Yay! Out of the blue, here's a new one from The Oscillation. The Oscillation? You might remember, a few years back (2008) we raved about this UK band's debut album Out Of Phase, an import on the DC Recordings label. We described their music as "a druggy, dubby mix of rhythmically krauty space rock, angular No-Wave funkiness, and, yes, oscillating electronics" and mentioned Neu!, Hawkwind, Salvatore, Tussle, and White Hills over the course of the review, as possible comparisons. If we were writing it now, we'd probably also cite the Lumerians, Moon Duo, Majeure, K-X-P, Maserati, Nisennenmondai...
The Oscillation's trance-inducing throb turned out to be, not surprisingly, something that a lot of you liked as much as we did! However we kinda lost track of them, for a while - though apparently they've been gigging hard - and thus were super excited to see that this new album was available, and it's domestically priced too.
Picking up where the debut left off three years ago, it's another potent dose of krauty rhythms, dubby disco, and druggy psych, both mesmerizing and melodic, but maybe, at times, heavier, more "rocked out" than before, witness the the beefier guitar on some tracks definitely getting into The Heads territory! Though The Oscillation started off as a one man band (that man being Demian Castellanos of Orichalc Phase), it grew from an electronic producer project into a fully-fledged live act, the power of which is displayed here (but also their mellow, shoegazey spacey side too). 'Tis mostly instrumental, even when it isn't, the occasional effected, hushed and chant-like vox betraying their (Brit)pop sensibility amidst the pulsating motorik beats, washes of distortion, and electronic FX... what's not to like??
The album opens with the subtle atmospheric drones and percussive textures of "Sandstorm", a build-up to the mantric chatter and sheer spacey howl of "Future Echo", like so many of the songs here, sounding like the perfect soundtrack to some futuristic, cinematic chase scene taking place in a Blade Runner style dystopia - though others sound more appropriate to a weightless drift, off into the soothing deeps of (inner) space. Next up, the haunting "Fall" eventually ups the ampage ante even more, with psychedelic guitar wrangling burying the drawled vocals... As well as feedback and freakout, elsewhere the guitars go more for chiming stabs amidst the hazy drone and hypnotic shaka-shaka-shaka rhythms. We'll spare you the whole track-by-track summary, let's just say that this is disc is ultimately epic (12 minute title track!), echoey (everything, all the time), often quite pretty (like the lulling swells of "See Through You"), and definitely propulsive. For fans of the likes of Loop, Can, and all the sundry other rad bands mentioned above. Tune in, turn on, oscillate!!
Latest blast of blown out, looped and lysergic psychedelia from Mr. Campbell Kneale, previously of the legendary Birchville Cat Motel, currently of the soon to be just as legendary Our Love Will Destroy The World. And like previous OLWDTW releases, Kneale continues to expand his sonic scope, seemingly building one gigantic and utterly epic songsuite, every record seemingly capable of flowing into the next, but each unique enough to be utterly listenable on its own.
Blue Eyes Are My Reward starts off with a bit of a curve ball, introducing some surprisingly tranquil soundscapery, dreamy looped percussion, the various bits of buzz and glitch smoothed and muted into rhythmic pulsations, very raga like, but sun dappled and laid back, very mediative and melodic, we were almost prepared for a new softer Kneale, when the second track swoops in with a kaleidoscopic explosion of upper register crunch, careening dramatically from speaker to speaker, grinding guitars, over pachinko machine percussion, and immediately we're again immersed in that sort of 'noise' only Kneale seems to conjure up, a distinctly UN-noisy noise, swirling and soothing, hypnotic and seriously tripped out. The rest of the record offers up more 'movements' in the Our Love songsuite, from super distorted strum laced drone, sounding like sixties folk woven into Skullflower skree, to glistening hazy folkdrone shimmer, lush and layered and so otherworldly, from muted percussion driven blurs, laced with snippets of voices chopped and reassembled into rhythms, to ritualistic cacophonies, glorious staring-straigh-at-the-sun FX-drenched high end next level drugdrone noise raga blowouts. As always, magical!
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, and yeah, LIMITED.
Not many pop groups have won us over so utterly and completely as Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. Their blissed out debut from a couple years back tapped into the best bits of '80s dream-pop and Sarah records glory, and the group created such infectious and fresh sounding songs that we've blasted so loud and so many times by now. With their follow up full length they return with an album that's a bit more meaty and fleshed out, featuring a much slicker production. Don't get us wrong the dreamy and breezy elements are still there, but they are accompanied by a more '90s sounding guitar rock vibe a la Smashing Pumpkins circa Siamese Dream, The Swirlies or Swervedriver. But under the ringing of the guitars is still that breeze and ease that makes POBPAH such the perfect band to listen to when you're cruising in a car on a sunny windy afternoon, or laying in the park with friends as you take a break from the harsh realities of the day to day. Carefree and rocking in such delightful ways.
SKWEEE alert!!
Import full-length vinyl debut from Finland's Pavan, aka Frans Carlqvist, who is actually the same guy as Limonious, another essential skweee artist who's lp House Of Usher on his own label Flogsta Danshall we highlighted here last year. If you liked that one - or like ANY skweee - you ought to like this. And if we have to explain skweee, well, you haven't been paying attention have you? It's the homebrewed electronic music sub-sub-genre that started in Scandinavia, a mix of video-gamey, chip-tuney electro soundz and instrumental hip hop. Damaged, funky, infectious.
