Another slab of awesome eighties style electro new wave digital funk dreaminess, from a mysterious Canadian, released by the label that brought us Games and White Car. Layered synths, pulsing minimal beats, all drifting beneath reverbed soulful vox, a bit like a more electro/new wave How To Dress Well (a recent AQ Record Of The Week), the music leaning more toward the Goblin/Carpenter/Zombi axis, sort of futuristic retro sci-fi soundtracky, slipping from droning electronic psychedelia, to pounding big beat to almost '80s MTV style electronic pop, the vocals drawing it all together, and weirdly enough, reminding us quite a bit of Peter Gabriel, as if someone took those old classic Gabriel records, and time machined them into the body and soul of some modern music maker, who created the same music, but filtered through a slightly cracked, modern avant electronic music lens, the result a psychedelic electronic retro pop, equal parts new wave, old soul, eighties pop, synth wave and dream pop. Nice!
Now that the Profound Lore label has released this Chicago-based metal band's fourth full-length, we think more people are gonna start paying attention to 'em. We know WE are. Though we thought we knew what they sounded like before, we were blown away by this. Note we said "metal" band, and didn't qualify that in any way. Didn't say black, thrash, doom, true, etc. That's 'cause Dawnbringer are sorta ALL those things. Well, they used to have a lot more black metal aspects, death metal too, as we remember. But through a process of experimentation it seems they've arrived at THIS sound, a perfection, a distillation, a PURE metal sound that is traditional... yet advanced and yes, still experimental.
On Nucleus, Dawnbringer bring it, all right. They can be triumphantly shredding in speed metal glory, or NWOBHM-ishly rockin' ("Swing Hard"), or thrashy ("The Devil" approaches black metal velocities), and then slow, sad and majestic... sometimes all within the same song. And SONG is the operative word, as is singing, the versatile vocals often approximating the melodic gruffness of Lemmy, or James Hetfield, sounding tough, yet vulnerable... so Dawnbringer have their Motorhead and Metallica sounding moments, also musically reminding us of Maiden and other old school metal greats. Another reference point would have to be Hammers Of Misfortune, if you stripped away most of Hammers' prog elements and exposed the metal core.
'Tis utter headbanging heaviness, inspiring "invisible orange" style air-grabbing for sure, but not without neo-classical artistry as well. Impressive as hell, especially considering it's mostly the work of one man, Dawnbringer being masterminded by multi-instrumentalist (and singer) Chris "Professor" Black, a former member of psychedelic black metal act Nachtmystium, also drummer for power metallers Pharaoh and the genius behind NWOBHM worshippers High Spirits (whose demos cd we HAVE to review here soon!).
For everyone disappointed by the lack of proper, big beat, banging Daft Punk style dancefloor destroyers on the recent Tron soundtrack, well this is for you. The latest from Deadmau5, an electronic musician who performs costumed, much like the above mentioned Daft Punk. But where Daft Punk are some sort of futuristic spacemen, Deadmau5 wears a giant, lawsuit baiting mouse head, and sonically, Deadmau5 explores a soundworld not all that dissimilar to those of his electronic music compatriots, Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers and the like. Big beats sure, but with a dark melodic element that elevates this beyond pure dancefloor fodder.
"Some Chords" might be the electronic jam of the year (last year?), with its haunting moody intro, thick corroded/distorted synth sound, woozy minor key melody, and dubsteppy vibe (not to mention that dubstep bass wobble/warble), hypnotic, and dark, and rhythmic, and surprisingly cinematic.
Those same elements inform the rest of the record, fat fuzzy basslines, wheezing synths, big ol' block rocking beats, but with plenty of unlikely filigree, from strange Darth Vader like heavy breathing to dark moody piano to Jamaican style toasting, to ravey synth stabs. The songs with vocals are definitely on the pop side, sing songy, sounding like Double Dutch chants, playful and fun and funky, but it's the instrumental jams that are the fiercest, and must send dancefloors into fits. "One Trick Pony" manages to merge the two, with a totally pop verse, but when the vocals drop out, it's one of the hardest dubstep jams we've heard in ages. "Raise Your Weapons" sounds like a soulful radio ballad, crooning female vocals over dark minor key piano, but then suddenly, the vocals get all dubbed out, and the song gets super dense and heavy, and those throbbing dubstep basslines, squelchy synths and crushing stuttery big beats come tumbling out.
For fans of the poppier side of dubstep, Zomby, Rusko, Martyn, Roska, Guido, Mount Kimbie who aren't averse to some chest rattling big bass, and of course the above mentioned big beat electronicians (Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, etc...)!
We really can't get enough of the dark, cinematic soundscapes conjured by so many of the artists on such likeminded labels as Type (UK) and Miasmah (Norway). This new release on Type by Norwegian duo Deaf Center (cellist Erik K. Skodvin and pianist Otto A. Totland) is our current fave, it's just their second full-length in six years, as clearly it takes time to craft music this moody and gorgeous, this time around produced in a proper studio, in Berlin, on analog equipment for maximum fidelity. Also the two members of Deaf Center have been busy with their own, individual projects - Skodvin, for one, is the man behind another AQ fave, Svarte Greiner, plus he also runs the Miasmah label! And if you like the "acoustic doom" of Svarte Greiner, you should also appreciate Deaf Center's evocative combination of modern classical, ambient, and electronic strains on Owl Splinters.
Atmospheric opener "Divided" sets the mood, all abstract, monastic moan and droning string-scrape, hushed and floating. Then "Time Spent" introduces sparse melody, played on pensive, pretty piano, alone in the dark. Third track "New Beginning (Tidal Darkness)" is one of subtle crackle and glitch, the music ebbing and flowing through drone build-ups and more exquisite piano reveries. Once again, moody and somber, but beautiful. And so it goes, Deaf Center getting much heavier (eventually) in the midst of the grinding epic, "The Day I Would Never Have", the album's nearly 11 minute long centerpiece (which is infinitely longer on the vinyl version, as it ends the first side with a locked groove). Dense tones resonate with great emotional presence.
Skodvin's deep cello sawing can get spiky too, as on the nervously dramatic "Animal Sacrifice", though all is soothed by the luminous fuzz of the ambient background. Another epic track appears before the end of the disc, "Close Forever Watching" being 8 minutes of glorious, massing drone shimmer - play loud!!
With its balance of delicacy and weightiness both, Deaf Center's Owl Splinters coincidentally in some respects reminds us of two other releases recommended on this week's list - the new album from Earth, and also the Klute soundtrack! The recent Ural Umbo lp highlighted here last time also comes to mind.
Essential for fans of all things Type and Miasmah, particularly (of course) Svarte Greiner, also Elegi, Jacaszek, Fjellstrom, etc. A great going to sleep album for some of us, if you're ready for some perhaps suspenseful dreams.
Please note that the vinyl version, as is often the case with Type releases, is packaged with a bonus cd, in this case containing a 46 minute reworking of the album tracks by Skodvin under his Svarte Greiner guise, entitled Twin. Why they want to deprive cd purchasers of that, we don't know.
How do you make a record that is your most unique, ambitious and weird, but also your most accessible at the same time? How, after ten albums are you still able to create an album that sounds so damn refreshing, creative and full of new ideas? There aren't really answers to these questions, except for the fact that you are Deerhoof. How after all these years they've maintained their artistic creativity, yet been able to explore new avenues, techniques and approaches along the way, still boggles themind. With their first non Kill Rock Stars full length in almost a decade, Deerhoof make Polyvinyl proud with one of the most far reaching, exciting and enjoyable albums we've heard in ages.
Further pushing their love of sounds and music from across the globe, Vs. Evil finds Deerhoof taking those sounds and with them exploring an awesome psychedelic spy soundtrack vibe, as well as a twisted take on sparkling teenage pop music, all of which displays a band at their most sensual, surprising and innovative.
Deerhoof most deserve all the love and adoration they seem to be receiving, and we are hoping this is the record that will push them to that next level, alongside folks like The Flaming Lips, Radiohead, etc., as we can't think of a more creative or exciting band that has paid their dues and stayed true to their mission of all out creativity and sonic excellence!
Search back into the Aquarius archives, and you'll come across reviews of records that we loved with just a phrase or a sentence, giving a few choice references and adjectives. Oh, how the times have changed. Way back when, we summed up Der Plan's classic weirdo kraut new wave record with the following pithy statement: "A head on collision between the Residents and Conny Plank." Still very true to this day, although an expansion of that description is most definitely in order. Der Plan hailed from Dusseldorf, and Geri Reig was their first record, emerging in 1980 as a particularly bizarre version of the Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) sound. It seemed that every single German punk and NDW band would twist and mutate some sickly sweet ballad into something monstrous and perverse. Even Neubauten did a cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'Aime" on their first record; but polkas, waltzes, and cabaret numbers seemed to the prime target for the venom, bile, and ill-thoughts of the youth from back in the day, and Der Plan had authored a good number of these cheeky tunes, with atonal blooping electronics, plinkety-plonk melodies, and disjointed scratchy vocalizations. As a result, the Residents are still an apt reference for most of Geri Reig, although perhaps the equally bizarre, although less known Die Todliche Doris should also be referenced as well. For all of Der Plan's weird disposition, they would also craft a percolatingly brilliant minimal wave track here and there, as heard in the man-machine sequencing on "Commerce Exterieur Mondial Sentimentale" and the future-shock arpeggiations of "Adrenalin Lasst Das Blut Kochen." A classic record from the NDW period, now available once again thanks to the fine folks at Medical Records!
Brand new batch of twisted psychedelic summery druggy dream pop from this oddly monikered UK one man band, and it's simply more of what we loved about the last record. If anything, this new one sounds way less lo-fi, the guitars are alternatingly warm and jangly, crumbly and crunchy and fuzzy, the vocals are multi tracked into strange harmonies, the sound simple but so sweetly shimmery, the vocals reverbed and draped over lilting major key jangle pop, sounding almost like a more home brewed bedroom version of aQ pop faves Telekinesis.
But it's not all sunshine, the band do manage to get a little bit dour and minor key now and again, and those might be our favorites, "Like It Was Again" (a redone and polished up version of a song from the first record) is total mix tape heaven, simple propulsive drumming, fuzzy jangle, sweet vocals, and a haunting Cure like melody wrapped around everything, there's also a buzzy minimal guitar solo that just sort of replays the main melody. "Stream" is another one, a brooding strummer, with creepy fields of feedback, and a gorgeous main minor key melody, the song exploding into full psychedelia, the guitars distorted and heavily effected, before slipping right back into the lope and brood. And in fact, the record gets less and less summery feeling with each listen, maybe more like a rainy summer day, indoors, the sun hidden behind the clouds, the sound a little bit gloomy and barely cold wavey here and there, but so catchy, and as much as we dug Tendrils, this one sounds EVEN better. Most definitely a new fave. And fans of the Captured Tracks usual suspects (Beach Fossils, Blank Dogs, Hanoi Janes, Minks, Soft Moon), who have yet to check this guy out, well, this would be as good a place as any to start!
