Hails to Hells Headbangers, the label is on a roll lately, bringing us long-awaited new releases by two of the most outre of AQ metal faves: Ominous Doctrines Of The Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm by black metal aberrations Inquisition (Record Of The Week last list) and this, the more simply titled Stoned, from psychedelic doomsters Acid Witch! It's their 2nd full-length, after the now out of print debut Witchtanic Hellucinations we cackled over a couple of years back. Once more, Shagrat and Slasher Dave (minus Finnish friend Lasse Pyykko, who wasn't actually the main guy in the band as it turns out) have stirred up a bubbling cauldron of tripped out, horror-loving metal that draws upon their love of old school death metal, doom, fright flicks, and drugs! They say it best themselves: "Metal, punk, comic books, and horror vhs / Nothing else to live for so you might as well obsess / Discovering books of power on the arcane and occult / Eating psilocybin leaves you feeling quite possessed" (lyrics from their song "Stoned To The Grave"). Now, we're not gonna say if we condone that lifestyle or not, but we sure do like the sick, slightly tongue in cheek music that results!! And if you can appreciate a song title like "Metal Movie Marijuana Massacre Meltdown", then you'll probably like this album and band. THAT song features another verse we've just got to quote: "Seen these movies so many times / Turn off the volume cause I know all the lines / So fucking high, just let the stereo play / But only if it's Lizzy Borden or Fastway." Sheer poetry to our ears. However, Acid Witch themselves sound a lot more underground than those '80s metal bands they mention, the Hellhammer poster and Bulldozer t-shirt in the band photo represent more likely '80s inspirations.
So, if you've heard their debut, you what to expect. After an intro of Goblin-y keyboards and looped samples, the album kicks into metallic gear with track two, "Witchfynder Finder", a song about turning the tables on Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General. It's a catchy juggernaut, sounding not unlike Cathedral or Electric Wizard (or Pykko's band Hooded Menace) riding Hawkwind's "Silver Machine". One of the many killer cuts here with skull caving riffery and fuzzed out guitars. Those Goblin-y keys return later on the eerie "Whispers In The Dark" and elsewhere... while in "Live Forever" the keyboards take on more of a Deep Purplish hue! All in all, a heavy, rockin', horror show of guttural vokills, '70s Sabbathry, and spooky-ooky atmospheres.
Their favorite holiday is obviously Halloween. October is a long way off but if you like Halloween too, Acid Witch have a treat for you right now. Buy this along with that Wooden Stake / Blizaro split also highlighted this week, and your inner psych doom freak monster will be well fed.
All right! We're happy to report that Rise Above Relics is back in business, with an impressive new batch of proto-metal reissues including albums by Steel Mill and Necromandus... gotta get 'em all reviewed, but we're gonna start with a Bang. A box set of Bang, in fact. We've long stocked the self-released cd reissues of this early '70s American answer to Black Sabbath, but THIS is the definitive Bang reish for sure. Physically much nicer than those previous reissues, this handsome yellow box contains all 4 of Bang's full-lengths on 4 individual cds in mini-lp style gatefold sleeves, plus bonus material, and a thick (40 page) booklet stuffed with detailed liner notes and photos... and there's a Bang sticker too!
Essential for Bang fans, and that means all lovers of '70s heavy psych rock action. Here's a revamp of what we had to say about Bang before, when we reviewed each album:
Dust, Captain Beyond, Jerusalem, Toad, Pentagram, Highway Robbery, T2, Buffalo, Budgie, Blue Cheer, Lucifer's Friend...if these names mean anything to you, you're probably one of our customers who dig that heavy '70s acid rock proto-metal stuff. Whenever we find a reissue of another lost gem from the era we try to share it with you. So, here, at last... the legendary Bang, a trio from Florida (by way of Philly) circa '71-'73 who managed to crank out some Sabbath-like riffing to go with the very Ozzy-like vocals of lead singer and bassist Frank Ferrara!
Bang never got big - although they did share stages with everyone from Alice Cooper to the Allman Brothers to Chuck Berry to Funkadelic to Black Sabbath themselves, apparently had a #1 hit in Hong Kong and at one point owned their own private plane! They released three albums in their career (for a US major label in fact) plus they recorded some singles and made an entire unreleased album as well.
As we said, Bang, especially on their first self-titled album, recorded in February of '72, bore a remarkable resemblance to the Sabs, which was really unusual for their era, when heavy bands were more likely to copy Zeppelin or Purple or just be stuck in the '60s. Kinda lo-fi, but quite heavy, it delivers doomy hard rock, with a kinda Comus-y Pagan slant, that also brings to mind the most powerful early King Crimson. Like most heavy bands of the period, Bang weren't cognizant of the "metal" concept, and probably saw themselves as a pop rock group - a dark and psychedelic pop rock group to be sure - and so sometimes the hard riffing lets up to allow for some happier or more gentle fare, which is not always a bad thing anyway (this a phenomenon we discussed in our review of the Dust albums once upon a time).
Bang's second album, which followed later in '72 (groups back then didn't dilly dally with putting out one album every couple of years like today's bands) was oddly presented as two distinct side-long mini-albums, each with its own 'front' cover. Side one (the heavier) being "Mother" with side two dubbed "Bow To The King". Both sides together were not as Sabbathy as the debut perhaps, but still excellent '70s proto-metal indeed.
They then went to Hollywood in '73 to cut Bang Music, their third album. It's quite a bit more of your standard '70s rock/pop fare, not nearly as heavy as their earlier efforts. But it's nicely melodic and has a few rockin' tracks on it, like opener "Windfair".
Then we step back chronologically a couple of years for the conceptual Death Of A Country, which was Bang's never-released first album, recorded in 1971 prior to their self-titled debut. With visions of societal corruption and ecological disaster, this album's doom-filled lyrics are certainly Sabbathian, although the music really doesn't get as apocalyptically heavy as what they came up with on Bang. But still, a decent slab of downer psych-rock, more '60s hippie than '70s metal.
True heavy music connoisseurs really need this 4th disc, though, for the two of the three "lost singles" included: the tracks "Slow Down" and "Feels Nice". They're the highlights here for sure. "Slow Down" woulda fit in well on their debut, while "Feels Nice" has more of Led Zep vibe. As an additional bonus, Rise Above have included a half-hour radio interview.
Bang's slogan was always "Music Shot From Guns". Of their albums, it's the first two, Bang and Mother - Bow To The King, that definitely use the higher caliber ordnance. But the other two discs here also get off some good shots. And the whole package is a huge improvement over the band's previous official reissues that we stocked, not to mention the bootleg editions that have also circulated. More room for the art, better design, and the other goodies in the box.
One of the best unsung heavy rock acts ever, finally gets the box set they deserve. BANG!
We've long been a fan of Bardo Pond, but this new record definitely took a few listens to get into. The response everyone seemed to have was "this sounds really WAY out of tune", and it does, sort of. Right from the outset, the group unfurl some woozy warbly strummy twang flecked psych folk, the strings buzzing and tangling, the melodies, shifting and intertwining, the vocals sounding sort of out of sync with the music, the bassline warped and underwater sounding, the drums an abstract scatter of beats, but as that first song continues, the vocals sink into the mire, harmonica begins to wheeze, the sounds of birds (?) surface, and the guitars, gradually grow more and more intense, first smoldering, before gradually catching fire, and finally exploding, and then the band are KILLING it, a huge squall of swirling, super distorted, wild and loose and chaotic druggy droned out psych guitar freakout, the drums pounding, everything twisted and sprawling and lit from within like some sort of sonic supernova, revealing the group's true purpose, the vocals returning, now sounding perfect, multitracked and nestled within the coruscating sheets of crumbling distortion and pealing blown out leads. The sort of epic dreamlike drugged out jam you never want to end. And that's how the band introduce their latest full length, their self titled their eighth proper full length, nearly two decades into their career, and they still sound as loose and free and psychedelic and heavy as ever. If not more so.
The rest of the record follows suit, "Don't Know About You" launches into a thick crusty chunky bit of riffage, the vocals witchy and snarly, the perfect match for the group's super distorted groove, everything still wreathed in streaks of effects and guitarnoise, and like the track before it, blossoming into some seriously heady psychedelia, surprisingly melodic too, the guitar tone epic, thick and blown out, almost Kyuss-y, that same sort of fuzz and crunch, and the more we listen, the more this sounds like BP at their most songy, sure most of the record is spent unfurling epic space out mega jams, but they're wrapped around dirgey downer pop, some weird hybrid of the Stooges, the Velvets and Crazy Horse, but dosed and doused and let loose, to billow up in great clouds of heaviness, of swirling trippiness. "Sleeping" offers a little respite, all hazy acoustic guitars and warm fluttering flutes, some woozy, acid folk drift, but it's not long before the band launch into the 21 minute "Undone", a warbly slow build, backwards guitars and angelic vox, all over simple folk strum, the track gradually expanding, the drums not even entering the picture until more than halfway through, but when they do, and the guitars finally let loose, it's glorious, the vocals crooning beneath clouds of lightning bolt guitar, and jagged shards of effects drenched melody.
"Cracker Wrist" might be the heaviest of the bunch, but it starts out deceivingly dreamy, all layered drones and gauzy shimmer, but after a few minutes, the riffs come fast and furious, locked tight with the pounding drums, a mesmerizing bit of krauty drone rock heaviness, again the guitars going wild, and wrapping everything in tangles of melody and fragmented drug drenched shred. "The Stars Behind" is another ballady number, but it wouldn't be BP if it too wasn't eventually enveloped by ropy blasts of grinding guitars, and soaring sheets of blown out psych swirl, the record finally finishing off with the comparatively tame "Wayne's Tune", all warbly melodies, angular guitars, shuffling drums, no big build, no explosive catharsis, instead, just hazy and droney and dreamily druggy.
After some initial (and unfounded it seems) trepidation, this is turning out to be one of the best Bardo Pond records in ages. Killer, very metal, cover art too, all black and silver with some strange black shapes and a new spidery drippy BP metal style logo!
We knew it was only a matter of time before the ethereal magic of Julianna Barwick's music would capture the attention and imagination of the underground music scene. After two utterly gorgeous self released albums, Asthmatic Kitty wisely stepped up to sign her and release this brand new stunning set of songs, which finds Barwick's sound becoming even more pristine and dreamy. Alongside Grouper, Barwick really is doing wonders to channel the ethereal magic of 4AD's sound via Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, and Cocteau Twins. Magic Place wastes no time heading right for the sky, which is where Barwick's songs always reside. Daydream reflections, moon worship hymns, sun cycle observations, close your eyes and let these sounds take you wherever they may. Beyond beautiful!
The tape loop that William Basinski sources on A Red Score In Tile, dates back to 1979 during that manic period in Basinski's life when he was cataloguing shortwave radio noises, bittersweet sounding moments in muzak's mood engineering, and various piano extracts - all of which ending up on tape loops in the way that a lot of people build photo collections of the events, people, and places around them. But beginning around 1998, Basinski began to transcribe those tape loops digitally, finding an immense source for his future compositions that all heavily incorporate the slow-motion, sleepwalking murkiness of those original tape loops to their fullest advantage within his elliptical hypnosis of emotive tone and drone.