This new lp from Pavan is a great example. Nine tracks of pure groovy skweee, with titles like "Punt Kick", "Holy Volts", "Afrika" and "Crank Up". Pavan lists his gear, for those interested, he's using the Ensoniq ASR-10, Atari 1040ST, Atari STacy, Minod Vorga Prototype, Minod Bit Sampler, Yamaha CS-5, Roland Juno 106, Roland RE-201, and Otari 8-track. Great stuff from one of the masters of skweee!
After the darker, more cinematic buzz and whir of Pulse Emitter's recent The Palace Of Love cd-r, Spiritual Vistas, the latest from Daryl Groetsch, aka Pulse Emitter, finds his sound, as the title might suggest, returning to a zone much more dreamy and washed out, ethereal and kosmische. Four looooong tracks, all variations on that dreamy PE space-synth krautdrone shimmer, the sonic element linking the various tracks together this time around seems to be a super melodic almost new wave sounding synth bassline, that pulses right below the surface, offering a sort of anchor to the otherwise light and airy sounds above, the opening track is a sort of kosmische kraut lope, which gives way to full on Tangerine Dream style ethereal new age swirl, but still held together by that low end pulse.
The flipside starts off with lush string like swells, all majestic and warm, lush and layered, minimal melodies hovering over constantly shifting backdrops, rife with overtones and subtle sonic colorations, the sound so dreamlike, meditative and tranquil, like new wave, blurred and smeared into a sun dappled shadowy impression, before slipping into the final track, which revisits the ominous, more darkly cinematic vibe of the above mentioned cd-r, adding some buzz and crunch to the hazy whirl of prismatic thrum and droned out lysergic shimmer. So nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
There's a video making the rounds, of a Radiohead support group, where one man has to be coaxed into saying how he really feels, that he likes OLD Radiohead better, as he admits to not getting King Of Limbs, the group leader prompts him, "was it really JUST The King Of Limbs?", other contributions include "where are the choruses?", "the choruses? where are the verses?!" and "Give Johnny Greenwood his bleeding guitar back!" (the punchline being when the man admits to thinking OK Computer was overrated, at which point, he is asked to leave, everyone looking disgusted).
And while it's funny, it's also frankly true. Radiohead are not the pop band they once were, heck, they're not even the 'experimental pop' band they once were. They have essentially ditched choruses and verses and traditional song structure and from what we can tell most traditional rock band instrumentation. They've made no bones of their love for electronic music, that love having found its way into their sound as far back as OK Computer, but manifesting itself more and more with every record, on Thom Yorke's solo record The Eraser, and no more than here, on King Of Limbs, a collection of ethereal, musical trifles, but only in so much that they don't adhere to pop song tradition, for while they feel like trifles, they are hardly trifling, instead, they are impressionistic, abstract, based more around texture and rhythm, opener "Bloom" almost sounds like Yorke singing over a Boards Of Canada track, the sounds woozy and smeary and washed out and glimmering, the drums looped and motorik, Yorke's croon an echo drenched ghost. "Morning Mr. Magpie" is a bit more 'rock', but only a bit, with actual guitar, but again draped over a rhythm that in its repetition becomes more like a loop, the guitars following suit, and instead of slipping clearly from chorus to verse, the songs seems to just drift, but that's enough, the sound lush, and dense, layered and a bit dark.
"Lotus Flower" is the single, and it makes sense, a bit of stripped down skeletal dubstep flecked minimalism, softly swirling and again fairly abstract, but Yorke's voice is quite nice, slipping into a higher register, and adding a bit of pathos and drama to the otherwise minimal skitter. And so it goes. The one complaint might be that it doesn't really sound like a record made by a proper band. Even the drums sound programmed (perhaps they are), the guitars are often replaced by swirls and swaths that sound more like synths, but really, if you're a fan, and have been over the last few records, then King Of Limbs is not the radical unexpected step so many are claiming it to be. And heck, if you were never into Radiohead's stadium rock bombast, as experimental as it may have been, maybe this is the record for you, a modern minimal avant dance music disc that manages to fuse a sort of ethereal abstract pop to more modern minimal electronica. We dig.
Hot damn, this band just keeps getting better and better. While their name and image can sometimes lead you to believe Shannon And The Clams are just a campy band who wanna have fun, the real truth is that they are some of the best songwriters to emerge out of the great garage pop scene in San Francisco over the last few years. Channeling the best elements of girl groups, haunting punk rock, fired up garage rock, and early rock n' roll, Shannon and her Clams fit right at home alongside local pals like Ty Segall, Hunx & His Punx, and Thee Oh Sees.
There is something totally unique about how they are able to merge all of their different sides and styles and influences into a cohesive force that grabs your attention and never lets go. Imagine The Cramps covering Richie Valens or Ronnie Spector covering The Gun Club. We've dug everything they have released so far, but this new full length is maybe their finest moment yet!
We love Riot Season. Easily one of our favorite labels, consistently delivering fucked up heavy weirdness, far out psychedelia, and pretty much every variation in between, Shit And Shine, Acid Mothers Temple, Aluk Todolo, Black Boned Angel, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Todd, Skull Defekts, Mainliner, Circle, Hey Colossus, Aufgehoben, most recently Ultraphallus, and now Sloath, who couldn't have found a more fitting home for their sprawling slo-mo downtuned doomage.
