Latest record from this ever shifting sonic collective, still comprised of the core duo of Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), KTL, etc.) and Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo, Mothlite), although this time the group is rounded out by Kristoffer Rygg, aka Garm from Ulver, plus percussionist Steve Noble.
En Form For Bla is the result of several performances in Norway earlier this year, and finds the group shedding much of their previous heaviness in favor of a sound much more haunting and abstract, spaced out and introspective, the guitars less murky and muddy and massive, and more spidery and ethereal and minimal, laying out deep low end thrum and keening upper register shimmer. Rygg operates like a dub producer, electronically treating the sounds, while adding some of his own, the result is a constantly shifting landscape of drift and doom and pulsing heaviness and whirling almost free jazz sounding sonic exploration.
The big surprise here is Noble, who is all over the record, without overplaying, letting the record remain unstructured and abstract, while still moving it beyond mere static ambient improv, whether it's scattered bits of subtle skitter, thick clouds of shimmery cymbal or pulsing rhythmic pound, the band tend to creep and crawl, but when they do let loose it borders on Bitches Brew style jazz psychedelia, albeit a bit more blackened.
The overall sound is quite atmospheric and soundtracky, the melodies subtle, but the feelings they evoke not so much, stirring up dark clouds of sinister brood, and epic soaring cinematic mesmer, occasionally slipping into some minimal krautrock throb, like on the mesmerizing "Vivarium", and sounding a bit like a more low end heavy Necks (or maybe Supersilent), and then lurching into some giallo style mood music, on "Vyomagami Plume" and sounding like a deconstructed Goblin, a gently chaotic assemblage of heaving bass and twisted keyboards, of clattery percussion, and spaced out electronics, but all deftly woven into something moving and emotional and darkly compelling. Fantastic stuff.
We'd been hearing about this new project for a little while, a duo featuring Katy Goodman from Vivian Girls (and La Sera, reviewed elsewhere on this list!) and Gregg Foreman of Delta 72 fame (as well as being a regular player in Cat Power's band). Watch out Best Coast, as this is another awesome duo featuring an indie rock veteran and a younger female vocalist creating totally warm and fuzzy timeless girl group inspired garage pop. We like how Foreman gets some really cool sounds with his organ and treated guitars, which create the perfect hazy backdrop for Goodman's reverb soaked enchanting vocals. It's a bit more dreamy and washed out then what many in this terrain have been making lately. Releases on Art Fag don't tend to stick around too long, so act fast on this one!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
We usually hate when reissue labels put out something contemporary, often it's some modern band that's making music in a similar vein, even more often it's a friend of the label, done out of obligation, and in both cases, most of the time, said release sticks out like a sore thumb. There are exceptions, and labels with great taste, can be trusted to make exceptions when they're called for. And Mississippi is definitely on of those labels we implicitly trust. In the past, they've peppered their mind blowing catalog of killer reissues with records by Spooky Dance Band (post Reeks And The Wrecks), PDX punk rockers Sad Horse, longtime aQ fave Mirah, and now a Portland based guitarist named Marisa Anderson.
Anderson plays guitar and lap steel, and offers up a dozen gorgeous tracks of her own particular brand of Appalachia, from the noisy, reverbed, chaotic and crunchy, almost psychedelic sounding "Drop Down", to the more traditionally folky "The Night Before Last", her playing is fluid and emotional, dexterous and original, channeling the spirits of the past (Fahey, Kottke, etc.) but infusing them with the spirit of today, and her own soul and feeling, and the results are indeed really quite nice. So lovely, sun dappled back porch guitar music, with the occasional foray into something a bit darker and stormier, WAY recommended. And you can now add Anderson to the elite roll call of Post-Fahey guitar gods (and now GODESSESS!) along side James Blackshaw, Jack Rose, Richard Bishop, Ilyas Ahmed, Matt Baldwin, and the rest.
A killer four way split of extreme electronic music, ranging from deep drones to Merzbow style white noise to gorgeous synthy krautdrift, this match-up pits Astro against Pulse Emitter against Acre against Monsturo, three long times aQ faves and one unknown-until-now, each taking half a side and offering up their own bit of electronic punishment.
Japanese one man wrecking crew Astro is up first and lays waste with a blown out assault of roiling super heavy cosmic power electronics, distorted murk barraged by bleeps, in-the-red, distorted and crumbling, bordering on Merzbowish white noise but more clipped and looped and rhythmic and weirdly hypnotic.
Up next is Pulse Emitter, who finds extremity not in volume or distortion but in space, delivering a swirling spaced out sci-fi bit of synth wave kosmische drift, hypnotic and ethereal, no rhythms, just electronic pulses and swirling synths, soft flurries of melodies, floating in a buzzing expanse of near blackness, exactly what we love about PE, a single shot exploration of inner/outer space.
Acre deliver the drone, an impossibly dense and heavy sound, that on the surface seems minimal and pretty, but is somehow sooooo powerful, the layered tones seem to vibrate your skull, minimal maximal dronemusic that manages to be gorgeous but subtly punishing at the same time.
Finally, Monsturo delves even deeper, unfurling some seriously super deep lower register thrum, like an all low-end Raster-Noton, rumbling and rhythmic and barely there, but at the right volume will crumble all the buildings within earshot, as well as causing the Earth's crust to collapse sending you plummeting into its molten core. Awesome.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, with a printed insert, and housed in a full color paste on sleeve.
We've long been fans of Canadian doom/drone/dirge outfit Aun. They shared a split with French ultra doomlords Habsyll (who also released a record on Andee's tUMULt label) and we made their most recent record, VII, a Record Of The Week a while back. Which makes perfect sense, as they traffic in a perfect blend of electronic dronemusic, abstract blackened buzz and downtuned glacial sludge that we just can't seem to get enough of. VII was peppered with black metalisms as well, and featured drumming from Voivod's Away, transforming Aun's drones into something way more metal, but on Black Pyramid, Aun move away from overtly metallic soundmaking, and instead focus on creating a collection of epically abject dronescapes, that capture the same sort of intensity and soul crushing heaviness, but using a distinctly different palette. And the results are incredible. Dark, and dreary, depressive and hauntingly beautiful.
Each track here is a miniature epic, a bleak sprawl of smoldering sounds, deep shimming low end drifts beneath hazy fragmented melodies, everything blurred and smeared into slow shifting clouds of grim ambience, the tracks peppered with mysterious bits of random percussion, scrapes, creaks, chimes and buried rhythms.
The sound occasionally blossoms into thick buzzing sheets of crumbling distortion, smoldering swaths of blown out thrum, or gorgeously dreamy streaks of shoegazey melody, but just as quickly settles back down into pulsing electronic swirls, or murky expanses of blackened drift.
The record closes with the 9+ minute "Shining", which finds Aun taking that hushed minimal shimmer, and tethering it to a strange skeletal rhythm, a sort of disembodied techno throb, but more brittle and trebly, as the black swells beneath roil and churn, until eventually, thick throbbing droned out guitars, wreathed in swirling fuzz, are driven forward by a new, more propulsive, loping, lurching rhythm, the sound growing more and more intense and distorted, before finishing in a final squall of swirling FX and washed out distortion. So good. And while way less metal than the previous record, it's most definitely just as heavy, and dark, and intense.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!
Another winner from Mexican Summer (who seem to traffic primarily in winners anyway), hot on the heels of recent Record Of The Week, Ghost Blonde by No Joy, comes this, the debut recording from Beaches, who despite their summery moniker, kick up a seriously distorted and blown out shoegaze spacerock racket.
Done just the way we like it. Massive guitars, huge hooky riffs, thick buzzing bass, pounding drums, the vocals barely there, buried in the mix, the songs mainly a single riff, locked tight, and repeated over and over, mesmerizing and cyclical and hypnotic, druggy and repetitive and totally psychedelic, occasionally slipping into some sort of chorus, and letting the vocals come to the fore, but even then they're panned strangely, coming from different speakers, still pretty low in the mix, only adding to the druggy psychedelic vibe.
Equal parts washed out jangle, churning riff heavy crush, hazy spaced out psychedelia, there are hooks, but they're buried under all the murk and swirl and howl with the vocals, this is total headtrip heart of the sun, drone heavy, buzz drenched space rock, but infused with a heart of shoegaze pop, which is what makes this sound so good. Absolutely a new favorite, and WAY recommended for anyone into space rock, drone pop, shoegaze or anything heavy and hazy, druggy and dreamy.
One complaint though: four songs, 45 rpm, $24?!?! C'mon, Mexican Summer, sure, the jackets are super thick and the vinyl is crazy heavy, but still seems sorta steep. Too bad it's so good, and we're actually thinking these 4 songs might just be worth $6 a pop. At least based on the fact that we've listened to them all about a million times already...
There is something about knowing your sound and keeping your focus which is kind of crucial when you are a band playing very primitive ramshackle DIY folk/punk. The Beets know this so well, in fact right on the cover it says this is a collection of thirteen new songs about staying home. And many of the tracks are in fact about why the world can often make staying in your own room the only viable alternative. They keep all the subject matter very simple yet painfully honest. It's about relationships, regret, fear, longing...all delivered in a way stripped down lo-fi left-field garage pop sound. Following in the tradition of folks like Daniel Johnston, The Shaggs, Half Japanese, Beat Happening and Jonathan Richman, The Beets remind us that when done right, less can be so much more!
Experience the chilling terror of.... BLIZARO! Thrill to the nightmarish sensation that is... BLIZARO!
Enjoy the lovely melodies of... BLIZARO! Space out to the swirling sizzling synths of... BLIZARO!
Puzzle at the schizophrenic doom-prog-metal-soundscapes conjured by... BLIZARO!