He actualized A Red Score In Tile first in 2003 for a piece of vinyl issued by the Chalk / Heemann label Three Poplars; of course, it quickly went out of print. This new cd version is a slightly different mix (only in that the piece isn't split over two sides, tracking instead about 45 minutes or so).
But for that tape loop, we're told the sole source is a piano, but it could have easily come from some of the bleak incidental music that Lalo Schifrin composed on the Rhodes for Dirty Harry. It's also incredibly prescient of the blackened 'horror jazz' from Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. This loop might only be cycling through an endless repetition, but it really doesn't sound that way. An atmosphere of urban decay hangs upon these broken notes, amplified by the vaporous reverb that oozes in, through, above, and below Basinski's sound. Of course, Basinski's music has long spoken of the elegant corrosion of sound, spoken most concisely through his epic Disintegration Loops series. But where the physical act of disintegration mirrors that of the sound itself, the sonic decay of A Red Score In Tile is spellbindingly subtle, and might actually be a grand illusion sparked by Basinksi's part works and deft ability to make a simple tape loop sublime. As a result, A Red Score In Tile is a stunning disc, one that ranks very highly within Basinski's always impressive catalog of recordings. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
What comes to mind when you think of The Bee Gees? Saturday Night Fever? Disco? White suits? 30 years of cheesy disco dancing to "Stayin' Alive"? The awesome(ly atrocious) film version of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? SNL's "Barry Gibb Talk Show"? Probably all of those things.
Which is too bad, 'cuz if it weren't for all that stuff, maybe you'd think instead of lush melancholy experimental pop music, incredible vocal harmonies, horns, strings, orchestras, mellotrons, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Zombies...
Some of you probably have no idea what the heck we're on about, but well before disco and Saturday Night Fever and all that, way back in 1967, the Bee Gees were crafting some of the loveliest, most compellingly mysterious pop music around. With a sound that borrowed from other bands of the time, most notably the aforementioned big three, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Zombies, but incorporated those influences into a sound that was distinctly their own. A sound at times gorgeously classic sounding, and at others surprisingly strange and dark and experimental.
The influence of the Beatles and the Beach Boys is undeniable. The song "Please Read Me" is incredibly Beach Boys-esque, and marks the first time the group would employ falsetto vocal harmonies, obviously influenced by Brian Wilson, and which would of course become their trademark. And the cover of 1st is by the artist Klaus Voorman, who of course also designed the Beatles' Revolver. But scratch a little below the surface, and there is so much more. A musical world of dreamlike, melancholy psychedelia.
"Holiday" is a brooding and moody dirge, with haunting organ swells, and pizzicato strings, with soft horns and simple percussion, and a gorgeous vocal melody, as well as a strange and impossibly catchy bridge with simple nonsense vocals. Then there's "Red Chair, Fade Away" a dreamy, rainbow hued blast of psychedelic pop, blissed out and trippy, with tons of layered production, fuzzy guitars, jazzy horns, fluttering flute, all wrapped in a stained glass production, peppered with circusy calliopes and soaring strings.
But two of the tracks on 1st really stand out. Lovely and catchy, but so dark and emotionally intense. The first is "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You", which begins with minor key strings over monk-like chanting background vocals, before the Strawberry Fields vocals kick in, over a shuffled rhythm and some deliriously fuzzy psych guitar, with the chanting vocals resurfacing throughout the song before it fades into a truly haunting outro, just those strings and some heavily reverbed drums that stumble into the darkness. The other is the amazingly monickered "New York Mining Disaster 1941" with it's haunting nearly a capella verses (backed up by barely audible guitar strumming WAY down in the mix), jangly guitars, throbbing simple percussion, the whole track mournful and melancholy, the minor key brightening briefly for the chorus before drifting baack into haunting melancholia. The track is laced with strange funereal strings, and again the vocals are just so beautiful, lush and dreamy.
The rest of the record is just as fantastic, every song a strange gem, it's difficult to pick which ones to mention, you'll of course recognize "To Love Somebody", which while not a huge hit for them (although it did crack the top 20), has become an international pop standard, and was originally a track the band wrote for Otis Redding, but their version is the best, so lush and rife with layer after layer of instrumentation, as well as some amazing melodic flourishes left off subsequent cover versions, then there's "Cucumber Castle" with its super dramatic strings, Spanish sounding trumpets, moaning cellos, and bizarre player piano background trills, all behind a main melody that is so unbelievably catchy... we could go on and on and on. Needless to say, it's difficult to not go all gushy and declare this as one of the all time greatest pop records. But what the heck, it is! Listen to this enough and you just may banish all thoughts of white suits and light up dancefloors from your head forever!
Gorgeously elaborate reissue, in a full color 8 panel digipak, full color with tons of amazing photos, a massive booklet also packed with photos, with lengthy liner notes, as well as notes on each track from the surviving members. The first disc contains the full version of the album, in both stereo AND mono, the second disc contains 9 alternate and early versions (including two dramatically different versions of "New York Mining Disaster 1941") as well as 5 unreleased tracks, most of which are as good as anything on the album proper!
Two stunning new songs from Bonnie Prince Billy and The Cairo Gang. "New Wonder" is a solemn and mournful tear jerker that ranks to the top of any of Will Oldham's most affecting tracks of all time and that's saying a lot! "Island Brothers" will be familiar sounding to anyone who has seen the band in the last year or so as it's become a staple of their live sets. With the profits of this record going to help in the efforts to get clean filtered water into Haiti, still struggling in the aftermath of the recent disaster, it's just further proof that Oldham is not just a class act, but still one of the best songwriters of his generation.
A must have for Oldham fans!
Dunno if Darkthrone's Fenriz is into Cauldron or not, but we're gonna quote him here anyway: CANADIAN METAL!! Yes, the Cauldron boys are back, with the eagerly awaited Burning Fortune. As fans of the band, or anyone taking a glance at the cover image (demonic woman emerging from sports car) might guess, it's another slice of awesomely, unapologetically '80s styled retro-metal from this Toronto based trio, now consisting of Jason Decay on bass and vocals, Ian Chains on guitar, and new drummer Chris Steve. We loved Cauldron's Earache debut a couple years back, Chained To The Nite, and this is a perfect sequel. Massively melodic, whilst being moderately menacing. Nostalgic, yet fresh and energetic. Once again, catchy stuff that absolutely does not shy away from metal's former glories in the pop arena.
That's what we like so much about Cauldron - they're just about the only one, among the many current "new school of old school" metal acts, who aren't too cool to take non-ironic inspiration from the best of the long-gone glammy "hair metal" brigades, while keeping it hard and heavy at the same time. Nobody else sounds like this anymore. Sure, it can be a bit cheesy but that's how they wanna be, and that doesn't preclude 'em from conveying some real emotion. And, like they did last time with their version of Black 'N Blue's "Chains Around Heaven", they add to their old school cred with another cool cover, this time of a song by obscure Detroit horror metallers Halloween.
Admittedly, if you were to spin this and then immediately follow it with, say, some vintage Kick Axe, Helix, or Sword (just to mention a few '80s bands also from Canada), Cauldron might not quite measure up, but they come close, the main issue being that Jason Decay can't exactly hang with the likes of those classics in the vocals dep't, though his are decent enough here. And headbangers should certainly be satisfied with the shreddin' guitars (check out Ian Chains' solo spot "Unchained Assault"), along with some substantial bursts of speed now and then ("Rapid City", ferinstance).
Also cool: for some reason, Earache has continued the tradition of putting out Cauldron albums at a bargain price, this one's only $8.98, about what a cassette or lp of this would have cost if it had actually been released back in the '80s, like it sounds!
Deep hitting soul filled burners belted out with such conviction and rounded out with jazz flourished glory. Released in 1972, this lost gem is finally getting the reissue it deserves, as fans of Northern soul and soulful female vocalists are bound to fall deeply in love with Alice Clark, if they haven't already. With arrangements and instrumentation that draws heavily from jazz in an almost space age bachelor pad kind of way, this is a record that is as much about Clark's commanding vocals as it is all the rich organs, tambourines and deep deep grooves. We're reminded a lot of the Voices Of East Harlem, The Staple Singers and Lynn Collins. That's pretty damn sweet company to be in, and Alice Clark holds her ground just fine!
A few lists back we went apeshit over some mysterious band of musical miscreants called the Violent Students, who made an unholy din like we hadn't heard since the glory days of the Butthole Surfers. Damaged and filthy and freaked out, a druggy chaotic punk sludge mess that just totally blew our minds. We recently discovered that some of those very same Students were doing time in the band Clockcleaner so we figured we oughta check them out as well, and so glad we did! For CC, the all out chaos has been reeled in a bit and while the result is less fractured and less completely unhinged, it's still pretty demented and manic, but way more song oriented with some KILLER riffs. When we first threw this one, the first thing we thought was the Cars meet Flipper. Which pretty much describes our dream band. But the more we listened the more we felt like we were slipping back in time, to that special moment, that only lasted a few years, where the Amphetamine Reptile label could do no wrong. Clockcleaner could easily have existed right there between the God Bullies, Halo Of Flies, Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost and all the rest. The record starts off with some weirdly eighties metal riffing, like the intro to some Ratt song, before the whiney Jello like vocals kick in, and the whole thing lurches into action with plenty of Buttholes tribal pound, Jesus Lizard groove and a decade's (the nineties) worth of Amphetamine fueled fury. Plus some amazing song titles ("Missing Dick", "Gentle Swastika", "Interview With A Black Man", "Blood Driver") and some problematic poop smeared cover art, but they had us at the Cars meet Flipper!
So much awesome pop on this week's list, The Disciplines, Yuck, Telekinesis!, and this, the latest from Cleveland fuzz poppers Cloud Nothings. Just check out the first song "Understand At All", and odds are you'll be sold. Jangly fuzzy guitars, bubbly basslines, slightly snotty sounding vox, all sunshiney and crunchy, and but then the song slips into the chorus and it becomes transcendent, the vocals shifting to a sweet falsetto, the guitars muted, the drums holding it all together, which leads right into a cool stop start sort of proggy bit of mathiness, and then it's back to the verse, and right into that sweet sweet chorus again. The second song, "Not Important" is another winner, all super fuzzed out power pop, the vocals this time all raspy and Jawbreakery, changing the vibe of the song completely, but it's still so jangly and hooky, a little bit of mathiness, but still mostly crunch and fuzz and jangle. "Should Have" is all eighties style DIY pop, mixed with a little bit of new waviness, "Forget You All The Time" is washed out and shoegazey, reverby and hazy and dreamy, and "Nothing's Wrong" is all hyperactive nerd rock Ramones, frantic and bouncy and caffeinated, and so it goes, every song somehow totally different, the sound, the arrangement, the voice, but they all hang together pretty (im?)perfectly as a 'proper' album, a wild, slightly schizophrenic, super kinetic, ultra jangly crazy catchy, super melodic fuzz pop record we can't seem to stop listening to!