Not to be confused with the Dimmer that was born from NZ's Straightjacket Fits, this Dimmer brings together two stalwarts of the California experimental community: Thomas Dimuzio and Joseph Hammer. The former skirts the boundaries between electro-acoustic technologies and improvisational abstraction, having collaborated with the likes of Chris Cutler, Matmos, Wobbly, Scott Arford, Illusion Of Safety and countless others. Mr. Hammer is one of the prominent members of the willfully oblique Los Angeles Free Music Society, having participated in such projects as Solid Eye, Points Of Friction, and Steaming Coils. Hammer's instrument of choice is the reel-to-reel tape deck, through which he can muster an uncanny palette of sound, noise, and drone. The two have worked together off and on for a good part of the last decade, with a handful of performances throughout California and a couple of releases - Remissions being their second and collecting some of the best moments from those live gigs.
"Sky Wire" builds insectoid buzzes and creepily harmonic drones out of the interplay between Hammer's rough-hewn tape manipulation and Dimuzio's deftly rendered swells, somewhere between Machinefabriek and Christoph Heemann. "Sun Dog" grafts blackened noise onto an electrocutioner's hum, with Hammer's start 'n' stop tapes popping into view like a detached Burroughs cut-up. Both "Gases That Emit Light" and "Giant Eagle" continue along these same strategies with eerie clouds of drones that fold and collapse between harmonic resonance and dissonance with unsettled bursts of soft focus noise. This is really exceptional stuff, and certainly some of the best that we've encountered from either artists individually.
You know these guys. A seminal outfit of the post rock ilk, one without whom... well let's just say there's a good reason they'll be namechecked in every Battles or Hella review we're or anyone else who knows what's what is gonna write. Pittsburgh's finest, the SCTV lovin' Don Cab, led by drummer extraordinaire Damon Che, are back with yet another lineup, and their second Relapse release (7th album overall if you count the singles comp). While the "metal" leanings of their 2006 Relapse debut World Class Listening Problem have been scaled back a bunch here, it's still another dazzling display of their trademark instrumental mathrock chops. Except, this time, it's not all instrumental! There's vocals on some (about a third) of these 14 tracks, and they're surprisingly melodious. (Maybe not so surprising if you've ever heard Che's other band, Thee Speaking Canaries, in which he sings and plays guitar.)
But don't worry, aside from the sometime singing, everything else is 100 percent Don Cab: Wise ass song title non sequiturs. Stop on a dime changes. Complex song structures. Unusual time signatures. Loud-soft dynamics. Proggy perplexity. And quite a lot of pretty parts too! Several tracks are much more harmonious than hectic, soundscapes with airy grooves and lulling, lovely vocals. But an album called Punkgasm can't be a total blissout, it's usually a bit busier. On most tracks, the guitars - sometimes bright and chiming, at other times heavy and distorted - mesh with precision into the spinning gears of Che's constantly percolating, plentiful percussion. Imagine a King Crimson "Projekt" gone indie rock, but better.
We've definitely said it before, but it bears repeating. As much as we love endless squalls of black buzz, long drawn out low end drones, noise of every stripe, and music that is less music and more SOUND, we do love SONGS. And bands who write songs. Kick ass super rocking songs. When we step back and observe objectively, it's strange how few 'rock bands' there are. Guitars, bass, drums, verses, choruses, and yeah, we know that's not nearly enough, but when a band like that has the chops and more importantly THE SONGS to back it up, then holy shit, look out.
We heard Double Dagger for the first time on Thrill Jockey's Record Store Day release Records Toreism (of which we have a very few copies left!), we described their song as "kick ass, super distorted, howly, drum heavy, bass heavy, arty, angular, crunchy, almost a bit metal post punk", which we're happy to report is still the case on this, their debut full length.
A chaotic, heady mix of all the things we love about math rock, post rock, noise rock, emo and screamo, equal parts Fugazi, Pavement and Fucked Up, a churning juggernaut of thick super distorted bass, pounding mathy rhythms and yowled vocals that definitely sound like the perfect mix of Ian Mackaye and Stephen Malkumus, and yeah, NO guitars, not that you'd ever notice, the bass is massive, thick and undulating, sometimes dripping with crumbling distortion, other times as clear as a bell, definitely reminiscent of Lightning Bolt's Brian Gibson, but way more indie rock. And the songs, awesome, super mathy and complex, weirdly dense and convoluted, but with hooks galore, totally takes us back to the nineties glory days of this sort of sound, and reminds us how awesome music can be when it IS more than just cool sounds. And these songs have been lodged in our heads like crazy since we first got this in, and it's obvious from listening to these guys rock, how amazing they must be live, wild and sweaty and blown out and fun as fuck. Which pretty much perfectly describes More.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Never reviewed this, just have a couple copies. Draugsang are Norwegian, Morker are Swedish, they did this split record of Black Metal fury back in 2006. Limited to 500 copies then, likely out of print now. Calling all Vikings!
Full length number two from this East Coast noise rock trio, finally available, self-released on vinyl by the band on their own label, whose recent set at the aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase blew us all away. An insanely kinetic display of tense mathy crush, pounding feral filth, and blasting, churning, grinding, blown out heaviness. It's hard to translate that sort of live energy to disc for sure, but this new album comes pretty close. The guitars impossibly distorted and in the red, pegging the meters and seemingly transforming into some strange looped and clipped chug, the drums pounding and relentless, the vocals howled and barked and buried in the mix, the band locking into full on feedback drenched hypnorock, before letting it splinter into strange stuttery stop starts, or almost blast beat driven bursts of black energy.
A few of the tracks slow it down a little, but that's about all the respite you'll get, and even the dirgier numbers are still oozing grit and filth, threatening to destroy your speakers and bloody your ears. A couple favorites, "All The Dead Dogs", with its super distorted riffy churn, bizarre blown out percussion, and killer main groove, all chug and thud, with little flurries of all out noise peppering the otherwise tightly controlled crush. "Quality Of My Life", with its opening salvo of layered feedback, pounding drum stutter, and the way the drums and guitars lock into this weird rhythmic throb, before exploding into some serious skull crushing heaviness. But hell, we could pick any of these jams, they're all fierce and fucked up and awesome, the whole record playing out like one massive, multi movement, damaged and demented noise rock epic. Essential ear punishment for fans of Brainbombs, Mayyors, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Rusted Shut, Billy Bao, White Mice, Anals, Liquorball and other similarly unhinged noiseniks.
It's worth noting, though, that Drunkdriver broke up recently, under difficult circumstances, as it turns out there were some serious allegations about DD's drummer and some alleged fucked up shit in his past, and while he vehemently denies everything, and his bandmates supported him (although some online sources report otherwise), the band finally decided they just didn't want to deal with all the rumors and the constant pressure of all that nothing-to-do-with-the-music bullshit, just so you know, even though we figure if you don't have a problem with a band called Drunkdriver to begin with, you can probably separate enjoying the album from any alleged problematic actions of the persons involved in making it, after all the music's still the same awesome noisy punk rock we liked before all this hit the fan.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, packaged in really nice heavy jackets...
Full length number three from 'hypnogogic pop' outfit Ducktails, aka Matthew Mondanile, whose day job is playing guitar in lo-fi pop combo Real Estate, and whose records as Ducktails tended more toward the murky and druggy and hazy, a tropical infused low fidelity avant pop warble, but on Arcade Dynamics, Mondanile has definitely jettisoned much of the murk and moved his side project a bit more toward the more traditional pop of the Real Estate mothership. That said, it's all relative, things in Mondanile's world of Ducktails is still warped and woozy and warbly and dreamily druggy, but this time around, the guitars are more jangly, and chiming, the sound is more sunshiney and sun dappled, and most noticeably, there are way more vocals, less meandering experimentation, and more proper songsmithery, and it definitely suits him.
The record begins with a more traditionally Ducktailed mini jam, instrumental and a little bit tropical, a simple beat under effected jangle and swirling melody, but as soon as the second track starts up, it's easy to hear something has changed, the song a bit more brooding, still rife with gorgeous hooks and melodies, but the sound is more measured and hypnotic, the vocals hazy and reverby, but not at all to the point of distraction. "Sprinter" is a total eighties throwback, with gorgeous tangles of guitar harmony and muted thumping percussion, and while "The Razor's Edge" does find Mondanile dipping back into the more experimental side of Ducktails, it's actually pretty great, a brooding minor key almost sci-fi sounding bit of glitchy twang and motorik throb. "Killin' The Vibe" is a hazy bit of sunshiney psychedelia wrapped around a stripped down electronic pulse, and rife with hand claps and gorgeous multitracked vocals, while "Art Vandelay" might be the highlight of the record, reminding us of recent Record Of The Week Public Service Announcement by Purling Hiss, the same sort of lo-fi retro classic pop sound, with a big chorus (big for Ducktails at least), flanged steel string strum, and another skeletal programmed beat, all wound into an impossibly perfect chunk of hook-heavy lo-fi jangle pop.
And like some of the other Ducktails records, it seems Mondanile likes to finish off with lengthy experiments, and III is no different, a sprawling 10 minute stretch of minimal reverbed guitarscapery, warm and shimmery, hypnotic and mesmerizing, laced with strange percussion and mysterious field recordings, a beautiful and chilled out finish to what is most definitely our favorite Ducktails yet!
The vinyl version comes with a free download, which includes a bonus track NOT on the cd, an alternate version of "Killin' The Vibe" featuring Panda Bear from Animal Collective!
PS vinyl coming February 1st!
And as promised last list, when we made the reissue of seventies Mexican psych legends Los Dug Dug's 1971 self-titled debut a Record Of The Week, here's their equally Record Of The Week worthy second album, 1972's Smog, now also reissued on both cd and, for the first time, vinyl! And as we said then, we love this band! Why? 'Cause Los Dug Dug's kick out jams that are part garage rock grooviness, part Beatlesy bliss, part power pop, part proto-metal, and part prog (with flute!!). What's not to love? And we haven't even mentioned the heavy dosage of FUZZ they supply, either!
Unlike the debut, which was Mexico's first rock record sung all in English, Smog is sung in Spanish, and sees Los Dug Dug's stripped down to an amped up power trio format, led as always by guitarist/vocalist Armando Nava (he's on the right in the cover picture, with the dyed grey long hair and beard, looking like some pensive psychedelic wise man or wizard). Pretty sure he's also the one playing the flute here, pumping up the progginess in a hard rock context that could kinda be likened to Jethro Tull meets the MC5, yeah, and reminds us of Italian prog faves Osanna, too.
