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!
Given the look and sound of this short EP, Magnetic Stripper could be some terminally obscure DIY-industrial-synth project circa 1982, with the tinny drum machines, noisy blurts from various synths, and plenty of references to Absolute Body Control, Minimal Man, The Units, and Chris Carter's synth moments within Throbbing Gristle. But in fact, this is the work of San Francisco's James Ellis, currently working and performing today. There are four short pieces that would make for a great teaser for a forthcoming record, with the weird-science array of disjointed synth melodies and electro-static squiggling, all hanging upon skeletal drum machine pulses. The title track has more of a bedroom project New Wave feel with its motorik rhythms and percolated step sequencing. The other three tracks take more of an early SPK direction with all of the drum rhythms taking on a lumbering pace, minus the snarled noise and grizzy imagery. Both sides of the 7" end on locked grooves, and the single comes with a retro-looking button. Very cool.
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...
Second release from Video Horror Show, a new label releasing, as the name implies, VHS tapes, featuring original music, accompanied by tripped out visuals. The logical extension of the renewed interest in audio cassette tapes we presume, yet somehow even more retro, we can hardly wait for someone to start releasing tapes on betamax! Or microcassette! Even better, how about a laserdisc label?! Anyway, like the first installment (now out of print), a buzzing black metal sprawl from the awesomely monickered Suffer The Shards Of The Lost Culture Of Silence, The Five Wounds is another twisted sonic excursion, still plenty 'black', but instead of metal, this comes via witch house weirdos Mascara (spelled of course with the A's replaced by triangles, and the word separated by a little black pyramid, a spelling that for whatever reason comes out all gobbedlygook on our website), an epic 15 minute electro-goth synthdrone creepscape, all fuzzy distorted keyboards, moaning chanted vocals, lurching lumbering skeletal rhythms, everything hazy and blurry and gauzy and washed out, the sort of music you can imagine hearing in some dark smoke filled club in a David Lynch movie, so much smoke and dry ice, that it's nothing but shadows and strange amorphous shapes, and the sounds are muffled and mutated and refracted by the thick atmosphere, the voices slowed down to a crawl, the beat hypnotic and unrelenting, the synths buzzing and brittle, the vibe tranced out and deliriously druggy.
The accompanying video most definitely suits the sound, super trippy and lysergic with loads of lo-fi effects, grainy film stock, double exposures, burnt out images, swirling landscapes, slow motion sort-of-3D, strange shapes and figures, warped clips from horror movies, eye popping colors, ever shifting kaleidoscopic tableaus of murder and mayhem and terror, forests, and altars, and basements, and dark hallways and lonely roads. They don't call it Video Horror Show for nothing. Needless to say, both sonically and visually, totally far out and mesmerizing, and pretty fucking awesome.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in a white clamshell old school video tape case, with two color hand screened inserts, recorded onto a blue videotape, and comes with a download code (just for the music) as well!!
It's finally here, the long threatened 'acoustic' solo record from Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis, and guess what? It sounds just like an acoustic Dinosaur record, which is not a bad thing at all, Mascis's distinctive raspy drawl is perfectly suited to a stripped down sound, and he's always been a fantastic songwriter, and that hasn't changed, in fact if anything, stripping away all the distorted guitars might make it even more evident.
And it's not strictly acoustic, and not strictly solo, there are lots of guests: Pall Jenkins from Black Heart Procession and 3 Mile Pilot, Matt Valentine from MVEE and Tower Recordings, Suzanne Thorpe from Mercury Rev, Kevin Drew from Broken Social Scene, and Kurt Vile from Kurt Vile, with instrumentation that includes violin, musical saw, optigan, dobro, flute, clarinet, lap steel and slide, and more, but those extra instruments, and the guests who wield them are employed judiciously for sure, the core sound is acoustic guitar and voice, just occasionally embellished with some swoonsome strings, some lush layers, or an extra set of melodies, the coolest addition is the extra vocalists, who add unlikely harmonies to a handful of tracks, the sound a little twangy, a little folky, but undeniably and distinctly Mascis/Dinosaur Jr. Obviously fans of the man and his band will dig this too, unless the wild distorted guitars were the only reason you were into Dinosaur (fair enough), but odds are the rest of you will dig this a lot. And if you like modern folkies/singer songwriters like Kurt Vile, and for some strange reason have never encountered J Mascis or Dinosaur Jr, then heck, this might be the introduction you've been waiting for�
NOW AVAILABLE AS A PICTURE DISC LP!! And boy does the feverish psychedelic jungle Seldon Hunt artwork look nice on the vinyl! Limited of course. Here's what we said about the previous cd and vinyl editions:
Sometimes seeing a band play live in the flesh surpasses the experience on record, but other times, there's the danger of diminishing whatever mystique they've created for themselves, which remains safe when one listens at home with just the music (and record sleeve artwork) for one's imagination feed upon. Seeing a bunch of dudes in jeans and baseball hats up on stage making musician faces and fiddling with gear has bummed us out a bit about bands we've liked before, when we wanted gods and monsters and supermen.
And the ominously, exotically evocative music of the Master Musicians Of Bukkake, along with their colorful album cover imagery, provides a LOT of mystique to live up to (despite their irreverent/gross/jokey monicker). So when Allan here got the chance to see 'em recently at the Roadburn Festival in Holland, he was full of anticipation, but also a bit trepidatious about it. Turns out he had nothing to worry about. Do go see the Master Musicians Of Bukkake if you get the chance, their mystique will remain intact, never fear! Led by a dramatic robed figure wearing a wooden demon mask, the rest of the large ensemble wore white sombrero-like hats, their faces shrouded in black netting, and rocked out like dervishes, looking like they stepped out of scene in a Jodorowsky movie. One of most memorable performances at Roadburn for sure (and despite being, ah, so different from a lot of the other bands, they got a great response).
Witnessing that definitely got Allan excited about this impending new album, Totem Two. Plus we loved Totem One. The sequel raises the Master Musicians' mystic monolith still higher to the heavens. Once again to describe their sound, we could use the usual shorthand of the Sun City Girls meet latter-day Earth (which has some basis in this band's hybrid heavy drone exotica as well as their actual membership / friendship connections to those two legendary Seattle outfits). Other references: Ghost, Grails, Acid Mothers Temple, Secret Chiefs, Tangerine Dream! Thus, Totem Two has certainly been getting played a lot in the store, the MMoB's particular/pecuilar synthesis of sounds appealing to all of us here. Psychedelic, pretty, sinister, cinematic, steeped in ancient, Third World folk music and mythology... they're a mysterious moody mix of a lot of stuff we love, electronic drone filtered through faux-ethno ceremony, part SUNNO))), part Sublime Frequencies! Also, we're almost surprised this isn't on Ipecac, they ought to be Mike Patton's favorite band, in some ways bringing to life Mike Patton's Ennio Morricone compilation Crime & Dissonance (which was actually compiled by Alan Bishop, who of course is one of the Sun City Girls, and a mentor of / inspiration for / occasional collaborator with these guys).
The album begins with what sounds like a ghost train a-comin'... field recordings and tinkling percussion, hushed drone and the far-off foggy bellowings of Tibetan horns... you know you're in for a far ranging journey, off the beaten track. Gorgeous lonely flute dominates the second song, floating o'er a ritual processional, like Djivan Gasparyan sitting in on a sombre Amon Duul or International Harvester jam... the middle of the album brings in more buzzing synths, majestic and melancholic, getting spacey like Klaus Schulze, playing sentimental cinematic themes, dark and melodic.... The distortion ramps up briefly as a segue into the album's final eleven minute piece, a calm and psychedelic epic like Six Organs with extra synth squiggle... Beautiful! Almost makes us think of Japan's Far East Family Band from the '70s, that one. That's just a short surface summary, you could fall into this album's depths though, and come back changed, as if from a dream/drug quest...
The Mayfair Set sound exactly how you would imagine a band made up of members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls would sound, AWESOME!
Equal parts gloomy retro cold wave and that reverbed sixties girl group sound, two great tastes for sure, the sound washed out and murky, the boy vocals buried beneath angular jangle guitar and simple drumming, the female vox all shimmery in the background on some tracks, way up front in the others, with the boy vox drifting off in the distance, brooding moody verses and soaring choruses, gothy cold wave basslines, lilting and sing songy jangle gives way to driving woozy gloom pop, the guitar lines are spidery and skeletal, the distorted drumming skitters and stumbles, locking into simple propulsive rhythms, holding things together, white the dueling girl / boy vocals drive most of these songs, surrounded by shimmering clouds of glitchy effects, warm whirring keyboards, the sound warm and washed out and dreamy, another one of those records that gets played like crazy every single day. No better recommendation than that! And the fact that's members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls...
Our only real exposure to Dan Melchior, frontman of the Broke Revue and sometime collaborator with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, was on a recent split with local garage poppers the Fresh & Onlys, and we were blown away, describing his side of the split as "awesomely super distorted garage pop, like Elvis Costello, all jammed up and slathered in crumbling hiss and grit, the vocals delivered in a thick English accent, the drums blown out, effects all over the place, everything buried beneath a patina of blurred buzz..." which pretty much describes Melchior's Siltbreeze record as well, but if anything, all the blown out weirdness and heavily effected and damaged aspects we dug so much on that 7", have been cranked WAY up here. Noisier, more lo-fi, way more chaotic and confusional, the proper songs that do surface are slathered in distortion and FX, and transformed into some sort of outsider lo-fi avant garage psych weirdness.
"Atomizer" is some sort of no-fi distorto new wave, the whole song driven by a churning muddied electronic pulse, the vocals distorted and WAY up in the mix, robotic and clinical, but crumbling around the edges, pelted by jagged shards of blown out guitar, and squalls of cascading psychnoise, and the lyrics, twisted and appropriately baffling. "Bewildered And Wild" begins all folky and strummy, until the vocals come in, all processed and effected, making it sound like some alien blues, everything smeared with grit and grime and hiss, total interplanetary back porch moon blues weirdness, rife with the occasional super distorted swell of low end buzz. "Bread Bin Wailing (Moonlight Crow)" is all muted backwards warble, and ultra thick metallic bass buzz, echoey vocals, smears of psychedelic leads, and so it goes, the whole record some sort of drug addled bedroom blues, filtered through NZ noise rock, eighties cold wave, outsider loner zoner psych, and spit out in all its filthy fractured fucked up glory! Think Suicide crossed with Chrome crossed with the Shadow Ring crossed with Robyn Hitchcock crossed with Alastair Galbraith crossed Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. Indeed.
Comes with a download coupon too...
Now in stock on compact disc, 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 filligree, 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.
As much as we love progress, and new fangled gadgets, and the web and MP3's and YouTube and Netflix and downloads and iPods and all the various things that make life easy and exciting and make us feel like we're already living in a sci-fi future, we definitely dread the day where physical media ceases to exist. We like to think that could never happen, cuz who wants to live in a world without record stores, and movie theaters, and magazines, and newspapers, and lps and cassette tapes. And of course ZINES!!! Sure zines may seem like they're already dead and gone, but there are a few folks keeping zines alive, heck, there's a vintage zine store right down the street from aQ! And there's still loads of modern zines that rule: Salt, As Loud As Possible, Savage Damage Digest, Rape & Honey, and now Niche Homo, who are currently on issue number 4, and whose features should have most aQ-ers all in a tizzy. Ramleh, Sic Alps, Homosexuals, Thee Oh Sees, c'mon! There's also plenty of cool random stuff, articles, columns, illustrations, comics, all super well written and fun to read, and all laid out old school photocopy style and stapled in the middle. WAY recommended. Long live the zine!!!!