Oh yeah, we've been waiting for this one for a while! Keen readers of the AQ list might recall mention of Blizaro in our review of the debut Crucifist release on Profound Lore, earlier this year. We mentioned that the guitarist from that blackened death-thrash entity, John Gallo (also of true doomsters Orodruin), had an awesome, eccentric synth-based side project called Blizaro, whom we'd experienced via some self-released cd-r's. Thus we were looking forward to Blizaro's upcoming full-length cd, and at long last, it's finally here! Like a mad scientist's lo-fi, DIY mashup of Goblin and Black Sabbath, Blizaro is right up our dark and creepy alley. Yours too we might imagine. It almost makes up for that Tony Tears album having gone out of print.
There's definitely plenty of metal bands who have taken inspiration from the classic Italian horror/suspense "giallo" cinema (and soundtracks), we're thinking Necrophagist, Hooded Menace, Cathedral, Moss, Acid Witch... and of course other musicians too, recent good examples being Zombi, Majeure, Magda, and Umberto. (Oh, and NightSatan, whose album we should soon have, too.) But Blizaro kind of take it to another, weirder level of worship. Blizaro is bizarro, yes that's for sure. Their sinister synthesis of Goblin/Sabbath has some off-kilter, confusional, sorta Sun City Girlish elements to it as well. It never really gets very metal, actually, but also stays away from the disco thing too.
Divided into two halves, one "Physical" and one "Mental", this disc offers up a deranged range of strangeness, from the fuzzed out Sabbathy psych riffage of "Midnight Lurkers" to the purely synthesized spacey suspensefulness of "Violet Cosmos". The eight minute opening epic, title track "City Of Living Nightmare", is a progged out tour de force of both gentle, eerie melodies and jagged martial metal riffage. It certainly sets the stage for what follows... cinematic symphonics, whispered vocal incantations, organ drones, monkish moans, sickly grooves, acid guitar soloing, druggy atmospheres... with song titles like "Eyes In The Caskets", "Catacomb Man", "Portallucinations", and "Ceremonial Bone Ritual". And then, at the opposite end of the album, as if to give credit where credit is due, Blizaro wind up the disc with a spot-on cover of Goblin's theme to Suspira! Almost unnecessary, after what's come before, but a nice touch nonetheless.
Quite recommended, especially to those who dig, say, both Osanna and Witchfinder General, or Fabio Frizzi and Paul Chain (all artists, among many others, that Blizaro cite as influences). Man, if only this were an actual soundtrack to an obscure old giallo, in the tradition of Argento and Fulci, we'd sure love to see that movie!!
So, people, if you dare, feel the embrace of the purple-hued, witch-haunted horror that is... BLIZARO!
At the time Borghesia was formed in 1982, Yugoslavia was beginning to exhibit the cracks in its federalist system of government; by good fortune, the Croatian born members of Borghesia, Aldo Ivancic and Dario Seraval, chose to study in Ljubjana, located in Slovenia - the state which peacefully separated from the Yugoslavian federation in 1990, unlike those states to the south. Ljubjana had long been the home of a lively arts and music scene, having spawned a number of underground venues / art-spaces including the first gay disco which caused considerable controversy within the conservative society at large. This was also home for Laibach, the Irwin Group, and other arms of the Neue Slowenische Kunst collective. Borghesia had always played second fiddle to Laibach, even though they really sounded nothing like the band. Where Laibach offered bleak appropriation of cultural elements within a cold industrial context, Borghesia was one of the early proponents of "electronic body music" - the sweaty electro-funk that really exploded out of Belgium by the late '80s, with D.A.F., Cabaret Voltaire, and Chris & Cosey influencing Borghesia's hedonistic, leather-clad electronics. The mutant funk sensibility takes up tracks like "A.R." and "Brisk Vomit" with choppy guitars, darkly bubbled electronics, and neck-wrangled basslines. On the aforementioned "A.R.", Borghesia filters the vocals through a megaphone of barked sloganeering for the closest thing that the band ever came to sounding like Laibach. The dirge "Tako Mladi" with its whip crack, reversed delay, and stalking electronic sequences is probably the strongest track on the record, through its oppressive atmosphere.
This album was originally released on an Italian label in 1985, and came with Italian translations of the Croatian lyrics. Those have now been transcribed into English, but keeping the same oversized poster with dot-matrix artwork / text that was on the original. As with all Dark Entries releases, this has been exquisitely remastered and pressed on big chunky vinyl. Limited to 500 copies.
Easily the world's most twisted outsider metal mashup. Damaged and demented aQ faves, Midwest metal militia Breathilizor (to read more about our undying love of Breathilizor, check out the review of their Metal Dump 7" elsewhere on the aQ website), teamed up here with the brilliantly monikered Doktor Bitch, who we know absolutely nothing about, but who somehow sound like Breathilizor's sick sonic soulmates.
Before we get to the music, we sometimes like to take in all the visuals, all the non musical elements that help set the scene, and in this case, what a scene. Let's take the Breathilizor side first. The cover art is incredible, super glossy and full color, some sort of zombie holiday elf, horned and fanged, eating the brain and chewing on the spind of a soon to be deceased metalhead, all beneath the album title: Imperative Of The Electron Snake AKA Baffled By The Blood Moat, and their awesome, super slick new logo. Inside, there are band photos, assembled in the shape of an upside down cross, some of the band wearing corpsepaint, some regular dudes, and much mayhem and destruction evident. There's also the legend: "Breathilizor is a nun's laughter. A nun's laughter is Breathilizor." Hmmm. And then there are the song titles, as we mentioned in the review of their 7", the songs follow a strict title code of "SOMETHING ---OF--- SOMETHING ELSE", so this time around, it's "Troll Of Spinal Chord's Destruction" (guess that's a troll on the cover), "Mountain Of Manson", "Stevie Nicks Of Goat Head Metal", "Virus Of Hollywood Sequel", "Infirmities Of Metal", "Albatross Of Gossamer", "Softball League Of Satan" and "Something Of Something Part VII". And we won't even get into the lyrics, needless to say, they are insane and brilliant.
On to the Doktor Bitch side, another glossy full color cover, this one featuring a brain fondling radioactive zombie, some Japanese characters in a square puddle of blood, and the band name in big 3D blood red letters. Inside over a photo of seamonsters beating each other with sticks, the band members are listed: Alozzamas, Necroponde and Pat Minotaur, as are the song titles: "Lavender Trainwreck", "Axial Rake/Radius Gash", "Have 'N A Relapse", "Vaguilla", "How Is That For Evil? (For Poopy)", "Super Fast Night Dump" and finally "You Chop My Head Off". There are liner notes to, most tellingly, thank you's sent out to "butt, eggs, ciggies and inmates".
So after all that, what the hell does it sound like? And why do both sides/halves seem like they could be the same band? Well, that's cuz some of the Breathilizors are also in Doktor Bitch! So for those not familiar with Breathilizor, imagine some sort of classic chugging metal, a dizzying mix of Venom and Slayer, all tangled up with elements of doom and sludge, but focused mostly on riff heavy super rocking, and blasting thrashing heaviness, then of course there are the lyrics, delivered in a strange nasally drawl, a sort of underground outsider metal version of Jello Biafra maybe, jamming tons of words into small spaces, spinning far out yarns, and tales of the impossible, and the unknowable and the downright evil! Doktor Bitch, somehow take the Breathilizor sound, and fuck it even further up, wrapping it in sonic murk, and transforming it it into a grinding punky metallic noise rock, plenty of chugging riffage, but those riffs often collapse into tangled gnarled squalls of churning blackened metalnoize, before eventually returning to the riff. The vocals are grunted and gurgly, the sound chaotic and loose and frenzied, laced with the occasional bit of lead guitar, but mostly heavy on the downtuned low end, a muddy, blackened sludge drenched riff rock to counter Breathilizor's by-comparison classic (albeit fucked up and fractured) metal sound.
Needless to say, if you like your heaviness damaged and demented and baffling and confusional and whatthefuck, then you just may have found you weirdo metal dream team match up.
Halation is the debut release from Japanese dronologist Hiroshi Tanaka, aka Capricornus, and is two tracks and 41 minutes of gorgeously minimal, hazy, gauzy, ethereal, free floating, hushed ambient drift. Long tones are layered into gently undulating sonic swells woven into a blurred, meditative new age, melodies playing out over minutes instead of seconds, the overtones, creating subtly kaleidoscopic shades amidst the glacially unfolding drowsy tranquility, occasionally what sounds like guitars surface, but all the edges are worn away, transforming the chordal steel string whir into yet another layer of soft sound. The second track is a bit more moody, slightly darker, the sounds interacting similarly, muted and murmuring, drifting dreamily, but the tones have a melancholic cast, as if clouds had drifted over the opening track, still warm and lush and dreamlike, but more rainy day than sun dappled summer afternoon. Both equally lovely, a fantastic debut of washed out ambient dreamdronedrift.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
One of two brand new Carlton Melton releases this list, the other being their strange and culty split with Qumran Orphics. This one an amazing 7" on a cool brand new deluxe 7" label, Valley King (we also have a new Sweet Apple 7" on the same label to be reviewed later). Housed in a mini-gatefold sleeve with insert and sticker, with gorgeous artwork by Alan Fobres who also did Carlton Melton's Pass It On LP as well as their split with Empty Shapes.
"Handling Snakes" is a jolt of heavy hypno-blues a la Wooden Shjips but even heavier with wailing riffs and pummeling drums. The B side, "The One That Got Away", is more majestic and broodingly heavy with searing and weaving guitar lines and molten textures.
It's over before you know it, but it's just long enough to hit the spot. Limited to 500 copies. Grab this taste of radness while you can!
Brand new split of heavy freakiness from one of our favorite local bands Carlton Melton teamed up here with new-to-us bizarre shamanistic cult collective Qumran Orphics.