The label mentions Sleep and Sabbath and Melvins and Earth (old Earth we presume), and while these guys do carry on the tradition of doomed out heaviness, it's also it's own warped beast. Three epic jams, super hypnotic and mesmerizing, the guitars massive, so distorted that at times it sounds like the speakers are getting fried, but it's also melodic, lumbering and moody and epic, the vocals, wordless and chantlike, the band locking into full on psychedoomdelic space jams, like some sort of ultra heavy Hawkwind, the tracks laced with streaks of feedback, occasionally getting super dynamic, slipping from lurching groove to Harvey Milk like extreme plod to woozy slowcore slither.
The final track is a massive 22 minute epic, beginning all post rocky and lightly psychedelic, clean guitars, simple minimal rhythm, but still subtly doomy and heavy, the sort of thing that psych rock heavies should be flipping for, the vocals delivered like some psych doom shamen, and after about 9 minutes, the hammer falls, the guitars explode, even more distorted than before, the track building to a seriously majestic in-the-red space rock doom sludge blow out, wild psych leads draped over the churning Sabbathy swing underneath, totally heavy and epic and fucking incredible.
This RULES. These guys are the perfect bridge between the doom/sludge scene and the space rock / psych world, two sounds that really aren't all that far removed from each other as they seen anyway�
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
Snackpit, the magazine of tasty treats! No, wait, that's not it. SNAKEpit. Also a magazine of tasty treats - that is, if you consider obscure, old school '80s metal a treat!! Dunno why we've never listed an issue of Snakepit before, this "Heavy Metal Magazine" has long been a must read for the most metal of us here. Each issue, like this one, featuring a plethora of ultra in depth interviews with (mostly) long-defunct, cult '80s metal bands, or rather, the former members thereof, many of whom probably haven't done an interview in decades. The interviewer's questions are loaded with such obsessive minutiae, it makes most magazines, with the exception of Ugly Things, look vague and cursory in comparison. Usually the Snakepit writers seem to know more about the history of band in question than the ex-band members could possibly even remember! (They'll throw questions at 'em like, "On April 9th 1982, ACID played live at the Beurshalle in your hometown, Bruges, with SOGGY. What do you remember from that occasion?", stuff like that.)
So, which denim 'n leather clad cults get the Snakepit treatment this time 'round? A bunch of our faves: Acid, Raven, Griffin, Watchtower, Obsession, and (early, Neil Turbin era) Anthrax, among others. And then lots more we maybe, barely had even ever heard of before, such as Blackkout, Voor, Sexist, Excalibur, Existance, Messiaxx, Witch Cross, Baron Steele... All gripping stuff for us metal geeks!
Not everything is '80s, it just sounds '80s. One of the more recent bands interviewed is the late, potentially great Powervice. We'd been wondering what happened to them, they had a great, Iron Maiden circa Killers sounding cut on the Earache comp Heavy Metal Killers a few years ago, then (we learn here) broke up, bummer.
Plus, this issue's densely packed 116 pages are also graced with a section of reviews (reissues, new stuff, demos) which are, interestingly, often quite harsh and negative. And there's plenty of ads for stuff we're gonna want to hunt down as well. Oddly, though, 'cause Snakepit, while its editorial offices are over in France, is published Stateside by the Nuclear War Now label, there's ads for current black metal stuff that they'd never ever cover in the magazine. The closest they'd come are things like early thrash / death metal crossover, like the feature on Chuck Schuldiner's pre-Death demo band Mantas in this ish.
And, as a bonus, this comes packaged with the limited edition vinyl 7" with rare tracks by the Bay Area's own awesome Griffin, live in '82, including their classic "Flight Of The Griffin" and a cover of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".
It goes without saying that Phil Spector really stands (or stood) at the pinnacle of pop music and what it means to be a producer. His 'wall of sound' has influenced generations of amazing bands from the Beach Boys to Jesus & Mary Chain to Spiritualized to the Vivian Girls and beyond. It was actually hard to get so many of his great recordings on cd, unless you snagged the box set that came out years ago, so we're so psyched for this new release of some of his most memorable moments. Working with groups like The Crystals, The Ronettes, Darlene Love, Ike & Tina, and more, this collection shows off Spector's uncanny ability to create pop nuggets that have proven to be timeless and so endlessly addictive. While many of us who like to hang out in the fringes and more obscure realms of the music world, Phil Spector is a reminder of how amazing more mainstream pop music can be when in the hands of a musical genius.
While much of his personal life is depressing and distressing, he seems to be a part of a long tradition of deeply troubled music producers who were able to use music to channel the beauty inside of them that they had such a hard time doing in all other aspects of their life. With so many bands of the moment like Dum Dum Girls, The Raveonettes, Shannon & The Clams, and The Sandwitches taking so much from Spector's sound, it's perfect timing for these songs to be made available again.�
From the same label that brought us the recent Carlton Melton Handling Snakes 7", comes this, one of two new 7"s from Spiders (the other is on Kemado), a new group featuring members of Graveyard and Witchcraft, and whose sound is a witchy hybrid of the two, but taking that sound in a distinctly garagey, more classic rock direction.
Fans of the recent crop of female fronted heavy combos, Loon, Royal Thunder, Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Christian Mistress, Blood Ceremony and the like, should definitely check out Spiders. Definitely less metal than most of those, but no less heavy, Spiders whip up some seriously old school witchy hard rock, lots of extra percussion on the A side, along with crunchy guitars, and some awesome kick ass vocals, the vibe is HUGELY seventies, a little classic rock, a little Southern rock, the song shifts gears about halfway through, trading the slither and swagger for some double time rocking replete with lots of dynamic breakdowns and some seriously kick ass guitar leads.