Smog is one smokin' album, it's hard to pick favorite tracks, as they're all so good, but we'd have to mention both the lovely ballad "Voy Hacia El Cielo (Voy Hacia El Sol)" and the motorcycle revving, ecological protest rocker "Smog". Yep, just like their self-titled debut, this one's got plenty of both the heavy rockers and the gentler, poppier stuff, but leans towards the former, and seems more '70s than their first album, which had more of a '60s feel to it.
Air pollution is certainly a '70s theme, also something that any band based in Mexico City would be concerned about, and the title Smog gives this a heavier vibe than if they'd called it something like Flowers & Incense, eh? In keeping with their new style and attitude, they do a Spanish-language remake / update of the debut's frantic garage beat number "Let's Make It Now", stretching it to almost 12 minutes, as a totally progged out, flute-fortified five part suite, now titled "Hagamasolo Ahora (2a. Parte)", while retaining all the energetic excitement of the original. The energy level of this entire album is exhilarating, there's a couple pleasant acoustic numbers but otherwise it's quite rough, rhythmic, and riffy.
As we said when we reviewed the reissue of the debut, we've listed this album (and several others by the band) before, but it was always tough to keep enough of 'em in stock, they were Mexican imports and never reliably available, seemingly going in and out of print in quite random fashion. Hopefully these new editions will be around longer, and remain easy to stock. Also, these reissues are the very first time we've seen any Dug Dug's reissued on VINYL, yay!!!
As with the self-titled debut, the new cd version of this comes packaged in a handsome plastic-protected miniature lp style sleeve, complete with obi strip. Other than the text on the obi, there's no liner notes for this reissue, which we're told is a result of the difficulties inherent in licensing a release like this from a major label (it's owned by Sony BMG). In any case, we're glad it got reissued again, at all, and it's nice enough! Sooo recommended, equally up there with the debut, maybe even better, especially for folks who dig the cowbell-knockin', fuzz rockin' action.
A quick four song follow up ep to the I Will Be full length that was a huge hit around here, and if anything, He Gets Me High is even better. The production is lush and polished, and the songs, best yet we think. "Wrong Feels Right" has a brooding bass heavy intro with dense tribal toms, that reminds us of Icicle Works actually, before launching into something more shimmery and reverby and jangly, hooks galore, and a lush, heavy, almost shoegazey chorus, not to mention some gorgeous hazy lead guitar. "He Gets Me High" then ups the ante, super crunchy distorted guitar, a groovy garagey stomp, all beneath lush multitracked vocals, everything still reverby, but here the guitars make it sounds like Spacemen 3 or something, a pretty bad ass combo or sure.
"Take Care Of My Baby" is a smoldering ballad, and sounds more like the DDG of old, the guitars wreathed in thick reverb, the vocals smokey and sultry, the sound like some sixties girl group B side, minor key and moody, and another to-die-for hook and an oh so classic chorus. And as if that wasn't enough, they cover the Smiths' "There is A Light That Never Goes Out", and they own it, sounding a bit like a meaner Best Coast, the song is obviously fantastic already, but the Dum Dum Girls makeover turns it into something even more intense, the verses so broody and dark, but then that chorus, soaring and catchy and so perfect.
We've been playing these songs to death, over and over, mix tape manna for sure, and most definitely has us chomping at the bit for a new full length!
Eccentric outsider doom metal from the '80s, from waaaaaay down underground. Now hold up, if the words "doom" or "metal" make you think, not for me, think again (maybe). This isn't like any metal you've ever heard, really. More like spaced out '60s heavy psychedelic guitar rock (one song's called "Heavy Vibrations", man), overloaded also with shrill synth symphonics and trippy effects... That's where the "outsider" tag comes in, Dwarr being a one-man band, all the work of South Carolina multi-instrumentalist (but especially guitar!) Duane Warr (hence the name Dwarr), whom we get the impression is quite a character. It's so DIY that the cds have his phone number on 'em, in case you want to get in touch. His privately pressed music comes off like a cough-syrup dosed mixture of Black Sabbath and Todd Tamanend Clark (whom you should know from the double cd anthology we raved about a few years ago). Or, The Happy Dragon Band playing Pink Floyd, from beyond the grave. Maybe a lo-fi Captain Beyond, on even more drugs than Captain Beyond were ever on. Or imagine if Bobb Trimble was an '80s metaller, perhaps (and worked out in the gym a lot more?). Sorry to use so many almost equally obscure references, but it's hard to compare this confusional beast to anything else.
Look at that insane cover painting, a surreal post-apocalyptic landscape (that's a malevolent-looking Statue of Liberty sunken in polluted looking water next to a cave populated by long-haired, skull-faced cannibalistic mutants, with an avatar of Dwarr himself, we're guessing, striking a heroic he-man pose in the upper right hand corner). The music itself is as surreal and apocalyptic and ridiculous as that image, matching up to it much more than most other "metal" albums ever match up to their cover art, both in subject matter and, ah, execution.
Just from the cover painting, let alone the music, this Dwarr album is SO perfectly Aquarius, you'd almost think we made it up. But no, Dwarr's for real, something we'd vaguely heard tell of and been curious about for years, and finally went to the trouble of tracking down (not so hard, thanks to the Internet, now that everybody and their grandmother's bands are on MySpace). And lo and behold, it turned out Dwarr had issued ALL four of his albums (two from the '80s, two from the '00s, believe it or not!) on compact disc. So we had to get a bunch of this one, his second, from 1986, probably his best and "heaviest". A Record Of The Week, easy.
There's 13 tracks, each one incredible (or incredibly strange). There's nothing that's NOT freaked out about this. Even the poppiest songs (like the title track "Animals") are full of sluggish grooves, druggy lyrics, buzzing electronics, melodic stoned vocals, acid rock guitar (and acid WTF synth). Elsewhere it gets away from rock/metal song structure entirely, with interludes of eerie atmospherics, spacey soundscapes overlaid with ominous whispered declamations, and weirdass instrumentals, like the squirrelly, proggy bombast of "Chocolate Mescalyne", a track that if you sped it up a lot would almost fit in on a Orthrelm album.
And then there's the DOOM. Oh yeah, while it's not "normal" doom it IS doom. Sludgy, Sabbath-riffed doom indeed, despite the trebly production. "Ghost Lover", for instance, gives us the feel of both the Sabs' "Iron Man" and "Electric Funeral", and Duane's vocals are particularly Ozzy-ish on the uber-heavy "Evil Lures" too... Great stuff if you really really appreciate the stranger, more psychedelic aspects of true doom artistry, the spirit is HERE.
Three cheers for avant garde new wave downer rock hippie heavy metal weirdness! That gives special thanks "to the Columbia High School Band for the use of their percussion instruments". We are so pleased to play a role in sharing this culter than cult classic with you, which by the way comes in fairly no-frills packaging, the cd in a thin cardboard sleeve with full-color album art front and back but no lyrics, liner notes, nothin' like that. It's pretty cheap though. Not that you should need any further incentive to pick this up, after reading our ravings above...
More twisted collaged schizophrenic cabaret French pop folk weirdness from mysterious troubadour Laurent Gerard aka El-G! Where El-G's last record was a dizzying shimmery Gainsbourg meets Animal Collective song suite, that slipped from delicate hushed French pop, to more abstract free rock weirdness to epic dense dronemusic, Capitaine Present 5 is something way more out there.
On the surface, it almost sounds like one of those Sublime Frequencies collections, that just features snippets collected from the radio, short snippets, mysterious disembodied voices, a glorious barrage of constantly shifting sounds and textures, but as the record progresses, it becomes easier and easier to become lost in El-G's sound, tolling bells, thrummed bass, maniacal spoken word, bursts of noise, and tangled fractured melody, wheezing organ, delicate acoustic guitar strum, the vocals dramatic and passionate, the single song (?) that takes up the record's one playable side, shifting constantly from total chaos, to fluttery folk, to dreamy avant pop, to mysterious foreign radio play, to Residents-like art rock, to warm orchestral shimmer, to sultry smoldering torch song, to total what the fuck mashup and every possible permutation in between.
It's definitely chaotic, and a bit out there, a total head phone trip for sure, but the chaos is infused with plenty of jangle, subtle hooks, some pretty vocals, and irresistible melodies, even some cinematic strings, which makes Capitaine Present 5 a fantastic, and fantastically confounding listen.
The Absent Coast is the debut recording from the duo En, made up of James Devane and Maxwell Croy (one half of the duo that runs the Root Strata label), and is a gorgeous collection of melancholy, otherworldly dronemusic, a varied selection of miniature epics, each an evocative and emotional travelogue in sound, utilizing organs, melodica, piano, guitar, vocals, koto and various other instruments and devices, the duo weave lush expanses of layered, organic sonic energy, warm buzzing tones stretched into sheer blissy shimmer and lush chordal swells blurred into gauzy slow motion melodies become an ever shifting soundtrack to a series of fading memories, brief flickering filmstrips in sound, the indistinct images allowing the listener short glimpses of stories untold, decisions unmade, lives yet to be lived.
The opener is a rich crumbling landscape of layered shimmer, crackling with electrical energy, an energy which gradually dissipates, eventually leaving a smooth glassy stretch of gently pulsing thrum, eventually fading out completely, the resulting vacuum filled with a miniature symphony of scraped steel strings, their overtones ringing out in the ether, leaving shadowy melodic traces, those strangely melodic metal scrapings overflowing into yet another sprawl of lush layered longform dronemusic, a sea of softly undulating buzz, a mesmerizing field of sympathetic steel, which then itself blossoms into yet another bit of drone, this one a sun dappled bit of ethereal ambience, peppered with deep distorted notes, and flitting electrical fields, all wrapped in a woozy cocoon of burnished blur.
And so The Absent Coast unfolds, waves of hissy white noise wash over plaintive piano like some late afternoon sonic sea, glistening fields of celestial glimmer shed notes like falling stars, the result a prismatic cascade of unfulfilled wishes rendered in sound, deep drifts of muted melody are stretched and pulled apart, letting the light from within infuse the sounds all around them, ghostlike drones change color before our very ears, like the leaves turning, Jeckian dirges crawl glacially through moonlight, spitting sparks that smolder in blues and greens, leaving the glow of gradually dying embers, a delicate piano's notes send sonic ripples into the ether, the melodies overlapping and intertwining creating subtle ever shifting patterns that gradually flicker and fade, and finally, hushed sonic shadows give way to a soft sun dappled blush, which in turn becomes a slowly intensifying radiance, a sky full of luminous flares, a visual symphony of sound, lush and rich and almost orchestral, only to finally dissolve, the colors fading to brown, then black, the sound following suit. So so nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Another blast of furious blasting blackened sickness from Swiss one man horde Enoid, masterminded by Bornyhake, who also does time in the equally awesome Borgne. We reviewed the Enoid full length Ataraxiis a few lists back, and Suicide Genocide takes up right where that one left off, furious and frantically blasting black metal, Norwegian style, and yeah, he's Swiss, but the sound is classic Scandinavian black metal, the riffs epic and soaring, the drumming brutal and lightning speed, the vocals demonic and bile spewing, the buzz cranked WAY up, the tracks dense and complex lurching from maniacal frenzied blasting, to sludge-y doomic pounding to weirdly melodic, often all those elements colliding midsong. And he's not just a killer player, he's capable of crafting some pretty excellent songs too, hidden amidst all that gnarled blackness and buzz drenched blast, lurk plenty of hooks, subtle perhaps, but there nonetheless infusing this filth with a vibe that keeps it from being just another slab of grim black whatever.