We only have 6 of these, the debut demo from this Florida depressive black metal duo, who sound is a twisted, grim melding of screeching abject misery and blasting blackened buzz. After a brief intro of spidery acoustic guitar, and some jagged shards of distorted noise, the band launches into a frenzied fury of insectoid guitar buzz, galloping blasts, and over it all, so hysterically shrieked vokills, wrapped in TONS of reverb, which invariably leaks all over the rest of the proceedings giving the whole record a sort of hazy lo-fi vibe. While most depressive black metal seems to lean more toward the doom side of the spectrum, lots of the jams here are frenzied and fast, flitting from D-beat pound, to all out lightning speed black blast, the melodies minor key for sure, keeping the mood appropriately miserable, but all wrapped up in burst and blasts. There are a few tracks of loping doomic creep, some of the record's finest, and most emotionally charged moments, during which the vocals get even more anguished, the music sounding post rocky and proggy, but inevitably, they eventually slip right back into something more blasting and black.
CRAZY LIMITED, already out of print, and super cool packaging...
The peripatetic sound artist Michael Northam built these psychedelically tinged compositions for liquid drone, field recordings, and hypnotic instrumentation via his longstanding affinity for the work of Rene Daumal. A mystic who ventured in and out of the Surrealist circles in the early 20th centuries, Daumal had done much in the way of metaphysical introspection, with only a few written works published. Mount Analogue would have been his second novel, had he not died before it was finished; this allegorical travel narrative, even in its unfinished state, became the template for Jodorowsky's film The Holy Mountain. Northam in his investigations of found sounds, activated spaces, crackled minimalism, and recent studies in Indian raga has put forward an earth-bound transcendence, not far removed from Daumal's mystical visions. Out of masses of bowed metals and small flutes, Northam constructs haunting elongations of harmonic tones that flicker throughout streams of textural noises, which sound like leaves rustling through through a wind-swept house perched somewhere up in the Himalayas. Northam's work is far from static, as tones subtly shift and burblings of those textural abrasions slip between a variety of monochromatic variations. Here, Northam offers something not too far from the classic sounds of Zoviet France mingled with those of Small Cruel Party and one-time collaborator Loren Chasse. More gritty, tape machinations speak throughout Northam's work, providing a post-industrial touch to all of the floating flute loops and bell tones suspended in meditation and harkening back to one of his early masterpieces The Absurd Evidence (with John Grzinich). This is an excellent recording, and limited to 250 copies through the Malaysian label Mirror Tapes.
Any one familiar with Mick Barr, most likely knows all about his dense, insane shredding axework and super obtuse metalisms in groups like Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Krallice and of course Ocrilim. This super deluxe, super limited boxset collects three out of print cd-r's, and presents them on vinyl, and all three taken as a single body of work might just comprise the most listenable stuff we've ever heard from Barr.
Annothrith Hymns is the prettiest of the bunch, a collection of short form solo guitarscapes, ostensibly black metal, but just the guitars, loosed from any griminty and instead allowed to soar majestically, layered and lush and lyrical, the sounds pulse and undulating, the tremolo picked riffs blurred into sweet soaring ur-drone epicness. Somehow buzzy and metal but still ethereal and mesmerizingly dreamy, even the Xasthur cover is transformed into something more crystalline and lovely.
Ixoltion immediately sounds like some epic, Norwegian style black metal, until you realize, that once again, it's just guitar, and the sound is not so much buzzy, so much as again, like the first lp, soaring and majestic, single riffs expanded to fill up a whole side, sprawling riffscapes that manage to remain black metal, while becoming something completely other, some sort of mesmerizing, looped, minimal blackened riffdronebuzz bliss out. Heavy sure, maybe, but more hypnotic and trancelike.
Finally, Sacreth, which complete the trilogy, and in some weird way, sounds like the first two combined, this is actual black metal, blasting and buzzing, but still minimal, the programmed beats proggy and intricate, matching the unlikely riffing, super hypnotic, the arrangements quite strange as well, lots of stop/starts, super mathy and complex, but still remaining epic and majestic, and weirdest of all, seriously melodic and poppy. It's almost like the three records are a slow build to Sacreth's black metal, but each part functioning fantastically on its own. So good. And even those of you who might have been put off in the past by Barr's gnarled noisy metallic tangle, this might surprise you as much as it did us.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Hand screened, hand glued silkscreened sleeves in a silk screened cardboard box, the records pressed on 180 gram vinyl, with a silkscreened insert, handnumbered.
Everyone's always saying they just don't make punk rock like they used to, and for the most part that's pretty much true. But, these guys do. Really. Just like the old days. In fact, if you didn't know better, you might find yourself wondering what old SST 7" this is playing, or thinking it must be produced by Spot, assuming they're probably from Hermosa Beach, pretty sure we saw them open for Black Flag, the record probably has cover art by Raymond Pettibon� well ONE of those is true (the cover art), even though this record sounds like they ALL must be.
Off! is most definitely a punk rock super group, Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag) on vocals, Steven McDonald (Redd Kross) on bass, Mario Rubalcaba (Earthless, Clickitat Ikitawi, etc) on drums, and Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides) on guitar. Sort of an unlikely lineup, but you'll only think that until you hear these guys play. Blasting, hooky, three chord old school hardcore / punk rock, 16 songs in 18 minutes, originally released as four 7" singles, these songs are short and sharp and are dead ringers for all the bands we loved back in the day. Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Redd Kross, Fear, the Germs, listening to these totally brings all that right back, Morris' distinctive yowl (sounding more and more like Jello Biafra), those killer riffs, the pounding propulsive drumming, the lo-fi production, and the songs, simple but catchy as hell. The jams KILL.
Awesome Pettibon cover art just seals the deal. It's been THIRTY years since the Decline Of Western Civilization came out and introduced punk rock to a whole new audience, and Western civilization is still in decline, and this shit still sounds better than most of the music released over the last three decades...
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark may forever be known for their '80s pop classic "If You Leave" which graced the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, but the band's first four records stand at the vanguard of British synth-pop. Unashamed by their influences from Kraftwerk and Brian Eno (especially Another Green World), OMD were keen on experimenting with electronics, synths, and drum machines in a new wave / pop context with a knack for the melodic pop hook to offset their mechanical plonk and bleep. Where The Human League were exceptionally coy with their ironic embrace of consumer culture (making their platinum clad singles all the more confounding), OMD were romantic at heart. Even the references to 20th Century warfare (i.e. Dazzle Ships, Enola Gay, The Messerschmidt Twins, Bunker Soldiers) find the band lyrically transposing the languages of love and war. Bittersweet at times, but never grim!
The eponymous record was the debut for OMD, released in February 1980. The single from the album, "Electricity," was a corker, a remake of a song from an earlier EP released by Factory. Here, it's a ridiculously catchy song with plenty of Man-Machine overtures in its crisp rhythm and plunky electric piano melody. With its sweeping tone-bend melodies and gliding electronic rhythms, "Bunker Soldiers" is one of those templates that had been emulated by almost every minimal wave project from 1980 to present. This cd reissue contains two versions of "Messages," with a single version fleshing out the tinny melodies with a springy Peter Hook inspired bassline... but no matter which version you're talking about, it's still fantastic. There are a few bonus tracks tacked on to the original program, including the spectral dirge "I Betray My Friends" and a cover of Velvet Underground's "Waiting For The Man" which is cute but unnecessary. Regardless, it's totally great to have this album back in print again, especially in the ongoing revisionism of minimal wave, synth punk, and new wave romanticism.
Some furious buzzing blasting blackened grimnity from right here in SF, the 4 song debut from Pale Chalice, a local black metal band who slay, this is not avant black metal, or post black metal, or experimental black metal, this is total, raw and furious, hateful and brutal old school classic black metal. The vocals are incredible, you might recognize that raspy demonic alien croak - those rotted pipes belong to Ephemeral Domignostika, of one man black metal band Pandiscordian Necrogenesis (who we've raved about on past lists), who's also one man black metal band Mastery (whose complete discography is coming out any day now on Andee's tUMULt label), but the rest of Pale Chalice ain't so shabby either, not sure if any of the others do time in other local outfits, but it hardly matters, this shit is fierce and frenzied and frantic, the sound huge, the guitars buzzing, the riffs gnarled, the bass a buried low end throb, the drums relentless and seriously blasting, the 4 tracks here hovering mostly in full on blast mode, but occasionally slipping into punkish pound, or woozy midtempo lope, even a little acoustic guitar drift near the end, the songs are massive and majestic, four tracks in about 30 minutes, sprawling blackened buzz drenched epics, intricate and intense, the vocals cranked WAY up in the mix, which makes the whole thing sound seriously fucked up and SICK.
Fast and furious, grim and black, one of the best new black metal records we've heard in a while� and yet another group to add to the ever expanding Bay Area black metal pantheon!
Hell yeah, '70s proto-metal from Detroit (and not only that, released on a Motown subsidiary)! These dudes have appeared on some cool comps of heavy psych obscurities we've listed (Up All Night, White Lace & Strange) but this is the first time we've seen a legit reissue of their only album, from 1970, entitled The Gospel According To Zeus. This digipacked reish is from the master tapes. The album starts off with stone classic "It Couldn't Be Me", a track that hiphop headz might recognize as having been sampled on an Obie Trice record a few years back. What we also now realize, is that recent AQ fave band Malachai (the sampledelic UK duo on Domino) essentially sounds, at their best, a whole heck of a lot like that one song by Power Of Zeus - it's as if Malachai based their entire sound on the big beat fuzz pop hard rock of "It Couldn't Be Me"! So that's pretty cool.
But Power Of Zeus have a bunch more bellbottomed acid rock goodness to offer here... ten tracks total ranging from upbeat garagey psych nuggets like "In The Night" and "I Lost My Love", to the mellower, harpsichord-laced "Green Grass & Clover" and the epic, aptly titled doomic dirge "The Death Trip", eventually culminating in the freaked out finale of prog opus "The Sorcerer Of Isis (Ritual Of The Mole)", another track that's been sampled by hiphop producers.
Along the way, lotsa bangin' fuzz riffs, wailing organ, lofty vocals, and cowbell knockin' grooviness, real good stuff for all you proto-metal (and popsike!) fans into the likes of Sir Lord Baltimore, Granicus, Atomic Rooster, Dust, Frijid Pink, Bubble Puppy, and last list's proto-metal selections by Bang and Elonkorjuu.
Way cool.
If Power Of Zeus played shows with Funkadelic back in the day, we wouldn't be at all surprised...
From the same label that released the two lps from Mist, Mist being the John Elliot fronted Emeralds side project, comes this, the debut from noisy droney duo Providen, featuring members of Swords Of Heaven and American Jobs, whose sound is well removed from the spacey sci-fi of Mist, and instead is a fantastically confusional jumble of processed vox, malfunctioning synths, deep rumbling drones, heavy sludgey trudge, psychedelic zoner folk, woozy melodic warpage and home brewed psychedelic whatthefuck, all woven into some sort of fractured no-fi abstract minimal psychdronedirge weirdness.