Discovered by James Brown while playing at a block party in Augusta, Georgia in 1973, Tony Cook was just a high school boy at the time, but even James Brown could see there was something very special about this particular boy. In fact just a few years later Brown recruited Cook to become the drummer for the JB's, a position he would hold off and on all the way until the end of James Brown's life. But beyond his playing with Brown, on his own, Cook became known for some of the most forward and fantastically fucked up left-field funk to come out of the '80s. Mixing elements of disco, funk, and space minded oddity, Cook created jams that sound like the perfect segue between Afrika Bambata and Prince.
Makes perfect sense that the Stones Throw crew would be big time fans of Cook, who heavily influenced folks like Dam-Funk and Peanut Butter Wolf. Makes sense then too, that Stones Throw would take it upon themselves to release this long overdue anthology of Cook's funky prowess.
Another blast of reverby eighties style pop from these Southern California retropoppers, this one even more beholden to the golden age of MTV than the last one. The last single we referenced modern weirdo pop outfits like Ariel Pink, Greatest Hits, Blank Dogs and the like, and while that comparison still perhaps applies, the sounds here is WAY less weird, and way more, well eighties. In fact, it's kinda uncanny how much these two tracks sounds genuinely 15+ years old. From the sound, to the song, to the vocals, the instrumentation, the production, total shimmery eighties MTV style jangle pop, it's easy to imagine seeing a video from these guys between, say the Thompson Twins and Icicle Works. Spidery melodies, bouncy basslines, electronic percussion, tinkling Cure like melodies, synths and keyboards, and some very broody Smiths like sad boy vox, and of course some female back up vocals on the choruses, the second side slips more into a sort of almost gothy eighties electro pop, but holy heck, this single is some sort of fantastic sonic time machine, and while we've doubted the sincerity of this next generation romanticizing what many of us consider to be an embarrassing decade, we have to say, these songs sound pretty darn good, and definitely had us pining for the (good?) old days of big hair, over the top videos, crazy clothes, dayglo, MTV and of course the super catchy jangly electro gloom pop that went with all that stuff...
Normally when we're reviewing a band on Sacred Bones, we find ourselves referencing cold wave or new wave, eighties goth combos or whatever, but Cult Of Youth requires a whole new set of parameters and comparisons. Think post industrial neo-folk, think Pagan sonic rituals, think the Wicker Man soundtrack, think Comus, think Death In June, especially that last one, cuz if we had to pick someone to compare CoY (originally a home brewed one man band, now a band proper) to, it would most definitely be Death In June, the same sort of charged mix of Teutonic bombast, martial percussion, acid folk strum, and booming chantlike vox. Dark and powerful and mysterious, and in its own way a pretty perfect fit for Sacred Bones.
The new multimember incarnation of Cult Of Youth, features mainman/mastermind Sean Ragon, joined by a performance artist/director/painter/occult scholar, a machinist drummer, and a violinist, who most recently arranged strings for the newest Zola Jesus single. Sounds like an eclectic assemblage of talents, but then Cult Of Youth is a pretty eclectic proposition.
The first song sets the scene for the whole record, dense tribal drumming, cyclical and hypnotic, thick distorted bass thrum, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, pounding drums, surrounded by swirling ambience, and moody, mournful minor key violin melodies, and over the top strident prosletyzing vocals, booming and emotional. There's also flute, that flutters dreamily throughout. And while this is essentially neo-folk, there is still a dark sort of cold wavey vibe happening for sure. It's not difficult to imagine these songs recast in a different light, replace the acoustic guitars with synths, program the drums, keep the vocals, we'd be talking some awesome chilly bit of brooding dramatic goth wave, so in one way you can almost imagine this as a folky acoustic take on cold wave, similarly dark and moody, gloomy and gothy and dramatic. There's also a bit of a swampy bluesy vibe, making us think of Birthday Party, Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand, especially on the more upbeat numbers, the sound transformed into a rollicking bit of shuffle and strum and howl, still peppered with strange bits of industrial crunch, but sweaty and heaving and overflowing with sonic vitriol.
The slower moments might be the most powerful, like on "Casting Thorns", one of the moments where the group is most obviously channeling seventies British outfits like Comus, Pentangle, Incredible String Band and the like, swoonsome steel string strum, muted low slung bass, the violin, soaring and lyrical, the link to the rest of the record being the vocals, which are even more dramatic and emotional, cracking and wailing, totally intense and over the top, but those folkier moments are fleeting, with the sound most often slipping back into something more propulsive and bombastic, epic and majestic and yeah, Teutonic.
Fans of any of the above mentioned bands should really check out Cult Of Youth, but especially folks into industrial / neo-folk outfits, especially Death In June, but also Current 93, Der Blutharsch, Sol Invictus, Blood Axis, Von Thronstahl, Toroidh and the like. Might also hit the spot for folks who dig seventies British folk and swampy slithery apocalyptic blues, and hell, Captured Tracks obsessives too, might just find a new sound they didn't realize was right up their alley.
A French born composer now living in Taiwan, Yannick Dauby comes from the same school of concrete-centric field-recording as Eric LaCasa, Tarab, Jean-Francois Laporte, and to a lesser extent Francisco Lopez. As such, Dauby pulls his compositions together from a near constant investigation of the environment, with the chorales of frogs and cicadas situated next to the thrum and hiss of heavy industry. Where LaCasa in particular is interested in matching particular textures and frequencies into sympathetic collages of intertwined sounds from any number of sources, Dauby has more of an interest in emphasizing a divergence in his sounds, juxtaposing comparatively dissonant field recordings to force them into a dialogue. So you'll find rasping blurts of locusts buzzing above a constant hum of some unnamed high-speed electrical dynamo, which gradually fades against a backdrop of metallic clinking, that almost sounds like the ambience of an ancient blacksmithery, becoming a smart counterpoint between two forms of human innovation. Dauby's composition is one of slow evolution with his numerous passages of water (thunderstorms, streams, subterranean dripping), the din of distant traffic, various bird utterances, windstorms, and clattering squeaks and whirls from industry effortlessly moving in and out of each other. All of these field recordings originate from France and Taiwan, although Dauby is very cautious not to make either locale too obvious, even when the chatter of children intermixes with that of incessant insect noise. It makes for a great, psychogeographical listen!
We really can't get enough of the dark, cinematic soundscapes conjured by so many of the artists on such likeminded labels as Type (UK) and Miasmah (Norway). This new release on Type by Norwegian duo Deaf Center (cellist Erik K. Skodvin and pianist Otto A. Totland) is our current fave, it's just their second full-length in six years, as clearly it takes time to craft music this moody and gorgeous, this time around produced in a proper studio, in Berlin, on analog equipment for maximum fidelity. Also the two members of Deaf Center have been busy with their own, individual projects - Skodvin, for one, is the man behind another AQ fave, Svarte Greiner, plus he also runs the Miasmah label! And if you like the "acoustic doom" of Svarte Greiner, you should also appreciate Deaf Center's evocative combination of modern classical, ambient, and electronic strains on Owl Splinters.
Atmospheric opener "Divided" sets the mood, all abstract, monastic moan and droning string-scrape, hushed and floating. Then "Time Spent" introduces sparse melody, played on pensive, pretty piano, alone in the dark. Third track "New Beginning (Tidal Darkness)" is one of subtle crackle and glitch, the music ebbing and flowing through drone build-ups and more exquisite piano reveries. Once again, moody and somber, but beautiful. And so it goes, Deaf Center getting much heavier (eventually) in the midst of the grinding epic, "The Day I Would Never Have", the album's nearly 11 minute long centerpiece (which is infinitely longer on the vinyl version, as it ends the first side with a locked groove). Dense tones resonate with great emotional presence.
Skodvin's deep cello sawing can get spiky too, as on the nervously dramatic "Animal Sacrifice", though all is soothed by the luminous fuzz of the ambient background. Another epic track appears before the end of the disc, "Close Forever Watching" being 8 minutes of glorious, massing drone shimmer - play loud!!
With its balance of delicacy and weightiness both, Deaf Center's Owl Splinters coincidentally in some respects reminds us of two other releases recommended on this week's list - the new album from Earth, and also the Klute soundtrack! The recent Ural Umbo lp highlighted here last time also comes to mind.
Essential for fans of all things Type and Miasmah, particularly (of course) Svarte Greiner, also Elegi, Jacaszek, Fjellstrom, etc. A great going to sleep album for some of us, if you're ready for some perhaps suspenseful dreams.
Please note that the vinyl version, as is often the case with Type releases, is packaged with a bonus cd, in this case containing a 46 minute reworking of the album tracks by Skodvin under his Svarte Greiner guise, entitled Twin. Why they want to deprive cd purchasers of that, we don't know.
With a name like Demonologists and a title like Sermons Of Death And Eternal Damnation, you probably already have a good idea of what sort of sonic sickness these guys have in store for you. And you'd be right.
A bleak, noisy, super distorted, atmospheric bit of blown out, crumbling, industrial doom laden trudge and lumber, the sky a black swirl of metallic crunch and shrieking feedback, what must be guitars are transformed into heaving avalanches of blacknoise, the voices (if they are voices) just add more chaos to the already confusional din, streaks of melodies and a buried slow motion propulsion drag the sound like some blackened carcass, being wheeled into the bowels of hell. Huge shards of moaning melody surface now and again, adding a strange sort of cinematic gravitas, but most of the subtle stuff is swallowed up by the harsh churning crush and pummel on the surface, heavily layered and super texture, so blown out and in the red, the tape gets overloaded, and the sound becomes strangely warm and muted before collapsing again into paroxysms of skree and scrape and howl and buzz.
It's like 10 different black metal records being played at once, and then being remixed by some Japanoise DJ's, the speeds shifting, the tempos dragging and threatening to spill into oozing black puddles of sound, this is definitely rough stuff, but like the best rough stuff, this is not just pedal masturbation or white noise punishment, although to be fair, it is punishing, there is plenty of white noise (and pink, and brown, and BLACK) and heck, there's probably some pedal abuse, but it's all whipped up into a serious speaker melting frenzy, the sort of sound that will definitely appeal to students of the school of Merzbow and Masonna, but also, folks into the noisier and more abrasive end of the black spectrum like Gnaw Their Tongues, BSBC, Aderlating, Alkerdeel, Black Mayonnaise, Grief No Absolution, Endless Humiliation, etc.
Sweet packaging, silver ink on black card stock. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have less than ten!
Record #2 from Chicago's murky psychlords Disappears. The sound here isn't so much a drastic departure from the band's previous Lux album as it is a logical extension (dig the similarly minimal artwork). While being tuneful and catchy, Disappears also come off as a bit tougher than many of their contemporaries, thanks in part to Brian Case's shouty monotone (in a good way) vocals and an overall... uh, "beefiness" that many bands of this ilk are seriously lacking. Guider wraps listeners in a warm blanket of analog fuzz with the pounding krauty rhythms and hella reverb that we can't get enough of. The band locks into a groove and takes you on a pleasantly rocking journey that you can also shake your ass and swagger to. Check it out!