What is it about the Swiss, it's hard to pinpoint, but we're becoming mildly obsessed with bands from Switzerland, Paysage D'Hiver, Darkspace, Wacht, Ordo Infandorum Rituum Occultus (both reviewed elsewhere on this list), Sun Of The Blind, Borgne, and yeah, like the Ukraine, it's probably all the same 4 or 5 guys, but who cares, they've tapped into something, that's positioning Switzerland to give France and Norway And heck, the Ukraine a run for their black metal money.
Latest from these Portland psych rockers, their first for new label Thrill jockey, which is where they now call home, alongside their pals, SF dronerockers Barn Owl.
For Beyond The 4th Door, these guys haven't really changed their MO all that much, but then as they say, why fix what ain't broke? The opener is a sprawling smoldering psychedelic drift, all minimal stripped down drums, effected guitar, processed vox, deep low end buzz, and helicopter like thrum, the sound twangy and sun baked, almost like they're taking a page from label mates Barn Owl, the same sort of deserty drift, but ET augment their drift with strange effects, whirring synths, culminating in a thick buzzing denouement, before slipping right back into a slowly fading outro.
That track bleeds right into the next, another chunk of psychedelic smolder, this time the guitars more distorted, a sound that reminds us of Flower Travellin' Band actually, like those wailing vox could swoop in at any second. Instead, the song unfurls, a mesmerizing chunk of hypo psychedelia, which again blurs right into the next track, a hazy slow burner, all tangled psych guitars, and shuffling skeletal rhythms, and finally on this one, the band get heavy (not crazy heavy, but heaviER), there's some sax here too, but it almost sounds just like another guitar, the band unleashing loose softly chaotic squalls of dueling guitars/sax, the whole thing hazy and druggy and pretty excellent, the sort of modern shit that should moss definitely appeal to all the Japrock obsessives who worship at the alter of Les Rallizes.
The record finishes with two sprawling epics, "Reflections In A Mirage", a droney, twangy, stretch of minimal, spacious shuffle, vocals return, to chant, and moan ominously, while the guitars warble and buzz, all tangled an spidery, draped over swirls of shimmery drone, the song never explodes or climaxes, which only makes it cooler, the instruments gradually blurring together and finally coalescing into a closing stretch of layered drone. The comes "Time Winds Through A Glass, Clearly", topping out at 12 minutes, beginning like some strange sort of country jam, loping low slung bass, and twangy reverbed guitars, soon sizzling clouds of cymbal shimmer drift overhead, the saxophone returns and skronks off in the distance, the song drifts and lopes and meanders, slowly picking up steam, but staying mostly restrained, until the last few minutes, where the band do let loose again, the drums pounding, the guitars distorted, wild streaks of psychedelic leads everywhere, a serious sonic squall, but only briefly, before things quickly settle back down and the track unwinds in a soft psychedelic haze. Great stuff. And refreshing that they managed to avoid the ubiquitous soft/loud, slow build, explosive ending thing that seems to be the way most bands do psychedelic space rock, instead, each song was a expansive sprawling epics that were both hypnotic and heavy, mesmerizing and mysterious�
To look at the personnel line-up of Evil Madness, you probably wouldn't know what to expect. There's the melancholy composer Johann Johannsson with a number of acclaimed cinematic records on 4AD. There's the bleak-minded drone specialist BJ Nilsen and his long-time collaborators Stillupsteypa. And there's another Icelander dude named Petur Eyvindsson, who has some oddball releases under the name DJ Musician. Given that, the punchy discotheque grooves of Evil Madness are way out of left-field and totally great. Italo disco, minimal wave / EMB, anthemic Detroit techno circa 1988, John Carpenter's paranoiac synth arpeggiations, lots of analogue synth worship, and pre-fab electronic beats all come together underneath the stoic yet tongue-in-cheek banner of Evil Madness. We suspect that Sigtryggur from Stilluppsteypa has quite a lot to do with this one, given the electro-breaks that would occasionally slap in the face of his seriously minded crackled dronemuzik; no matter who's responsible, both sides of Super Great Love are brilliantly hedonistic mash-ups of vintage synth stabs, stupidly good anthemic electronic melodies, and plenty cybernetic Moroder sequences, spiralling upon techno, disco, and electro rhythms. Super Great Love is actually the fourth record by Evil Madness, with their other releases coming out through the poorly distributed 12 Tonar label and the dada-fetish imprint Ultra Eczema, so this album on Editions Mego should garner a broader audience for Evil Madness (they'll be releasing a cd version eventually too). Fans of Majeure, Umberto, K-X-P, and the Oneohtrix Point Never sideproject Games would be well served to check this out!
Fabric is the work of Chicago's Matthew Mullane, who could be seen as a one-man doppleganger of Emeralds. Not only does Mullane have an album of acoustic solo guitar work on Vin Du Select Qualitite, following Emerald's guitarist Mark McGuire in such an honor; he's released this stunning piece of liquid electronica that could fool even the most die-hard Emeralds fan. To further matters, A Sort Of Radiance had caught the attention of Emerald's John Elliott, who released the album through his Spectrum Spools imprint manufactured by Editions Mego. Present throughout A Sort Of Radiance are the percolating cosmic synths with the same classical overtures to Cluster, Fripp & Eno, and Schulze that Hauschildt and Elliott would adopt on those brilliant Emeralds records (especially What Happened and Does It Look Like I'm Here?). Even with very similar synth programing through step sequencing and hypnotic iterations of electronics, Mullane also seems to tap into the same bittersweet expressivity found on those Emeralds album. The same rounded notes which brought Emeralds' What Happened to a conclusion are reprised on Fabric's "Light Float" (an apt name for this levitational track with all of its fizzing lines of patterned electronic static), and even the harpsichord sounding electronics which girded Emeralds' near poptune "Candy Shoppe." The similarities can be unnerving; but when you forget about this and just listen to the wonderful music within... A Sort Of Radiance is a thing of beauty.
After a record on Siltbreeze, one on Sacred Bones, one on Kill Shaman, and a whole mess of singles, none of which we managed to list somehow, comes this latest full length from Seattle's Factums, a soundtrack (or faux soundtrack perhaps), that takes their gloomy gothic post punk new wave sound and gets it all tangled up with much more soundtracky elements, and it's a pretty killer combo.
So yeah, that sort of post Joy Division, depressive modern retro new wave thing these guys do so well is fully intact, but on A Primitive Future, that sound is surrounded on all sides by experimental interludes, ambient mood music, drones and driftscapes, all appropriately haunting and mysterious and cinematic.
When the band rocks, it's fierce and feral, barked distorted vocals, creepy keyboards, buzzing angular guitars, chaotic drumming, krauty motorik rhythms, darkly new wave-y and dreamily doomy and depressive, but here the band spend much more time sprawling sonically, creating sounds to accompany sights (or so we're meant to believe): shimmering expanses of soft focus hiss over field recordings, haunting stretches of gauzy druggy drift, lo-fi rumbles beneath layers of shifting grit and grime, swirls of malfunctioning music box chimes, deep muted ambient whir, murky sci-fi psychedelic swirl, clouds of abstract deconstructed reverb and detuned guitar and on and on.
Not just another dose of cold wave post punk gloom (although there are moments, instead, a spaced out abstract creepy chunk of brooding, sci-fi, new wave, cinematic ambient doom drift.
We can always count on local reissue label Companion Records to foster the kind of rare hidden musical gem that perhaps won't appeal to everyone, but will get a select group of enthusiasts very excited over the discovery of someone's sincerely unique, but often-times misguided musical vision. Companion's specialty has always been private press vanity records, such as the Louie Louie, Charlie Tweddle, Marc Mundy and New Creation records, and for their first foray into vinyl releases have given us two quite amazing but very different musical visionaries: the latent mope-psych of Stan Hubbs (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and the spirited orchestral lounge stylings of Michael Farneti.
Hailing from South Florida and recorded in 1976, Michael Farneti's Good Morning Kisses is a brilliant head-scratcher. Indeed, it seems Farneti is channeling Van Dyke Parks, The Neon Philharmonic, Harvey Sid Fisher and Scott Walker in his wide-eyed enthusiastic and sometimes melancholic songs about Movie Stars, ESP, New York Muggers and Georgia Peaches. Without a hint of irony, Farneti exudes a wonderfully naive charm with strange (and perhaps unintentionally humorous) lyrics and sometimes goofy songs (an example: "Shower, shower, shower until you smell like a flower" on the title track). While we admit we maybe use Ariel Pink's name as a comparison too much in our reviews, it does seem apropos here, because if Ariel Pink played piano in a Reno airport lounge in the seventies, it might sound a lot like Good Morning Kisses. It definitely has the falsetto harmonies, Theremin flourishes, and washed out orchestral yacht rock arrangements that can be heard on Doldrums. Though some songs may make you cringe ("Rock Candy Roll"), there are plenty of golden moments and for fans of unique musical visionaries like the ones we mentioned above, Good Morning Kisses has a lot to offer. Limited to 500 copies. Sweet!
We sometimes think lysergic free noise floorcore duo the Skaters might as well have never broken up. Sure both James Ferraro and Spencer Clark (aka Monopoly Child Star Searchers) have carved their own sonic path, but they seem perpetually linked. On the same label, releasing records at the same time, often playing on each other's records (which makes it the Skaters sort of anyway, right?), sounds that while different, definitely share many similarities, and most notably, both possess a visual aesthetic so appalling and seemingly purposefully eye gouging, it's almost as if they're trying to get people not to listen to their records. Which is a shame, cuz another thing these guys have in common, is almost without exception, their records are fantastic. Tripped out and woozy and warped and psychedelic, each in his own twisted way.
Ferraro has mixed up his sound quite a bit, trading the confusional murky loopscapes for what sounds like a lo-fi eighties after school special soundtrack version of Ariel Pink. Which is not a bad thing, just fucking awesomely bizarre. Like eighties FM radio rock mixed with seventies glam rock run through the warped lysergic lo-fi warped retro pop of NOW. Hard to tell if the music is actually played, it sounds so genuinely old, it seems like it must be sampled, but either way, Ferraro straps on his best falsetto and lets loose, sounding one second like Russell Mael from Sparks, the next like Prince, and the next like some hair metal howler, the music similarly flits from sound to sound, one minute sounding like eighties MTV cheese, the next spandex-ed glam metal, the next dizzying warped collages, and the next like some Saturday morning commercial for some gloopy messy toy.