After a stretch of chanted electronic ambience, a sort of ominous buzz drenched into, the duo launch into a lurching Dead C like noise rock death march, all crumbling distortion, simple drums, and dramatic, almost gothic sounding crooned vocals, resulting in some sort of noisy coldwave dirge pop, way to short at less than 90 seconds, before leading directly into the chaotic and crunchy title track. All skittery distorto beats, howled vox, and malfunctioning electronics, another hypno noise rock dirge, a pulsing meditative trudge, wreathed in streaks and shards of electronic crunch and fractured melodic flutter.
And so it goes, the tracks alternatingly exploding into sheets of white hot, blown out supernova buzz, or collapsing into super minimal, detuned dronepsych bedroom folk, Jandekian and abject, or building into super dense lumbering electronoiserock dirges, like some sort of SUNNO))) / Six Finger Satellite mashup, in-the-red, crunchy and corrosive, but still weirdly trancelike and mesmerizing.
This is definitely the sort of thing that might be a bit too much for the spaced out sci-fi new agers into all that Expo 70 and Emeralds stuff, instead, this is something altogether more tense and intense, noisy and distorted, for fans of slow low blown out rhythmic heaviness like Mammal, Geronimo, Psychic Paramount, SUNNO))), Rusted Shut, etc... who also dig tripped out lysergic exotic doom folk like Amen Dunes, Amps For Christ, Steven R. Smith, Suarasama, Six Organs, Jandek, Daniel Higgs and the like.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, housed in nice thick cardstock sleeves with paste on front cover artwork, and a printed insert (on either cardstock or transparency).
We reviewed a split 7" from these Colorado noise rockers a while back, where we described them as sounding like "some sort of modern version of big ol' post punk sludge groove, hard not to hear some Scratch Acid in there. Ultra grimy downtuned guitars, super dense and mathy arrangements, woozy basslines, blown out fuzz guitar, growled/shouted vocals. Almost like a way darker, way more punk Pelican in a way." Apparently they liked that enough to put it on the cover (!), and some of that definitely still applies (not the Pelican thing so much here), this is some seriously heavy, crusty, noisy, pigfuck, distorto filth, raw and nasty, think classic AmRep, think Karp, a sort of post metal heaviness wrapped around dirgey punk rock pummel, dense distorted knuckle dragging caveman crush, the vocals a throat shredding howl, somewhere between death metal growl, Killdozer Yowl and Muppety howl, the music buzzy and blown out, super rhythmic, downtuned, heavy and hypnotic. Kinda weird to think Rabbits are from Portland and is made up of guys from Angel Hair / The VSS / Pleasure Forever, cuz damn if this don't sound pretty Midwest to us. Regardless, this is some thick as molasses, punked out sludgy noise rock that KILLS. Total doom sludge metal punk bliss. Fuck yeah. We've got compact disc and colored vinyl.
My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Slowdive's Soulvaki, Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See - there are just some records that stand especially tall in the pantheon of shoegaze's finest moments. Ride's album Nowhere belongs right there too, as one of our all time favorites, a truly perfect album from start to finish, that has most definitely stood the test of time. While Ride made some other cool records, they never were able to duplicate the genius of Nowhere. A record that soars and floats with such emotional honesty as well as that dazed 'n glazed vibe that has made it one of those records we've turned at so many different times in our lives. It came out in 1990 and really served as a perfect extension of what folks in the '80s like The Jesus & Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, The Durutti Column, Loop, and The Cure were doing, infusing that sound with an even deeper emotional quality as well as lots of psychedelic undertones, creating music that soared and floated with dreamy ease and driving force.
No matter how hyperbolic we get, we simply can't even get close to describing how much this record means to so many of us. We've turned to it in moments of despair, we've cranked it with windows down on endless drives with crushes and close friends, we've shacked up alone in our bedrooms with this playing during intense moments of loneliness, we've lain in beds with the ones we love lingering in ecstasy as it plays. It's a record that has and will continue to be such a constant source of pleasure for our ears and minds, hearts and souls.
Long out of print, we are SO stoked that Rhino has stepped up to reissue this classic on vinyl now! YOU NEED THIS! (There's also supposedly a special deluxe double cd edition on Rhino that includes a whole mess of bonus tracks, we haven't been able to get our hands on that yet, however.)
Yet another band to add to the current crop of boys club crashing, ass kicking female fronted, hard rock / heavy metal bands (alongside The Devils Blood, Jex Thoth, Loon, Cauchemar, Christian Mistress, Wooden Stake, Blood Ceremony), this one hailing from Atlanta, not so much a metal band as a hard rock power trio, with a lead vocalist with a serious set of pipes on her, no screeching, or buried in the mix warbling, Miny Parsonz dominates, her vocals sexy and sultry and witchy and powerful and dramatic, super distinctive, a little rough and raspy, but perfectly suited to the groups, swaggery, groovy, hard rock, almost Southern rock sounding at times, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, probably more than Sabbath honestly, the songs slow building and smoldering, the guitar smokey and spidery, the drums, subtle and laid back, the band creating lush dark mysterious twang flecked drifts, Parsonz' vocals slithering over the top, deep and throaty, the riffs getting more and more distorted, the drums crashing in, and suddenly it, the heaviest seventies hard rock jam you never heard, the hooks perfect, the vocals, so BAD ASS. There's a serious slowcore thing going on here too, like Loon, reminding us of aQ faces True Widow, that slithery moody minimal crawl, plus there's a definite eighties metal vibe happening too, mostly in the vocal melodies, that had us thinking of Lita Ford and Doro Pesch, which is not a bad thing at all, in fact, it adds a whole other dimension that other current female vocalists lack, and the fact that these guys (and gal) are obviously more about writing songs, that just SOUNDING heavy, means the more you listen to these jams, the more they stick. When we first heard this, we thought it was pretty cool, but now we can't stop listening, and damn if "Sleeping Witch" isn't the hard rock jam of the year. A new favorite for sure. And if you dig any of the above mentioned bands, this might be one of the best of the bunch. We've got cds, and colored vinyl, take your pick!
A while back we had a little gift certificate giveaway to help raise money for aQ pal Stephen Kasner, an artist you no doubt know, his art has adorned records by Aluk Todolo, Skullflower, Lotus Eaters, Subarachnoid Space, Blood Fountains, Khlyst, Aun, Habsyll, and loads more, we used to carry his amazing art book too, anyway, he was recently diagnosed with a serious illness, and of course like many artists/musicians, he does not have health insurance, and was faced with impossible medical bills, so the underground community has been doing everything they can to help raise money so Kasner can get the treatment he needs and get better.
This here split cd-r is another benefit, all proceeds from the sale of these discs will go directly to Kasner, and in addition to helping out a super nice, and ultra talented guy, you get two gorgeous, massive slabs of dark, thick. layered droned out ambience. Most of you probably already know RST, aka Andrew Moon, a killer NZ guitarist, here he shares a disc with Rahmane, who are/is new to us, but who offers up a pretty stellar bit of droned out psychedelic ambient drift, beginning with a bit of abstract shimmer, some minimal percussion, and finally some wheezing organ, haunting and cinematic, minor key and moody, the whirring organ soon gives way to a tangle of horns, wild squalls drifting over the now distant low end thrum, a sort of abstract dronejazz, which quickly erupts into a blast of noisy chaos, of gnarled electronics, twisted effects and processed vocals, a sound that gradually crumbles leaving just the sounds of a burbling brook, and a hazy layer of metallic drones, and soaring string like melodies drifting over the top. Quite nice.
RST follows up with a sprawling expanse of humid guitar drone, a thick all of muted and distorted heaviness, no forward momentum, instead, the sounds themselves churn and roil, buried melodies shifting and tangling, streaks of sizzling cymbals, chordal fragments, all drift within a corrosive, glacial swells, throbbing and pulsing but somehow remaining nearly static, a gorgeous washed out almost Tim Heckerish expanse of gauzy soft noise, underpinned by bits of guitar strum, and deep rumbling low end. Gorgeous as always. And well worth the price of admission, even mores knowing that it's for a good cause.
LIMITED TO 70 COPIES. Features original Stephen Kasner artwork, ALL proceeds go to the Kasner Fund.
Formery a bi-monthly magazine, Shindig! has now gone to a quarterly schedule, which means a beefed-up page count, this is BIG! Sorta the size of an issue of Ugly Things (a magazine with which Shindig! has much in common, content-wise) but on glossy, color paper for all the vibrant graphics to really zing out atcha eyes.
On the cover, The Electric Prunes. And among the many other things inside this ish, there's articles about (or interviews with) Dutch freakbeat greats Q65, 10cc's Strawberry Studios, the Light In The Attic label, Texas heavies Josefus, blues raga masters Clark-Hutchinson, former Blue Cheer guitar god Randy Holden, and "the rise and fall of our last great rock band" Thee Hypnotics - you see, it's not all '60s/'70s stuff, or maybe Thee Hypnotics, from the '90s, get a pass... Actually they cover even newer bands, including Swedish garage rockers The Maharajas, here. And then there's some non-music material as well, articles about psychedelic video games (really!) and trashy '70s exploitation paperbacks, including that volume of The Destroyer series Allan's been trying to find, #13: Acid Rock!
Plus the usual reviews, album art features, and more. All in all, lookin' good as a quarterly!
Not the Speed, not the Glue - it's just the Shinki, here. After reissuing the two classics of drugged out early '70s Japanese heavy psych by proto-metal power trio Speed, Glue and Shinki, makes sense that the Phoenix label would turn their attentions to the solo effort by that band's guitarist, Shinki Chen, originally released in 1972, also featuring Hiro Yanagida on keys, and George Yanagi from Flied Egg / Strawberry Path on bass and vocals. For those keeping score at home, this doesn't get nearly the love from Julian Cope's Japrocksampler as do Shinki's albums with Speed and Glue, but we still figure any Speed Glue & Shinki fan will certainly wanna check it out, 'cause it's pretty cool in our book. Truth is, as far as STONER rock goes, its hard to imagine music much more stoned than this comfortably numb slab of swirling, psychedelic blooze rawk. Just look at the album cover... crazy long hair, red eyes, puffing on a joint... that's this album, all right.
It starts off with a weird, semi-ambient opening track, "The Dark Sea Dream", five fairly abstract minutes of tinkling piano, barely-there percussion, distant voices (?), amp buzz and feedback drone which would fit right in on a current Miasmah label release, say. After that, the "regular" (though quite relaxed) rock n' roll kicks in, on melodic blues-based songs with such wonderful titles as "Freedom Of A Mad Paper Lantern", "Gloomy Reflections", and "Corpse". Shinki's guitar gently weeps, his riffage more slumbering than lumbering, the rhythms lazy and loping, everything often overwhelmed by blissed out layers of synth shimmer. And it's all quite enjoyable in fact, with a vibe sorta similar to the California dreamin' of Captain Beyond's Sufficiently Breathless (though without the jazziness of that album, which we just realized we've never reviewed!). And definitely of interest to fans of Too Much, Far Out, and of course SG&S.
In any case, Shinki and friends fuzz it up nicely here, and remarkably enough, on the album's last cut, the nearly 13 minute long "Farewell To Hypocrites", they suddenly start to display some energy, the drummer at last bestirring himself, making for a rousing finale to a record that otherwise often sorta sounds like heavy Hendrix on 'ludes. Nothing wrong with that, though, if you're in the mood! Hmm, maybe they recorded this last track first, who knows?
Limited, numbered, mini-LP sleeve styled gatefold packaging.