The Melton side is two 10 minutes slabs, the first, "March Of The Cicadas", sounds exactly like the title implies, a slowmotion dirge over martial rhythms with buzzing electronic hisses and stratospheric guitar leads. The closer, "Murder Ridge" is a noirish Bardo Pond-like spiral of burning sonic embers and sustained decay.
The Qumran Orphics side is a stranger beast altogether. Recorded from a live set at the Blank Club in San Jose, Qumran Orphics is led by KFJC DJ Cy Thoth (host of the show Firebunker, that plays lots of our favorite metal and experimental sounds), backed by an array of simmering guitars and shifting droning electronics. Like a strange and unfurling Crowleian ritual, Cy Thoth croakingly intones bizarre utterances one might hear in an H.P. Lovecraft story. It's a wild and charged performance. Not sure where this project will go next, all info on the group is rather scant or cryptic, but we're definitely curious!
Super limited to 259 copies, pressed on smoked wood and blood colored swirl vinyl. These probably won't last long....
The eighties, aka a decade of shameful sounds and fashions (at least to people our age) continues to be mined for musical inspiration, the latest coming from Catwalk, who make no bones about where their inspiration lies, Big Country, Style Council, The Smiths, and especially, to these ears at least, Icicle Works (remember "Whisper To A Scream"?), Big strummed reverby guitars, a bit sunshiney, a little bit melancholy, held down by some loping fuzz bass, and the vocals drifting in clouds of echo and reverb over the top, both songs here super catchy, hooks galore, but more than that, effortlessly evoking that other era, even more so on the B side, which is slower and more broody and ballady and is laced with big dramatic Breakfast Club choruses. Pretty dang good. Even for those of us who grew up during the real thing.
REPRESSED, BACK IN STOCK!!! Now including the "lost side" of unreleased tracks featured on the recent deluxe vinyl version.
Ooooh Ahhhhh! This one has been sizzling in our ears pretty much on endless repeat since it showed up at the store. Chromatics have undergone a pretty radical change from their early herky-jerky no-wave inspired beginnings, as showcased on the amazing and scene defining After Dark comp that we recently listed, and are still so in love with. Chromatics now have a sound that is much more sensual, subdued and spaced out. And we have to say we are loving this new direction. I definitely suits them so much more naturally than their noisier punky past.
With a sound much more rooted in early drugged out disco and '80s Euro-pop, Night Drive is sparse and melancholic enough to reel in folks whose taste usually falls on the darker end of the spectrum yet with songs so damn sexy and enticing that those of us with dance and pop leanings are seduced by their sound as well. With Ruth Radalet's vocals sounding like they are being delivered in a dark room filled with fog and smoke, there is such an intoxicating late night vibe that Chromatics tap into which feels so vacant and so sexy in the best possible way. They take on the daunting task of covering Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and manage to make it their own, no small feat as that is a song with such deep meaning for so many of us. So damn good!
Here's an old AQ fave, happily back in print on cd! Psychedelic rock from Israel, circa 1968, the original lp a rare collectible, and a classic. With Middle Eastern touches, backwards FX, lovely melodies, and twanging guitar solos, Churchill's should appeal to all fans of international sixties psych. Influenced by the Beatles and other British rock groups of the era (in fact, Churchill's later on became very Led Zep-ish, and covered "Living Loving" on a 7" single!), the Churchill's debut was apparently recorded as the soundtrack music for a pair of obscure films entitled A Woman's Case and The Dress. But the album is definitely a collection of songs, not instrumental/incidental music. And great songs they are. Some soft and mellow ("When You're Gone"), others weird and wigged out ("Straight People"). No doubt drugs were involved. One of the best tracks is the melodic, mandolin-fueled "Subsequent Final", an East-meets-West stunner indeed, pretty much worth buying this disc for just by itself, though you get lots more treats besides, in fact, this new reish includes TEN bonus tracks, unlisted for some reason, but we think they're songs from various non-album singles, as they do include their version of "Living Loving".
Back in print, now in a nicer edition on Bureau-B!
Nobody did spaced out krauty ambiance better than Berlin's Cluster. Maybe best known for their collaboration with Brian Eno, it was their work leading up to those monumental records that helped usher in a new wave of sound that's been latched onto and updated by many over the years. It's hard not to hear their influence on folks like Mouse On Mars, Aphex Twin and the atmospheric moments of Kid-A era Radiohead. It's always so great to remember and be reminded that they did it all without synthesizers (really, they say so in the liner notes!). Instead Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Plank were each armed with an organ, effect pedals, analog echo machines, alarm clocks, violin, etc. 3 songs and 40+ minutes long '71 is such a nice record to put the headphones on and begin to wander and fade away into their hypnotizing sounds.
We love black metal. Longtime readers of the aQ list are no doubt well aware of that fact. And as much as we dig the true and the grim and the kvlt, we have no fantastical notions of our own "Trueness". We love all sorts of black metal, ridiculous over the top orchestral bombastic black metal, avant pop laced BM, totally twisted weirdo BM, all manner of blacknoize, AND we love Cradle Of Filth. We have for nearly two decades. One of our first black metal records was 1994's The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh, which even today, still sounds incredible. And yeah, like Dimmu Borgir, CoF are one of the few bands who managed the shift to mainstream metal act, finding their way into Hot Topics and onto teenage bedroom walls worldwide. But that's not a reason to hate them. Well for some folks it probably is, but for us, we dig their ridiculous bombast, their over the top symphonic arrangements, their vampiric babe imagery, the soaring synths, the faux strings, Dani Filth's bizarre vocalizing, slipping from guttural growl to inhuman screech, and besides all that stuff, there's some seriously shredding black metal happening. Sure, not all their records have been good, the last few have been a bit disappointing, and few have been as good as their classic Dusk... And Her Embrace, which along with their debut we would still rank with our all time favorites.
The problem with the not-so-good CoF record was that they just weren't heavy enough, everything else was firmly in place, but the strings and the dramatic female vocals, and the orchestras and all that stuff, relegated the riffs and the blasts and the buzz to supporting roles. But damn if this new one isn't a return to form, their heaviest in ages. And it's easy to see why this appeals to goths and teens and the like, this is an epic and dramatic tale, it's like a black metal musical version of True Blood, or more accurately some historical tale of witches and warlocks, the whole thing rife with death and life, and love and tragedy and vampires and murder and mayhem, but it's the music that matters, and it sounds pretty bad ass to us, the riffing furious and frantic and so heavy, the drumming blasting and pounding, the vocals distinctively unlike most black metal vokills, then the synths and pianos, that would be enough, but then mix in some haunting dramatic interludes, the cinematic ambience, the haunting female voices, the symphonic stabs, and you've got what is essentially another awesome Cradle Of Filth record. And yeah, the true grim hordes can look down their corpse painted noses at us, but we love this shit. And for anyone who bought the ridiculous new one from Dimmu Borgir that we listed last time, well, this is the perfect companion!
While they last, we have the deluxe version with a bonus cd and four extra tracks!
Another awesome eighties metal obscurity rescued and reissued by the fine folks at Shadow Kingdom. Some of the metalheads around here (okay, just Andee), had this record when they were teenagers, so were especially excited by this reissue, and it's even better than we had hoped, as it tacks on the unheard-by-nearly-everybody second album, as well as a whole disc of demos.
Crisis were definitely not cool or hip, even back in the eighties. When the world wanted Motley Crue and Quiet Riot, these guys were channeling classic NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Meavy Metal), specifically early Iron Maiden, as well as Motorhead and Raven, with hints of Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher, their sound raw and rough, but super rocking and crazy catchy, the vocals sometimes a dead ringer for Maiden's Paul Di'Anno, their sound heavy, but hooky, and the songs, totally catchy, and super rocking. If only they had been about ten years earlier, things might well have turned out differently.
As it is, NWOBHM obsessives would do well to check this out, and fans of classic eighties metal, you probably remember these guys already and most likely want this, and if you never heard these guys, you're in for an eighties metal treat!
Includes a massive booklet, featuring the original 'sexy' gun toting babe album cover, liner notes, photos and lyrics.
De Ma Vaere Belgiere was a black-clad Danish post-punk act, who kicked out a single in 1983 and played a couple of shows before calling it quits. That single has been reissued as a split lp with fellow Danes End Of Your Garden on Dark Entries, and yes, that single is featured on this disc followed by a pretty great live set also recorded in 1983. "Cirkler" is a deadringer for what Interpol had been producing at the beginning of their career with this impassioned, darkly tainted post-punk with death disco rhythms, galloping basslines, and spiky guitars. Siglo XX and Crispy Ambulance also pop up as a reference through the monotone vocals and the downcast mood set throughout the rest of the tracks, and a less obscure citation is made on "Synsforstyrrelse" which lifts Robert Smith's riff from "M" of Seventeen Seconds. Not a bad thing at all! On the live recordings, The Cure's influence is even more evident through the interplay between Jakob Leth's bass, which leads the songs much in the way that Simon Gallup drives so many of The Cure's greatest tracks girded by chiming rhythmic guitars. As is evident through so many of the live songs, De Ma Vaere Belgiere were gifted songwriters for urgent, moody songs that were on par if not better which any given post-punk ensemble circa 1982. The live recordings are pretty good as far as live recordings go, but had Martin Hannett gotten a hold of this band, things would have gone very differently.
For everyone disappointed by the lack of proper, big beat, banging Daft Punk style dancefloor destroyers on the recent Tron soundtrack, well this is for you. The latest from Deadmau5, an electronic musician who performs costumed, much like the above mentioned Daft Punk. But where Daft Punk are some sort of futuristic spacemen, Deadmau5 wears a giant, lawsuit baiting mouse head, and sonically, Deadmau5 explores a soundworld not all that dissimilar to those of his electronic music compatriots, Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers and the like. Big beats sure, but with a dark melodic element that elevates this beyond pure dancefloor fodder.