It takes a lot these days to confuse and confound, but this stuff is wacked, and weird, and pretty twistedly wonderful. Not sure exactly who the audience for this stuff is, us it seems, cuz for all of its what-the-fuck-ness, we can't seem to stop listening to this, which either says something about the record, about us, or most likely both.
Brand new full length album from Justin Broadrick's (Jesu, Godflesh, etc.) Final project, which in the past was a sort of solo guitar thing, or so we thought. On Afar, the eight numbered tracks are arrangements of processed loops, with nary a guitar in site. Which becomes harder to believe the further we get into the record.
The sound here is dark and mesmerizing, each track a slow cycling soundscape, rife with shifting textures and pulsing almost-rhythms, the sounds super varied, but all woven together into one cohesive songsuite. Fans of Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck will dig bigtime, as well as guitar drone aficionados into stuff like Fear Falls Burning.
Layers of crunch and buzz are locked into swelling, swaying hypnotic rhythms, the textures and timbre shifting gradually, the looped aspect not always immediately noticeable. Deep rumbles beneath softly processed whirs are woven into stretches of haunting cinematic shimmer, fading into swooping backwards melodies peppered with bits of glitch and crackle. Elsewhere slow burning 'guitar' sounds buzz explosively into epic and majestic sheets of buzzing woozy blur, before being scattered by dense tangles of reverberating metallic hum and rumbling low end way off in the distance. A few tracks definitely dip into Jeck territory with stuttery looped vocals and clipped samples and muted skitter, before finishing off with a hushed bit of whispery murmur.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. We get these direct from Broadrick's Avalanche label in the UK, so when we run out it might take a couple weeks to get more, assuming there are still some left. Nice thick picture disc in a thick PVC plastic sleeve.
We're surprised it took this long for these two avant guitarists to join forces, Final, aka Justin Broadrick, aka the man behind Godflesh, Jesu, Grey Machine, Techno Animal etc, and Fear Falls Burning, aka Dirk Serries. In some ways both have a similar approach to the guitar, both able to sculpt sprawling expanses of layered drone music, transforming six strings into something much more, a sound generator capable of conjuring heaving, roiling dronescapes as well as hushed ambient drifts.
The opening track seems more influenced by later period Broadrick, as it sounds a lot like a washed out, minimalized Jesu track, a slow, warm, lugubrious riff, looped over and over, poppy and melodic, but slowed down enough that it becomes trancelike, with Serries (we assume) adding a sky full of tangled and layered high end contrails, adding a dark tension, and a mysterious beauty to the melancholic main riff, the whole thing wreathed in a gauzy dreamlike production.
The second track is more static, less riff based, and more wide open, a blackened landscape of rumbling low end string buzz, and singing high end skree, the skree muted so instead of being piercing, it's more smoldering, a glowing buzz, that pulses and throbs, the guitars constantly shifting, the layers overlapping and intertwining, gorgeous but still tense and dramatic, easily could have been extended to fill up a whole record and we definitely would not have complained.
The flipside begins with a smokey bit of folk flecked darkness, that definitely reminds us of groups like Earth or Barn Owl, a tiny bit of twang, a subtle choral vibe, warm and washed out, melancholy and minor key, the guitar unfurling skeletal melodies that blossom lazily, and then seem to fade into the background, just in time for more to take their place, a subtly active twangscape of muted buzz and almost country sounding drones, again, drifting ghostlike through a sepia toned haze.
The record closes with a gorgeous, thick bit of dronemusic, the background a sitar like buzz gives the track a definite raga like vibe, while in the foreground, another guitar moans, unleashing warped low end melodic tangles, delivered in slow motion, mimicking the sound of a horn almost, a muted bleat, but pulled into strange alien melodies, mirrored by the ever shifting, and highly melodic background buzz. This one definitely could have been stretched out forever, absolutely mesmerizing, the sort of drone you never ever want to end.
Gorgeous packaging, a black on black sleeve, with a very subtle die cut, revealing yet more black from the sleeve within. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
The return of these Aussie low end heavies. Two basses, drums, NO guitar, recorded on the tail end of their recent Japanese tour, more of what we love from these guys, mathy, doomy low end heaviness.
The A side is all one track, and it's a beaut. The basses loooow slung, thick and syrupy, streaks of feedback everywhere, the drums scattered, the whole thing gorgeously abstract, the bass lines sound woozy and warped, it almost sounds like one of the basses is being played with a slide, part way through it erupts into a full on free for all, drums going nuts, basses buzzing and roaring, the band managed to sound super tight, but also loose and improvised, slipping from droney to super complex to mathy to space-y to sparse and plodding to freaked out and frenzied.
The flipside begins heavy and downtuned and mathy, sounding like a more metal ruins, super tight, locked into impossible grooves, before slipping into another stretch of drifting abstract free jam, before finishing off with a super rocking jam that is total early nineties Homestead worship. Awesome!
Beautifully hand screened covers, black and metallic silver on white (peep the inside of the cover, they're all printed on recycled Oxes / Arab On Radar sleeves, haha), each one hand numbered and signed, LIMITED TO 355 COPIES! Includes a photocopied insert too.
Another fantastic Miasmah release, this one from FNS, aka Fredrik Ness Sandoval, who besides playing in a whole bunch of Norwegian bands we've never heard of, has collaborated with members of Acid Mothers Temple, 1/3 Octave Band, the Cranes, Zeni Geva, and Marble Sheep, but here on his solo debut, Sandoval crafts a gorgeous expanse of minimal psychedelic folk, that reminds us both of local dronefolk duo Barn Owl, but also space kraut astral travelers Expo 70.
Imagine folk music transformed into druggy drifty dreamy space ragas, and you'll be getting close, acoustic guitars unfurl gorgeous trancelike stretches of almost Appalachia like strum, while all around, effects swirl, other guitars are layered and woven into the original guitar, creating fantastical stretches of psychedelic drift, of abstract dronekraut minimalism, all infused with a subtle pathos, even the sunshiniest of the tracks here, brood with a somber undercurrent. The record opener sets the stage perfectly, an acoustic guitars strums a melancholy chord progression, while another guitar churns and chugs, a rhythmic counterpoint to the woozy drift of the acoustic, this undulating space raga is laced with tinkling chimes, swooping backwards effects, all wreathed in a sort of otherworldly shimmer, and allowed to loop and repeat and mesmerize, growing subtly more intense and loud, but never fully letting loose, instead, eventually shedding all the extra guitars and strange production, leaving just the warm strummed acoustic, and little streaks of backwards swoop. We say it a lot, but Sandoval could have stretched that out to 40 or 50 minutes and we'd STILL be raving about it. And that applies to all the tracks here.
"Sappelur" is a smoldering blackened dirge, roiling clouds of processed buzz, muted feedback, lots of layered tones and lush chordal blur, a lovely blown out psychedelic haze that just throbs and pulses and drifts, right into "Wooden Leg", which returns to the folk of the album opener, but unlike that track, the progression here is much more subtle, it's nearly 2 or 3 minutes before a strange drone begins to surface, along with gorgeous angelic female vocals, soon male vocals join in as well, not singing so much as sort of crooning along, the result is a darker, more menacing take on classic seventies British acid folk.
"I Think She's Asleep" is more abstract, a gorgeous shimmery dreamscape, all layered tones, and pulled apart melodies, haunting and otherwordly, hushed and lovely, very reminiscent of folks like Machinefabriek and Jasper TX. "Dream" is surprisingly less dreamy, sounding instead like some strange sonic ritual, spidery guitars wrapped around twisted damaged electronics, while the vocals transform the sound into something almost liturgical, lots of reverb and echo, as if it were being performed in some massive black cathedral, the effects swirling and swooping, and pushing the sound into the realms of spacekrautdrone for sure.
Finally, the record closes with the epic 12 minute "Flaggermusvingers Vift I Dimmet", which again begins as a slowly unfurling lush sprawl of melancholy Appalachia, all minor key and mournful, while just below the surface, some thick blackened buzzing is birthed, and as the track progresses, it grows more and more caustic, roiling and churning, eventually nearly swallowing the Appalachia whole, transforming the sound into some washed out doomgaze, all woozy and swirly, the low end swells laced with tangled psychedelic melodies, before dropping out completely, leaving just a soft focus cloud of distant reverbed shimmer, a distant cosmic vibration, that seems to gradually fade, like the stars disappearing behind the clouds.
Dark and dreamy and druggy and so so gorgeous... For fans of Expo 70, Svarte Greiner, Barn Owl, Jacaszek, Nadja, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, Fear Falls Burning and other purveyors of doomfolk, krautdrone, spacefolk and all sorts of abstract minimal guitarscapery...
Another split record featuring two aQ faves, each offering up a sidelong slab of dreamy dronemusic, with each giving it their own subtle twist.
Taiga Remains, aka Alex Cobb, head honcho of the Students Of Decay label, unleashes a deep reverberant drone, all shimmery metallics and soft low end swells. As the track progresses though, the sounds gets more and more dense, thickening, sprawling, becoming more ominous, the bass deepening, within this viscous flow, lurk buried melodies, steel string buzz, super deep melodic rumbles that surface like some massive sea creature before slipping back under. Near the end the sound becomes almost orchestral before finally flickering out.
Gareth Hardwick takes the other side, and his sound is much more tranquil and gentle than the Taiga side, but still similar, almost like the same piece, just stripped to its essence, warm languid layers drifting to and fro, unfurling a soft slow motion melody, melancholy and wistful. About halfway through, electric guitars join in, pulsing and buzzing over the soft shimmery drift, adding an ominous edge, layer upon layer, constantly shifting, overtones appearing and disappearing, the whole thing warm and thick and mesmerizing. Almost metallic but managing to remain somehow soporific and soothing.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in a plain green sleeve, and VERY VERY LIMITED!
A gorgeous and mysterious one sided lp from GazHeart, a duo made up of artist Rita Ackerman, and No Neck Blues Band's Dave Nuss. The two played together in Angelblood as well, but these recordings were made after the breakup of that band, on the duo's annual trip to visit Ackerman's family in Budapest. During late nights in the backyard, with Nuss beating on coffee cans and broken bottles, Ackerman sang lyrics she had created using automatic, unmeditated writing. The results are beautiful, innocent, playful, haunting and very mysterious.
This consists of a series of short tracks, each with a slightly different tribal rhythmic component beneath Ackerman's vocals, which range from ghostly chantlike recitations, to sweet cooing, to wild wailing. The record drifts from tripped out FX drenched clang and clank beneath childlike gurgling, to campfire handdrums and sweetly almost whispered vocals, to hypnotic almost looped sounding tribal drums tangled up with breathy ethereal hum, to Casio style drum machine pitted against manic vocalizing and buzzy synth melodies, to the final track, the percussion super abstract, with chimes and bells, the vocals sung by a little girl, very cute and innocent, but also quite haunting.