We love bands whose music-making formula appears, on the surface, simple and intuitive, yet the sounds they create are huge, engulfing and seemingly complex. Using two synthesizers and echoing vocals, The Slaves inhabit a sound that is as lush and dense as it is mysterious and minimal. Their debut album, Ocean on Ocean, is the perfect showcase of a group that can conjure up bountiful sounds within a restrained approach. Honestly, we can't get enough of Ocean on Ocean, something about those enormous, dreamy, engulfing songscapes just leaves us wanting more. Their oozing brew of minimal pop melts and blurs with the melodic thickness of MBV's Loveless or early Slowdive, but surrenders to a contemplative mode that falls somewhere between Gregorian hymn and pagan ritual. The duo spin a radiant web of sustained vocals and heavy synth, each chord drawn out and smeared into a neon haze while indecipherable lyrics suggest longing, loss and submission to oblivion.�
"Seventeen" unfolds with a slow arching chord progression that grows and dissipates like a coastal tide. Female vocals creep into the oceanic haze while fluttering noise and cosmic wash hover in obscurity. And though the rhythm-less wash may appear to be aimless improv, a close listen reveals a defined structure beneath the veil of long tones and heavy atmospherics. And yes, The Slaves are heavy. And it's not a 'down-tuned guitars through a wall of amps' kind of heavy. It's more evident in the slow movement of the songs, and the visceral effects felt by each musical gesture. The duo have perfectly crafted a searing offering of 'soft doom', so gorgeous and mesmerizing we've had Ocean on Ocean on repeat for the past week. "Shadows" is another noteworthy track. We love the push and pull of heavy synth and whispery vocals, whirls of female voice echo into the night then dissipate into huge swells of HEAVY distorted synth. Crumbling low end amid ethereal dream chants, what else could we ask for?? One of our favorite records in recent memory and highly recommended!�
Latest batch of end of the world, country twang, revivalist apocalyptic swamp folk from these Colorado cowboy punks, the perfect follow up to last year's Buried Behind The Barn, and while in the early days these guys were most definitely taking the piss, it's been long enough that any irreverence has become less schtick, and more just a part of what these guys do, and what these guys do, is something similar to groups like Woven Hand and Sixteen Horsepower (the vocals sound a lot like David Eugene Edwards, which is weird cuz Mr. Cessna used to sound just like Rhett Miller from the Old '97s!), Uncle Tupelo, X, Munly (he is after all ALSO in the Auto Club) and yeah the Old 97's, but also the Decemberists, Arcade Fire and the like, shuffly, twangy, with a sound that slips from
Devil-Went-Down-To-Georgia style country rock, to more dark and minimal folky twang, there's even some gospel going on, especially on the tracks that sound like some deep South faith healer tent revival meeting, call and response vocals, handclaps, but all wrapped up with slide guitar, banjo, lush haunting harmonies, and some seriously kick ass catchiness.
The production is surprisingly lush this time around too, lots of organ, transforming Cessna's hillbilly stomp into something much more moody and brooding, and it suits them for sure, just give the record opener a listen, the awesomely titled "Three Bloodhounds Two Shepherds One Fila Brasileiro", gorgeously grim and ominous, minor key and moody, but it's also loose and fun, a tall tale told in sound by a master story teller, and of all the tracks here, this is the one that most sounds like Woven Hand, and definitely hints at what these guys could pull off if they weren't such inveterate jokers. "The Unballed Ballad Of The New Folksinger" (also an awesome title), starts out with an organ heavy almost ska sounding groove, driven by a bouncy rhythm, lots of buzz and twang, woozy spidery riffs, and some awesome intense vocals, the song getting more intense and dramatic as it goes, there's even a strange deep voiced breakdown before the song launches right back into it. "Thy Will Be Done" is another bluegrassy twang flecked stomp, with a super dynamic start stop ominous cautionary chorus. And so it goes, the only respite from this damned-soul sonic sermonizing, the woozy ballad "A Smashing Indictment Of Character", weeping slide guitars, over hushed hazy vocals, but even here, Cessna and his crew can't resist the temptation to pepper the track with more of that handclapping revivalism, and some low slung banjo driven verses to boot, and while the track revisits that opening dreamy drift, it's only briefly, there's more testifyin to be done after all. And so it goes, track after track: buzz, twang, shuffle, croon, howl, pound, stomp, hook, howl, repeat. AWESOME.
It's hard not to love these guys, they're obviously such incredible musicians, and have a killer sense of humor, and to see them live, it's sort of what you wish all shows were like, wild and loose, and totally rocking, super fun, and funny, the kind of show you never want to end, and after a while you're almost convinced that this amazing music is in fact some sort of salvation, and remarkably, these guys manage to capture at least some of that fire and energy on record!
Huzzah! San Francisco's idiosyncratic old school metal masters Slough Feg are back with a new record, already! We made their previous album, 2009's Ape Uprising, a Record Of The Week, and wrote, like, thousands of words about it. So we'll be a bit briefer here, whilst still giving this our highest recommendation. If you liked it when they Aped it Up, then you know what you're in for on The Animal Spirits. Kinda...
Slough Feg already did an album called Atavism, but THIS is their most atavistic yet. Their most '70s rock. (Heck, most Broadway too.) In part, heavy, ripping, raw. In part, majestically melodic. So very melodic, and often major-key, almost pop instead of metal. But not "pop-metal", no not that. And always, always, eccentric. Also epic, can't forget epic, though none of the songs are even over 5 minutes long. Speaking of epics, what metal band would do a song about somebody named Thor, on an ocean voyage, and have it NOT be about Vikings? Slough Feg, naturally, with this album's "Kon-Tiki", about Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's daring raft expedition across the Pacific in 1947. Another unusual, historical number is "The 95 Thesis", about Martin Luther and the Reformation, maybe the only metal song on that subject and certainly the only one to features the lines "Some hide in sophistry but you had the balls / to nail your thesis to the cathedral wall", as it's not so much about religious history as it is about someone being a badass.
So, perhaps even moreso than on other Slough Feg albums, expect the unexpected. Like the crude but cool b&w artwork, for instance, drawn by the band's vocalist/guitarist/mastermind Mike Scalzi himself. Or the Alan Parsons Project (!) cover they do, "The Tell-Tale Heart", which utterly sounds like a Slough Feg tune, Scalzi totally owning the vocal part originally sung by none other than Arthur "I Am The God Of Hellfire" Brown on the 1976 original.
It's also perhaps unexpected that this record would be released on cult avant blackened doom label Profound Lore (though they've lately been signing a lot of the Bay Area underground's best, it seems). Sure, PL has put out some somewhat "trad" metal before, like the last Hammers Of Misfortune double disc and the recent, recommended Dawnbringer opus, but this still has to be the weirdest release on Profound Lore ever... who, by the way, claim that Slough Feg are America's most important heavy metal band of the past 20 years!
Over those years, especially with their current lineup, Slough Feg certainly have earned a reputation as an incredible live act, really you won't see too many more impressive or entertaining performances from a metal band, or any band, these days. They're a band that rejoices in being on stage, that revels in the skill they possess and the power they wield, and they capture that spirit and energy and showmanship and sense of abandon with these new songs for sure. The Animal Spirits is lively, dare we say playful. Sometimes cryptically, cleverly humorous. Bold and brash and totally unselfconscious. So they can do rockin' tracks like the frantic boogie of opener "Trick The Vicar", or the thrashy closer "Tactical Air-War" (which features special guest vocalist, Bobbie Wright of another San Fran metal cult, Brocas Helm!!), and in between find room for a few numbers that are closer to musical theater, though still quite heavy.
We've talked about the unexpected, the other hand, you CAN of course expect plenty of guitar harmonies, shredding leads, bombastic vocals, and memorable riffs... they still sound 100 percent like Slough Feg (and thus a bit like Maiden, a bit like Priest, a bit like Sabbath, and a bit like Thin Lizzy). If you've ever said, nobody makes music like that anymore, well Slough Feg do. But they're original about it too.
Oh, and good thing they released this in time for Halloween, as there's songs about both vampires and werewolves on here. The latter, live stand out "Lycanthropic Fantasies", is a show stopper on stage, and one of this disc's best as well. The former, "Ask The Casket", is a ridiculously melodic dirge inspired by the cult '60s TV gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows.
Another of our favorite tracks is "Second Coming", which starts off acoustically, and features one of Scalzi's most emotive and heartfelt vocal performances, as well as (more) gorgeous twin lead guitarwork... like Slough Feg's earlier "The Sea Wolf", it's a song inspired by writer Jack London, but maybe 'cause the lyrics make reference to San Francisco, it seems like Scalzi's really singing about himself here, somehow.
Finally, by the way, unlike Ape Uprising, which did have a song or two about apes, The Animal Spirits is NOT about animals (or spirits). The title refers to an archaic philosophical concept that Scalzi finds amusing, and we don't think pertains to the content of any of the songs on here.
Talk about simultaneously awesome and obscure. Delving deep into '80s metal buried treasure, Stormspell's Days Of Yore division has come up with this double cd, rollercoaster ride of a reissue, that anyone into technical thrashing prog metal ought to utterly enjoy. It's from a Massachusetts band, Spectral Incursion, who never even released an album, just a bunch of demos and one ep. Way underground, mathy metallic music-making mania on display here, jawdropping and headbanging.
Unrestrained, raw and ripping stuff from young guys more concerned with coming up with cool new parts for their twisting, turning songs than in being popular. We're lovin' it. The jagged, splintered riffs and tricky time signatures multiply throughout these heavy, hectic compositions, with leads spiraling up alongside vocals that scream, soar, and roar. Each over the top track seems designed by/for the ADD afflicted, shooting off in a new direction every few seconds, yet not neglecting melody and a rock n' roll vibe. Intricate, eccentric, exhilarating - and we really like how the DIY-ness of this mitigates against any potential pretentiousness a la big time prog metal like Dream Theater. This really is some kids tossing their faves like Rush, Priest, Sabbath, Maiden, Slayer, and Fates Warning into a sharp-bladed blender on high. If you're a fan of such bands as Confessor, Atheist, Watchtower, Coroner, or Hellwitch, you should definitely check this out!
Disc one consists of demo tapes from 1988 and 1991, their four song ep from '88, and four tracks recorded in 2010 by the reunited band, doing old songs by pre-Spectral Incursion incarnation Graven Image, whose demos circa 1986-'87 occupy disc two, which also contains some video clips for your computer.
Super cool, constantly surprising, what this lacks in production polish they make up for in precision - and sheer insanity. As always, great to see a forgotten band this good (and gonzo) get their due. Complete with thick, slick cd booklet full of liner notes, lyrics, etc.
A brand new batch of tracks the latest addition to the SF psychedelic space rock pantheon, with just a single 7" under their belts, and now this 5 song cassette, these guys are definitely poised to be another next big thing. After all, folks are so gaga for Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, Sleepy Sun, Carlton Melton, the Lumerians, hell, we can't imagine those same folks wouldn't flip for these guys too.
They definitely have a similar sound, Velvets, Spacemen 3, etc., although here, they open up with a way more straight ahead chunk of sixties style psychedelic pop jangle, stripped down, a little fuzzy, but not buzzy or droney or druggy so much as just hooky and jangly, it's not until the second track that they kick on the pedals, opening with a blast of crumbling distortion, only to fade away leaving just some strummed acoustic guitar, and then bam, the song kicks in, fuzzed out guitars, ear whirring organ, washed out reverbed vocals, motorik drumming, totally blissed out druggy droney psychedelic garage rock.