The flipside is even less metallic, but cranks up the seventies Southern Rock vibe big time, a garagey groove, the riffs dangerously Skynryd (not a bad thing), a distinctly Jefferson Airplane feel too, but the song super rocking, super heavy, and those vocals, and the main hook just sealing the deal.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Each cover beautifully silkscreened, hand numbered, and signed by the cover artist, includes a sticker as well.
Maybe you don't always buy Spin magazine, and we're not sure if The Strokes on the cover are gonna convince you to pick this issue up - but maybe the "Oral History Of Mr. Show" feature will!! With Jack Black, David Cross, and Sarah Silverman. Also this ish, back to music, there's The Kills, Foo Fighters, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, and more!
With Cold Cave crashing into a baroque mania on their Cherish The Light Years album, it's good to see a retro-garde minimal wave band properly filtering the wheat from the chaff when it comes to all of the references of '80 synth-pop. For all of the fetishization of antiquated sounds, one has to be very aware that for every great Human League, OMD, Depeche Mode record there were dozens that were truly horrible. And that's what makes the retro-synth-minimal-wave thing so appealing, since the most evocative, the most decadent, the darkest attributes of what came out of that entire history of music should be the goals for this schizophrenic recombination of tropes. Perhaps even more so than fellow Wierd recording artists Xeno & Oaklander, Staccato Du Mal totally gets that, finding some pretty great references to stitch together in his studio, overflowing we'd imagine with analog keyboards, step sequencers, modular synths, patchbays, and the like. Throughout all of the electronics on Sin Destino, you'll hear the ghosts in the machine from the lo-tech synth wunderkammer that is Throbbing Gristle's "United", the mechanoid alienation of Nocturnal Emissions' album Drowning In A Sea Of Bliss (especially the second half of that album), Dark Day's post no-wave synth excursions on Exterminating Angel, the proto-industrial adventures which sporadically detoured Harmonia, and even the cybernetic rhythmic electro of Adult and Model 500. Vocals are sporadic, always distorted, blurred, and buried in the mix, and Staccato Du Mal sounds all the better when nothing is said at all, as the synths in their dark arpeggiations, funereal atmospheres, and icy melodies are more than strong enough to stand on their own, and even expand into a darkly cosmic mindfucks as well. Super recommended!
As much as we love discovering new genres, it's almost more exciting to watch those new genres develop, transform, and spawn new and infinitely varied subgenres. It used to be that the evolution of scenes and sounds took months, maybe years, as bands toured and records made it to new listeners, but with the advent of the web, Facebook, MySpace and the like, it can now take weeks, hell, even days. And it seems like electronic music, more than most genres gets constantly and consistently mutated into new forms. At any given time there seems to be some sort of '-step', pick any word, and there's some microgenre, dronestep, drugstep, slugstep, doomstep, and of course the billions of variations on techno, jungle, downtempo, IDM...
The most recent IT genre is dubstep, even the new Britney Spears single features a killer blast of synth heavy dubstep, and of course dubstep as been evolving constantly, and while we tend to like our dubstep dark and heavy, with booming beats and massive ribcage rattling bass, we found ourselves mesmerized by a guy called Clubroot, and strangely blissed out, atmospheric take on dubstep, stretching out the sounds into hazy droney shimmerscapes, stripping the beats way down, and weaving lush landscapes of dubby skitter and swoonsome drift. Two albums and a couple 12"s (a new one reviewed elsewhere on this list!) and we still couldn't get enough.
And then along comes UK trio Swarms, who follow a similar path, taking dubstep somewhere else entirely, melding a minimal dubby shuffle to the abstract avant electro soul of How To Dress Well and Burial, weaving soulful vocals into clouds of softly swirling effects, pointilist piano, subtle guitar jangle, shimmering synths, taking elements of shoegaze and post rock, slow build dramatics and hazy atmospherics, layering them into washed out, dreamy and druggy expanses of sultry, laid back R&B flecked dubstep drift. Swarms augment the usual studio assemblies with plenty of organic instrumentation: guitar, violin and piano, and the vocals, these guys don't just slap on some soulful crooning, no they transform vocals into another instrument, sometimes speeding them up into little hooks hip hop style, other times they wreath the vocals in echo and delay and reverb, and pull them out into ghostly streaks, the male vocals are sometimes slowed down, and become a sort of chopped and screwed warble, but the vocals are just one part of the whole, and what a lush, expansive, multi layered kaleidoscopic whole it is. Totally mesmerizing, hypnotic, trancelike, sun dappled and dreamy one second, haunting and ominous and otherworldly the next, the songs woven into an epic sonic travelogue, a mysterious songsuite, a hazy glimpse of a musical otherworld, a transmission from the ether, a blurred impressionistic projection of dubstep from an alternate dimension. Incredible.
Hey all right, now a couple years after the cd reissue, the UK's Acme label has also pressed this on vinyl! No BBC bonus tracks here though, just the original album. Some of what we said 'bout it before:
We KNOW this is gonna be one that the legions of AQ customers into psych, prog and other late sixties/early seventies heaviness will want. And even if that's not one of your primary musical specialties, this would be a good choice to check out anyway if at all curious.
