some killer distorto riffing, pounding drums, keening guitar melodies, and those immediately recognizable Integrity style bellowed vox, it's doomy and dirgey knuckle dragging heaviness, that seems to mutate and morph growing more and more tripped out and psychedelic as it goes, finishing off in a cloud of lap steel shimmer.
After a stretched out bit of twisted piano ambience, the final track unfurls, a wheezing accordion sounding sinister and grim, soon swallowed up by a squall of atonal buzz and twisted guitar squiggle, finally coalescing into a woozy seasick bit of blackened lurch and stumble, the buzz caked on, the sound filthy and in the red, laced over super haunting blown out melodies, again managing to (im)perfectly merge melody and murk, until the track finally collapses into a chaos of colliding chugs over some darkly delicate fingerpicked guitar.
Incredible, and incredibly twisted stuff. Probably WAY too far out for the grim black hordes, but for everyone else, this is some beautiful and brilliantly baffling heaviness.
Housed in a cool diecut sleeve, comes with a poster and a patch and a digital download of the record.