But then they switch right back, and offer up another slab of classic sixties style psych pop jangle, before launching into a track that manages to mix both, that sort of Doorsy / Velvetsy style druggies, wrapped around some swaggery pysch pop shuffle, there's even some harmonica, that manages to make it all sound that much droopier and druggier.
Finally the band wrap it up with a short sharp blast of fuzzy drone rock bliss, all hazy and hypnotic, the Spacemen 3 vibe looming large, drawled vox, crunchy guitars, looped and hypnotic and mesmerizing, with some serious hooks hidden throughout, the sort of song that definitely deserves a multi minute psychedelic freakout tacked on the end, but instead winds down after just three minutes.
Killer stuff, another ep length tease, but just enough to tide us over until these guys finally get together a proper full length.
Like the 7", these babies are pretty limited, so grab one quick before they're gone...
One of our favorite albums, and another one we realized to our dismay that we didn't have in the store or on the website, so we thought we'd share our love of this record with any of you who aren't already familiar with this classic.
At their prime, Steel Pulse were without a doubt the best reggae band to come out of the UK, with great songwriting skills, social consciousness and songs bursting with energy and packed with infectious hooks. They were such a huge influence on so many bands in the punk and new wave world, that they were often asked by bands like The Clash, The Police, The Stranglers and Generation X to go on tour with them. In fact, much of the Police's early sound is SO obviously influenced by the music of Steel Pulse. True Democracy is really one of those records that crosses genre lines, while very much a reggae record it's amazing how many people who thought they weren't into reggae at all, heard this record playing and couldn't resist getting caught tight in its irresistible grasp. It's a record that never loses its charm or its ability to sweep us of our feet as we always walk a little faster, feel a little more free, and move with more purpose whenever we have it blasting in our ears. Originally released in 1982 and it still sounds as fresh and vital as ever!
There's certainly no shortage of Sun Ra reissues, the idiosyncratic bandleader recorded a LOT of stuff over his long career, and while we try to review as many of 'em as we can, we can't review 'em all... and don't really need to, as you can't go too wrong with any of 'em, if you appreciate Ra's spacey Afrocentric jazz in general, especially the way his music is often both outside and inside at the same time. But when a Ra reissue comes along that starts off with an otherworldly 18 minute Mini-Moog solo from the man himself, then that's one that we know we've GOT to list. "Space Probe" is the track in question, an apt title indeed, recorded circa 1969, right about when Sun Ra received a prototype model from Robert Moog, for testing purposes. Test it he did!! So this is a historic recording, and we can't help but quote what it says here about how "Moog always claimed afterwards that he never understood exactly where some of those sounds came from - suspecting he [Sun Ra] might have modified the instrument in some way."
Elsewhere on this disc, regular Sun Ra sidemen Marshall Allen (flute) and John Gilmore (bass clarinet) appear, along with James Jacson (log drum), Nimrod Hunt (hand drum) and Thea Barbara (wordless, operatic vocals), with material from sessions dating to the early '60s; a small, spare ensemble playing "jazz" that has to go in quotes. "Sun Ra music" is more like it. And it's intergalactic, atmospheric, avant garde groove (and anti-groove) unlike much else in this universe. Some of the tracks appeared on the 1974 Saturn label vinyl release, Space Probe, others are previously unissued takes.
Worth it for "Space Probe" alone, which combines '50s sci-fi film sound effects with proto-techno pulsations, so very different from the relaxed wooden rhythms and flute flutter of the 13+ minute "The Conversation Of J.P.", another of this disc's highlights.
Nicely done Art Yard reissue as always, in a slim trifold digipack with liner notes.
Ah, Teenage Panzerkorps. This confounding, transcontinental quartet has quite a punk / avant-rock pedigree. Edmund Xavier was born Glenn Donaldson, whose work within the forest-dwelling psychedelic collective Jewelled Antler spawned such projects as Thuja and the Blithe Sons, not to mention the paisley-pop project the Skygreen Leopards and Art Museums; and Boy True is the pseudonym for Jason Honea, who joined the leftist-punk band Social Unrest in the late '80s and Ten Bright Spikes in the '90s, before accompanying Donaldson and company on some of the more outre projects of Jewelled Antler. From the perspective of Jewelled Antler, the iconography of Teenage Panzerkorps makes a lot more sense, as a re-imagining of the childhood games playing with toy soldiers, where political and moral implications are lost within the wonder of play, all the while these childish ideals are smashed into the epiphany of hearing punk for the first time, with all of the social and political ramifications very much on the line. The Teutonic bark of vocalist Bunker Wolf and all of the militant iconography might give the impression of these guys being Nazi sympathizers, but this is hardly the case, as Der TPK's folding of symbols and metaphors is far more nuanced in its appropriation, pastiche, and parody.
German Reggae is album number four for Der TPK, and it exhibits some variation beyond the drone-punk propulsion which dominated their Games For Slaves and Nations Are Insane albums. Honea's basslines look back to the first couple of PiL records and Jah Wobble's thick punk-dub, and Bunker Wolf's delivery is a bit more understated, to which some have compared now to a Germanic Mark E. Smith. Even with these differences, Der TPK puts their collective head down for these propulsive, grimy post-punk numbers with plenty of references to the pre-Joy Division Warsaw recordings, Savage Republic, and Wire, not to mention contemporaries like The Soft Moon and Cult Of Youth.
The first thing you notice about the new record from psychsludgepop duo Tweak Bird, if you're us at last, and you're seriously obsessed with seventies Japanese psychedelia, is that the cover art is obviously an homage to Flower Travellin' Band's Anywhere record, the two members of Tweak Bird, shirtless, on a motorcycle, tooling down the highway with open fields in the background. Musically, though, these guys have way more in common with Torche or Floor than FTB, their sound a spaced out psychedelic proggy fuzzy buzzy stoner pop, thick baritone guitar riffs, big pounding drums, crazy catchy hooks, and some seriously dreamy vox, not quite falsetto, but soaring and clear, there are lush harmonies, and surprising melodies, and of course some 'ooooh ooooh's here and there, all draped over some seriously thick sludgey riffs, the band slipping from chuggy fuzzy pop, to pounding howling almost metallic crunch, there's sax too, and flute, and some synths, the more we listen the more proggy it sounds, Daniel Higgs like vocalizing wrapped around jazzy sax, all draped over shimmery keyboards and motorik drumming, only to blossom into something that sounds a little like Magma or the Ruins, albeit a stoner pop indie rock version, but it's killer. Elsewhere, flute flutters over some buzzy riff heavy groove, and those floaty ethereal surprisingly high boy vox, a sort of tripped out stoner metal prog fuzz folk pop, or something. And those doses of weirdness are balanced out by the blasts of full on buzzing metallic distorto pop, and heavy downtuned chug, the riffs slipping from jangly and minimal to super distorted and blown out, the band somehow creating an impossibly catchy sound with some seriously disparate elements. So goddamn good. We'd be seriously surprised if the rest of the world didn't finally catchy on, and like Torche, make these guys the underground stoner pop indie sludge super stars they should so obviously be. AWESOME!
Blame it on the Bossa Nova! What Americans experienced of Brazil's biggest cultural export in the sixties (think Astrud Gilberto's "Girl From Ipanema" and Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66) was actually a watered down version of a vital cultural renaissance of luxury and prosperity in a country transforming itself from its agrarian roots to a new industrial power on the world's stage. Soul Jazz has released this terrific new compilation to highlight the origins of this tremendous and far-reaching cultural shift, with many of the genre's original innovators: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Elis Regina, Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, Nara Leao, Wanda Sa, Maria Bethannia, Milton Nascimento as well as plenty of others we had never heard before. With its cool vocals, complex but economic melodic structures and sophisticated jazz motifs, Bossa Nova represented a huge shift away from traditional music to a new modern jet-setting sound. What's neat about this compilation is that even though the names may be familiar, many of the tracks are not the typical hits you may have heard before, reflecting the urgent embrace and hopeful optimism of a country stretching into its new identity. Sadly it wouldn't last. By the time, American's were fully seduced by Bossa Nova's warm wave of tropical sophistication in the mid-sixties, Brazil experienced a military takeover and many of the musicians (namely Jobim and Mendes) were forced to flee to the US. They were able to have successful careers (perhaps even more successful than when they were in Brazil) but Bossa Nova in America became something symbolically different, an almost Imperial embrace of laid-back Latin coolness while completely overlooking the political unrest that displaced it. Thankfully another musical and cultural revolution, Tropicalia, was gearing up to take its place. Still, whatever association you might have with Bossa Nova, this compilation is full of surprises and well worth the listen. So freaking good!
And as with all Soul Jazz record, the packaging is deluxe and elaborate, a slipcover housing a jewel case and a massive booklet, with tons of photos, and a super extensive history of Bossa Nova, detailing the musicians, and the politics of the era.
Weird, murky drone and darkly introspective goth-ambient sounds from the Austin indie-electronic underground. Brain Club is a series of mixes compiled by Jesse Jenkins (Silver Pines, Pure X/Ecstasy, Thousand Foot Whale Claw) and Kyle Dixon (Survive, Heathen Earth) of unreleased tracks by Austin-based groups (at least for this inaugural edition), most of whom we've never heard of before, but after checking this out we're really excited to know more about them.
The first side is more ambient with tracks mixing into each other beautifully. After a brief clip of a found spoken word recording by the mysterious "The Artist", Daniel Hipolito's Smokey Emery, the one project here we've reviewed in the past, appears with a short outdoor ambient industrial recording made with multiple tape machines that sound like far away drones recorded in a sewage tunnel which segues into VC Childkraft's soft focus "Magnetik Rose", a ghostly pitch-shifted piece of electronic clusters that sounds like a wind-soaked lullaby. Thousand Foot Whale Claw's shoegaze ambience of "Lost In Those Dunes", brings in a slow-motion crest of gorgeous guitar feedback culminating in the final track of side 1, Heathen Earth's witch-house instrumental of bleak hollow synths, echo-y drums and incidental crashing noises.
Side 2 has three more composed electronic tracks, the first a live track by Bodytronix which sounds like a Dam-Funk instrumental without beats. "Reverie" by Jake Schrock is probably our favorite track and it's also the longest. Sounding like a ballad composed by Roedelius, Vangelis, and OMD, it's pretty melancholic synth composition hits that sweet spot of uncanny eighties nostalgia without trying too hard. The final track by Phantastes called "Flight of Stares" is like last call at the Bat Cave, a murky instrumental goth dance anthem that channels Soft Cell or Alien Sex Fiend filtered through some druggy hazy processing. So good! We can't wait for more volumes if they're as good as this one!
Limited to 300 copies, these won't be around too long, so grab them fast. Comes as a pinkish-grey unlabeled transparent smoke colored vinyl in a hand-printed cardstock half-sleeve wrapped in an oversize ziplock plastic storage bag.