British psych/prog power trio T2 released this one amazing album on Decca in 1970, the bizarrely-titled It'll All Work Out In Boomland. Somehow, that lp didn't make much of an impact at the time (although the band did play the Isle of Wight Festival) and has pretty much been forgotten by all except obsessive psych/prog record collectors. Until now, it's been pretty hard to come by - the previous cd reissues we know of were either crappy bootlegs or rare, expensive Japanese imports. We've always wanted to list it, though.
T2, composed of drummer/vocalist/songwriter Peter Dunton, guitar whizz Keith Cross, and bassist Bernard Jinks, played HEAVY psychedelic bluesrock (a la Cream, Hendrix, Blue Cheer), mixed with progressive stylings (incorporating acoustic guitar, piano, mellotron, strings). Their songs combine Cross's big fuzzed-out hard rock riffs and psych-skronk leads with mellow, melancholic pretty parts and Dunton's gentle, whispery vocals. Very melodic yet heavy, totally classy and special. For instance, the song "No More White Horses" perfectly weaves amped up electric guitar feedback fury into a tasteful tapestry that also glows with lovely piano and majestic horns. Boomland also features T2's side-long, 21+ minute long masterpiece "Morning", a massive, memorable epic of many moods, a track meant to musically and lyrically describe (or potentially enhance?) an LSD trip, as the text and elaborate diagram included underneath the cd tray explains! There's two other songs on the album proper, the storming opener "In Circles" (which reminds us of stuff on Stray's first album, if you know 'em) and the calmer, exquisitely beautiful "J.L.T.", replete with lush orchestration.
Definitely one of the best bands from those magical years of the early '70s! Certainly one that should be better known. Do you dig the fuzzy, proto-metal heft of the aforementioned Blue Cheer? And also heavy progressive Krautrock stuff like Amon Duul II, Gila, Necronomicon, and Out Of Focus? Well kinda put those two together and you'll have some idea of T2's genius. Or imagine Randy Holden's Population II project gone all symphonic. Also, if you're into early, pastoral British psych/prog like In The Court-era King Crimson, Wishbone Ash, or the more obscure Bachdenkel then you need to hear T2! And for weird, psychedelic cover paintings, this is up there with Culpeper's Orchard, another lost '70s heavy druggy psych classic that we could compare this with musically as well.
Boomland is the kind of thing that turns up in the personal "Top 10 of All Time" lists of those lucky enough to have heard it.
British psych/prog power trio T2 released one amazing album on Decca in 1970, the bizarrely-titled "It'll All Work Out In Boomland". That LP didn't make much of an impact at the time (although the band did play the Isle of Wight Festival) and has
T2, composed of drummer/vocalist/songwriter Peter Dunton, guitar whizz Keith Cross, and bassist Bernard Jinks, played HEAVY psychedelic bluesrock (a la Cream, Hendrix, Blue Cheer), mixed with progressive stylings (acoustic guitar, piano, mellotron, orchestration). Dunton's songs combine big fuzzed-out hard rock riffs and Cross' psych-skronk leads with mellow, melancholic pretty parts and gentle, whispery vocals. Very melodic, very heavy yet beautiful, totally classy and special. Definitely one of the best bands from those magical years of the early '70s! (If you dig the aforementioned Blue Cheer, and can imagine them crossed with heavy progressive Krautrock stuff like Gila and Amon Duul II, or even early, pastoral British psych/prog like King Crimson, you've got some idea about the genius of T2.)
The seven tracks on this self-titled, 45 minute cd were recorded in 1970, intended as the follow-up to "Boomland" -- but the band broke up and this material languished in the vaults until this cd release. Had it come out at the time, who knows -- maybe people would have caught on and T2 would be more than just a cult band today. But, that's the way it is, and here's your chance to join the cult...
Blood splattered dudes from Watain and Shining grace the cover of this month's Terrorizer, the UK's premier heavy metal and other "extreme" music magazine, which is pretty much a must read 'round these parts. Also inside: Cavalera Conspiracy, Trap Them, Cauldron, Crowbar, Godflesh, Rotten Sound, Kyuss Lives, and plenty more. Adding value for yr dollar, there's a sampler cd tucked into the shrinkwrap, with everything from the retro thrash of Havok to the proggy vintage sounding doom of Blood Ceremony.
Finally here! We have been waitin' for this reissue to arrive for eons (well, at least Cup has!), and it's so well worth the wait. This is the original soundtrack to George Lucas' 1971 feature length debut THX-1138, a chilling, near-future dystopic cult fave shot right here in SF. Although Lucas decided to handle this film's restoration for the dvd release in much the same unfortunate way that he did for Star Wars - namely, by adding numerous quite significant (often intrusive and questionably necessary) CGI 'enhancements' and revisions - Lalo Schifrin's soundtrack has aged quite gracefully, and this release even includes some numbers he composed for the film that did not make the final cut. We love Schifrin's work, and this is no exception. It is considerably different from his many other sountracks (Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Enter The Dragon), but then again this film is considerably different. Imaginative, haunting and incredibly effective, his score perfectly complements Walter Murch's innovative ahead-of-the-curve sound design (it would be great to have a cd of that!), and together they play a vital role in each scene and in the film's overall impact. Starkly contrasted with the film's predominantly icily sterile visuals, it's an ever-shifting aural kaleidoscope of grand symphonic strings, menacing drones, blats of brass, imposing choral assemblies, bursts of Latin jazz, early synthesizers and electronic explorations, solitary woodwinds, percussive African rhythms, and avant garde sound collage... topped with a deliriously giddy "Be Happy" sing-song jingle cherry on top. Richly atmospheric, melodious and dissonant, and deceptively unsettling. Highly recommended... and not just for film score buffs! Limited pressing of 3000, but it has been out for a while, so get it while you can!