"Some Chords" might be the electronic jam of the year (last year?), with its haunting moody intro, thick corroded/distorted synth sound, woozy minor key melody, and dubsteppy vibe (not to mention that dubstep bass wobble/warble), hypnotic, and dark, and rhythmic, and surprisingly cinematic.
Those same elements inform the rest of the record, fat fuzzy basslines, wheezing synths, big ol' block rocking beats, but with plenty of unlikely filigree, from strange Darth Vader like heavy breathing to dark moody piano to Jamaican style toasting, to ravey synth stabs. The songs with vocals are definitely on the pop side, sing songy, sounding like Double Dutch chants, playful and fun and funky, but it's the instrumental jams that are the fiercest, and must send dancefloors into fits. "One Trick Pony" manages to merge the two, with a totally pop verse, but when the vocals drop out, it's one of the hardest dubstep jams we've heard in ages. "Raise Your Weapons" sounds like a soulful radio ballad, crooning female vocals over dark minor key piano, but then suddenly, the vocals get all dubbed out, and the song gets super dense and heavy, and those throbbing dubstep basslines, squelchy synths and crushing stuttery big beats come tumbling out.
For fans of the poppier side of dubstep, Zomby, Rusko, Martyn, Roska, Guido, Mount Kimbie who aren't averse to some chest rattling big bass, and of course the above mentioned big beat electronicians (Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, etc...)!
Any magazine with Electric Wizard on the cover is one we want to read, not that we don't ALWAYS want to read "extreme music" magazine Decibel anyway! Also this issue, there's features on the likes of Haarp, Ehnarhre, Ghost (Sweden, not Japan), Altar Of Plagues, Atheist, and... Cee Lo? Yes, Cee Lo. Apparently a closet metalhead.
Also, Tom G. Warrior of Triptykon does the "invisible jukebox" thing, totally harshing on the new one from Sodom by the way (and Sodom's Tom Angelripper does a Q&A this ish as well...). And, best of all perhaps, Decibel inducts CoC's Animosity album into their Hall Of Fame, definitely a deserving choice! Plus, there's the usual reviews (which includes one of the latest from the Dead C, demonstrating that they're an "extreme music", not necessarily metal, magazine), news, and funny columns.
Canadian garage rock freeks Demon's Claws are another one of those bands that we had never paid much attention to, not sure why, but we're sure kicking ourselves now, cuz this latest record is a seriously bad ass concoction of crazed, maniacal, swaggery sixties styled fuzz drenched garage pop bliss.
The music is stripped down and minimal, sometimes brooding and dark, other times raucous and rocking, the guitars tangled and jangly, crunchy and fuzzy, the drums solid and simple, while in the background spaced out effects and electronics occasionally swirl and shimmer subtly, but over the whole thing, frontman Jeff Clarke does his best Mick Jagger, or his best Iggy Pop, or more like some sort of impossible hybrid of the two, his vocals snarly and slithery, sinewy and yet still melodic, a classic sounding croon, over some killer and impossibly hooky garage pop, that manages to sound modern enough for the kids, but most definitely remains beholden to the classics. And damn if opener "Fed From Her Hand" is not the jam of the year so far, the main riff all low slung and sinister, the vocals wrapped in reverb, those electronics burbling just below the surface, and a sound, and a main hook / chorus, that sound like they were transported straight out of the sixties. So awesome! A new favorite for sure!
Full length number three from 'hypnogogic pop' outfit Ducktails, aka Matthew Mondanile, whose day job is playing guitar in lo-fi pop combo Real Estate, and whose records as Ducktails tended more toward the murky and druggy and hazy, a tropical infused low fidelity avant pop warble, but on Arcade Dynamics, Mondanile has definitely jettisoned much of the murk and moved his side project a bit more toward the more traditional pop of the Real Estate mothership. That said, it's all relative, things in Mondanile's world of Ducktails is still warped and woozy and warbly and dreamily druggy, but this time around, the guitars are more jangly, and chiming, the sound is more sunshiney and sun dappled, and most noticeably, there are way more vocals, less meandering experimentation, and more proper songsmithery, and it definitely suits him.
The record begins with a more traditionally Ducktailed mini jam, instrumental and a little bit tropical, a simple beat under effected jangle and swirling melody, but as soon as the second track starts up, it's easy to hear something has changed, the song a bit more brooding, still rife with gorgeous hooks and melodies, but the sound is more measured and hypnotic, the vocals hazy and reverby, but not at all to the point of distraction. "Sprinter" is a total eighties throwback, with gorgeous tangles of guitar harmony and muted thumping percussion, and while "The Razor's Edge" does find Mondanile dipping back into the more experimental side of Ducktails, it's actually pretty great, a brooding minor key almost sci-fi sounding bit of glitchy twang and motorik throb. "Killin' The Vibe" is a hazy bit of sunshiney psychedelia wrapped around a stripped down electronic pulse, and rife with hand claps and gorgeous multitracked vocals, while "Art Vandelay" might be the highlight of the record, reminding us of recent Record Of The Week Public Service Announcement by Purling Hiss, the same sort of lo-fi retro classic pop sound, with a big chorus (big for Ducktails at least), flanged steel string strum, and another skeletal programmed beat, all wound into an impossibly perfect chunk of hook-heavy lo-fi jangle pop.
And like some of the other Ducktails records, it seems Mondanile likes to finish off with lengthy experiments, and III is no different, a sprawling 10 minute stretch of minimal reverbed guitarscapery, warm and shimmery, hypnotic and mesmerizing, laced with strange percussion and mysterious field recordings, a beautiful and chilled out finish to what is most definitely our favorite Ducktails yet!
The vinyl version comes with a free download, which includes a bonus track NOT on the cd, an alternate version of "Killin' The Vibe" featuring Panda Bear from Animal Collective!
PS vinyl coming February 1st!
End Of Your Garden was a minimal-wave / post-punk quartet from Denmark, whose "Celebration" single from 1981 has just been reissued (on a split lp with Da Ma Vaere Belgiere) via Dark Entries. And this disc features those four tracks, plus four bonus tracks (two in the studio and two live recordings). Their skeletal arrangements for cheap electronics, drum machines, violin, guitar, bass, and vocals that all come together like Siglo XX trying to work out Young Marble Giants covers. The vocals alternate between monotone male vocals from Benny Woitowitz and Jan Laursen with a guest spot on female vocals by the breathy Angie White on the downbeat and slinky tune "Don't Walk Away In Silence." The other tracks, especially the anthemic "Celebration" and the messthetical "The Autumn" are considerably more up-tempo and urgent in their delivery. "Test" is one of the bonus tracks, and had appeared as another single from EOYG's Replik Muzick, with a two-note arrangement for guitar and synth plopped upon a noisy drum machine groove that Cold Cave might have very well lifted for their Cremations album. Agitated guitar noise gives more of a This Heat impression towards of the end of this track, and makes us wonder why nothing else was released from EOYG or anything from any of the members of the band, who all seemed to disappear around 1982. The other studio track and the live material also offer a lot of intriguing art-punk electronics, that certainly would lend themselves to a long career throughout the '80s. But alas, this is all there ever was.
More post-punk / minimal-wave obscurities by way of Dark Entries. Both of these bands were Danish outfits dating back to the early '80s, and don't seem to share much beyond their Danish good looks and the fact that both of these recordings had been released by the small Replik Muzick imprint. End Of Your Garden is more in keeping with the minimal wave vibe that Dark Entries has been promoting, through a skeletal arrangements for cheap electronics, drum machines, violin, guitar, bass, and vocals that all come together like Siglo XX trying to work out Young Marble Giants covers. The vocals alternate between monotone male vocals from Benny Woitowitz and Jan Laursen with a guest spot on female vocals by the breathy Angie White on the downbeat yet slinky "Don't Walk Away In Silence." The other tracks are considerably more up-tempo and urgent in their delivery.
The first cut from Da Ma Vaere Belgiere is a deadringer for what Interpol had been producing at the beginning of their career with this impassioned, darkly tainted post-punk with death disco rhythms, galloping basslines, and spiky guitars. Again, Siglo XX (alongside Crispy Ambulance) pops up as a reference through the monotone vocals and the downcast mood set throughout the rest of the tracks, and a less obscure citation is made on their final track which lifts Robert Smith's riff from "M" of Seventeen Seconds. Not a bad thing at all!
All of the material had been released as 7" singles back in the early '80s and now has been lovingly remastered and repackaged by Dark Entries. Recommended as with everything on the label!
It's been a boom in outsider music these last few weeks at AQ, first it was the random rediscovery of Doug Hream Blunt's Gentle Persuasion, a fantastic and fantastically strange disc of breezy lo-fi outsider funk, that was dropped off by the man himself and required quite a bit of reconnoitering to track him down to get more (a continuing saga). And now there's this. A mysterious disc by a one man band known simply as Fastest, a cd-r that just showed up here one day, and none of us can remember how or when. In the mail? Dropped off? Spontaneous generation? It was just here one day, and we were mesmerized from the second we laid eyes on it. The cover is a huge blue owl against a blue background. The band name Fastest is written in big green letters, in a sort of cartoonish metal font, and superimposed right on the cover is a big barcode. The whole thing printed out on a home laser printer. The tray card folds all the way up around the side so there's an extra panel visible through the clear tray that boldly proclaims: "digital audio compact disc - state of the art phonorecord." The tray card features the ASCAP logo (ASCAP is the company that determines musician royalties) no less than three times, the logo is superimposed again on the back in a little white square, and at the top, blue text explains that the record was "Produced by Daemaeen Hephaestus Chastical". We were almost afraid to throw it on, because we were convinced that there was no way the music could live up to the cryptic promise of the packaging. We were wrong.