This one should hardly need a description. C'mon, it's called PSYCHEDELIC SITAR HEAD SWIRLERS! And it's a massive 5 disc collection of Eastern tinged garage rock from the sixties and the seventies, from all over the world, all the songs linked together by one common sonic theme, the gorgeous hypnotic buzz of the sitar. Sometimes subtle and minimal, other times, intense and distorted and buzzy, the songs themselves ranging from hippie folk pop, to crunchy sitar drenched garage rock pound, to organ driven groovers, featuring a whole mess of bands you no doubt are already familiar with (or should be), many of whom we've raved about on past lists: J.K & Co, The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, The Pretty Things, July, Ramases, C.O.B., Meic Stevens, Erkin Koray, Popol Vuh, Brainticket, The Chocolate Watch Band, The Amboy Dukes, The Strawberry Alarm Clocks, Them, Krokodil, Mecki-Mark Men, The New Tweedy Brothers, Kuni Kawachi, The Book Of A.M., Shocking Blue, Pentangle, Sheila Chandra, Ananda Shankar, but for every band you already know and love, there's a handful you've probably never heard: Wylde Olde Souls, Popera Cosmic, Stuntz's Blue Leg Expedition, The Misty Wizards, Mushroom's God, Mystic Astrologic Crystal Band, United States Of Existence, we could go on, but needless to say, this collection is pretty incredible.
From the opening droney sitar spoken word tale, the collection flits from groovy flute flecked hippie jangle, to woozy, druggy almost Spacemen 3 like hazy buzzy drift, from jangly power pop to warm woozy psychedelic dream pop, from twangy strummy folk to sitar-ed Beatles covers, with much of the comp heavy on the drone, the sitar's distinctive buzz transforming even the simplest most standard chunk of sixties pop, into something more exotic and far out, more trancelike and WAY more psychedelic. So awesome.
Each disc comes in its own full color sleeve, all housed in a thick full color box, with a massive booklet packed with photos, record covers, and of course liner notes detailing the various songs and artists.
Subtitle: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock And Funk: 1970-1978. Maybe that's all the review this needs, it worked for us, but we'll go on...
Damn. Now THIS is what all comps/reissues should be like. Just the physical thing itself, both cd and lp formats, makes us go wow. And then there's the music, amazing stuff by bands we've NEVER ever heard of before, for the most part.... international psych-rock grooviness from the '70s, Indonesian division. Twenty tracks, all killer no filler for damn sure. So, to start with the elaborate, you're-getting-your-money's-worth packaging, packed with content: exhaustive liner notes, vintage photos, colorful album cover graphics, in a 64 page book in the cd version (and it really thick enough to be called a BOOK, not a booklet) or a 16 page (but lp-sized of course) booklet with the massive 3lp set. Both are solid, hefty items indeed. The cd itself comes in a sturdy cardboard mini-lp style sleeve, tucked tightly along with the book inside a wraparound slipcover. The vinyl, in a triple gatefold sleeve about a half inch thick. Impressive presentation, topping even that of another recent anthology of non-Western psych/funk stuff we made a Record Of The Week as well not long ago, the Sa-Re-Ga collection. What that was to India this is to Indonesia.
And Indonesia is definitely full of hidden treasures for us Westerners into exotic "hairy funk" and heavy rock sounds of the past. We knew about a few bands on here, that we'd had reissues by before, the Ariesta Birawa Group, Shark Move, Koes Plus, but that's it - all of those are awesome though, so the fact that we'd never heard of the other 16 acts on here (there's 20 tracks, but one band appears twice) just made us more excited to hear this: Rollies, Super Kid, Freedom Of Rhapsodia, Murry, The Brims, Black Brothers, Ivo's Group, Golden Wing, The Gang Of Harry Roesli, Benny Soebardja and Lizard, Aka, Panbers, Rhythm Kings, Rasela, Terenchem, and Duo Kribo.
The music of these groups ranges from heavy progressive bombast to hippie trippiness to out-and-out groovy dancefloor filling fodder, often all at once, and then some. Eastern-tinged (no surprise) psychedelic Sgt. Pepperisms and stomping acid funk are blended in the very first selection here, "Haai", by a band called Panbers, who once opened for the Bee Gees in Djakarta. Off to a good start! A tough act to follow (we imagine the Bee Gees thought so too), but track two's The Brims manage to hold their own with "Anti Gandja", a song apparently with a message of "just say no", though it sure sounds a lot like they said hell yeah. Then the third cut, "Bad News" by Rollies, suddenly introduces a healthy dose of James Brown worship, the others were funky but this one is straight up FUNK. After that, we're treated to one of the highlights from the Shark Move album, one of the few tracks here we knew, the fuzz-heavy shambolic riff-tumble with prog-classical soloing of "Evil War". Up next, the stoned lope of Golden Wing's love song "Hear Me" is a bit more primitive, akin to Japan's Speed Glue & Shinki, or Juan De La Cruz from the Philippines.
So, that's just the first five tracks, so far they're all smokin', and guess what? It just gets better and better believe it or not. Turn it up, play it loud! We can't go into detail about EVERY track, though they all deserve mention, from the spacey soul of Super Kid to the greasy groove of The Gang Of Harry Roselli, but we should at least let you know that the Koes Plus cut is NOT from the cd of theirs you may already have that Sublime Frequencies put out, it's taken from a latter record, 1976's ln Hard Beat 2, and it's a rad one, with a nice la la la vocal chorus echoed by some much more maniacal LALALA screaming, crazy.
Oh, and we know why they put two tracks from AKA on here, how could they chose between the badass hard rock of "Do What You Like" with its headspining psychedelic breakdowns, and the same group's seriously funky, James Brown inspired "Shake Me", which begins with call-and-response chant, the band saying "No" to grass, morphine, and LSD, but "YEAH" to sex.
Ok, we'll leave it to you get this and experience all the fuzzy, funky riffery here for yourself. Familiar in its '70s vibe - ferinstance Benny Soebardja (ex-Shark Move) and Lizard's "Candlelight" is so '70s, classic radio rock, maybe the Indonesian answer to the Steve Miller Band? - yet fresh, definitely from somewhere and somewhen else!!
Kudos to compiler Jason "Moss" Connoy for tracking down all these gems, and to everyone else involved with putting this package together, doing the research, writing, and graphic documentation... obviously an immense job but well done and well worth it. So, if you've been enjoying Sa-Re-Ga, Thai! Dai!, Sound Of Siam, Psych-Funk 101, The World Ends, or any other disc of crate-digging discoveries from around the world we've recommended lately, this one is definitely for you too! Highest recommendation.
Kurt Vile can seemingly do no wrong. The momentum of the last few years has only strengthened the Kurt Vile-ness displayed on Smoke Ring For My Halo, full length #2 for Matador after the not-so-surprising success of his asskicking Childish Prodigy album. Kurt's increased stature was enough to bring in hotshot producer John Agnello, who ups the fidelity a bit while retaining the DIY approach and style that brought Kurt to everybody's attention in the first place. Yep, the results are pretty stellar, further solidifying this dude's standing in the rank of current American songwriters. He somehow manages to sound both contemporary AND classic. The guy is for real, and this is by far the best thing he has released... so far, anyway.
Smoke Ring For My Halo is the kind of album that gets better with each listen. It's production is laid back but totally pro, and the cast of supporting musicians includes Meg Baird from Espers, Mike Polizze of Purling Hiss / Birds Of Maya fame, and of course, KV's band the Violators. The camaraderie of this Philly crew totally shines through, and boy does it sound fucking GOOD. A skillful use of noise and other bits of experimentation are worked effortlessly into these impeccably crafted songs, the result of someone who can turn any simple melody into a bad ass classic.
The album begins perfectly with "Baby's Arms", a beautiful heartfelt number with a nice dose of melancholy that immediately announces its author's total confidence in his abilities. Next up is "Jesus Fever", riding out with an easy rocking groove that should explain why Matador snapped KV up. You can see how Kurt just oozes out music when you read the lyrics to songs like "On Tour", which one would imagine are a direct reflection of what it means to be Kurt Vile. Many - wait, scratch that - ALL of these songs are presented as hazy and coolly detached from reality, like "Society Is My Friend" with its lonely western vibe carried forward with shimmering 12 string guitar and spacey mellotron, and the solo fingerpicked number "Peeping Tomboy". The record closes with "Ghost Town", which is dramatic in a Midwestern sunset kind of way. YEAH! In a music world filled with more imitators than originators, Kurt Vile occupies a unique place and his identity is unmistakable. That is why he, and this record, completely rule.
Holeeee Shit. THIS RULES!
Void were one of the original DC Hardcore bands (though they were actually from Columbia, Maryland, making them the only other non-DC band besides Lungfish to wind up on Dischord - they were that good), sharing a legendary split with fellow gods the Faith. Aside from some tracks on Dischord's Flex Your Head comp, nothing else was ever released in the band's lifetime from 1980 to 1983. Fortunately, other recordings have been floating around for a while, which leads us to this essential document of great raw sounding demos and live tracks from one of the craziest and most fucked up early hardcore bands out of the whole lot.
Trying to describe this band's music is no easy task. First off, they were totally insane and unhinged sounding, with the witchy shrieking vocals of John Weiffenbach standing WAY out from any other singers of the era, and probably the best hardcore guitarist after Greg Ginn in the form of Bubba Dupree, who was capable of wringing the most evil sounds out of his axe. The rhythm section of of Chris Stover (bass) and Sean Finnegan (drums; R.I.P.) held things together, just barely, and one can imagine that nobody else would have been physically capable for this job. At times, Void seem like they will collapse within the tornado of evil sounds they create, and the results are almost psychedelic in intensity, not to mention unbelievably noisy. It would be easy, but perhaps misguided, to draw comparisons to early black metal (still a few years to go before crawling into existence...), mostly because of the creepy woodcut images of death and pestilence in their artwork. At the same time, the chaos and fury of Void are, in a way, very, well... METAL. All the talk of "fucked up" metal bands that goes on around these parts DON'T MEAN SHIT when you throw on a Void record. One of the most underrated and one of the best, Void tapped into a sound that continues to confuse and inspire in the best ways imaginable.
Would totally be a highlight on this list, if we had few more copies, but we only scored a few.
Full length number two (record number three) from this fantastically confusional minimalist techno supergroup, a trio made up of Mortiz Von Oswald (Chain Reaction, Rhythm And Sound), Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay) and Max Loderbauer (Sun Electric), but like the first record, and the Live In New York double lp, the members and their sonic pedigrees do little to prepare you for the actual sound of the trio. Not techno, not even really electronica, at least at first, instead it's a sort of minimal jazz abstract dub, a thick, sinewy baseline holds the first track together, while around it reverbed guitars drift and pulse, bits of glitch surface here and there, flurries of percussion, fragmented melodies, it's all very abstract, hushed and minimal, it takes 6 or 7 minutes for the various strands to be pulled together, and then anchored to a super stripped down metallic rhythm, nothing else changes, those bits of guitar still swirl and shimmer, the rhythm pulses within a cloud of muted murk and strange abstract effects, finally growing more propulsive during the last several minutes, a skeletal beat, augmented by hand drums, tambourine, soft billows of hiss and whir, streaks of crunch and crumble, but all way in the backdrop and the rhythm loops hypnotically.
The second track begins much more overtly electronic, with another minimal electro pulse, but again, the surrounding sounds are definitely more organic that you might expect, glimmers of guitar, soft streaks of melody, some rubbery upright bass thrum, scatters of extra percussion, hazy synth swirls, but for all that seems to be going on, it's super hushed and muted and yeah minimal. The other two tracks are of course variations on the same theme, with "Structure 3" being perhaps the most Chain Reaction-y, with a little bit of a heroin house vibe, a muted electronic pulse, a dubbed out rhythm, laid across a sea of distant jangle and swirling echoes, until the final track, the longest of the bunch, and perhaps the most heavily rhythmic, but just barely, a groovy jazzy sprawl, the only deviation a couple of sonic squalls, one a flurry of wildly sawed strings, brief but dramatic, the other a less obvious burst of extra percussion, but throughout, the whole thing remains hushed, and muted and minimal and quite darkly dreamy.