We had never heard of these UK metalheads, but the gruesome Justin Bartlett art of course caught our eye, and if anything, the sounds inside live up to the grim warning of the strange ritual depicted on the cover, hooded figures surround a woman, whose baby is dragged from her by a strange goat creature, her mouth open, emitting instead of a scream a strange column of either feathers or crystals. The soundtrack to this demonic ceremony is some sort of super intense, ultra aggro, sludgey blackened downtuned death metal dirge doom pummel, the sound shifting from frenzied blasting Swedish style melodic death metal to lurching, lumbering noise drenched doom, the recording so hot and in-the-red, that the drums buzz and sizzle, the guitars so distorted they crumble from the speakers, the vocals a harsh hateful shriek, plenty of Eyehategod style feedback, long stretches of layered skree, tense and intense, the sound so impossibly heavy, not sure we've ever heard guitar SO buzz drenched and blown out, the sound brutal and intense and harrowing, but probably the coolest/weirdest aspect of this band's sound are the samples, all over the place, snippets of conversations, bits from films, sometimes draped over minimal bits of droney ambience, other times set amidst roiling churning heaviness and thus barely audible, but it definitely gives the record a strange vibe, reminding us of nineties industrial rock, but only in that one aspect, in every other way, this is some of the fiercest, most fucked up and intensely heavy death/sludge we've ever heard, the vocals sometimes slipping into an inhuman ear shredding shriek, the buzzing so intense and furious that it sometimes almost blurs into total blackdronenoise, usually slipping right back into something more riffy or dirgey, but always suffocatingly black hole heavy, and then there are those samples, which change everything. And stick around for the final track a supremely creepy outro of crumbling distorted buzz, keening feedback, layered industrial noise, and one final creepy sample. Awesome stuff. Definitely one of the most brutal records we've heard, and while too many samples definitely plague many an otherwise awesome record, somehow, this wouldn't be the same without 'em.
Debut from this mysterious doom drone industrial noise outfit, one of FIVE new releases on Waves Of Decay (along with Wicked King Wicker, Demonologists, Skin Graft, and Robe.), and the sound of Dreaded fits pretty perfectly with those others, as well as outfits like Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Wolf Eyes, Colossloth, SUNNO))), Khanate, R.Y.N., Amort and other practitioners of the slow/low/grim black arts.
A slow build of creeping crumbling ambience opens things up, thick swirls of sludgey black drift, a caustic cloud of black ambience, shot through with slivers of buried feedback, truncated melodies, the sound slipping into hypnotic swells, threatening to explode but instead locked into a haunting, mesmerizing creep. Elsewhere electronics buzz and rumble, the sound minimal, but ominous and ever darkening, subtly cinematic, peppered with bits of industrial crunch, clipped bits of downtuned riffage, sent careening into the ether, strange tangles of tape decay stutter and corrosive low end crumble, the whole thing a sprawling, gut wrenching, soul stirring expanse of bleak, black dronedoom minimalism, blending the hushed minimal drift of all those Drone Records singles, with something far more abject and hateful. Killer stuff for sure. Absolutely recommended for any one into ANY of the above mentioned bands.
Super nice packaging, silver ink on black card stock, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, of which we have but a handful...
If an argument had to be made for greatest modern American hardcore/grindcore band, it would be pretty tough to argue with Rhode Island's Dropdead. One of the heaviest, fastest, hardest, most pissed off and politically righteous punk rock bands EVER, devastating obliticore/blistercore/fastcore/powerviolence that KILLS, total thrashing metallic punk rock fury, beholden to classic Swedish hardcore, and old school UK D-beat, British anarcho punk and of course Japanese crust, yet somehow these guys took all those influences and wove them into something singularly epic and transcendent and about a million times better than pretty much every other punk rock band we can think of. Short, sharp blasts of blasting thrashing chaotic punk rock, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums a furious flurry of lightning fast beats, the vox howled over the churning punk fury below, the lyrics covering everything from animal rights to pacifism, racism to religion, each record an epic onslaught micro grindpunk epics, most clocking it at less than a minute, many half that, but these guys cram as much musical and lyrical vitriol in a matter of seconds than most bands manage over the course of a whole record. Even after years of listening to metal and punk and pretty much every variation and permutation of both, black metal, doom metal, grindcore, crustcore, whatever, there's still something so pure and honest and intense about Dropdead, raw and primal and at the same time impossibly epic and emotional and personal, the sort of punk rock that was as concerned with changing minds and fighting against injustices as it was with getting the pit moving, and in the process, they somehow managed to make these 30 second blasts of sonic ultraviolence, catchy as fuck.
Any one into any sort of heavy music, who doesn't own these classic albums, is missing out big time. All three records have been reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages, their 1993 self titled debut, their 1998 second album (also confusingly self titled) and their insane and untouchable discography collection, which gathers up singles and comp tracks, as well as Dropdead stuff from splits with Rupture and Crossed Out. Hard to recommend one over any of the others, all three rule and are absolutely essential, if you can buy all three, you won't be sorry, but at least buy one, start with any of them, odds are you'll want the rest. One of our favorite bands EVER.
If an argument had to be made for greatest modern American hardcore/grindcore band, it would be pretty tough to argue with Rhode Island's Dropdead. One of the heaviest, fastest, hardest, most pissed off and politically righteous punk rock bands EVER, devastating obliticore/blistercore/fastcore/powerviolence that KILLS, total thrashing metallic punk rock fury, beholden to classic Swedish hardcore, and old school UK D-beat, British anarcho punk and of course Japanese crust, yet somehow these guys took all those influences and wove them into something singularly epic and transcendent and about a million times better than pretty much every other punk rock band we can think of. Short, sharp blasts of blasting thrashing chaotic punk rock, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums a furious flurry of lightning fast beats, the vox howled over the churning punk fury below, the lyrics covering everything from animal rights to pacifism, racism to religion, each record an epic onslaught micro grindpunk epics, most clocking it at less than a minute, many half that, but these guys cram as much musical and lyrical vitriol in a matter of seconds than most bands manage over the course of a whole record. Even after years of listening to metal and punk and pretty much every variation and permutation of both, black metal, doom metal, grindcore, crustcore, whatever, there's still something so pure and honest and intense about Dropdead, raw and primal and at the same time impossibly epic and emotional and personal, the sort of punk rock that was as concerned with changing minds and fighting against injustices as it was with getting the pit moving, and in the process, they somehow managed to make these 30 second blasts of sonic ultraviolence, catchy as fuck.
Any one into any sort of heavy music, who doesn't own these classic albums, is missing out big time. All three records have been reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages, their 1993 self titled debut, their 1998 second album (also confusingly self titled) and their insane and untouchable discography collection, which gathers up singles and comp tracks, as well as Dropdead stuff from splits with Rupture and Crossed Out. Hard to recommend one over any of the others, all three rule and are absolutely essential, if you can buy all three, you won't be sorry, but at least buy one, start with any of them, odds are you'll want the rest. One of our favorite bands EVER.
If an argument had to be made for greatest modern American hardcore/grindcore band, it would be pretty tough to argue with Rhode Island's Dropdead. One of the heaviest, fastest, hardest, most pissed off and politically righteous punk rock bands EVER, devastating obliticore/blistercore/fastcore/powerviolence that KILLS, total thrashing metallic punk rock fury, beholden to classic Swedish hardcore, and old school UK D-beat, British anarcho punk and of course Japanese crust, yet somehow these guys took all those influences and wove them into something singularly epic and transcendent and about a million times better than pretty much every other punk rock band we can think of. Short, sharp blasts of blasting thrashing chaotic punk rock, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums a furious flurry of lightning fast beats, the vox howled over the churning punk fury below, the lyrics covering everything from animal rights to pacifism, racism to religion, each record an epic onslaught micro grindpunk epics, most clocking it at less than a minute, many half that, but these guys cram as much musical and lyrical vitriol in a matter of seconds than most bands manage over the course of a whole record. Even after years of listening to metal and punk and pretty much every variation and permutation of both, black metal, doom metal, grindcore, crustcore, whatever, there's still something so pure and honest and intense about Dropdead, raw and primal and at the same time impossibly epic and emotional and personal, the sort of punk rock that was as concerned with changing minds and fighting against injustices as it was with getting the pit moving, and in the process, they somehow managed to make these 30 second blasts of sonic ultraviolence, catchy as fuck.
Any one into any sort of heavy music, who doesn't own these classic albums, is missing out big time. All three records have been reissued on vinyl for the first time in ages, their 1993 self titled debut, their 1998 second album (also confusingly self titled) and their insane and untouchable discography collection, which gathers up singles and comp tracks, as well as Dropdead stuff from splits with Rupture and Crossed Out. Hard to recommend one over any of the others, all three rule and are absolutely essential, if you can buy all three, you won't be sorry, but at least buy one, start with any of them, odds are you'll want the rest. One of our favorite bands EVER.
The further Earth evolves, the harder it is to believe they were once THEE progenitors of the doomdronedirgesludge sound that's so prevalent these days. They began life as a sludgey, druggy, slo-mo avant riff behemoth, no one could have imagined they would have turned into this, a dusty, twangy, deserty, moody minimal slowcore combo, with a sound that has essentially evolved into a score to some stark, spare, imaginary black and white independent film, more soundtrack, imagined or not, than proper rock band, let alone, METAL band, which is how they have been traditionally categorized. But Angels Of Darkness, like the last few Earth records before it, is most definitely not metal, not even heavy really, at least in the traditional sense, this one even in the NON traditional senses, instead, it's again dark and brooding, evocative and emotional, cinematic and soundtracky, the core sound has again been expanded to include strings, which only adds to the whole moody minimal soundtrack vibe. But hell, it still suits them, we now have enough other bands doing the whole slow and low dirge and drone thing, and if anything, Angels Of Darkness might be Earth's most full realized stab and capturing their 'new' sound. No pretenses, no strings attaching them to the old Earth, very few allusions, sonic or otherwise, to the ghost of doom past, they're even more secure on the new path they set out on years ago, and it shows, each of the long tracks here unwinds gradually, a slow, swirling smoldering bit of twang flecked slowcore, a little bit droney, the guitars spidery and crystalline, the bass and drums super minimal, the cello doing much of the heavy lifting this time around, its deep throaty buzz, the perfect compliment to the band's sun baked shimmer, and bleak drowsy moodiness. Not a huge shift in sound, but then nobody wanted that, we just wanted more, more slithery, sun dappled darkness, more summery shadowy twang, and that's what Angels Of Darkness is, more just a honing and perfecting of a sound that's already pretty perfect, and exactly what you'd want to be playing in the background as you wandered down the dusty street of some old ghost town, and a perfect fit alongside the rest of your 'Ghost Town' mix alongside Scenic, Tulsa Drone, Barn Owl, Calexico, Sixteen Horsepower, and the rest.