The title track starts things off, and immediately you know this is like nothing you've ever heard... a flurry of lo-fi distorted programmed beats, that sound like they could have been lifted straight off that Vijaya Anand Dance Raja Dance Bollywood compilation on Luaka Bop from years back, but any resemblance to Bollywood ends there, as some strange atonal midi synth guitars swoop in, along with some woozy warbly bass, the strangely syncopated programmed beats sputtering wildly in the background, the song slipping into a moody drift, the vocals a strange ominously hushed whisper, that even remind us a bit of the slowed down mush mouthed rapping of Sensational, eventually there's a sort of chorus, the midi guitars buzzing, while a strange synth unfurls a twisted melody, and then there's the most brilliantly baffling break, a stop/start flurry of stuttering beats, and some more warped woozy melodies, eventually joined by a sort of midi guitar least, atonal and detuned, the whole thing sounding like it's melting before your ears, before finally returning to the 'chorus'. Holy shit. What just happened? What is this? How had we not heard this before? Very reminiscent in fact of those absurd midi guitar releases we raved about on lists past, all of them work of a single man, released under different names: Shevelreq, Xynfonica, Gluttony, Thursar. If you were as into those as we were, stop reading and buy this now. Everyone else, read on, and sink deeper into the glorious musical madness that is Fastest...
The first song is so perfect, and perfectly demented, we dared not go on. We just kept listening to that one song over and over and over. Heck we wanted it to be OUR theme song. But eventually we knew we had to go on, and somehow, Fastest managed to confuse us again. And again.
After some simulated jet engine sounds, "Jet Sound II" begins, but it's super melodic and all 8 bit sounding, and reminds us of music from The Legend Of Zelda, but those vocals, dark and ominous, weirdly offset the cheerful melodies and loping programmed rhythms. "Televise" begins with sample bells, and immediately returns us to The Legend Of Zelda, until the vocals come in, locked in tight with the main melody, making for some strange electronic lo-fi midi-pop mystery.
"While You're Here" might be our other favorite (if we were forced to pick), with it's haunting melody, over minor key distorted finger picked guitar, tinkling chimes, very cinematic, again like some dramatic moment in a video game, but definitely dark and haunting, but of course, the song slips right back into some Zelda-y minimal 8 bit balladry, replete with those slightly ominous gruff vocals.
"Million Lies" begins with some dramatic syncopated start/stop dynamics, before slipping into some pulsing electronic groove, but this time, the vocals are super distorted, and even more creepy, and the drums erupt into little flurries of rhythmic tangle.
And so it goes, the sound drifting from Bollywood flecked 8 bit video game soundtrack songsmithery, to eighties style midi driven synthwave, and some hard to describe stops in between, culminating in the final three tracks, maybe the darkest and heaviest of the bunch.
"Seasons Change" is all distorted bass, stereo panned so the buzz flits from ear to ear, the drums spastic and skittery, the vocals as grim and ominous as at any point, the melodies creepy and minor key, which leads right into "Alter Fate" all swirling synths and stuttery almost IDM sounding beats, the whole thing blurry and smeary, before slipping back into the dirgey synthy creep of the previous track, a sort of second movement, laced with more strange disembodied high end melodies over the tumbling drum fills and more gruff whispery vox, finally culminating in "The Wind", which begins with appropriately enough, swirling wind, distorted acoustic guitar, a gauzy patina of lo-fi buzz, before finally launching into a tense stretch of buzzing swirling electronic weirdness, the various chunks of low end fuzz and warped melodies, adding some serious pathos, growing ever more distorted and finally finishing in a blaze of super distorted programmed beats, chaotic and noisy and psychedelic, before winding down with more acoustic guitar.
Absolutely baffling and disturbing brilliantly, total genius outsider mystery music, this is the sort of thing groups like Gary War and Ariel Pink are striving for, but just can't ever quite reach. Fantastically idiosyncratic, highly personal, and completely warped and cracked and demented and literally unlike anything you've heard. It's not hard to imagine this finding its way onto one of those incredible strange music comps or one of those Songs In The Key Of Z collection, it's certainly divisive, it's definitely too much for some folks, so be warned, this is strange strange stuff. But folks around here have become a bit obsessed, and can't seem to get enough. Which is good, cuz there are at least THREE other cd-r's. If you decide you need those too, just ask...
Originally, posthumously released in 1972, this album collects late '60s recordings by these long haired Illinois boys, apparently a band renowned for their live show. We were initially interested in this reissue from a proto-metal perspective, as the reason we'd ever heard of The Finchley Boys in the first place is 'cause of a pretty killer, almost MC5-ish, track by them included on the heavy psych comp Up All Night some time ago. That song, the hard rockin' anthem "Outcast", is the lead off track here, and it's only flaw is that it fades out too soon. But as much as we like that one, it's another track, their cover of The Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else", that's our pick for the true classic here, a hard-hitting, garage psych workout with enough melancholic grandeur that it maybe coulda/shoulda been included on that Forge Your Own Chains comp that came out a while back. In their hands, it sure sounds like a track Roky Erickson/13th Floor Elevators fans oughtta dig. There's plenty more fuzzed out hard psych and rebellious acid rock on offer here besides, such as "Restrictions" and "Hooked", but what we discovered delving into this disc is that The Finchley Boys were a versatile (and talented) bunch. Among the 16 tracks total here, there's also some folkier acoustic hippie rambles, though they never go full-on country like you might have expected from a band with a name like theirs. Really, they're all over the hard/soft spectrum, doin' some wild RnB ravers and harmonica-laden blues rock (our fave is the way tripped out, almost underwatery-sounding "Finchley Boy Blues", plus they get points for the title "Deep Throat Blues" too), along with lovely dark psych ballads like "It All Ends". And there's even one seemingly out of place Motown style soul-funk number ("Bad When The Teardrop Falls") complete with horn section. Huh, wow. Pretty good though!
Definitely a very enjoyable reish for anyone into '60s acid blues action, who don't have to have it heavy ALL the time.
Miasmah debut (after a couple previous releases on the similar label Lampse) from this young Swedish composer, whose affecting, abstract cinematic soundscapes are part modern classical, part electro-acoustic ambience, hallucinatory and haunting. Reference has been made to Angelo Badalamenti and John Cage, Autechre and Jerry Goldsmith. If you're already a fan of Miasmah's marvelous, moody, murky output (Jacaszek, Elegi, FNS...) you should be eager to hear this. Likewise if you enjoy the likes of Leland Kirby and Indignant Senility.
The eleven tracks here are rife with subtle electronic pulsations, Jeckian surface crackle, gentle chimes and shivering drones... all with sad, pretty melodies buried beneath. It's mysterious, quite lovely music. Fjellstrom's sounds conjure images of surf wracked, rain swept shores at dusk, ancient pianos and grandfather clocks crumbling slowly (and somehow rhythmically) into dust, and the sleeping forms quietly dreaming such things. Indeed, anyone making a dreamlike and slightly sinister film would be wise to consider Fjellstrom for the soundtrack (as some have already done, tracks 6-9 here, forming the "House Without A Door" suite, having originally being commissioned for a film of the same name).
Latest recording from SF avant death metal outfit Fleshwrought, who besides offering up some head spinning, ultra complex, outsider death metal madness, also has produced what might be the most over the top packaging we've ever seen.
First up, the sounds. Fleshwrought, aka Naveen Koperweis has managed what is essentially a full length, spread out over a 10" and a 7" (more on that in a moment), of furious, ultra complex, super intricate, fierce and furious and fucked up death metal. Twisted and proggy, the songs pack a million parts into a space most bands would reserve for 2 or 3, grinding, blasting, chugging, churning, the guitars thick and distorted, the vocals a guttural grunting growl, the drums, totally nuts and impossibly intense and mathy, the arrangements over the top, basically this is some next level death metal for sure, easily setting FW miles above the DM masses, plus, besides being heavy and proggy and intense, its also super weird, strange bits of grooviness, stretched out streaks of electronic drone, even some seriously out of place saxophone, all wound into super dense tangles of death metal madness that totally destroys.
And all appropriately housed in some of the most elaborate packaging EVER.
The cover is a single color screenprint, printed in ink infused with Koperweis' blood! The inside features a 4 color screen print by SF artist Amy Trachtenberg. The jacket is assembled from 2 pieces of cardstock, laser cut, then folded, glued, scored and bound with twine, all by hand, the sides were stamped by hand on each label, includes both a laser cut stencil, and a screen printed canvas patch, the whole thing folds up like an elaborate hand made book, the sleeve hand numbered AND letter pressed. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! Holy shit! Incredible and insanely limited, and kick ass, both packaging and the sounds inside, so grab one before they're gone!
Yes that's right, Flied not Fried Egg. Uh, 'cause they're Japanese. Think about it. Hey, it's their joke. Anyway, this one's for all you '70s heaviness lovin' proto-metal fans, it's something that we got in along with the Flower Travellin' Band reissues we listed last time. Goodbye is Flied Egg's second of two albums (both '72, and both on the famed Vertigo label, best known as the home of Black Sabbath). We also intend to review their first one, with the marvelous title of Dr. Siegel's Fried Egg Shooting Machine, which as you might guess is some pretty wild acid psych. We decided to list Goodbye first, though, just 'cause we can simply say it's a no-brainer for Blue Cheer fans.
Basically, this album is distinctly (even on cd) split between two sides, the first half recorded live, possibly at their farewell concert, we'd guess from the title. This in-concert portion is the heaviest, it's all bad ass fuzzed out blooze rawk swagger that makes us think Blue Cheer, Blue Cheer, Blue Cheer! (Also Grand Funk/Cactus/Mountain.) Hear 'em rile up a cheering crowd with these party-pleasers: "Leave Me Woman", "Rolling Down The Broadway" (a stompin' composition that appears in a studio version on their debut), Josea/King's "Rock Me Baby", and the twelve-minute-plus "Five More Pennies", which includes a drum solo in addition to all the acid guitar excess. Following all that, the studio half of the album gets a bit more proggy and wigged out (ending with a multi-part piece entitled "521 Seconds Schizophrenic Symphony"!) while also containing a couple of mellower melodic numbers, the sad and gentle "Out To Sea" and "Goodbye My Friends".