Like the other MVOT records, features super striking minimal cover art.
Yet another chunk of electro goth, witch pop, gloom-soul weirdness from this SF duo, who, while originally linked to the witch house scene, seem dead set on blazing their own confusional sonic path, and it does just keep getting better and better.
Drippings is a songsuite of what to these ears sounds like minimal miserable electronic death ballads, or like a more lo-fi, creepy and drug addled How To Dress Well. The same sort of soulful vibe, but WB's 'soul music' is something altogether more grim and evil, mottled and murky, the music here stripped down and skeletal, the vocals verring from DJ Screw style sizurped drawl, to an almost Nick Cave sounding deep and dramatic croon. All laid over a strange framework of super spare electronic dub, crumbling bits of distorted melody, bits of metallic buzz and deep rumble, the occasional swirl of synthy shimmer, gauzy stretches of sci-fi kosmische ambience, wheezing drones, sometimes coalescing into a clattery detuned warped cabaret, other times spacing out into glimmering expanses of crystalline haze, and still other times, stumbling into strange Middle Eastern sounding grooves, that sound almost like Muslimgauze crossed with the Butthole Surfers, but still laced with those creepy ominous bellowed vox. Seriously twisted, dementedly genius, fantastically totally fucked up and thus WAY recommended.
SUPER LIMITED! We might not be able to get more when we run out, so act fast.
Like some warped children's fairytale designed for seriously stoned adults, all sitting around on dirty couches, bongs in hand, following along in their little storybooks, a strange voice begins to deliver the tale of Jason... The Dragon (oof, a bad pun for sure, and perhaps a vague reference to that other stoner dragon Puff?), but before the voice finishes with his tale, a thick ominous buzz begins to surface, and suddenly everything seems just a little bit more (in)tense, as if the sun was suddenly blotted out by huge black winged shadows, and before you know it, the sky begins to fall, and the ground opens up, unleashing a torrent of impossibly thick, buzzing bass, and pounding skull splitting drum damage, and a harsh demonic rasp, all woven into some seriously blown out sludgey groove, and so begins the latest chunk of drugged out tarpit heaviness from stoner sludge doomlords Weedeater, and if you weren't sold already, give it one more track, cuz "Mancoon" is a seriously ripping slab of ultra heavy downtuned in-the-red sludgeblues groove, with a guitar sound so blown out it sounds like your speakers melting, and that's what these guys do pretty much better than anyone, melding swinging grooves to abject sludge drenched heaviness, stumbling from Eyehategod style feedback soaked death march doom buzz trudge, to almost Southern rock sounding stoner rock, but everything oozing with grit and filth, and wrapped in the sonic version of a halo of flies, every track a lumbering and crushing, slo-mo stoner doom juggernaut, oh that is except for the weird acoustic tracks, like "Palm And Opium" a strange twang flecked lo-fi hoedown, all acoustic guitar, and woozy slide, augmented by thick distorted buzz, and some seriously creepy Buttholes style processed vox, or the record closer "Whiskey Creek", with it's chirping crickets, Deliverance style banjo, the sound or rain falling, some rumbling bass, creepy and strangely beautiful, and then after a few moments of silence, some strange old timey saloon sounding barrelhouse piano, definitely a bizarre way to finish of a bizarre record, but these guys have always been a bit cracked, and fans of slow and low ultra heaviness, and swinging Sabbathy stoner crush, like Sleep, pre-Weedeater outfit Buzzov*en, Eyehategod, Electric Wizard, Dozer, Dopethrone, Bongripper, Acrimony, and the like, it seriously doesn't get much better than this.
Progression is the latest chunk of abject nihilistic ultra doom sludge from these Aussie heavies, the first full length since their sprawling double cd on 20 Buck Spin, and it continues on right where that one left off. Lurching lumbering downtuned slo-mo riffage, dueling vocals: grunted monstrous growls versus maniacal shrieks, fat fuzzed out bass buzz and massive pounding drum pummel, but unlike many of their doom/sludge contemporaries, Whitehorse actually have some groove, and some serious forward momentum, with maybe more in common with Eyehategod and Khanate than say Monarch or Bunkur, this isn't all near-ambient black doom drift, no these guys grind and pound, this is most definitely metal, just really really slow, it's propulsive, but a sort of tarpit propulsion, the sound super dynamic, lacing their metallic crunch with plenty of stop/starts, long stretches of squealing feedback, strange industrial clatter, the songs shifting from slow slung bass driven crawls, to loping glacial doom, to almost swinging metallic crush.
Opener "Mechanical Disintegration" channels the spirit of Winter and diSEMBOWELMENT into some sort of slow motion death metal, peppered with some surprisingly melodic filigree, these strange but super hooky guitar melodies draped over the main churning riffage, makes it sound like some classic metal playing at 2 rpm.
The title track slows it done even further, adding lots of scrape and clatter to the death march trudgery, a pounding minimalism that shifts gears part way through when the band launch into a serious groove (at least for them), verging on almost headbangable, really lurching and lumbering, some Sabbathy swing slowed down into something more serpentine and slithery. The rest of the record veers from funereal crawl, to grinding metallic pound and back again, the songs laced with strange mechanical hiss, white noise hum and weird glitches, all wrapped around that super low throb and thrum, culminating in the epic 9+ minute closer, which pounds away relentlessly before finishing off in a squall of feedback skree, twisted black noise and super distorted buzz.
Doom legend Scott "Wino" Weinrich, front man for Saint Vitus and The Obsessed, and member of Shrinebuilder, offers up a new solo album, the vinyl of which we have via Volcom. But don't expect heavy stoner doom here. It's passionate, and earnest, yeah, but not heavy - this is an all-acoustic album, just voice and guitar pretty much. So, it's kinda the coffee house version of Wino, we'd have to say. He's gone all singer songwriter on us. And that's not bad, after all he's got a cool voice and is a talented guitar player, as capable with the delicate country folk flecked acoustic stuff as he is with the shredding psychedelic electric leads that sometimes intrude over the acoustic strum. It might not be fair to say that this is his Book Of Shadows (this IS better than that Zakk Wylde acoustic album) but it's definitely a far cry from Born Too Late or The Church Within, as well, doomhounds should note. Maybe Jar Of Flies would be a better comparison? Oh, and if you ever wanted to hear unplugged versions of Motorhead's "Iron Horse" and "Born To Lose", the album ends with such a medley. There's also a Savoy Brown cover too. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! ACID MOTHER'S TEMPLE / STEARICA "Sterica Invade Acid Mothers Temple" (Homeopathic) cd 17.98 ACRYLICS "Lives And Treasure" (Hot Sand / Friendly Fire) cd 13.98 ANAL CUNT "Fuckin A" (Patac) cd 11.98 ANBB (ALVA NOTO & BLIXA BARGELD) "Mimikry" (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98 ANIKA "s/t" (Stones Throw / Invada) cd 21.00 BANJO OR FREAKOUT "s/t" (RBR) cd/lp 15.98/16.98 BEACH FOSSILS "What A Pleasure" (Captured Tracks) cd/lp 10.98/13.98 BEE MASK "Canzoni Dal Laboratorio Del Silenzio Cosmico" (Spectrum Spools / Editions Mego) lp 21.00 BICK, ANDREAS "Fire And Frost Pattern" (Gruenrekorder) cd 16.98 BIRDS OF AVALON "s/t" (Bladen Country) cd 14.98 BLOOD OF HEROES, THE "s/t" (Ohm Resistance) cd 17.98 BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER "Skeletal Coupla Remains" (Gnarled Forest) lp 16.98 BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER / WICKED KING WICKER "split" (Gnarled Forest) lp 14.98 BRIGHT EYES "People's Key (First Edition)" (Saddle Creek) cd 14.98 BURZUM "Fallen" (Byelobog) cd 14.98 CASSLE "s/t" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98 COHEN, TIM "Bad Blood" (Captured Tracks) 2x7" 10.98 COVER STORY VOL. 2 "Cover Story Volume Two: Odd, Obscure, and Outrageous Album Art" (Waxpoetics) book 24.95 DANAVA / EARTHLESS / LECHEROUS GAZE "s/t" (Kemado) lp 19.98 DARK DAY "Strange Clockwork" (self-released) cd 12.98 DECEMBERISTS, THE "The King Is Dead" (Capitol) cd 17.98 ELECTRIC VOYAGE "Flight of No Return" (Kemado) 7" 5.98 ESG "Dance To The Best Of ESG" (Soul Jazz) 3lp 59.00 EXPO 70 "Center of the Earth" (Sonic Meditations) 2lp 33.00 FABRIC "A Sort Of Radiance" (Spectrum Spools / Editions Mego) lp 21.00 FATHER BEFOULED "Morbid Destitution of Covenant" (Relapse) cd 14.98 FEAR "The Record" (Slash / Rhino) lp 14.98 FINCHES "On Golden Hill" (Ulrike) cd 10.98 FLOATING BRIDGE "s/t" (Aurora) cd 17.98 FRIMPONG, K. & HIS CUBANO FIESTAS "s/t" (Continental Records) lp 17.98 GANG OF FOUR "Entertainment" (Rhino / Warner Bros.) lp 24.00 GRAYCEON "All We Destroy" (Profound Lore) cd 13.98 GREEN DOOR KIDS, THE "Muzikal Yooth" (Optimo Music) lp 16.98 GROSSKOPF, HAROLD + VARIOUS ARTISTS "Synthesist / Re-Synthesist" (Rvng Intl) lp+cd 22.00 HAINO, KEIJI, JIM O'ROURKE, & OREN AMBARCHI "In A Flash Everything Comes Together As One There Is No Need For A Subject" (A Black Truffle / Medama) 2lp 29.00 HAMMER, JOSEPH "I Love You, Please Love Me" (Pan) lp 36.00 HELEN LUNDY TRIO, THE "s/t" (HLT Records) cd 11.98 HUMAN INSTINCT "Kiwi Psych Heads : Singles 1966-1971" (Groovie) lp 32.00 HYPE WILLIAMS "One Nation" (Hippos In Tanks) 12" 25.00 INDEX "Black Album / Red Album / Yesterday & Today" (Lion Productions) 2cd 27.00 JOHANNSSON, JOHANN "Virdulegu Forsetar" (Touch) 2lp 22.00 JOKERS "s/t" (Fading Sunshine) cd 14.98 JUV "s/t" (Miasmah) cd/2lp 16.98/23.00 KALEIDOSCOPE "s/t" (Shadoks) cd 17.98 KVELERTAK "s/t" (Indie Recordings) cd 14.98 LARD FREE "Gilbert Artman's Lard Free" (Wah-Wah) lp 30.00 LI, LYKKE "Wounded Rhymes" (Atlantic) cd 13.98 LIFELOVER "Sjukdom" (Prophecy Productions) cd 16.98 MAJUTSU NO NIWA "Ecstatic Crystalization" (Musik Atlach) cd 16.98 MANDELBROT & SKYY "OD-Axis" (Digitalis) lp 14.98 MARATHON MAN / THE PARALLAX VIEW (MICAHEL SMALL) "OST" (Film Score Monthly) cd 17.98 METABOLISMUS "Mauser Ok" (Amish Records) 7" 10.98 NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS "Waves Of The Random Sea" (Blackest Rainbow) cd 19.98 NATURAL YOGURT BAND, THE "Tuck In With..." (Now Again) cd 18.98 NEUMEIER, MANI & KAWABATA MAKOTO "Samurai Blues" (Bureau B) cd 17.98 NIGGAS WITH GUITARS "Ethnic Frenzy" (Digitalis) lp 16.98 OSWALD, JOHN + 1,001 VINTAGE POP STARS "Perplexure" (Fony) lp 14.98 OUTER LIMITS RECORDINGS "$20 Bill" (True Panther) 7" 6.98 PSYCHIC REALITY "Vibrant New Age" (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98 