Fans of Deerhoof, OOIOO, Tenniscoats and obviously No Neck and Angelblood will definitely dig.
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a thick sleeve, with Ackerman drawings on both sides, each the opposite/negative of the other, printed on nice thick paper, the lp is one sides, the flipside has an original Ackerman etching. Cool.
The music from Ginnungagap's long out of print Return To Nothing cd is available again, however briefly, on vinyl, super swank swirled yellow vinyl in fact, and limited to 500 copies...
Ginnungagap is a term from Norse mythology that means something like "seeming emptiness" and that's a great name for this project, which sounds like it emanates from some abyssal void or abandoned cave or something. Ambient sinister drone improv, reminding us a little bit of House of Low Culture or even Thuja, if they were more creepy and liquid-sounding. Ginnungagap is a trio consisting of Khanate / SUNNO))) dude Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Khanate's Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, and Gerritt Wittmer (who runs the Misanthropic Agenda label, and records solo as Gerritt) on computer. Packaged in a gold-printed, flat oversized cardstock sleeve, this disc consists of two tracks: "Return To Nothing" being a live recording about a half-hour in length, followed by Gerritt's remix "Nothing To Return" for about 20 minutes more. Like so much Khanate / SUNNO))) related stuff, it's of course a limited edition release...
We originally said that about the cd, but in fact, by the time you read this, the lp too will probably already be out of print. So...act fast if you want one.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
These noisy weirdos, an eclectic, electronic cabal including Bananafish 'zine ringleader Seymour Glass, Barbara Manning, and Siltbreeze's Tom Lax, unleash some "plunderphonic improv" here on this limited Ultra Excema album from late 2009 that we accidentally forgot to list. Now we've got 2 copies left, act quick to abuse (and sometimes soothe) your earholes with this wax. We put it on sale too, just 'cause. Used to be the usual UE not so nice price of $27...
UK space rock combo Gnod definitely seem to have a thing for splits. Thankfully, they've shared most of those splits with some seriously kick ass bands, two with NYC psychedelic space rockers White Hills, one with riff heavy psych rockers Robedoor, and one with UK space doom outfit BONG, and now they team up with the until-now-unknown-to-us A Middle Sex, who definitely hold their own alongside Gnod, and amidst the elite split sharing brethren.
Two side long 45rpm jams, Gnod's is a sprawling expanse of swirling psychedelic shimmer, total blissed out slow burn kosmische drift, clouds of tinkling glimmering chimes, spidery tendrils of smoldering psych guitar, wailed vox WAY down in the mix and a pounding caveman beat that's not so much rhythmic as it is some sort of primal throb. The more we listen, the more it almost sounds like some twisted space rock version of Finnish forest freaks Avarus. Not a bad thing at all!
Eventually the track does attain some forward momentum, a lurching, lumbering, lysergic dirge, but by the time it does, things are already winding down.
A Middle Sex, who also call the UK home, do their own psychedelic space rock thing, which in their case is all about rhythm, after a brief swirl of kosmik krautsynth shimmer, the band launch into a seriously spaced out sprawl of tribal pound, a primitive Crash Worship style rhythm ritual, wreathed in streaks of keening feedback and swirling high end. The track gradually becomes enveloped in a haze of psychedelic guitarnoise, a Skullflowerish skree for sure, before settling back into a weirdly tranquil bit of drugged out drift, laced with strangely effected Buttholes style vox and more keening high end tones.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on nice heavy 140 gram vinyl.
The long awaited debut from Grey Machine, the collaborative beast featuring Justin Broadrick of Jesu, and Aaron Turner from Isis, just two songs, it's a teaser for the forthcoming full length, the A side a track from the record, the B side an exclusive remix available only on this here 12".
So what exactly does Grey Machine sound like? Definitely not as blissy as Jesu, although some of those elements still remain, if anything, it's closer to Godflesh in tone, lumbering and industrial, wish some surprising bits of modern electronic music (dubstep!) which manage to be deftly woven into GM's sound without sticking out or sounding forced.
The track from the forthcoming full length is a monster for sure. A wild cacophonous chaotic noise jam, that features crunchy post industrial rhythms wrapped around a thick blown out blast of dubstep style bass, the vocals fuzzy and lo-fi buried way down in the mix, some woozy dark descending riffage, the timbre prickly and abrasive, but beneath all the churning and roiling heaviness (and it IS heavy) are some awesomely melodic guitar lines and some tripped out spacerock FX draped over the almost jungle bass and drums (or should we say drum + bass).
The B-side is a super stripped down dubbed out groove, tons of space, the beats spare and skeletal, rubbery and bassy, over the top of some howled distorted vox (a la Godflesh), in the background streaks of guitar buzz, blurred bits of droning ambience, all sorts of space-y effects, the track pounds away, drifting through little clouds of blissed out crunch and more of those seriously bassbin destroying, thick buzz drenched dubsteppy basslines. Super cool. Bodes well for the full length!
Old school 12" style packaging. Black vinyl, no labels, plain white sleeve, with a black and white sticker affixed to the front. And of course, LIMITED!
Full length number three from this amazing outfit, whose debut, Guitar Music From The Western Sahara, we made our Record Of The Week back in 2008, and whose second record, Treeg Salaam, we probably should have, both of those albums brimming with, as we mentioned in past reviews: "dizzying blasts of lo-fi electric guitar driven rhythmic African folk, clattery homemade percussion, jubilant vocalizing, repetitive and melodic and hypnotic, and super rocking."
This latest lp offers up a different side of the band's sound, songs that adhere to the roots of Saharoui music, the roots of Group Doueh's sound, played mostly on traditional Moorish instruments: the tinidit (a three string lute), the ardin (a kora-like harp), the tbal (a clay drum) and the kass (tea glasses), but this is Group Doueh after all so those traditional instruments are augmented by synths and GUITARS!
The opening track is sooooo gorgeous and sets the tone of the record, darkly rhythmic, lush and layered, sweet tangles of intricate melody, the arrangements emotional and propulsive and jubilant, laced with subtle drones and flurries of rapid fire notes, minimal but still so rich and dense and deep. Not all of the record is so tied to the past, after all the Group Doueh sound we know and love was born of this music, and is not really that far removed, so many of the other songs drift into more familiar territory, although the arrangements and instrumentation remain subtly closer to traditional Saharoui music, but again, since our exposure to that music has mostly been via Group Doueh records... well, you get the picture. Every song here is a fantastic celebration of sound, from sublime desert blues buzz to soaring vocal driven high life, to droned out psychedelia to super stripped down vocal/rhythm jams, and those vocals, again so incredible, so emotional and passionate, the perfect match for the music underneath which exudes the same sort of passion. The final track on side one slips back into a sound more minimal, a sprawl of hypnotic buzz and skitter, totally trancelike and hypnotic before exploding into a noisy psychedelic blowout, perfectly bookending the tracks in between.
The offers up still more fantastic desert blues folk bliss, singing strings, propulsive rhythms, vocal harmonies, some wild serious steel string wrangling guitar action of course, peppered with bits of that more minimal rhythmic traditional music, but all woven into the lush living colorful fabric of GD's gorgeous timeless sound.
As with all Sublime Frequencies vinyl releases, EXTREMELY LIMITED, this will most likely be sold out and out of print in the next week or two, pressed as always on thick vinyl and housed in a super swank, heavy full color gatefold sleeve. ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
This is a strange one, definitely not for everybody, but for those of you into freaked out, noisy, goofy, silly and stupid, whatthefuck weirdness, then Guaranteed Katch might hit the spot. Knowing that this stuff was recorded in Ohio with the guy from Sockeye, legendary fucked up lo-fi punk noise weirdos (who have a connection to aQ faves Breathilizor) should tell you enough about these "experimental noise rock" / "jazz core" to know whether to venture in, or run away screaming. Even we're not sure which to recommend. But that in itself, at least around here is its own sort of twisted recommendation.
Stumbling, noisy, chaotic, puerile, punky, jazzy, like the brain damaged little brother of Mr. Bungle, these guys mix and match, sludge and samba, noise and jazz, punk and pop, but this is not the Naked City sort of genre splicing, no, this is more a sort of ADD, kitchen sink, too much weed and a 4-track, channel surfing, ritalin overdosed, neighbor terrorizing, basement lo-fi noise punk jazzbo misfit metal, who-knows-what sort of dizzying DIY damage.
Not sure what else to say, be forewarned: only for the brave, or the ballsy, or the dim witted, preferably all three! And as with all Equation records, this one is packaged pretty sweetly, pressed on thick brown vinyl, with tons of inserts, a fancy full color jacket, bonus tracks not on the original cd releases, and LIMITED TO ONLY 333 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
All right, another "hawk" band. Lately there's been Freedom Hawk, and Doomhawk. Being somewhat "stoner rock", this is one that should also appeal to the same folks who liked Freedom Hawk. And going way back, maybe even Hawkwind. Though the classic '70s rock band that these guys most remind us of is Thin Lizzy. A LOT. They're overtly, utterly under the spell of Thin Lizzy (a band that's more influential now than ever it seems). The melodic but husky vocals are like a gruffer Phil Lynott, the twin guitars twine together harmoniously in classic Lizzy fashion. And heck, in case we didn't get it, they even do a song entitled "For Those Who Love The Lizz" that not only sounds like Lizzy, but has lyrics that cleverly consist of references to that band's songs, like "the hero and the madman", "renegade boys back in town", "that blue orphanage in the shade", etc., as a tribute to their Irish inspiration! Although, overall, Gypsyhawk are more than a tribute, bringing in elements of garage, doom, punk, prog, and good ol' metal along with the specific Lizzy/Lynott influence.
Turns out, Gypsyhawk vocalist/bassist Eric Harris used to be in blackened thrashers Skeletonwitch, another killer band we like quite a bit. What we heard was that he got kicked out of Skeletonwitch, or otherwise quit the band, while they were on tour. This happened in Los Angeles, and instead of catching a Greyhound bus back home to Ohio where Skeletonwitch are from, though, Harris decided to stay in LA and start his own band there! Which, we gotta say, is a pretty darn rock n' roll thing to do. Thus, Gypsyhawk was born. And they're quite a bit different from Skeletonwitch (whose dual guitars dated from a different era) but equally awesome. For those into more melodic stuff, anachronistically proto-metal, especially so. These guys have the riffs, the leads, the melodic hooks, and the heaviness, to be right up there in the "hawk" band pantheon. Rockin' and majestic stuff that should go down well with fans of Lizzy-lovin' bands like Bible Of The Devil, Hot Fog, Falcon, and Valkyrie.