Members of Flied Egg also did time in some other hard rockin' underground Japanese psych acts whose reissues we've previously reviewed, including Strawberry Path and Brush!?... if you dig those, or the likes of FTB, Blues Creation, Speed Glue & Shinki, or Too Much, then Flied Egg is for you too.
Ahhh, Fredrik is helping us start our new year in the most lovely fashion with this new 3-song 7". Gauzily atmospheric, softly groovy, subtly folksy, hushed elegance. The central pair Fredrik Hultin and O. Lindefelt are now joined by vocalist / instrumentalist Anna Moberg, and the new sounds they are conjuring together are a glistening joy to hear, a glorious progression from the duo's already sparkling previous recordings - Na Na Ni and Trilogi. If you have a penchant for lush and dreamy sounds you can snuggle into and drift off to, you definitely must make a bee line for any and all music created by this Swedish trio (psst, a new full length is slated for March)! Limited vinyl pressing, the first installment in a new 7" series from seven year old indie label The Kora Records.
An unlikely split it might seem, to some ears at least, but as far as we're concerned, tough to go wrong with these two bands, and hell if more splits were based simply on two bands that rule and that we love, well, the world would be a much better place wethink!
Fucked Up give us a short blast of totally epic progressive punk rock, the way only they can do it, beginning with an opening salvo that is about as epic and majestic as it gets, brooding, slow building, total super heavy post rock bliss, before launching into the song proper, the vocals that instantly recognizable bellow, the guitars chiming and chugging, the song rocking and hypnotic, but super dynamic, with plenty of start/stops and a few stretches of blissed out almost krautrock sounding melodic tangle, before launching back into it. If only all punk rock was this weird/cool/good.
Norwegian drug/drone/space rock combo Serena-Maneesh counter with another jam of their twisted druggy psychedelic weirdness, equal parts droned out space rock, indie jangle, brooding dark drones, and totally twisted avant experimentalism, sounding a bit like a mash up, the buzzing heavy guitars, and chaotic drumming, underpinning, mumbled whispery vocals and keening psychedelic leads, the song peppered with shards of white noise and abrupt bursts of crunch and static, sounding almost like someone flipping switches, while the band rock out oblivious, totally heady, druggy, weird as fuck, space drone hypnorock outsider heaviness, that continues to rule. Not sure why more people don't worship at the altar of S-M, but hard for us to imagine anyone listening to this and not being converted. Fucking AMAZING!
Both tracks rule, and make it well worth the sorta steep price...
UK space rock combo Gnod definitely seem to have a thing for splits. Thankfully, they've shared most of those splits with some seriously kick ass bands, two with NYC psychedelic space rockers White Hills, one with riff heavy psych rockers Robedoor, and one with UK space doom outfit BONG, and now they team up with the until-now-unknown-to-us A Middle Sex, who definitely hold their own alongside Gnod, and amidst the elite split sharing brethren.
Two side long 45rpm jams, Gnod's is a sprawling expanse of swirling psychedelic shimmer, total blissed out slow burn kosmische drift, clouds of tinkling glimmering chimes, spidery tendrils of smoldering psych guitar, wailed vox WAY down in the mix and a pounding caveman beat that's not so much rhythmic as it is some sort of primal throb. The more we listen, the more it almost sounds like some twisted space rock version of Finnish forest freaks Avarus. Not a bad thing at all!
Eventually the track does attain some forward momentum, a lurching, lumbering, lysergic dirge, but by the time it does, things are already winding down.
A Middle Sex, who also call the UK home, do their own psychedelic space rock thing, which in their case is all about rhythm, after a brief swirl of kosmik krautsynth shimmer, the band launch into a seriously spaced out sprawl of tribal pound, a primitive Crash Worship style rhythm ritual, wreathed in streaks of keening feedback and swirling high end. The track gradually becomes enveloped in a haze of psychedelic guitarnoise, a Skullflowerish skree for sure, before settling back into a weirdly tranquil bit of drugged out drift, laced with strangely effected Buttholes style vox and more keening high end tones.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on nice heavy 140 gram vinyl.
A brand new solo record from Mr. Holtkamp, who besides crafting lovely droning blissed out records on his own, also plays in long time aQ faves Mountains. On this latest record, Holtkamp set out to document his shift from digital to analog, combining both live performances, and studio recordings into a single whole. That whole being these two extended tracks.
The first, combining synths, electronics, harmonica, organ, acoustic guitar and a glass of ginger ale (!). The result is hazy and washed out and a little pop ambient, muted minimal bits of percussive thump and crackle, hover over streaks of warm liquid low end and shimmering static buzz, a sound that seems to fall right between new age-y krautdrone and Oval's skittering sonic experiments, mesmerizing and subtly psychedelic, the various elements shifting slowly, a forward momentum that borders on glacial, but deep listening reveals a symphony of subtle shifts and gradually mutated tones and overtones, the timbre changing as well, from brittle and hissy, to warm and lush, the whole thing fantastically dreamy.
The second track, "Loosely Based On Bees" is in fact loosely based on bees, a field recording of actual bees made on a friend's roof, the various studio elements tuned to a sympathetic frequency so the organic sounds and electronic sounds would blend somewhat seamlessly, the sound shifting so it's difficult to discern which parts exactly are the bees, and which are the bee-like sounds. Hardly matters thought, cuz the whole thing is a warm, softly smoldering bit of deep dronemusic, tranquil and peaceful and surprisingly melodic, the sound of the bees eventually recedes and becomes more textural, leaving analog synths to unfurl undulating layers, which seem to pulse and throb, before eventually blossoming into a full on distorted buzz drenched psychedelic blowout, blissy and shoegazey and almost heavy, but still remaining melodic and cyclical until finally settling down into a warm whirring outro. As always, gorgeous stuff from Holtkamp.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, and packaged in a gorgeous letter pressed hand pasted sleeve.
From the same label that brought us the most recent record of dark apocalyptic folk from Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, comes this gorgeous bit of dreamy folkiness, recorded in an old stable in Belgium, Isbells create a lush softly strummed folky pop that reminds us of both Bon Iver and Iron And Wine. Mainman Gaetan Vandewoude has an impossibly gorgeous crystal clear voice, and has crafted the perfect musical backdrop for that voice, adding just the occasional bit of slide guitar, gentle horns here and there, scattered percussion, and spidery bits of extra melody, but for the most part, needing nothing but an acoustic guitar and his voice, the songs surprisingly lush, most warm and sun dappled, but occasionally, slightly dark and dreamily dramatic.
This is fast becoming a new favorite. Just listen to the sound samples, if you're anything like us, you'll be immediately smitten. So good!!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
The final set of songs from "folk song stylist", black minstrel showman and ramshackle one man blues band Abner Jay, as Mississippi continues to spread the word about this oft overlooked musical legend.
The tracks here are Jay's last recordings, all previously unreleased, including a new version of an old AJ classic, the sound is dramatically different too (on all but one of the tracks), as the one man band set up has been mostly left behind in favor of something much simpler, just acoustic guitar, harmonica and voice. The results are stunning, and posits an alternate reality, in which Jay, instead of telling crazy stories and jokes between songs, and performing his one man band schtick, was in fact simply a bluesman, a singer songwriter, as these songs display an impossible depth, so dark and sorrowful, melancholy and emotional. "I Cried" is heartbreaking, Jay's voice fragile yet still powerful, the music so sweetly sad. "Too Poor To Live, Too Poor To Die" is a classic slice of old time blues. The Jay classic "Cocaine Blues" gets reinterpreted as a much darker, more personal acoustic ditty, and "Love Wheel" is a dark and mysterious blues ballad. Finally, on "My Middle Name Is The Blues" Jay revisits the one man band one more time, that thick ominous riffing, simple foot driven drums, wheezing harmonica, his voice intense and commanding and so so so soulful.
A fantastic final missive from this legendary and unsung musical genius.
Super thick tip on sleeves, inside are two commemorative photos as well as a big booklet with incredible liner notes.
It seems like time for a rant again. Don't worry, I'll make it short. Roland Kirk is God! Or at least as much a god as Mingus, Sun Ra, Davis or Coltrane. So here's your chance to see what you've been missing. And what the majority of jazz fans can't get their narrow heads around: soulful, jazzy, funky, groovy, funny, soul shaking, gut busting, tear jerking brilliance from this musical genius. Master of every instrument he picked up (as well as a handful he invented!), able to play three horns at once (not as a gimmick, as a way to play three melodies), blind since birth and later suffering paralysis from a stroke, wandering around NYC with a huge wheeled staff with various horns duct-taped to it as well as a portable tape recorder that he used to record the sounds of the world and would sometime incorporate into live performances, a brilliant and funny orater, telling jokes and stories, ranting and testifying, preaching and proclaiming, and once even handing out cocaine to folks in the crowd. This man was remarkable. Musically, socially, personally. Unclear why he tends to get overlooked, and underappreciated by the majority of jazz fans. Too weird I guess. But I know that won't bother you (speaking here to YOU, the erudite AQ list subscriber) !!!
So it's always a happy day, when some new Kirk gem is unearthed, or some classic Kirk record gets the re-release/remaster treatment. So kudos to Collectables for reissuing 7 essential and timeless Kirk masterpieces. Some terrible design ideas though: the cheesy Collectables logo, HUGE ADS taking up whole pages in the cd booklets, and the 'Collectables Jazz Classics' tag line pasted everywhere over the original art, making them look like those bargain collections you find at truckstops or drugstores. But it's all about the music right....