Legendary composer Duke Ellington gets the deluxe Monk Records treatment here, bringing together 17 songs recorded in 1927 and 1928, right as his success was really beginning to take off thanks to a lucrative contract with agent Irving Mills. Ellington was an incredibly prolific songwriter and served as the perfect example of a big band leader. He also helped bring his art to the attention of white Americans, leading to unprecedented fame and elevating jazz music to a level of respectability that could not be ignored within America or the rest of the world. This record captures Duke and his Orchestra performing a variety of mostly Ellington penned tunes, with a couple of other numbers as well. Listening to this stuff is exciting, as one really gets the sense of a distinctly American artist creating and drawing on a distinctly American style of art, while also demonstrating how important the contributions of African-Americans were in establishing this new identity. Another winner from Monk!
Yeah! Here's another rad reissue of early '70s proto-metal. Of special interest to us, Elonkorjuu are Finnish, in fact hailing from the same town, Pori, that later gave us AQ faves Circle!
Their ultra-collectable 1972 album Harvest Time is a heavy progressive gem, full of ripping guitar and wild organ... wailing English-language vocals, melodic moody parts, many mathy changes, and galloping riffage are also all elements of the sometimes complex Elonkorjuu equation. Although fairly heavy for the time, they also have a generally "happy" sound, one that's often hectic too, these guys obviously reveling in their music making prowess. Their fervor is infectious, this is great stuff for anyone who loves other early '70s prog-psych acts of this ilk like Trettioariga Kriget, Wishbone Ash, Cargo, Culpeper's Orchard, Murphy Blend, Steamhammer, Wind, Irish Coffee, Osage Tribe, Odmenn, Blues Addicts, Stonewall, Toad, Road, etc.
While they only recorded one more album in the late '70s, the talent and exuberance displayed on Harvest Time earned 'em (and Finland) a spot in early, obscure hard rock history, for sure. Forever underground, they even title a song here "Praise To Our Basement", wherein these young long haired hippies first had first begun jamming back in '69...
Wow! While Brazil gets most of the attention in terms of creating some of the best South American psychedelic music, we've recently been checking out the left coast of the continent, namely Chile, and have been digging some amazing stuff. Perhaps it's the epic geographical relationship of mountains and coast in close proximity that inspires such transcendent music or perhaps it's the constant political unrest of the period that cultivated a longing for the more earthy populace-empowered past. Smooth romantic harmonies, ancient flutes and dreamy textures of jungle and nature sounds are all key variables in the sound of great Chilean psych bands El Congreso, Congregacion (also reviewed on this list), Kissing Spell (featured on the Love Peace and Poetry Latin America comp), and their later incarnation, Embrujo. While Kissing Spell was more of a mellow psych-pop confection singing songs in English as was the trend of Latin groups seeking to become more commercially viable, the decision to become Embrujo stemmed from a revolutionary stance possibly inspired by the Brazilian Tropicalia movement both politically and sonically, to write songs almost entirely in Spanish and create a dynamic sound on their own terms upping the ante on their songwriting craft and musicianship. What they add to the equation is Gr-ooo-ve, driven along by fuzzy organ, simmering guitar and funky drumming, building on the traditional Chilean sound with fluid changes, solid rhythms, and like Os Mutantes, occasional wackiness. Tight hook-laden arrangements, lyrical breaks and progressive interludes are what make this sole 1972 album fetch astronomical prices amongst collectors of private press recordings. This is its first CD reissue and seriously, we haven't stopped playing it since it arrived in the store a few weeks ago. Finally we have enough to share this with the rest of you. Embrujo means "bewitched" in Spanish, and we are positive you too will be captured by its spell! Recommended!
To look at the personnel line-up of Evil Madness, you probably wouldn't know what to expect. There's the melancholy composer Johann Johannsson with a number of acclaimed cinematic records on 4AD. There's the bleak-minded drone specialist BJ Nilsen and his long-time collaborators Stillupsteypa. And there's another Icelander dude named Petur Eyvindsson, who has some oddball releases under the name DJ Musician. Given that, the punchy discotheque grooves of Evil Madness are way out of left-field and totally great. Italo disco, minimal wave / EMB, anthemic Detroit techno circa 1988, John Carpenter's paranoiac synth arpeggiations, lots of analogue synth worship, and pre-fab electronic beats all come together underneath the stoic yet tongue-in-cheek banner of Evil Madness. We suspect that Sigtryggur from Stilluppsteypa has quite a lot to do with this one, given the electro-breaks that would occasionally slap in the face of his seriously minded crackled dronemuzik; no matter who's responsible, both sides of Super Great Love are brilliantly hedonistic mash-ups of vintage synth stabs, stupidly good anthemic electronic melodies, and plenty cybernetic Moroder sequences, spiralling upon techno, disco, and electro rhythms. Super Great Love is actually the fourth record by Evil Madness, with their other releases coming out through the poorly distributed 12 Tonar label and the dada-fetish imprint Ultra Eczema, so this album on Editions Mego should garner a broader audience for Evil Madness (they'll be releasing a cd version eventually too). Fans of Majeure, Umberto, K-X-P, and the Oneohtrix Point Never sideproject Games would be well served to check this out!
Fastest's Theme, a Record Of The Week a few lists back, was a surprise hit around here (not a surprise for everyone though, some of us knew, few would be able to resist the twisted confusional home brewed madness that is Fastest), but we sold them like crazy, and in that review we mentioned Fastest also had a handful of other records, and got a bunch of reponses from folks wanting more.
So here you go, Into The Night, not sure where it falls in the Fastest catalog, which is now up to 8 or 10 releases, but it's another one of our favorites, second only to Theme, and like Theme, the sound here is pretty idiosyncratic and difficult to describe, warbly buzzying synths, stumbling weirdly programmed drums, that seem to explode into impossibly tangled rhythmic flurries, that is when they're not locked into some warped robotic groove, the melodies are twisted as well, moody and melancholy one second, then all sunshiney the next, like the music for the final screen on some old school video game, all 8 bit bleep and bloop, underpinned by weirdly bloopy low slung bass, and those chaotic beats. And did we mention the vocals, sort of sung/spoken, Allan here thinks it sounds like rapping, and likens Fastest to mush mouthed headphone rapper Sensational, but Fastest is much more strident, his vocals urgent and dramatic, often delivered in what sounds like a growled death metal grunt, but just as often whispered or crooned, the vocals locked tight with staccato rhythms, the ominous buzzing synths, the midi guitar melodies, slipping from epic and intense and almost heavy, to fuzzy and bouncy, but more often than not somewhere right in between. In some ways, Into The Night is a bit darker than Theme, and the spastic avalanche like drum programming sounds even more out of control, which is most definitely a good thing. For more on our obsession with Fastest, check out our review of Theme elsewhere on the aQ site, but if you've yet to check out the fractured and fantastically fucked up musical stylings of this one man band, this is as good a place to start as any, and who knows, you might find yourselves needing ALL of them. We did!
Like Theme, the packaging is awesome and over the top and a bit confusional. A custom (not real) barcode right on the front cover, a cool tray card that wraps up and around the edge, the Fastest logo all sharp and heavy metal looking, notes exclaiming "digital audio compact disc" and "state of the art phonorecord", the ASCAP publishing logo/info not less than FOUR times on the back cover, a shoutout to TDK, and of course, like Theme, a production credit for someone/something named Daemaeen Hephaestus Chastical. Oh, and a cool lazer etched discface! Needless to say (but we will anyway) CRAZY RECOMMENDED.
A couple of lists back, we highlighted the Editions Mego disc UL8 by minimal techno artist Mark Fell. It was one of two solo albums from snd member Fell that were recently released more or less simultaneously. So here's the other one, via the Raster-Noton label quite appropriately, and it's another intense, experimental exercise in the controlled chaos of (ir)rhythmic variations. 17 tracks, 64 minutes of glitched out, Geiger-countery goodness. If you liked the complex, computery patterns of UL8, you'll like this too! Repetitive, seizure-threatening stuff here, a seemingly endless array of stunning, stuttering clicks, claps, ticks and kicks... it's like the distorted, digitally bent creakings of teetering, tweaked electronic architecture built by Fell from precise blueprints for perverse purposes. His constructions are varied enough, exploring both skittering texture and shuffling groove, to hold earphone interest for the duration. At times it sounds kinda like club music composed by Conlon Nancarrow for synth and typewriter. Any fan of Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, etc. ought to investigate this and UL8 too if you haven't already.
Before there was Torche, there was Floor. And if you love the super hooky, impossibly heavy sludge pop of Torche, then you'd do well to investigate Floor, who were like a slightly sludgier, slightly less poppy Torche. We recently reviewed the (now sadly sold out) massive 8 cd complete Floor collection, but this might be a bit easier to digest. And hell, if you DID buy that Floor box, you're probably gonna want this too, cuz nothing here was included in that set!! And if you don't own Floor's Dove record, find it. NOW. Some of the heaviest hookiest shit EVER. Floor never made it big, and were way more unsung than they deserved, and of course, Steve Brooks went on to form Torche, but with the love and hype surrounding Torche, it was inevitable that folks would finally discover Floor, which culminated in that 8 cd set, and a couple live reunion shows last year, one of which is what's contained on the first disc in this double disc set, a massive two hour live set, split into three separate sections, each featuring a different drummer, and the songs that drummer played on. It's a pretty epic and crushing collection, blown out, downtuned, EPIC, heavy as hell and hooks galore, total blissed out sludge pop radness, and all three versions of the band DESTROY. Also included on the first disc is a short documentary/interview with the band and all three drummers, including tons of super rare old live footage and lots of photographs.
As if that weren't enough, the second disc is a data disc containing, high quality audio files of both reunion shows (not just the one from the first disc), the complete and unedited film of Floor, everything that was cut, restored to a massive 2+ hours, and a whole bunch of super rare live videos, spanning the band's entire existence, from 1993 all the way to their final shows in 2002.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES. Housed in a super elaborate origami like silkscreened package, similar to the Harvey Milk Anthem release, a printed insert with both discs affixed to it, housed in a six panel jacket, all metallic ink on heavy textured cardstock. Nice!
There's been so much hype about this Swedish metal outfit, before we had ever heard a note, we had heard ABOUT them, seen amazing pictures of the band playing live, the vocalist with a face painted like a skull, dressed in robes like some demonic priest, the album cover, a creepy seventies oil painting of that same vocalist, hovering demon like over an old haunted looking church, their satanic lyrics, their epic heaviness, so we were prepared for something seriously demonic and devastating, black metal or at least black-ISH metal we were assuming, so when we finally heard it, we were lured in by the sound of a church organ, so far so good, haunting and mysterious, and then the first song kicks in, thick buzzing metallic bass, pounding drums, okay, so not black metal, but heavy, fuzzed out, a little psychedelic, and then the vocals, woah, sounding a lit like Voivod weirdly enough, soaring majestically over chugging churning, and them suddenly, so POPPY, the song shifting gears, slipping into something way more melodic, replete with oooh's and aaaah's and some strange liturgical sounding crooning, some cool seventies style organs too, so it may not be what we were expecting but we were loving it, so then the next song started, and wow, even less metal, more like classic rock, seventies psych, a surprise, but fuck it, still pretty damn killer, the guitars still plenty heavy, and then the chorus, holy shit, a dead ringer for Blue Oyster Cult, total hooky pop, and it was then that we realized we were totally hooked.