Somehow we never carried the debut by Toro Y Moi, which fit crazy comfortably next to releases by Washed Out, Neon Indian, and Nite Jewel as one of the most promising offerings in the 'chill-wave/glo-core' movement that seemed to blossom a couple years ago. With his anticipated follow up to that debut, he's shown there is much more to them to just being a part of a potentially passing trend, as this album proves with glorious cascading pop sounds that come swirling and dripping from all of his songs. Imagine if the Sea & Cake let their hair down and loosened up big time, that's the vibe of this record, the sounds rushing and swirling with a tropical breeze that just feels so damn good. Instead of trying so hard to be weird or lo-fi like so many of his peers, Toro Y Moi has shown he's way more interested in creating a broad sonic landscape that invites you in with open arms and leads you ever deeper and deeper, going wherever the sounds may twist and turn. So delightful.
When we discovered the debut full length from Texas slowcore doomgaze trio True Widow, it was a revelation. How could a band like that exist and not be HUGE? Why were they not everyone's favorite band? No one we knew had heard of them, in fact, a few random folks claimed to not even like them. But we were smitten. More than smitten. OBSESSED. It had been years since a record, or a band, had blown us away like that. We contacted the label, ordered the record, made it our Record Of The Week, and sold HUNDREDS. Just at aQ! We had them play our showcase at South By Southwest, where they blew everyone away (even after SXSW asking us why we wanted them to play at all?!). We got them to play Noise Pop out here, and again, everyone was mesmerized, watching slackjawed, utterly entranced� That record, it made us zealots, we felt like we were spreading the good word, the True Widow sonic scriptures, trying to convert everyone we could. Playing that record incessantly, for everyone, all the time. And guess what? It seems like maybe all that proselytizing paid off. Oh and maybe it was the relentless touring those guys did, but c'mon, all we wanted was the rest of the world to catch on, and these guys (and gal) to be adored, and worshipped, their music to move people the way it moved us.
So here we are, a couple years later, and lo and behold, True Widow find themselves on ultrahip label Kemado, and getting showered with the praise we knew they so deserved all along. And more important that any and all of that, it this here is a BRAND NEW True Widow record! Which we've essentially been waiting for since we first got the last record, and we're happy to report, it RULES.
Not as immediately as catchy as the first one, although it's hard to be objective after hundreds of listens, but it hasn't take long for this one to sink it's claws in. The sound remains essentially the same, the guitars thick and liquid, super distorted, almost crumbling, the bass, dense and buzzy, the drums solid and motorik, all wreathed in a druggy haze, a psychedelic soft focus gauze, the boy / girl vocals laid back and languid, a sound like Beach House on Thorazine, or a doom metal Low, or some sort of impossible Codeine / My Bloody Valentine / 4AD hybrid, pressed onto a 7" and spinning at 16rpm, this is total cough syrup slo-mo jangle pop doom drift bliss. Warm and whirling, hushed and minimal, mesmerizing and enthralling and totally hypnotic.
Opener "Jackyl" is a super distorted dream pop craw, the vocals sultry and witchy, the guitars pouring from the speakers like black tar, the song lit by streaks of sunlight through the slats of an old barn, blurred droney chugs spread out over swirls of low end thrum and lush reverbed shimmer. And then "Blooden Horse" begins, with some chiming minor key guitar, and when the band come in together, it's magical, super melodic, impossibly catchy, the vocals perfect, weary, but emotional, the various chiming melodies, the heaving downtuned doomic crush at one point, all woven into a perfect slab of slowcore doom jangle bliss. Our tendency is to go song by song by song, and we most definitely could here, but we'll just mention two more, "Skull Eyes" another perfect pop song, here cast in black, and wreathed in crumble and crunch, the female vocals so warm and enveloping, the melody so impossibly catchy, the boy/girl harmonies make this sound almost like like a slowed down drowsy Heavy Vegetable, the same perfect interplay, it's like it must be a cover of some classic pop song, but it's not, which is what makes it so good. And finally, the epic closer, "Doomseer", 9+ minutes of brooding slo-mo twang, the guitar not so much riffing as unfurling thick layers of rumble and whir, a sort of minimal dronerock ballad, laced with ethereal angelic background vox, a killer high end squall of psychedelic feedback near the end, and a groove that sounds like it's gradually melting before your ears, the whole thing somehow sounding impossibly too short at 9 minutes. So goddamn good. We want to go on, and describe every song in exquisite detail, but by now, it should be abundantly clear how we feel about True Widow, and about this record, and odds are, all it'll take is a few minutes of the below sound samples for you to be as utterly and completely under their spell as we are. Record of the year contender for sure...
The vinyl version is limited to 2000 and hand numbered.
Yet another sonic time machine trip, right back to the mid eighties, and as usual, you find yourself transported directly to the credits of a VHS tape in the bargain section of the local video store, or right into a montage of various characters getting ready for the big dance / race to raise money to save the school / rendezvous with the cute girl you've always had a crush on. It's so strange how these youngsters can so masterfully channel a time before they were even born, but then there are plenty of people who are channeling the sixties and seventies, maybe it's more a question of WHY. The decade better forgotten, whether it be fashion or music, but once again, given enough space, we have to say, as reimagined by this new generation, this stuff sounds pretty dang good.