1973's Prepare Thyself... album found Kirk mixing bop with cinematic soundscapes, bizarre vocalisations, bells and chimes and tribal percussion. The opening track is another barnstormer, totaly menacing and haunting, percussive and hypnotic. Why he was never hit up to score movies I'll never understand. The 10 minute Seasons was my introductionm to Roland Kirk, although the version I first heard was recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival documented on the live release Eye Aye I. A tripped out tribal intro gives way to summery fluttery flute improvisations. But the real attraction here is an epic 21 minute free jazz workout called "Saxophone Concerto", complete with ranting female testifying, Kirk and band swinging from bop to swing and bopping from swing to bop, often in the same passage. But the focal point is Kirk's endless, breathless, tenor sax, wailing and squealing and screeching for 20 minutes, until any normal man would have passed out. Or dropped dead.
Debut release from this Vivian Girls side project, and it most definitely sounds like it, gorgeous hazy Phil Spector-ish production, lush jangly guitars, simple stripped down drumming, and reverbed vocals, but La Sera does stand out in several ways, one is the addition of some strange (and lovely) synth melodies, which seem like they would clash with the overall throwback vibe, but somehow just make it sound more distinctive, and the other is the vocals, Katy Goodman aka La Sera sings here much more cleanly, her voice more ethereal and angelic, and the sounds definitely reflects that, conjuring up that nineties Slumberland vibe which meshes pretty perfectly with the Spector girl group sound. So nice!
This is not new, but we never listed it before and we've always been fans of Trevor Montgomery's (Tarentel, The Drift, Believer) solo downer folk-blues project Lazarus, and seeing that he had a stash left of these, we jumped at the chance to share this beauty with you.
Trickster from 2009 is the third album from Lazarus and it's just as beautiful and heart-wrenching as the previous ones. Like a folkier Nick Cave, Trevor's baritone gothic blues-tinged croon is more refined but no less weary. Backed by simple lyrical guitar, organ, bells and shimmering electro-acoustic tones, the well-written songs display a despairing majesty that show glimmers of hope and redemption.
Limited to 300 copies on swirly smoke or blood colored vinyl, each cover uniquely hand-painted. Trevor has significantly less than 300 left so we don't know how long these will stick around. Highly Recommended!
Any fan of heavy psychedelic music should already be hip to the mighty Liquorball. If you don't own their Fuck The Sky record, find it, you will NOT be sorry. Or hell, let's start a petition to get all the LB stuff re-issued! Anyway, Liquorball are still in fact a going concern, and unlike lots of bands that continue on well past their prime, Liquorball still sound as sick, and heavy and psychedelic as EVER. This lp captures the group live, at 29 Palms, presumably in some dive bar, a couple years back, tearing it up and blowing the roof off. Two side long jams that DESTROY. Super distorted and loose as fuck, tripped out and druggy, pounding and howling epic psychnoise blowout of the highest order. Guitars unleashing wild tangles of frenzied psychedelia over a relentlessly pounding rhythm, like some sort of Fushitsusha / Burnt Hills tag team match, endlessly rocking and totally mesmerizingly EPIC. The first side/track never lets up, launching right into it and shredding the whole side to bits, while the second side is a bit darker, a little more dynamic, but is essentially part two of LB's live set single song infinite psych-space-drug jam blowout!
Needless to say, anyone into heavy psych, needs EVERYTHING from these guys, and if you're into the current crop of psychedelic space rock, give this a listen and watch the rest of your space psych records cower in fear and shame!
LIMITED TO 540 COPIES!!!
As is the case with Aidan Baker and Nadja, it almost wouldn't seem like a proper aQ new arrivals list without the presence of�Machinefabriek, aka Rutger Zuydervelt, so we're quite relieved to have both. Actually, all three.�
This latest Machinefabriek recording captures three live performances, all in Amsterdam, recorded between 2006 and 2008 all looooong, the shortest 16 minutes, the longest 22.�
All three performances find Machinefabriek in fine form, offering up thick billows of warm guitar shimmer, fluttery staticky ambience, and at one point some uncharacteristically heavy super distorted metallic guitar, but here, it's not so much metal as simply a mighty drone, thick and throbbing and super intense. There are long stretches of near silence and super minimal high end drone, glimmering slow building crescendos, squalls of distorted choral buzz, warm whirring metallic reverberations, shimmery almost new age and dense black dronemusik, all the stuff we love about Machinefabriek, BUT, and this is what makes this disc so good, is that live, while still being dynamic and subtle, Zuydervelt also proves to me way more intense and aggressive than on his recordings. And thus, we must recommend!
LIMITED TO 180 COPIES!
One half of avant experimental dronescapers the Starving Weirdos strikes out on his own, teaming up with some other mysterious noisemaker to form Manilapede and craft this disc of 'dune rock', which is essentially a Starving Weirdos record writ buzzing and black, super distorted and blown out. A series of thick undulating drones, cobbled together from dense churning slo-mo metal riffage, buried hiss-like skree, which to these ears sounds like some sort of barely recognizable vokills, peppered with bits of weird percussion (which on the opening track sounds like someone hitting a chainlink fence with a two-by-four), Manilapede are basically some sort of avant-SUNNO))), and "Peninsula Overdrive" lays out their modus operandi pretty perfectly, a sprawling buzzscape, roils and grinds, the sounds so distorted they seem to ooze, the low end rumble and thrum, impossibly thick, shot through with streaks of high end melody, wrapped around the aforementioned chainlink fence percussion, it's a creepy, haunting bit of mysterious dronedirgedoom, that barring its experimental leanings, holds up pretty damn well alongside the various more metal practitioners of similar sounding heaviness. And that opening track is good enough that we would have been perfectly happy if the whole record was just an hour of that and nothing else.
Thankfully, the rest of the record is essentially variations of that same sound, multiple movements in a singular sprawling epic songsuite, trancelike riffs are blurred and smeared and stretched into loooooong streaks, then layered and set to undulating, various bits of crunch and glitch and hiss are harnessed to form skeletal rhythms, giving the proceedings an obliquely industrial vibe, glacial and corrosive, buzzy and fuzzy and near static, dune rock is essentially a more experimental drone metal, a sort of modern minimalism applied to the new wave of dirge/drone/doom, and the results we are happy to report, are as awesome as you might imagine. Hypnotic and heavy, droney and dark, murky and mesmerising and in its own way, pretty fucking metal.
"On a cold Spring morning, around AD 30, a man was hung on a tree, upon a mound of dirt, this is his story, of a man named God."
And so it begins, the latest batch of Christian baiting musical propaganda from weirdo UK black metal outfit Meads Of Asphodel, and what might be their most fully realized record, both conceptually and musically, is also not surprisingly their most bizarre, and least black metal. But to be fair, Meads were never your typical black metal band, whether it be jamming out on punk covers, getting a member of Hawkwind to join their grim horde, or infusing their blasting blackness with loads of space rock Frippery and distinctly un-black metal swoops and swirls and fucked up sonic weirdness. It's of course what makes us love these guys so much. Not to mention their hilarious / irreverent approach to playing an inately grim and true and kvlt style of music.
The Murder Of Jesus The Jew plays like an Off-Broadway musical, if someone decided to combine a wildly sacrilegious rant and twisted black metal into an Andrew Lloyd Weber style spectacle, and while we wish some day someone would, this is most likely about as close as we're gonna get. And right from the start, this is like no black metal record you've heard, after that haunting narration, the record blossoms into a strange cabaret, like old timey European street music, all horns, and strings, and orchestral bombast, it's not hard to imagine a cobblestone street, and a candlelit tavern, the motley collection of patrons being entertained by this strange musical combo, decked out in full armor, until suddenly, they launch into a blast of buzzing howling black metal, which lasts less than a minute until the horns come in, and the song shifts to a much more major key sounding melody, and then you realize, if you stripped away the blasting drums and the buzzing guitars, you'd still be back in some cabaret stage production, an evil / anti-Christian version of Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar. Sounds bizarre, and it is, so bizarre, we imagine lots of black metallers will be put off big time, but for the rest of us, this is some twisted, genius shit. And twisted it is, there's not a stretch of buzzing blackness that makes it more than a minute without any weird sonic impudence, usually in the form of a swoonsome melodic bit of overly dramatic balladry, or some sweetly soaring female vocals, those parts so dramatic, and SO good, they really COULD be from some musical...
"My Psychotic Sand Deity" flits back and forth between horn laced black metal, to that sort of end-of-the-show schmaltzy big finish, where everyone holds hands and sways back and forth, but it's Meads, so that sweet sunshiney tranquility is shattered in the last few seconds by a burst of black metal that is about as black and frenzied as it gets.
And so it goes, a gloriously schizophrenic sonic treatise on the myth of God, and the foolishness of his followers, told in the form of the REAL life story of God, complete with more ominous narration, buzzing black electronics, soaring strings, swirling new agey keyboards, creepy monk like chants, twisted apocalyptic folk ("Stiller Of Tempests" almost sounds like Woven Hand via Godspell, but a bit more evil), "Dark Gethsemane" is a swoonsome shuffling dark pop ballad, but it's quickly followed by "Jew Killer", which is a creepy crawly chunk of lurching, lumbering, atmospheric doom, and it continues to veer wildly from atmospheric power metal classic rock epicness, to bouncy Pogues style drunken metal folk, back to some buzz and blast, and then again to something more black metal Broadway sounding. And finally, the band close the show, with the ridiculously titled "A Canticle for the Lost Amputees of Aelia Capitolina Who Have Been Trampled Under the Iron Shod Hooves of Salivating Hell Rams and Impaled on the Shimmering Tusks of Salvation Within The Abandoned Tabernacle Of A Bronze Age Myth", which according to the liner notes, is sung in ancient Aramaic, and is of course a lengthy twisted bit of warped cabaret laced, piano and electronics flecked, super dramatic, epic and melodic over the top (only sort of black metal) weirdness, and the perfect finish, to a dazzling, bafflingly brilliant record. As absurd as it seems, we would kill for someone to make this into a proper musical, stranger things have happened. Well, okay, not THAT much stranger.