C'mon, chugging satanic metal meets dark psychedelic rock meets Blue Oyster Cult? How rad is that?! The Answer is VERY. The vocals occasionally sound a bit like King Diamond, the band slipping into some Mercyful Fate-isms here and there, but a way poppier, more psychedelic, less overtly metal version, the leads are awesome. And it's pretty cool to hear actual singing and real melodies and a sort of classic psych rock formula with these explicitly Satanic lyrics.
"Death Knell" gets a little doomy, and features the refrain "Six Six Six" amongst other evil ramblings, but the song is far from fierce and heavy, instead it's trippy and broody and mysterious and haunting, the vocals wreathed in reverb and draped over muted guitars, fuzzy organs, with some cool dynamic stop/starts, as well as some tolling bells and a few definite Sabbathisms. We were sort of hoping "Prime Mover" was a Zodiac Mindwarp cover, but instead it's a pretty stellar original, droned our layered high end guitars wrap around a chugging churning riff, the bassline buzzy and ominous, again, a super dynamic arrangement, maybe one of the heaviest jams on the record, a little mathy, the guitars thick and fierce, and then the vocals come in, and the sound shifts to something more melodic and moody, drifty and creepy and psychedelic.
So yeah, don't be misled by the hype, or the satanic imagery, this isn't black metal, or really strictly metal, but if the idea of some awesomely Satanic psychedelic seventies styled heaviness, a sort of more metallic and WAY more evil and over the top classic rock, sounds like your sort of thing (and why wouldn't it?), then you'll probably love this as much as we do.
Killer packaging too, the aforementioned cover art, a sweet slipcover, and of course lyrics, so you can sing along and perform your own little musical black masses at home.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We'll keep this brief, as we only have but 3 copies to disperse (we actually acquired twice that number, but already sold some in the store)! So act fast, Haino fans, if your collection is lacking this long out of print 1997 release, bearing one of the most straightforward of the Tokyo psych shaman's poetic album titles, which are often much lengthier and more cryptic.
This disc contains one long track (67'31") of wavering, haunted drone, its meditative mystery eventually enhanced by rattling, rustling percussion, abstract Eastern string strum, and hoarse, mumbled chant (a far cry from Haino's usual anguished shrieks). Sparse and ceremonial sounding, this is the calm side of Keiji, not amped up and/or abrasive like some of his other releases. Like we said, it's out of print, a "warehouse find" we unearthed from an undisclosed location, and according to the internet it now sells for up to $60! While even the most devoted Haino fans here find that a bit insane, it's certainly worth the price we're charging... to at least, and unfortunately ultimately at most, three of you, we're sure.
There's really no way to start this review without a seemingly over the top declaration. NYC's Railroad Jerk were one of the best, and sadly most unsung bands of the last 20 years. And while Railroad Jerk front man Marcellus Hall is probably better known to the world at large as an illustrator, whose done work for the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Press, Time, as well as numerous covers for novels, but for us, Hall will always be the swaggery, silver tongued frontman for the late great 'Jerk.
The sound of Railroad Jerk was feral and bluesy, super rhythmic and percussive, like a stripped down, less dumb Blues Explosion (WAY less dumb and WAY more awesome), the sort of band you might see set up on a street corner on some shady street in New York, just killing it. They reminded us a little of bands like Cop Shoot Cop, but minus the industrial heft, and in it's place, something more slithery and sexy, their sound fierce and frantic, like a gritty sort of twang flecked junkyard blues, and Hall's super distinctive voice and guitar pretty much defined their sound. Post Railroad Jerk, Hall started White Hassle, whose sound was not all that far removed from Railroad Jerk's, but since then we've heard almost nothing, until now.
The First Line is the first proper release featuring Hall and his new band The Hostages, and while his voice sounds as good as ever, the sound is much more stripped down, a sort of twang flecked Americana / folk, mostly acoustic guitar, a lot of cello, some shuffling percussion, a little slide here and there, some harmonica, but as always, it's all about Hall, his voice so rich and mellifluous, but definitely unique and distinctive, still subtly swaggery, his lyrics snarky and a little brainy, but much more romantic and heartfelt than in Railroad Jerk, the arrangements simple and spare, the sort of sound that seems like it could catapult Hall beyond the underground rock ghetto he should have ruled with Railroad Jerk, but even for those of us who call that selfsame underground rock ghetto home, this still sounds pretty fantastic, think Jay Farrar, Peter Case, David Eugene Edwards, and actually, come to thing of it, Edwards might be the most apt comparison, the same sort of fire and passion, a similarly super unique voice, a vocal style that's equal parts crooning and testifying, but unlike the apocalyptic fire and brimstone of Edwards outfit, Hall's combo is something else altogether, much more subdued, mellow and strummy, but in some ways just as intense and passionate.
Fantastic stuff, we can't get enough of Hall's voice, and while we love love love The First line, we'll never stop missing Railroad Jerk...
Super swank packaging, the cd in a fold out digipak, alongside a 44 page book of illustrations by Hall, all housed in a full color slipcover. The lp version includes a similar book, albeit in a large format 12 page version, is pressed on 180 gram vinyl, and comes with a download card.
Over the last decade, PJ Harvey has proven to be one of the most versatile, unpredictable and unique artists around. From polished and poppy (Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea), to lo-fi (Uh Huh Her), to raw, intimate and devastating (White Chalk), along with an amazing ongoing collaboration with John Parish. So we had no idea which side of PJ Harvey would emerge on this long awaited new full length, and that's actually now part of the fun when anticipating a new record from her. There is no question it will be great, it's just a matter of what shape of great it will be.
Let England Shake is a song cycle about England that takes its cues from battle hymns and as always Harvey's lyrics are both cryptic and complex, without being overbearing. Alongside her longtime collaborators Flood, Mick Harvey and again John Parish, this is a record that sounds like it was made by a proper band, unlike the ultra personal presentation of White Chalk. But just like everything PJ Harvey has released over the years, its an album that reveals its intimacy and emotion upon repeated listens, an album that is already getting under our skin in the best of ways.
Ethiopiques meets Torch Of The Mystics? Cambodian pop meets Turkish psych rock? Freaked out surf rock meets Saharan guitar music? Howabout all of the above...?
The very first release on the Sun City Girls' Sublime Frequency label from Istanbul-based instrumental psychedelic surf / space rock band Hayvanlar Alemi, their first vinyl lp, and their first record readily available outside of Turkey.
The thing that makes this Hayvanlar Alemi record work in the context of Sublime Frequencies, is that it borrows from a super varied set of sounds, from all sorts of musics, each track here sounding like it could possibly be from some other SF release, twanged out desert psych, moody Eastern garage pop, fuzzy druggy almost krautrock style drift, a few of the tracks even sound like they could be some Sun City Girls Torch Of The Mystics B side! But somehow these guys make all those different sounds work, this whole record holds together perfectly and flows like a proper album, a super expansive and sonically rich collection of modern psychedelia, beholden to all the various musics that came before.
The sound on Guarana Superpower is definitely exotic, lush, with Eastern melodies, simple hypnotic percussion, long droning tones, looped motorik grooves, plenty of buzz, and jangle, and crunch, rhythms that veer from spare and skeletal to wild and splattery, songs drift from tranquil shimmer to meditative buzz to occasional blasts of full on chaotic freaked out in-the-red psychedelia, but even in the midst of those noisy squalls, the instrumentation is distinctly Eastern, the result some fantastical Eastern psychedelic noise rock. It's during those moments that the Torch Of The Mystics comparisons become even more apt. The record is of course rife with references to traditional Turkish folk music, Turkish classical music, sixties and seventies Turkish psych rock, as well as all the above mentioned NON Turkish sounds and influences, all filtered through a modern avant rock sensibility. There are a few tracks of surfy, bluesy garage rock stomp as well, but again, even those jams are infused with a vibe and energy that is way more Eastern than Western. So good. And such a perfect fit for Sublime Frequencies...
As always, this is a super limited one time vinyl pressing, nice thick vinyl, housed in a heavy old school style tip-on jacket.
Half of Teenage Panzerkorps comprises Horrid Red, including the Teutonic punk vocalist Bunker Wolf and the multi-instrumentalist Edmund Xavier (aka Glenn Donaldson of all things Jewelled Antler). Those familiar with Bunker Wolf's Teutonic vocal bark from Der TPK will instantly recognize it here as well, although the Horrid Red sound is a little different from Der TPK's grimy punk hypnosis, as this has got much more of a neo-goth / cold-wave vibe with springy basslines and motorik-pop rhythms butting against atonal swarms of guitar noise and morose synth atmospheres, that come together sounding a lot like Blessure Grave trying to cover "Love Will Tear Us Apart" but mixing up the bassline with a Cure song instead. Limited to 300 copies, comes with a download coupon.
Not to be confused with the infamous music video director, THIS Hype Williams is a Euro boy/girl duo who traffic in a woozy washed out, looped and loopy lysergic dubbed out witchy electronica, like How To Dress Well crossed with The Skaters, each track, a dizzying hypnoscape of cyclical rhythms, of layered melodies, and processed vox, a sound all syrupy and sludgey and seriously lo-fi, casio-core writ downtempo dancefloor drawl, chopped and screwed, and not all that far removed from Witch Housers like oOoOO or Salem, the same sort of cough syrup soaked electro dub, all skittery and shuffly, warped and warbly, everything dragging and druggy, sloe eyed and slithery, the bass is fuzzy and buzzy but is muted and blurred beneath robotic primitive rhythms, and hazy swirls of dreamlike melody, samples are manipulated, processed, stretched and reimagined, Sade becomes an icy chunk of electro murk (not here, but on another record, HW samples aQ fave Doug Blunt, AND half of Hype Williams calls himself D. Blunt, hmmmm), elsewhere the samples are not so easy to pick out, instead they're simply shards and streaks and fragments, all woven into HW's psychedelic skitter and bleary creepy crawl.
From ominous mysterious mumbly murk, to hazy, looped dreampop drift, from twisted chaotic collaged shuffle funk to Ariel Pink style alien FM radio groove pop, all the tracks here ooze and bleed and melt before your ears into one ever shifting organic assemblage of late night, under water, doped up, drift off, zombie funk...
Armed with two analog synths and an alliance of effects pedals, this NY duo conjure forth a deep cleansing slab of grim new agey bliss. In the same droney vein as newcomers Emeralds, Infinity Window delve deep into the divine world of heavy synth wizardry to unveil two sides of all-encompassing aural blitzkrieg. To say their sound is thick would be a total understatement. These guys know how to lay it down heavy, but there is a lighter side to their heaviness, not really a dooomy type of heaviness, more a melodic and shimmering type of heavy that reminds us of the earlier Growing albums. Both sides build from wondrously minimal, video game-y bleeps and bloops to huge walls of trance inducing, glacial radiance. Like staring directly into the blaring sun, these tracks are celestial and huge but damaged and textured. Fuzz and noise subtly encapsulate the reverberating tones to swiftly steer away from any new-agey cheesiness.