PUCE MOMENT "Avoiding Certain Topics / Essence Of Mann e.p. / Puce Moment" (self-released) 3 x cassette 9.98 PULSE EMITTER "Spiritual Vistas" (Cylindrical Habitat Modules / Expansive) lp 14.98 PURO INSTINCT "Headbangers In Ecstasy" (Mexican Summer) cd/lp 13.98/16.98 PURO INSTINCT "Stilyagi / Put Medved To Bedved" (Mexican Summer) 7" 5.98 QUICKSAND DREAM "Aelin - A Story About Destiny" (Planet Metal) cd 10.98 RIVAL SCHOOLS "Pedals" (Photo Finish) cd 12.98 RONETTES, THE "Be My Baby : The Very Best Of The Ronettes" (Legacy) cd 10.98 ROSE, EDEN "On The Way To Eden" (Lion) cd 16.98 RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE, THE "Departing" (Saddle Creek) cd 14.98 SAXANA - THE GIRL ON A BROOMSTICK (MICHAJLOV, ANGELO) "OST" (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 16.98 SCALE THE SUMMIT "The Collective" (Prosthetic) cd 14.98 SHIFLET, MIKE & DANIEL MENCHE "Stalemate" (Sonoris) cd 13.98 SHIVER, THE "Walpurgis" (Garden of Delights) lp 34.00 SIMONE, NINA "At Newport" (Doxy) lp+cd 26.00 SIMONE, NINA "The Legendary First Recording In New York City, 1957" (Doxy) lp+cd 26.00 SLITS, THE "In The Beginning" (Vinyl Lovers) lp 27.00 SLOATH "s/t" (Riot Season) lp 17.98 SPACEMEN 3 "Take Me To The Other Side" (Fire) 12" 13.98 STEEL MILL "Jewels Of The Forest" (Rise Above Relics) cd 16.98 TEAMS VS. STAR SLINGER "s/t" (Mexican Summer) 12" 19.98 THX 1138 (LALO SCHIFRIN) "OST" (Film Score Monthly) cd 17.98 TORO Y MOI "Underneath The Pine" (Carpark) cd 14.98 V/A "Brazil Bossa Beat! Bosa Nova & The Story Of Elenco Records, Brazil" (Soul Jazz Records) cd/2lp 23.00/24.00 V/A "Cartagena! Curro Fuentes & The Big Band Combia And Descarga Sound Of Columbia 1962-72" (Soundway) cd 16.98 V/A "Casual Victim Pile II" (12XU) lp 14.98 V/A "Funky Chicken" (Trojan) cd 15.98 V/A "Groove Club Vol. 3: Cambodian Rock Intensified!" (Lion / Get On Down) 2lp 22.00 V/A "Guitar Mood 2" (INST) lp 10.98 V/A "Nippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat, & Bossa Nova 1966-1970" (Big Beat International) cd 19.98 V/A "Rhythm" (Gruenrekorder) cd 16.98 V/A "Riddimentary : Diplo Selects Greensleeves" (Greensleeves) cd 12.98 VACANT LOTS "Confusion b/w Cadillac" (Mexican Summer) 7" 5.98 VAMPILLIA "Alchemic Heart" (Important) cd 14.98 VENA "Nomadic" (Paradigms) cd ep 11.98 VESTER, HEIKE / OCEAN SOUNDS "Marine Mammals And Fish Of Lofoten And Vesteralen" (Gruenrekorder) cd 16.98 WILLIAMS, LUCINDA "Blessed" (Lost Highway) cd 15.98 _______________________________________________________________________ Please place your order via our website. [1] We will contact you to verify your order and let you know when it will be shipped. Please note that occasionally it may take a day or two for us to reply. We are not a faceless bunch of computers replying to your order -- we are human beings! [2] If we are out of some of your items and we think we will get them within the same week, we can wait to ship. Or... If it's going to be more than a few days to complete your order, we will ship what we have and then will contact you as the remainders arrive. [ note ] Due to the everchanging nature of the independent record business, we are not responsible for listed price changes (due to supplier price changes) and often cannot update our site fast enough to reflect these changes, but we will always try to let you know of any differences.
The grim and ghoulish doom/death duo of Wayne (aka Elektrokutioner) and Vanessa (aka the Funeral Mistress??) are back with a seven inch slab of thick black vinyl to stab thru yr ears... well ok, it's plastic and not pointy, but does the job Wooden Stake style regardless. After their (now totally out of print) debut cd-r Vampire Plague Exorcism, and more recent split cd with AQ faves Blizaro, maybe you know what to expect from Wooden Stake: female fronted, horror fixated, riff rituals of slomo sludge, that are part Black Sabbath, part Jex Thoth, part Obituary... they deliver all that here, with the A-side alone being one of their best songs we've heard yet.
Real soon we'll also have WS's debut full length cd, the awesomely titled Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades, so watch out!!
In the meantime, grab this two song 7", it's limited to 500 hand-numbered copies....
This Record Of The Week from last year, now available in the vinyl format, via Kemado! Limited. numbered, gatefold sleeve, download code. Here's what we said about the original compact disc edition:
There are lots of remarkable things about this latest Xasthur disc. It was released on his own Disharmonic Variations label for one thing, instead of Hydra Head, his home for the last few records. It features the vocals of folk chanteuse Marissa Nadler quite prominently, which was definitely a bit of a surprise! Even more surprising is that according to Malefic, the man behind Xasthur, now referring to himself by his given name Scott, this is the very last Xasthur record. EVER. He's not giving up music, just black metal. Which might seem less surprising once you've heard Portal Of Sorrow. Whose sound is at once a continuation of the last few Xasthur records, but at the same time, a total departure. Right out of the gate, the title track, is all acoustic guitars, and cooing wordless vox, more some sort of ethereal depressive doomfolk than black metal. Haunting atonal chords, folky guitar strum, wheezing organs, everything warped and warbly and really quite beautiful. Some more 'metal' guitars enter into the picture but they just serve to add filigree to the folky gothic dirge. Pretty weird and fantastic for sure. And for sure to bum out legions of true grim black metallers. The second track is more black metal, but if anything it's WAY weirder than the first track, with what is either the worst, or best production yet, the guitars detuned and atonal, the drums insanely produced cardboard box thumps WAY up in the mix, Nadler's often wordless vocals again soaring and dramatic, while Malefic croaks along in the background, a gloriously stumbling bit of blackened freak folk buzz, moody and murky, with some serious chug part way through, but that chug is accompanied by PIANO, which renders it more some sort of blackened chamber music.
And so it goes, the whole record is not only strangely composed, but the sound itself is totally alien, it sounds accidental, but a sound this twisted and warped and idiosyncratic MUST be by design.
"Shrine Of Failure" begins with clean guitars and floppy bass, a constantly descending melody, the vocals singing right along, before the heavier guitars kick in, but instead of making the song heavier, they seem to float above the already in progress weirdness, adding a layer of distorted buzz, and alternately wild psychedelic squiggles of tangled lead guitar. "Stream Of Subconsciousness" is another washed out doomic dirge, driven by Nadler's angelic croon, and Malefic's warbly guitars, the swoonsome synths, leading to an ambient drift, and then more murky stumble. "Horizon Of Plastic Caskets" is all minimal drumming, swirling synths, distant vocals, a sort of black ambient post rock lope, peppered with Malefic's maniacal screams, which do nothing to take away from the track's haunting cinematic vibe.
"The Abyss Holds The Mirror" opens with some seriously lovely multitracked vocals from Nadler (she's credited with "choir, vocal flashbacks, vocal instrumentation") before the song proper kicks in, and it's a dirgey doomy deathmarch, with church organ, croaked demonic vocals, all set to a heartbreakingly melancholy melody, the whole second half is just organ and vocals, and is the last thing you'd expect to hear on a black metal record.
"Released From This Earth" is all struggling drumming, atonal piano pound, and more of Nadler's heavenly crooning, in some ways, this almost plays out like a Marissa Nadler record, with Xasthur as his band, no disrespect to Malefic, in fact, that's what makes this record so good, it's less about having some token guest vocals, and more about true collaboration, which is exactly what makes this record so fucked and far out and special. Even at it's blackest, it's about as far removed from black buzz and grim blast than you could imagine. Which is what keeps us from mourning the death of Xasthur, and instead has us anxiously awaiting the future rebirth, and phoenix like ascension of whatever comes next.
Xex was the experimental synthpop creation of three high-school misfits living in central New Jersey during the mid-'70s, having survived their teen years of suburban boredom with plenty of drugs and eye-opening excursions to New York. Liberated by the spirit of punk, this outfit - pseudonymously known as Waw Pierogi, Thumbalina Gugielmo, and Alex Zander (later joined by Jon-Boy Diode and David Anderson) - took up the task of infusing a smarty-pants cynicism to hyper-primitive arrangements on a small assortment of synths and drum machines. No guitars whatsoever, the sound of Xex is one of skewed melodicism and incessant repetition. This combined with a typically monotone vocal sensibility put Xex in the same synthpunk orbit as The Units and Crash Course In Science. It's a very American sound, to look back upon all of these records. In Europe, the new wave and synthpop was far more self-possessed, even amongst the DIY circles, but for a certain subset in the States, the nerds had become emboldened in punk to use science and math as a spasmodic, future-shock means for nihilist poetics and cathartic release - hence, Devo, Dark Day, Nervous Gender, the aforementioned Crash Course In Science, and Xex. With the exception of Primitive Calculators and Severed Heads in Australia, there's hardly a parallel anywhere else in the world to this synthpunk sound; and Xex were certainly exceptional at it.
Group Xex was the only record they released, although the band recorded a second album but never released it (unfortunately the tapes of that second album had deteriorated beyond repair). Self-released in 1980, the album was sold pretty much exclusively in Manhattan and North Jersey, with an edition of a 1000 copies disappearing quickly. The album did get a cd reish in 1995 after Tom Smith championed the record after discovering it in the vaults at WFMU. It's a very quizzical album of purposefully simple electronic tunes played upon whipcrack drum machines and minimally percolating synths matched by the alternatinge female and male vocals, which are always thin, reedy, and metallic. Thumbalina's girly vocals bounce through the motorik synthpop ditty "Fashion Hurts" whose singsonginess is immediately countered by the unwavering robotic monotone that Pierogi presents on the cybernetic "You Think", and the grim, paranoiac poetry on "SNGA" (which stands for Soviet Nerve Gas Attack).
Another great find from the always impressive Dark Entries label! Definitely for fans of Devo and the Units. Limited to 500 copies with a great looking new wave booklet with lyrics, a band history, and some amusing tidbits thrown in for good measure.