A fine debut, and it's adorned with fantastic purpley-blue and gold artwork (that looks a bit Erol Otus-y), nicely packaged in a digi (the cd) or gatefold sleeve (the lp). And the vinyl version is limited, there's 200 on purple wax, 200 on half-and-half purple/multicolored splatter, and 100 clear with color splatter, we've got an assortment of the first two.
Hopefully we made it clear, we're stoked on this!
We hadn't heard from Aussie industrial crushers Halo in ages, so this lp was definitely a pleasant surprise, a long overdue reissue of an out of print cd-r. Halo released two of our favorite records, both on Relapse, both punishing and epic, downtuned and fierce as fuck, but also atmospheric and haunting, their sound somewhere between Swans, Godflesh, early Earth, Neurosis, Eyehategod, diSEMBOWELMENT, Gore, Cop Shoot Cop and Whitehouse, thick low slung bass buzz, pounding pummeling drum crush, as well as various electronics and tape loops, the duo whipping up a sound that sounded like it came from a much bigger beast.
Degree Point Of Zero Implosion was originally released way back in 2000, and finds the band sounding super raw, but with a sound already fully formed, a sort of abstract doom sludge drone industrial, the drums pounding out simple monstrous earth shaking plods, the buzzing strings not so much producing riffs, as seismic waves, thick swells of rumble and thrum, the sound shifting from spaced out minimal drift to full on corrosive howling crush, the sound fleshed out by all manner of electronics and samples, of textures and loops, the songs brooding and slow building, super ambient and atmospheric, creepy and ominous and sinister, the vocals usually buried way down in the mix, but sometimes howling over the band's lumbering din. Often clean, but just as often a guttural, heavily effected death metal style bellow, the songs wrapped in coruscating crumbling guitar drones, moaning, keening fractured melodies, sheets of hiss and howl, or super distorted, impossibly downtuned ultradoom chug. This shit is so dense and brutal and powerful and heavy and epic, anyone into the current crop of slow and low heavies (Khanate, Moss, Bunkur, Monarch, Habsyll, Atavist, The Body, Otesanek, Human Quena Orchestra, Salome, Orthodox, Nihill, etc.) who hasn't checked out Halo, you have been missing out BIG TIME.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Concept albums usually end up too overblown for their own good, or at least those that brand themselves as concept albums. All those secret messages and subtle hints at depth usually come down to nothing more than pretension and bong-ripping late-nights in the studio. Happiness, Gerard Patawaran's one man band, stages its self-titled LP as a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, with the ensuing songs passing through quite a few relationship-stages, most of which many of us have been through. The hesitancy of a crush to the passion of (what must be) true love; the pleasure of fucking in every room of the house to the Joy Division refrain of "love will tear us apart again."
There are no song titles on the jacket or the insert, so what we'll refer to as the "first song" sounds like a cross between The Psychedelic Furs and an elecrified Mountain Goats. The second song has a definite Magnetic Fields flavor and not just because of the "love" theme. With simple instrumentation, Gerard's melodic crooning creates an atmosphere that is larger than the simple drumbeat and jangly guitar. Sometimes there's little fuck-ups that endear the listener rather than seeming like fuck-ups, reminding us that no one is perfect and that even true love has the occasional hiccup. The whole album clocks in at around 22 minutes or so, weaving its way through the Psychedelic-Magnetic-Goats themes effectively.
There's something really sweet about this record that's hard to describe. The songs are short and diversely written, both happy and sad at the same time. It's a little late for Valentine's Day, but this is a perfect record for telling that certain special someone "I love you".
Over the last decade, PJ Harvey has proven to be one of the most versatile, unpredictable and unique artists around. From polished and poppy (Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea), to lo-fi (Uh Huh Her), to raw, intimate and devastating (White Chalk), along with an amazing ongoing collaboration with John Parish. So we had no idea which side of PJ Harvey would emerge on this long awaited new full length, and that's actually now part of the fun when anticipating a new record from her. There is no question it will be great, it's just a matter of what shape of great it will be.
Let England Shake is a song cycle about England that takes its cues from battle hymns and as always Harvey's lyrics are both cryptic and complex, without being overbearing. Alongside her longtime collaborators Flood, Mick Harvey and again John Parish, this is a record that sounds like it was made by a proper band, unlike the ultra personal presentation of White Chalk. But just like everything PJ Harvey has released over the years, its an album that reveals its intimacy and emotion upon repeated listens, an album that is already getting under our skin in the best of ways.
ATTENTION DOOM FANATICS, DOOMLORDS and DOOM MAIDENS!!!
HC Minds began life way back in the early nineties, in the placid little town of Eugene Oregon, and while the name might not be immediately familiar to many of you, the bands that were spawned from HC Minds most likey are familiar: the legendary YOB, and the not nearly so legendary, but equally awesome Aldebaran. HC Minds released a handful of records, including a split with Japanese sludgelords Dot [.], most of which faded away with little or no fanfare, but maybe it was just that their doom was a bit ahead of its time. Now that we're in the midst of a doom renaissance, what better time than now for HC Minds to rise from the grave and offer up a new batch of filthy, downtuned doomy sludge!
Their first record in 6 years, The Beginning Of The End is a gloriously heavy sludgefest, doomy yes, but not ultra doomy like Corrupted and Bunkur and Moss, no this is way more rocking, we're talking Eyehategod, Grief, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Acrimony, Church Of Misery, that sort of thing.
The opener here is a short sharp blast of groovy stoner doom, with a killer almost NOLA sounding main riff, recorded HOT and way in-the-red, lo-fi, but fierce and intense, but that brief blast quickly gives way to some massive slow motion Sabbathian doom, lurching, lumbering, tuned way down, the drums spread way out but pounding heavily, total classic old school dooooom. But the record closes with another uptempo jam, a super heavy grinding stoner doom workout, mathy, jagged, with wild drumming and a killer main riff.
The first track on the B side is the record's centerpiece though, HC Minds get all Corrupted, starting off with 5 or 6 minutes of dark languorous piano, atmospheric and haunting, before the hammer falls and the band launch into the meat of the song, WAY heavier, but no less atmospheric and mysterious, this time bordering on ultradoom, with the riff unfurling and ringing out into long stretched spaced out crumbling decaying distortion, before the riff winds up and goes again, the drums a massive pound, but striking every few seconds, the vocals a raspy whisper, the whole thing gorgeously depressive and sloooooooow.
The band close out with an even slooower doom jam, super abstract, and ultra distorted, a lugubrious crawl, but peppered with furious squalls of wild grinding psychedelic freakouts, and some harsh demonic almost black metal vox, so fucking awesome, almost wish this track had been given a whole side of its own.
Heavy, and slow, and doomy, and downtuned, which in case you're still not getting it means total stoner doom dirge NIRVANA.
LIMITED TO 380 COPIES!!!! On black vinyl, although amidst the 30 copies we got, there are 4 or 5 of the super limited white vinyl version, maybe you'll get lucky. Comes in an awesome full color eye popping sleeve, with a printed insert, and an equally eye popping poster of the cover.
The return of Heatdeath, record number two, and once again, just as hard to describe as the first one. A sprawling soft cacophony of buzz and whir and drone, laced with bits of glitch and hiss all woven into a multi part abstract freenoise epic, that plays out like some futuristic symphony gone haywire.
Fuzzy staticky whirs drift above warm shimmers, mechanical crunch is smoothed into blurred anti-rhythms, thick layers of distortion ripple over roiling depths of hiss and buzz, occasionally a metronomic sonar like beep keeps the time, waves of pink noise crash over shard of keening feedback, occasionally coalescing into thick roiling shoegazey sort-of-doom, all abstract and dreamy, but still rough and raw and doused with crumbling distortion, wild drum freakouts muted and muffled until they become skittery landscapes of thump and shuffle, long stretches of washed out Tim Hecker like ambience, and a long stretch of warped haunted house creep, peppered with soft chimes and deep cavernous drones. All over the place sonically, but the various parts blend perfectly, drifting into one another, taking the form of one single epic abstract chunk of noisy drone-y buzzy doomy mystery.
Gorgeous packaging, thick jackets in super thick PVC sleeves, black inner sleeves and heavy vinyl. Each record comes with a download coupon as well! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
This band is definitely tough to pin down sonically. Their sound is equal parts black metal, industrial, free jazz and electronica, but the resulting sound resembles none of those. Or perhaps all of them simultaneously. Hard to tell.
Which is sort of what makes this band so magical. A duo from Minnesota, whose first release is on a Belgian label, continues to confound from the sound to the dearth of information on the sleeve. But as confounding as this record is, it's also fantastic. Totally vibrant and alive and freaked out and joyous, while somehow managing to be grim and brutal and weird as fuck.
But how to accurately describe them... They are a duo, so of course one is tempted to throw some reference to Lightning Bolt in there, and there is some LB to Heatdeath's sound, a relentless churning, maniacal energy, it's impossible to imagine the drummer can play like that nonstop for whole sides of an lp, but he does, and the axeman keeps up just fine thank you. A closer and slightly more accurate comparison, might be a black metal, or black industrial Necks. There is a definite element of slow shifting stasis, no distinct riffs, and no real distinct rhythms, but more a roiling black hole of chaotic drumming and denatured riffing, like the Necks covering Abruptum. Wow. Indeed. The two tracks constantly shift, moving from slightly more tranquil drift, to fullbore crash and buzz, and it sounds improvised for sure, but at the same time, it almost seems composed, the two players shifting seamlessly from part to part, mood to mood, creating gorgeously expansive soundscapes of intense instrumental interplay, and churning abstract ambience, often the two colliding and getting gloriously tangled up.
Packaged in thick plastic sleeves, black on black fold over jackets, and each lp includes a coupon so you can download the whole record for your iPod.
LIMITED TO ONLY 250 COPIES!!!!
When we were making our top tens for 2010, Allan realized that one of the discs he loved and listened to the most this year was something we hadn't even reviewed yet - and actually came out in 2009. Finally, we just got it in, though, direct from the band. It's this, High Spirits' self-titled debut, which consists mostly of material from two demo cd-rs, but they're the sort of demos with songs that some bands with a career's worth of proper albums could never better. So, some background on the Chicago-based High Spirits... Maybe you recall, in our review of Profound Lore's recent release by Dawnbringer a few lists back, we mentioned that the mastermind behind that outfit, Chris "Professor" Black, was also in a NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) worshipping band called High Spirits. What with the critical acclaim that Dawnbringer has received, we expect some folks will be interested in this too - especially since as far as we're concerned, High Spirits is even better. Rather than trying to synthesize a variety of metal methodologies the way Dawnbringer does, High Spirits does one thing and does it so well... catchy, classic, honest to gosh pop songs in retro-metal guise, sounding so authentically NWOBHM that it's uncanny. Seriously, if someone told us that lead-off track "Torture" was a long lost single recorded by a band from London or Liverpool in 1980, we'd believe it.