Rajko Muller, aka Isolee, has been one of the leading forces in smart and infectious microhouse over the last decade. His ability to merge dance floor ready beats with nuanced production has made Isolee popular with both club kids and more heady avant types. Well, Spent Youth, is the long awaited follow up to We Are Monster, and Isolee sound as precise, icy and sexy as ever. With menacing and moody undertones, Isolee unleash minimal dancefloor grooves that radiate with repetition and restraint. We thought that Kompakt would be all over Isolee by now, as they really have perfected the sound that label has become synonymous with over the years. Phenomenally chilling!
Now reissued on vinyl! Krautrock obscurity alert! Definitely a fave, an album deserving of its mythical, mystical reputation.
Kalacakra's Crawling To Lhasa contains eight tracks of mantric acid-folk self-released in 1972 by the apparently drugged-out duo of Claus Rauschenbach ("guitars, kongas, percussions, vocals, harmonica, slentem") and Heinz Martin ("electr. guitars, flute, piano, vibraphon, schalmi, cello, violin, synthesizer"). Their strange, hippie sense of humor and obsession with the culture of Tibet (the name Kalacakra is the Tibetan term for "wheel of time") results in some fantastically nonsensical, eastern-influenced psychedelia (nonsensical? well, that "slentem" that Claus plays is in fact a non-existent, made-up instrument!). The album begins with the dark, hypnotic "Nearby Shiras", a song about a plague-ravaged town in olden Persia, which features some totally sinister and maniacal whispered German-language vocals, reminding us a bit even of Comus. As their crawl to Lhasa continues, Kalacakra venture into zones of lovely folk-strum and raga-rock as well, before the album wraps up with a deranged and damaged blues stumble called "Tante Olga".
Recently one of us here at Aquarius happened to rent and watch the classic psycho-sexual thriller Klute for the very first time. That noirish 1971 film stars Jane Fonda as a neurotic New York call girl being stalked by an obsessed john, and Donald Sutherland as a straight laced investigator attempting to solve a missing persons case, to which Fonda's character may hold the key.
It became apparent that not only was the movie indeed quite excellent, but so was its beautiful, sinister, sometimes groovy soundtrack, quite integral to the film's effectiveness. A quick search revealed that, yay, the Klute soundtrack is currently available on cd, released by the same label responsible for recent Record Of The Week, the 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T!
So of course we ordered it in, immediately. What with the Klute soundtrack's ominous atmospheres, occasional lush sentimentality, and also very '70s psychedelic vibes (the discotheque dancing scenes!), we know it's going to appeal to a bunch of you. Heck, much of this music's worthy of a Dario Argento giallo, and also has a passage that sounds more like an Eastern-inspired, krautrocky jam session. It was composer Michael Small's first Hollywood commission, and he innovated a more intimate, modern approach to suspense film scoring, as the very detailed liner notes explain. Ethnic instrumentation, languid jazz trumpet (leading the melancholic "Love Theme From Klute"), and acid rock guitar are all elements of this soundtrack, though what's most common to most of the twenty nine Klute cues indexed here (48'51" total time) is a shivery combination of eerie tinkling piano, sudden skittery percussion, and breathy, whispery wordless female vocals, the latter performed by singer Sally Stevens, who was also heard that same year on Lalo Schifrin's soundtrack to Dirty Harry. Those moody cuts, like "On The Roof", "Moonwall", and "Bree Followed On Street", are both quite lovely and downright creepy... play this alone late at night and we know you'll be checking to see if your doors are locked!
If you've never seen Klute, by all means do so, it's a great movie, with Fonda's performance in particular quite impressive. But whether you've seen the movie or not, the soundtrack is one of those that can be enjoyed by itself, apart from the story and visuals.
It's paired here on this two-on-one disc with the soundtrack for 1976 Watergate drama All The President's Men, composed by the great David Shire (The Conversation, The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3). Naturally, it's also pretty good! The movie ties in with Klute as another example of paranoid seventies thriller cinema, and also shares the same director. Its soundtrack, while not quite as idiosyncratically striking as that of Klute, is certainly cool to have on this disc, offering 30 more minutes (24 tracks) of suspenseful sounds... And while not as "sexy" in subject matter as Klute, we'll note that All The Presidents Men, both film and book, contains a prime example of the cultural mainstreaming of porn in America, with "Deep Throat" famously being used as the code name for the Woodward and Bernstein's mysterious White House informant.
The label, Film Score Monthly, does their usual exceedingly expert job in presenting these two soundtracks, the extensive notes in the thick, full color illustrated cd booklet providing commentary well versed in both music theory and cinematic history. Recommended!
Every time we come across a new Les Rallizes Denudes reissue, not only are we absolutely thrilled, cuz we're sort of WAY obsessed, as are many of you we're discovering, we just can't get enough of these Japanese underground legends' crazed guitar-heavy freaked out, in-the-red psychedelia, but we also begin to marvel that there even IS another Rallizes release. After all, these guys only ever had ONE single proper release, and spent very little time in the studio, so pretty much every other record is a collection of live performances, some recorded straight through, others collaged into 'proper' records, but hell, we're not complaining, these guys sound like they were made for tearing it up live. And the varying sound quality, only adds to the whole freaked out-ness, the sound crumbling, or the levels peaking and the whole band seeming to disappear in a cloud of muted buzz, before emerging and exploding into another frantic bout of wild tangled leads, or some chugging proto-metal psychedelic blues.
Great White Wonder was originally released in 2006 on the Univive label, and now it's now been reissued with a whole extra disc, the now 4cd set compiling, yep, a handful of live shows from 1974 to 1980, with lots of the same song performed at each, but in true Les Rallizes fashion, you'd never know, in fact sometimes we think the titles were just a formality, the same song will be 9 minutes on performance, 5 the next, 6 the next, super loose and high end and chaotic one performance, dark and muddy and riffy the next, murky and heavily reverbed and way more rocking the next, but that's kind of what's so magical about these guys, and what keeps most of us complaining about the inevitable overlap, cuz it all sounds so good, and it always sounds different, the arrangement, the sound quality, the tone and timbre, and listening to these 4 discs, if you edited out the breaks and between song spaces, it's easy to imagine this would flow pretty excellently as a nearly four hour super jam. And it is pretty divine, these guys are the undisputed masters, slipping from brooding, and soulful crooned balladic blues, the guitar leads super emotional and soaring and epic, to wild and loose and chaotic, the guitars impossibly frantic and furious and freaked out, the sound easily shifting between the two, a moody crooned verse will explode into freaked out psychedelic frenzy, an endless heart-of-the-sun jam will slip smoothly into a loping bit of midtempo brood. And with Les Rallizes, it's totally about the jam, sure there are songs, and there is singing, but most songs eventually (d)evolve into something much more transcendent, total epic majestic psych rock nirvana.
Fans of all things PSF, modern Japanese Psychedelia, and newer psych rock like the Heads and White Hills, odds are you're already as obsessed with these guys as we are. If you're not, well, give the sound samples a listen and try and see if you can resist...
Four cds housed in cardboard wallet style sleeves, all housed in a nice printed box, with extensive and detailed liner notes. And FYI, an eventual (and expensive) vinyl version is on the horizon as well.
After discovering these guys via a cd sampler in a magazine of all places, we quickly became pretty obsessed, their last record, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, becoming a fast favorite. Their sound dark, and melancholy, a sort of twangy slowcore, a moody countrified folk, the instrumentation spare, yet lush, the vocals incredible, the songs pretty much perfect.
For their new record, the group gathered in an old abandoned pasta factory, in a massive space, all wood floors and huge windows, and expanded their already expansive sonic palette, the usual rock instruments augmented by clarinet, upright bass, trumpet, harmonium, violin, cello, electrified pump organ, flugelhorn, jaw harp, trombone, re-amp, melodeon, banjo, wind chimes, omnichord, harmonica, crotales with sizzling coins (!) and flickering film (!!). Yet even with all those extra instruments, the sound remains skeletal and intimate, the band weaving softly swirling stretches of warm country shimmer, the album opener is a heart breaking mournful lament, the horns unfurling sweetly sorrowful melodies, over a dreamy balladic background, while "Apothecary Love" is more of a Dylan-y chunk of folk, rife with slippery slide, but the band do let loose, and do make full use of the increased complement of sound making devices on "Boeing 737", which sounds like Neutral Milk Hotel or Arcade Fire via Uncle Tupelo, rollicking and rocking, and epic, the sound lush and nearly orchestral, but right after, the band return to something much more minimal, a series of haunting dreamlike fuzzy twang flecked dreamfolk ballads, mostly just buzzing steel strings and vocals, the songs colored by wheezing organs and harmonicas, warbly harmoniums, lots of subtle, lush and layered buzz, the room sound too, an instrument of its own, wreathing the songs in a soft reverby haze. So lovely.
Definitely for fans of Vic Chesnutt, Jayhawks, Sparklehorse, Iron And Wine, Songs:Ohia and the like.
It's been a long time coming. After the tease of a 7" and a 12" ep, both tantalizingly KILLER, and a ton of incredible live shows, including a show stealing performance at the aQuarius records 40th anniversary party, comes this, the full length debut from SF psychedelic hypno drone psychedelic space rockers Lumerians, and it's just as good as we'd hoped and imagined. For those who've yet to hear these guys, have a look at this list of bands: Wooden Shjips, Hawkwind, Circle, Spacemen 3, Loop, Cave, Cloudland Canyon, The Heads, White Hills, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, 3 Leafs, Mugstar. Does that look anything like your record collection? Then odds are you've just found your new favorite band. And if there's any justice in the world, these guys will get the same sort of hype and adoration that Wooden Shjips do. Not necessarily because they sound the same, they definitely don't, but they both DO explore similar territory, spaced out buzzy, fuzzy droney psychedelic rock, but where the Shjips are minimal, Lumerians are maximal, with multiple keyboards, even a percussionist, their sound more lush and layered, similarly propulsive and driving, but maybe with more of a nod to Spacemen 3 and Hawkwind, creating super mesmerizing cyclical hypnorock epics. And these tracks are indeed epic, slow building, smoldering, hypnotic, totally trancelike but still super heavy and rocking.
Opener "Burning Mirrors" pretty much sums it up, loopy low slung bass, simple motorik drumming, crunchy super distorted fuzz guitars, and thick swaths of spacey keyboards, not to mention drawled laid back vox, all appropriately reverby and echoey, these guys traffic in the sort of sound, where every song, whether 5 minutes or nearly 10, sound like live, they could go on for 20, 30, even 40 minutes, druggy, lysergic, tripped out and psychedelic, head nodding, body moving drone rock bliss.