Twins is the latest in a long line of new outfits channeling the sound and spirit of eighties pop music. Zombi, Majeure, Umberto, Outer Limits Recordings, Puro Instinct, Dylan Ettinger, Autre Ne Veut, Craft Spells, Innercity, Greatest Hits, Gatekeeper, Soft Metals, well now you can add Twins, aka one man band Matt Weiner, to that list, but of that whole bunch, we're definitely feeling like Twins might be the weirdest, and at the same time, the most genuinely eighties sounding of the bunch. Or maybe it's just how we wish music in the eighties sounded, or how we remember it, whether it's true or not. Woozy doomy warbly sci-fi funk, crappy Casio disco, warped druggy new wave electro pop. The drums programmed and reverbed, woozy guitar jangle, throbbing synth funk bass, and the vocals, warped and sexy, a whispery croon, heavily effected, the pitch control seemingly on the fritz, slipping into crazy falsetto one second, deep bellow croons the next, the perfect match for the throbbing pulsing neon new wave surrounding it. Unlike the dancey grooves and haunting Carpenter soundtracks of many of the other eighties revivalists, Twins is more concerned with pop music, this is like a glance into some alternate universe, where eighties MTV continued on into the future virtually unchanged, just becoming more and more damaged and fractured and fantastically freaky as it's broadcast across time and space. We're definitely reminded on fucked up pop weirdos like Gary War and Ariel Pink, but if anything, this takes those already fucked up sounds, and adds a whole other level of new wave cabaret drama, transforming a mere exercise in romantic retroism, into something totally and dementedly inspired.
Released on the Synth Series sub label of the mighty Rural Fauna, and of course very very limited�
Holy crap. 200 pages! And, as always, it lands here (with a weighty thud) just a day before our list. So we'll have to wait until the weekend to really delve in, but also as always we're damn excited to.
One of our favorite magazines ever, now up to its 31st fat issue, wow. If you're into almost any interesting bands of yesteryear, of the garage/punk/psych variety, you should read this magazine!! Girl groups, surf rock, freakbeat, even some esoteric prog, it's all here. (For metal bands, check out Snakepit, also reviewed this list.)
Tons of great stuff this ish, about bands both infamous (The Stooges) and obscure (The 40 Fingers). Let's see... Them, The Masters Apprentices (part 3 of a monster feature), oud master John Berberian, Wreckless Eric, Ollie Halsall, The Zachary Thaks, The Cobra Seas, The Mountain Men, The Pleasure Seekers, The Missing Lynx, Them, and others! Guaranteed each article or interview is both more in depth and more interesting than you could ever imagine.
Some of the other features that jumped out at us include a discussion of the merits of the many posthumous Jimi Hendrix records, also a piece all about the Norton Records label. And of course there's pages and pages and pages of reviews. Awesome - as always!
Here's the sequel, already, to last year's great Dirty Water comp of proto-punk (sonically and/or spiritually) music from the '60s and '70s, including many often-overlooked, unlikely gems and surprises, plus some "standards" as well. It's another double disc set, with 39 tracks on the compact disc version (and 19 on the slightly less comprehensive vinyl). We were already impressed with what compiler Kris Needs (former editor of British underground '70s rock mag ZigZag) included on the first volume, and this one just as cool. Some bands make a return appearance (MC5, The Silhouettes, Death, the Flamin' Groovies, Suicide, Mott The Hoople), and deservedly so, but there's lots of room for songs by artists dipping into the dirty water for the first time. From famous folks like the Velvet Underground, Bo Diddley, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Captain Beefheart, Blondie, and Big Star to not so well known names like The Vice Creems (Needs was the singer!), The Tidal Waves, The Unrelated Segments, Kilburn & The High Roads, Doctors Of Madness, and The Human Expression, amongst others. This is quite an eclectic collection, and while, say, ESP-label proto-punk bands of radical hippies from downtown NYC like the Godz and The Holy Modal Rounders are obvious choices, many others aren't. For one thing, it's not even all rock 'n' roll. The supposedly "punk" side of jazz is represented here by Albert Ayler and Dizzy Gillespie, the former punk for being so "free" and "out", the latter simply for ripping it up bebop style, we assume! Reggae (Tapper Zukie, Junior Murvin), funk (Parliament, though the track here is oddly more of a gospel tune), and folk (Woody Guthrie) are also included. Krautrock, too, via Faust. The proto-punk thing of course makes more obvious sense regarding entries from the realms of '70s glam, '50s rock n' roll (Eddie Cochran), and '60s garage (The Zachary Thaks) and psych (The United States Of America).
And happily, at least one of the suggestions we made in our review of the first Dirty Water is included here, heavy hippies the Edgar Broughton Band. There's also some more heavy psych from the likes of Blue Cheer, The Misunderstood, and Stackwaddy. So once again, a killer collection of tracks that might be familiar to you (but given new context here) and/or that might not (but you'll be glad to hear), forming a primer part II to a "secret history of rock 'n' roll", elaborated upon in Needs' extensive liner notes that come in a huge 86 page booklet (cd version, at least). It's also quite well programmed, like they way Death's "Freaking Out" segues perfectly into the Dizzy Gillespie track, makes sense!!