As always the core group of Metatron (posing in the booklet, in full armor, with his dog!), J.D. Tait and Vrakbarameel, augment their merry band of armored metal soldiers with a sprawling selection of guests, no less than 14 this time around, including Hoest from black metal horde Taake, Mirai and Dr. Mikannibal from weirdo Japanese metallers Sigh, and Alan Davey from Hawkwind (of course) among many many others. Includes a massive booklet, with tons of photos, and a 'program' with lyrics so you can follow along!
MPEG Stream: "My Psychotic Sand Deity" [/audio/meadsoamurmypsy.m3u]
Similar to how The Soft Moon delivered on the amazing promise of their first two 7"s with their recent aQ Record Of The Week debut full length, Minks have managed the same feat, their brand new full length offering us everything their 7"s got us hoping for.
Dreamy blissed out pop that sparkles with such a suave touch and an impressive dynamic range. In fact as much as we loved the 7"s it did seem like maybe the Minks were just gonna be another band tapping into that of '80s and '90s shoegaze sound, but with By The Hedge, Minks demonstrate they have surprisingly wide sonic horizons and have added some serious depth and scope to their sound. It's an album that really has it all, from totally catchy warped pop nuggets, to subdued and stoney daydream moments. While pulling of course, from My Bloody Valentine, The Cure, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Field Mice, Slowdive, Ride, and even Ariel Pink, Minks have found a way to take those influences and make something very much their own. It's an album that we dig more and more with repeated listens. We really do think there is something to be said for what folks like Minks and Soft Moon have done in releasing a few 7"s before jumping into a full length, as both parties were able to take their time with the origins of their creation to make an album without any filler or throwaways. So damn good!
Record number three from Travis Graves aka Mt. Egypt, and we now find ourselves wondering how we never heard, or heard of, Mt. Egypt before now? Apparently he's toured with Band Of Horses, Cat Power, The Flaming Lips, hell, even Willie Nelson. And as we mentioned above, this is his THIRD record. We're definitely kicking ourselves for only just catching on, but we're doing our best to make up for lost time, listening to this like crazy...
The music of Mt Egypt is a darkly delicate, introspective folk, simple and spare, warm and languid, a hazy sun dappled back porch summer afternoon sound, ethereal steel string guitar shimmer, wrapped in warm tendrils of muted melody, all with a subtly psychedelic cast. The sound is mostly acoustic guitar and vocals, but really nothing else is needed. It's all about the songs, and the voice. The songs themselves are practically perfect, sparse and spacious and stripped down, delicate and hushed, mysteriously and subtly catchy, the hooks are there, but they're hazy and indistinct, and hover in the background, the catchiness an afterthought to the mood, and the emotions, a gentle classic poppiness that informs Mt Egypt's skeletal country folk, and Graves' voice is the perfect match, plaintive and keening, slipping from a weary whisper to a mournful croon, somewhere between Neil Young and Songs:Ohia's Jason Molina. Grave's vocals occasionally woven into angelic harmonies, draped over elegiac stretches of minimal strum and drift. Broken hearted, twang flecked introspective folk, that is simply lovely. And is most definitely recommended for fans of Palace Brothers / Will Oldham, Fleet Foxes, Band Of Horses, Iron & Wine, Mount Eerie, Songs:Ohia, Rocky Votolato, Vetiver, Bon Iver and other similarly dark and introspective folk...
LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES!!!!
You think by now, that after a million or so releases, we'd be sick of Nadja, and could nor possibly need/want another record to add to our already overflowing Nadja collection, but somehow, we just never get sick of it, and love pretty much everything we hear, and still get excited when we hear about a new record, and every one seems to sound better than the last, what's not to love? Heavy, spacey, doomy, droney, shoegazey...
This latest sonic missive is another gem, a sidelong epic of hazy, druggy, rhythmic, almost krautrocky minimal post rock doom drift, but the thing is, it never gets loud, or heavy, whereas most Nadja jams eventually explode into a roiling crushing blissed out wall of heaviness, this one refrains, instead, loping, and drifting, and shimmering, and pulsing hypnotically, while all around the main riff and the simple motorik rhythm, backwards sounds swoop and swirl, guitar drones are layered and blurred, the bass sticks close to the drum machine, a solid anchor for the various other sounds to hover and float, the whole thing an endlessly mesmerizing chunk of softly shoegazey krautdrone slowcore. So good.
Nadja get teamed up here with someone called Armchair Migraine Journey, who counter Nadja's sidelong epic with one of their own, a field of glimmering, chiming, shimmering guitars, melodies and chords and notes swirl and shift and merge and tangle, all over a bed of low end hum, peppered with occasional echo drenched, deep and dramatic vocals, giving the sound a bit of a cold wave / gothic vibe, but only briefly, as the vocals drift off, and the tangle of guitars take over again. The side finishes off with a coda of minimal metallic buzz and haunting music box melodies. Pretty great stuff, and a good match for the Nadja track, which definitely ranks among their best.
And the packaging, WOW. A super fancy, super heavy black sleeve, printed in metallic silver, with a printed insert and pressed on thick thick vinyl. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Another long out of print warehouse find, this one released on Seedy-R, an offshoot of Antony Milton's Pseudo Arcana label, and again featuring avant guitarist Anthony Guerra, here teamed up with drummer Matthew Nidek, for a 23 minute abstract drone/free-noise/psychedelic workout. Hard to say which is the focal point here, so we'll go with both, the guitar is fiery and fierce, alternatingly unfurling thick sheets of SUNNO))) like drone or white hot streaks of Haino-esque howl, slipping from spare and minimal to blurred and burly and almost blackened, the drums locked in tight every step of the way, skittering intricately, occasionally offering up bursts of rhythmic crunch, but always slipping right back into the skree, the sound is heavy and intense, and manages to get louder and louder and more blown out as the record progresses, until finally exploding in a cloud of near white noise skree, which eventually splinters into a stumbling abstract detuned outro, that manages to retain much of the preceding ferocity, recasting as something more warped and brooding.
ULTRA LIMITED, and way out of print. We have 4 or 5 of these and then THAT'S IT!
Another warehouse find (which in our case actually means closet find, since our 'warehouse' is in fact, more like a closet, well, it actually IS a closet, anyway...), we discovered a stash of the 2007 full length from black metal horde Obscurus Advocam, whose name might not be all that familiar, but the members of OA have done time in a couple other black metal groups we've raved about in the past, Glorior Belli and Wolfe. And c'mon, they're French, and we have a serious thing for French black metal, and as one might expect, fans of Deathspell Omega would do well to check out OA's swirling darkened black metal progginess, not nearly as next level and head spinning as DSO, OA nonetheless weave sprawling epics rife with tangled riffage, sinister moodiness, mathy intricate arrangements, LOTS of bass, and some killer grim vox, all wound into slow burning blackness, that tends more toward the creep and the midtempo, than the all out blast, but fear not metalheads, some serious buzz and blast is peppered throughout, but it's what's between that makes this stuff so cool, moody and murky, haunting and creepy, melodic and sorrowful, but still seriously and satanically grim. Had we reviewed this back in 2007, this would most definitely have been a contender for black metal record of the year, as it is, if you somehow missed this, now's the time to right that wrong.
Finally available on cd, the previously vinyl-only debut lp from former Harry Pussy guitarist Bill Orcutt. And as we mentioned in our review of the lp, don't be expecting a blown out noise record, instead, this is solo guitar, Orcutt's take on Fahey, although his take is decidedly more twisted and chaotic and idiosyncratic and NOISY. The cd version features a bunch of bonus tracks not on the original vinyl (but more on those later)...
When we first got the lp in, we couldn't keep it in stock, we kept having to postpone reviewing it in fact, 'cause every time a new list Friday would roll around, we'd discover that we had sold out again and would have to wait for Orcutt to drop off more records, when the same thing would happen again. We finally got enough to list and review and they blew out of here, and again, we'd sell 'em as fast as we could get 'em in, until finally there were no more to be had.
Thankfully the cd version is less limited and should ne a wee bit more available. But now you're probably asking yourself, what's so great about this, why have they been flying out of here? Maybe it's 'cause this was picked by the editors of The Wire as number 3 in their top 50 albums of 2009. Or maybe 'cause so many AQ customers have an unhealthy obsession with the seminal underground '90s no wavey noise rock outfit that Orcutt used to abuse his guitar in, the notorious Harry Pussy. But this is pretty far from the skronk and spazz of HP. Well, it's still noisy in its way, but what Orcutt is playing here on this solo guitar album is "the blues". In an "American (very) Primitive" style. That's right, it's kinda the Harry Pussy version of John Fahey or something. Totally tangled, out there improvs from a guy who's really really feeling it, you can tell.
His steel string acoustic guitar is only strung with four strings (missing the two in the middle, apparently, who needs 'em) and it's recorded up close and personal, played in a choppily percussive, and definitely emotive way. Appalachian angst that's sometimes stark, the background hum or tape hiss somehow somber, but mostly crowded with energetic bluesy bursts of notes spilling all over themselves, punctuated by occasional yelps and hollers as the spirit moves him. Imagine an agitated, ADD old timey outsider artist on Mississippi, also part Tetuzi Akiyama, part Jandek...
Sure, there's some folks who might bring out the hoary old argument that "I could play like that too". But they didn't, and Orcutt did, and we're digging it! Definitely for fans of avant electric guitar freakouts - even though this is all-acoustic!
The cd version tacks on six bonus tracks, two from a 7" single we never even saw (or heard) and 4 unreleased tracks exclusive to this release, and if anything, the extra tracks are alternatingly more melodic and pretty, more intense and frenzied, but they all sound cut from the same fucked up, outsider psychedelic guitar freakout cloth. So awesome!