Dunno how he does it, the Professor surely is talented a talented fella, with this, like Dawnbringer, being a one-man operation (though he's got accomplices for live performances, including two dudes from like minded retro metallers Zuul). The lo-fi demo budget production only adds to the atmosphere of awesomeness, as far as we're concerned. High Spirits simply rules, with warm, wonderfully FUZZED guitars, relentless riffing, tasteful solos, and Professor Black's slightly strained, ever so vulnerable, melodic vocals... and let's give it up for his lyrics, not something that we usually notice on most metal albums... they're pretty well-written for what they are, rock n' roll boy meets (or loses) girl cliche. Lyrics about loving and dreaming and yearning and running away, coming across as quite heartfelt, done with subtle cleverness. One line that stood out was: "Everything is what it seems / Just like in your dreams". Another we liked: "You left me crying on the day you said goodbye / But we both know you were so good at telling lies".
Memorable, melancholic, majestic, rockin'... Oooh. So good, can't wait for a new full-length. But even if this was all they ever did (and they have put out a 7" since), High Spirits should get some recognition, for conjuring such a classic sound - and songs - in this day and age. It's indeed about the songs, and the spirit - which is high indeed. Of all the new school of old school metal bands we've come across, High Spirits is one of the most worthy, please don't miss this. Heck, if NWOBHM means nothing to you but a jumble of letters, give this a shot, even folks into the current crop of indie garage pop with fuzzy guitars might just have a new favorite metal band!!
Available in either compact disc or vinyl formats, the cd in a digipack, the lp in a gatefold sleeve, both with minimal, black text on plain white graphic design that's simple but striking, lets the music speak for itself, and contributes to the super old school and underground vibe too.
Pacific Fog Dreams is the latest missive of abstract droned out psychedelia from Higuma, the duo of Evan Caminiti (of Barn Owl) and Lisa McGee, a logical extension of Caminiti's twang drone doom folk soundscaping in Barn Owl, Higuma finds Caminiti and McGee crafting epic, roiling expanses of smoldering slow burn shimmer and hushed apocalyptic minimalism, heaving sheets of distorted sound swirl like black clouds in a grey sky, lit from within by a distant sun, that glow a constant source of deep divine melody, each track an ancient ritual depicted in sound, a journey from some deep lost other world to some future unknowable self, the various instruments woven into undulating sonic tapestries, McGee's reverbed disembodied voice a glowing thread running throughout, the sound shifting from shoegazey to hazy, warm and whispery to dark and droney, occasionally erupting into gouts of grinding super distorted psychedelic effulgence, the vocals following right along soaring into the stratosphere, a keening high end melody held aloft by the burnished blackened guitar thrum.
Elsewhere, the guitars hover and drift, a swirling hum, a spectral presence, the various melodies blurred and smeared into the background, becoming a strange prismatic ever shifting landscape of chordal fragments, each like the ghost of some lost song, soon to be swallowed up by a wave of crumbling corrosive buzz, a strangely melodious bit of SUNNO))) blasted crush, the edges smoothed, the grit worn away, leaving a thick undulating swell of bleary, blissed out shimmer, laced with tendrils of steel string buzz, and wreathed in garlands of whir and blur and rumble.
The final movement begins as steel grey streaks of chordal corrosion peel away, leaving nothing but swirling shadows and barely there billows of echo drenched drone, before blossoming into a strum laden slow build, a sea of sympathetic vibrations and lush overtones, keening high end shimmers off in the distance, and a dense melodic center, pulsing, the melody threatening to break free, but held in check by swaths of whirling buzz, the various sounds slowly loosing their bonds, and becoming one, the colors running together, creating a dark black buzz, that trails off into the night sky.
So gorgeous. Beautiful packaging too, and of course, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Proudly following in the tradition of druggy punk blooz derelicts like the Birthday Party and the Gun Club, San Francisco's the Holy Kiss (featuring the tallest aQ staffer and all around good guy Nick Ott pounding the skins) is sure to satisfy your demented lust for bluesy, gothic tinged post-punk on their third album, which is also sadly their swansong. Bittersweet indeed, as the sounds within come off like the work of a quartet of sooty-faced Victorian street urchins, frantic and generally teetering on the edge of total madness, with enough restraint to make you feel nice and nervous before completely losing yourself to some sort of absinthe-induced mental breakdown where you gleefully tear your hair out, rip off all your scabs, and burn down the orphanage where you grew up. Under Noon Of Night possesses a sexy swagger that makes you want to dance wildly AND writhe around in your own cold sweat. The band's darkly sardonic humor and lyrical approach will definitely appeal to fans of groups like Jonathan Fire*Eater and Pleasure Forever, with singer Matty Rue Morgue spitting out deranged tales of love, lust, and death over a frenzied hurricane of shakers, bluesy guitar squall and basslines that would make Tracey Pew proud if he weren't, you know, dead. There are even two delightfully melancholy piano ballads. Things flow at a steady pace, with a wry, underlying wit and general sense of red-eyed insomnia keeping it all together. There's also a bit of swampy apocalyptic folk in the mix, adding to the end of the world / end of the night vibe, and making them the perfect band to open for Woven Hand, which these guys (and gal) did recently.
Limited to 500 copies, this vinyl platter comes housed in a cool hand silkscreened cover and also conveniently includes a cd for the non-turntable inclined. So choose your format, throw on a pot of coffee, break out the whiskey, kick up your boots, turn down the lights, and let yourself get lost under noon of night...
A new lp from long beloved noisemakers Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Well, not entirely new, as one side was previously released as a super limited 3"cd-r, but considering how limited that was, most of you will be hearing all of this stuff for the first time.
The A side, previously released on Small Doses, is a tripped out burst of mysterious musical abstraction. Two tracks, clocking in at about 18 minutes total, an abstract and spacious drift through some lost alien soundscape. The first track is all tinkling melodies, glistening high end, strange rumbling fluctuations way off in the distance, bits of creak and scrape, everything bathed in foggy reverb and warm wet swirls of tape hiss and atmospheric whir. Melodies creep in and out, as do bits of field recordings, it all feels like some cinematic bleary eyed wander through a hazy druggy flashback, a washed out world of lost memories and fragmented dreams. Here and there guitars grind and reverberate, and strange percussive sonic events drift into earshot, like an even more abstract Wolf Eyes maybe. Quite gorgeous and dreamlike.
The second track starts out the same, a smear of high end shimmer, but instead of spreading out into languid pools of blurry sound, things get decidedly more abrasive, the high end becomes sharper, the percussion is more clattery and jarring, a disembodied voice intones some creepy monologue over the top, effects swirl and swoop, deconstructed riffs chug and churn, everything dizzying and disorienting, like the nightmare analogue to the opening track's dream.
The flipside also offers up two tracks, the first begins with a swirl of creaking metal, sizzling cymbals, clattery percussion, until suddenly the clang and crunch are transformed into a strangely rhythmic crunch, the metal sounding much deeper, more of a resonant bellow, all very chaotic and cacophonous, underpinned by deep distant rumbles. Which leads right into track number two, all birdsong and tinkling chimes, whispered voices, random sonic detritus, sharp slivers of momentary buzz, soft smears of static, very haunting and ominous and like the first side, quite cinematic.
Beautifully packaged as always, pressed on thick vinyl, housed in full color sleeves with super striking artwork from HPK mainman Anthony Mangicapra. We know it's LIMITED too, just not sure to how many.
San Francisco's Raub Roy (aka Horaflora) met Ryan Martin (aka Secret Boyfriend), during an ambitious Horaflora tour in 2008, whereby he biked from Georgia to Maine, playing his unique brand of acoustic noise along the way with just what he could carry and what he could scrape together at each show. Martin hosted one of these shows in his hometown of Carrboro, NC; being impressed by the performance, he offered Roy a split release on his own Hot Releases imprint. While it would have been cool to have a document from the Horaflora bike tour, this is a damn fine split release of nocturnal murk linking the two projects. The Horaflora side is actually a recording of a live radio broadcast at KALX in Berkeley, with Roy being accompanied by Andrea Williams. One of Roy's best tricks - expanded balloons expelling their innards across drum heads and metal surfaces - is on display here; and it's great to hear the variety of these blustery elongated textures in an audio environment when it has been such a great visual aspect to his live performances. Amidst these sounds, Roy and Williams interweave acoustic noise-junk textures from found metal, tin cans, and hypercompressed recordings from hand-held tape decks, spluttering towards a dense climax of floor rattling low end and aerated acoustic noise.
The Secret Boyfriend side opens with a meandering set of Roy Montgomery styled noise-drone guitar melodies collapsing into a murky spectral-decay wash of no-fi shoegazing. Fuzzy piano tones begin to emerge as graceful calliope like melodies, still hung with enough grit and cobwebs to make these sound haunted. All of this comes to an end with a menacing burst of noise grafted upon a cheap synth melody that tone bends from the depths of cavernous cistern, but the noise begets a couple of darkened mope-folk tunes of just acoustic guitar and voice buried in echoplex.
300 copies and that's it for this great split!
Even to this day, people are constantly singing the praises of Godflesh. Talking about how influential they were. And rightfully so. Cuz they were, certainly. But there was another band back then, who were just as amazing. And who sounded quite a bit like the 'Flesh. But had their own take on the whole metallic industrial plod thing. Pitchshifter were often painted in the press as Godflesh ripoffs, but as far as we're concerned, there was plenty of room for more than one pounding industrial metal outfit! And in many ways, Pitchshifter were a bit more interesting. Heavier a lot of the time, definitely more 'metallic', and with some seriously killer riffs, but they also let the drum machine take center stage sometimes, embracing their machine like rhythms, filling breaks with weird stuttering skitters and rapid fire machine gun rhythms. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE Godflesh, but we love Pitchshifter too. A lot!!!
So we were super psyched to discover that there was a new band, self described "industrial driven doom", featuring some Pitchshifter guys doing, well, industrial doom, as if they weren't already sort of doing that back in the day anyway. So here it is. Hordes Of Satan (bit of a naff name), four songs of crushing machinelike doom, and weirdly enough, it doesn't sound all that different than Pitchshifter. Slower, heavier maybe, but still immediately recognizable as the 'Shifter. Machinelike rhythms, massive downtuned guitars, growled death metal vocals (again not all that different than Pitchshifter). Crushingly heavy and intense, it sounds like Godflesh or Pitchshifter at 10 rpm, sludgy and doomy but churning and relentless. And pretty fucking scary. One of the tracks features a cool bridge with some scary sample looped and repeated over a churning drum machine and a throbbing bass line and the vibe is seriously Skinny Puppy! And as if to drive the whole Pitchshifter thing home, they even do a Pitchshifter cover, "Landfill", and guess what? It sounds like Pitchshifter, only slower and heavier. Which as far as we're concerned is fucking awesome!
All this Jesu stuff lately had us hankering for Godflesh, and thus missing Pitchshifter, so this Hordes Of Satan is quick becoming out new favorite slab of heaviness!!