"Black Tusk" gets all sixties, the drums shuffly and busy, the keyboards crunchy and fuzzy, lots of percussion, the bass driving everything, swirly and psychedelic and minus the killer production, and the super distorted stuttery organ buzz could be some lost psych jam from back in the day. "XuluX" is another sprawling droned out jam, that gets seriously groovy, with all sorts of heavily effected guitars, and more crunchy organs, before blissing out into some seriously swoonsome keyboard driven psychedelic drift.
And so it goes, "Atlanta Brook" definitely conjures up the spirit of Spacemen 3, the vocals a dead ringer, the hazy warped buzz the perfect prescription, but Lumerians add their own twist, infusing it with some strange rhythmic bridges, and buzzing sitar melodies, before slipping back into a washed out almost Beatles-esque outro.
"Calalini Rises" might be the heaviest track, murky and muddy, the drums locked tight, tribal and propulsive, all the other instruments loose and chaotic, a constant sonic swirl, totally spaced out and abstract, definitely a song that could have stretched out for another couple hours. But one of our favorite jams might just have to be "Longwave" which sounds like Lumerians at the wrong speed (which we presume it must be), Neu! style, the band unfurl a droney dirgey spacerock jam, slowed to a crawl, the guitars even thicker and grungier than usual, the drums lumbering, but then the vocals come in, and they're perfectly melodic and dreamy, and drift over the undulating psychedelic murk below, culminating in a gorgeously tripped out second half, with lots of rumble and whir and buzz and drone and swirl and shimmer (but be warned vinyl folks, in order to fit the whole album on a single lp, they had to speed this song back up, shortening it quite a bit, everything is essentially the same, just the murky background music is a little less murky). So good.
Seriously. If any of the above bands are your cup of tea, try spiking that tea with some Lumerians, you won't be sorry. Easily, THEE space drone psychedelic hypno rock record of the year. Drop out, and dig in!
Last year's Ugly Side Of Love, the debut from UK sampledelic duo Malachai, was a surprise hit around here, we loved it from the second we first heard it, we just didn't realize HOW much. We ended up playing it to death, and it ranked as one of our favorites of the year, so much so that we found ourselves lamenting the fact that we didn't make it a Record Of The Week. Which it no doubt should have been, a dizzying assemblage of samples and proper instruments, woven into what sounded like some some lost seventies retro rock, proto metal, fuzzy, groovy, heavy psych jam, and barring some little bits of obviously electronic filigree, it totally could have been.
So we were super psyched to discover a new record, and while on first listen, it doesn't sound -quite- as catchy as their debut, the more we listen, the better it gets, and we're pretty sure we'll find ourselves obsessed and kicking ourselves all over again. But whatever, just don't sleep on this, so fuzzy, and heavy and groovy and goddamn good. And strange. Simultaneously warm and familiar, but also like nothing you've heard, from the super cinematic opener "Monster", a string heavy bit of dramatic ambience, with big skittery beats, and a gorgeous soaring orchestral outro, which leads directly into a heavy shuffling drum beat, laced with some hazy guitar buzz, some swirling atmospheric shimmer, and then some reverby vox, the sound again some impossible hybrid of then and now, past and present, sixties psych wrapped around looped beats, and wreathed in shimmery effects.
"Mid Antarctica (Wearin' Sandals)" is super heavy proto metal buzz, the riffs epic, the organs whirring, the bass thick, the beats big, a sort of hip hoppy groove underpinning some serious psych fuzz, occasionally breaking down into ethereal drift, but always lumbering right back into some thick churning heaviness. "Rainbows" is all hazy and reverby and echoey, with gorgeous boy girl vox, the strums muted and washed out, everything wreathed in a patina of soft focus shimmer, and so it goes, the record shifting and transforming, from hushed balladic drift, to shuffling sunshiney hippie folk, to buzzy druggy groove, to piano driven super dramatic creep, to what might be our other favorite track, "Monster" which sounds like DJ Shadow, if he were raised on sixties psych as well as hip hop, epic and bombastic, moody and broody and so good. And it just keeps getting better. The sort of 'psychedelic sixties Entroducing' vibe becomes more pronounced as the record progresses, finishing off with the twangy, woozy buzz drenched strum and shuffle of the closer "Hybernation", pepper with some unlikely boomin' system low rider bass, and yeah, we're kicking ourselves now for not making this Record Of The Week, so just figure this is an UNofficial ROTW, which means this is about as recommended as it gets...
While there are some fantastic labels crate digging for those awesomely obscure synth-wave / post-punk reissues, there's something to be said for Wierd Records in championing some of the best current practitioners of retrogarde cold-wave. It seems that at every step of Wierd's brief history, there has also been the sounds of Sean McBride, whether that be from his work in the exceptional Xeno & Oaklander or the sporadic tracks released with Three To Forgotten or his solo work as Martial Canterel. These dark-eyed synth-pop projects all share a lot of similarities in their modern romantic poetry working through the urgent marches of interwoven arpeggiation, flanging tone, spectral synth flourishes, and propulsive drum machines; and McBride's vocals carry an affected delivery with British inflections. McBride is quick to point toward his impressive collection of vintage synths and sequencers, speaking of the craftsmanship required to master these instruments. There is self-awareness of the irony in such a statement, given that so many of the great electronic bands had been accused of being less than human through their use of electronics, and McBride wholeheartedly embraces his role as a fetishist and an archivist, presenting all of his arrangements with a flawless reclamation of a forgotten future. As such, all of McBride's productions look toward the classic early new wave works of Human League, OMD, and Depeche Mode, with You Today nestling very comfortably amongst all of those references of old.
We've raved about instrumental post rockers Maserati in the past, and they just keep getting better and better, while oddly enough, they seem to gradually be moving away from their early sound, which was pretty much straight ahead nineties style post rock, which we love, toward something much more synthy and krautrocky, more groovy and almost dancey, which we also love. It probably has to do with the fact that drummer Jerry Fuchs (who tragically passed away last year) also played drums for !!! (Chik Chik Chik), so it was maybe inevitable that some of that funkiness might creep into his other group, since it's Fuchs' beats that pretty much drive this Maserati, propulsive and intricate, mathy and tight, but also super fluid. The guitars follow suit, looped and effected, cascading and chiming, all of that underpinned by some serious eighties style synths, pulsing like some supercharged John Carpenter soundtrack, and that's what makes Maserati sound so good, the collision of heavy crunchy guitars, propulsive motorik krautrock, and that sort of new age/wave-y synth. That's also why Maserati sound more like Zombi or Majeure these days, albeit a way more rocking, way heavier version. And hell, who could argue with a way heavier Zombi? Not us, that's for sure.
But really, to be fair, this new record is not all that far removed from past records, as far back as their Inventions For The New Season record, we were already describing some of their music as sounding like a "coke-fuelled Circle/Tortoise/Zombi jam" or as the perfect soundtrack for "an episode of Miami Vice, like for a scene (filmed from a helicopter) of an exciting power-boat chase across a deep blue, beautiful, sunshiney sea." And that vibe is still present, only now, it's for an episode of some futuristic sci-fi noir program, and instead of a speedboat chase, it's a hovership chase, between Bladerunner like buildings, culminating in a wild shootout in some sort of futuristic space disco. Which sounds pretty dang good to us.
Recommended for fans of Majeure, Zombi, Solar Bears, and other modern spacekraut sci-fi synth explorers, but also post/math/hypno rockers like Circle, Salvatore, Parlour, K-X-P, Magyar Posse, Cave, Russian Circles, etc.
We usually avoid online discussions about the death of the record industry, the rise of the mp3, and all that sort of stuff. We run a record store. We have no illusions about the industry, or the musical landscape. We all have iPods, and we all listen to mp3s and we all download stuff, but the thing is, we love records, we love cds, tapes, but especially the 7". So we got sucked into a discussion about the irrelevance of the 7" single, or more specifically, how 7"s lack the subcultural force they did 15 years ago. And while that may in fact be true, they do still have a force, just maybe a sub-SUB-cultural force. They remain the format of choice for first releases, a cheap way to check out a band you've only heard about (not as cheap as a download, but infinitely more satisfying), we have a handful of customers who ONLY buy 7"s, and we have to say, our love of the single has not really waned over the years. We of course wish they were cheaper, but there's something about 2 songs and a little chunk of vinyl, done right, it's about as sublime as music gets.
Which leads us to this, the latest single from long running post rockers Mogwai, and a Sub Pop single to boot, which holds a special spot in many of our hearts, that black bar across the top, the font, the Sub Pop logo, definitely sending us right back to the classic days of the Sub Pop singles club, and our beloved singles from Mudhoney and Nirvana and Afghan Whigs and the Dwarves and we could go on and on and on. Mogwai's offering features one track from their brand new (and killer) full length Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, not an obvious single in the context of the record, but here on a 7", it definitely reveals itself as THEE perfect single, not at all typically Mogwai, more fuzzy and crunchy, with a swoonsome bassline, big distorted guitars, driving and intense, but still a bit jangly, with some cool warbly synth melodies mixed in.
The B side though, which is exclusive to this hear 7", is well worth the price of admission, this one DEFINITELY classic Mogwai, big drums, twangy moody guitars, very mathy, and post rocky, layered melodies and strange chords that sound almost a little like Sonic Youth or Blonde Redhead, the verses quiet, but only compared to the big crunchy crashing distorted drum heavy choruses, the bass getting even more thick and fuzzy, the sound epic and heavy and so good, managing to sound like Young Team era Mogwai, but at the same time, sounding fresh, and not at all out of step with their new, less obviously quiet-loud-quiet-loud sound. Super awesome. And yet another kick ass single. Furthering our belief that we'll never get over our love of these little chunks of vinyl.
Comes with a download code too!
The first we'd heard from Australia's My Disco was on their split 7" with Young Widows, their track a killer slab of dour post punk noise rock, all lope and chug and minor key guitars, which is how Little Joy starts out, all clanging riffage, low slung bass, simple propulsive drumming, mantra like vocals, a bit like a dronier spacier Interpol maybe, their sound repetitive and cyclical, peppered with jagged shards of caustic guitar crunch. But it's on the second track, "Young", where the band's unique sound really gets to blossom, after another opening blast of minor key post rock, with cascading This Heat like guitars, and pounding motorik drumming, the band eventually slip into something way more rhythmic and sinewy and mesmerizing, sounding almost like a punk rock Necks, the band unfurling an epic sprawl of minimal hypnorock, the instrumentation super restrained, more about the rhythm, and the timbre, then the melody, the sound at once heavy, rhythmic and hypnotic, reminding us of a way more abstract Circle, locked tight, peppering the looped groove with little flurries of extra drumming, super subtle bits of melodic filigree, but for the most part holding the listener in thrall with their trancelike mastery of tension and NO release. Which is how the whole record plays out, a push and pull between more traditional sounding post punk jangle and clang, and totally mesmeringly minimal droned out repetition, either on their own would certainly be pleasing enough, but the two combined, create something much more that the sum of it's parts, the rare sort of record that should appeal as much to math rockers as post punkers, or to krautrockers as much as pop kids. So good.
(Not just on vinyl, cds coming back in soon...)