One suggestion for vol. 3: Blue Oyster Cult!
That's right, another Indonesian garage rock comp, but c'mon, how can you resist a record subtitled Indonesia Screaming Fuzz? One that promises "garage stomp, Indo-rock and beat surf"? You can't. Or at least we can't. Some of the names here will be familiar to long time readers of the aQ list. Groups whose albums have gotten the full on reissue treatment, like girl group Dara Puspita, and legendary Indo-garage rockers Koes Bersaudara (who show up again as Koes Plus), which should give you an idea of the sounds here, and while you might already own those tracks, odds are you probably don't have many jams from The Swallows, Females, Steps, Panber's, Mona Rita & The Kingstons, the Peels, Rolling Beats, Black Magic, Los Indonesios or Banjamin S. But we can promise, after listening to this you will wish you did.
The Swallows transform the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" into their own chunk of surfy garage-y hypno rock, Rolling Beats take sweet bubblegum pop and wreath it in a haze of serious guitar fuzz, the Peels do their best Stones (which means they basically just swipe a song and sort of cover it), with some twangy distorted guitars and some sweet vocal harmonies, Los Indonesios sound a bit like an Indonesian Monks, big twangy guitars, and booming echo drenched vox, Females mix classic Indonesian sounds with fuzzy garagey grooves, and introduce some dreamy vox and handclap, and Steps do some Ventures style surf rock, but with buzzy synths and some distinctly Eastern sounding melodies, and so it goes. It's a sound we just can't get enough of, groovy, fuzzy, surfy, jangly, the sound so distinctive, and even the 'covers' reimagine the originals in new and spectacularly groovy ways.
Needless to say (but we will anyway), fans of recent Record Of The Week Those Shocking, Shaking Days, will dig this big time, and if you liked other comps like Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! Psychedelic Funk Music In India 1976-1983 and Thai? Dai! - The Heavier Side Of The Luk Thung Underground, or if you loved those Dara Puspita and Koes Bersaudara reissues and wanted more, well, here you go...
The Sublime Frequencies vinyl reissue campaign continues. A few weeks ago, the long out of print Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol. 1 cd was repressed on lp, and now another old fave, Princess Nicotine: Folk & Pop Music Of Myanmar gets the same treatment, pressed on vinyl, in a super deluxe full color gatefold sleeve. And while the cd remains out of print, this amazing sonic document is available again, at least for a limited time...
If you have seen the Sublime Frequencies Nat Pwe dvd, then you at least have a rough idea of what you're getting yourself into here. But even if you're not all that familiar with Burmese music, you'll find this compilation truly weird and wonderful. Unlike the handful of Burmese releases on other world music labels, this is something else entirely, a completely raw and unfettered, whole grain Burmese sonic assault. In other words: it's absolutely manic! At its most insane, it's akin to taking your standard, off-the-wall Bollywood arrangement and running it through a prog rock or free jazz filter. Nasal double reed instruments parallel vocal lines, clashing cymbals emphasize every beat, while the pat wain (a set of rice paste tuned drums which encircle the performer) smacks out its own melody like a set of out of tune roto-toms. On the mellower side of things there's strange hallucinogenic Appalachia featuring sudden bursts of piano, interjecting banjo, violin, flute, horn and most oddly: sultry female vocals offset by distorted male vocals. There's also hazy semi-Hawaiian psychedelia, with piano and keyboards pounding out the occasional random chord progression. So intense, and unique and utterly amazing. If you have to chose just one record to blow your mind, this could very well be THE ONE!
Not super familiar with Ben Vida, but this super limited cassette for Root Strata has definitely whetted our appetite for more. On two long form synthscapes, originally a soundtrack to a video projection / art installation, Vida takes the whole synthdrone sound, that frankly is getting a little played out, and twists it all up, most noticeably, constantly shifting the speed/pitch, creating unlikely melodies by speeding up the sound, then slowing it down, making those buzzing synths gorgeously woozy and warped and warbly. Not to mention that the whole thing is wreathed in field recordings of chirping crickets, bird song, and the subtle white noise of crashing surf, or burbling brooks, as well as adding extra panpipe like melodies, and some swirling sci-fi spacey fx, but subtly, the various elements, even the field recordings, shifting dramatically in volume, in the foreground one second, barely audible the next, the label describes it as some kind of sonic safari, and it really does sound like it, maybe like some synth/flute performance, taking place in some remote forest glade, the entire thing recorded onto a 4 track with dying batteries, the results, a dreamily druggy, atmospheric ambience, a warped ritualistic Jewelled Antler styled new age, and a seriously divine soft epic.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
Volume two in the retrospective collection of unreleased rarities from this legendary, and under appreciated US ambient / ritualistic / ethno / drone combo, we never actually saw the first volume, but you needn't have heard that one to enjoy this, a sprawling collection of lush, dense, hazy, ambient abstractions, and rhythmic experiments, a fusion of Muslimgauze, Crash Worship and Maeror Tri, a strange and varied selection of noise making devices employed within a distinctive production style, allowed VoE to create gorgeous, dark rhtyhmscapes, that definitely bucked the conventions of ambient music. This was something altogether more intense, menacing, and powerful. We hear shades of Savage Republic, as well as more modern groups like No Neck Blues Band, Avarus and Sunburned Hand Of The Man. These tracks are epic and expansive, yet dark and mysterious, culled from all sorts of sources, singles, live shows, demos, compilations, splits, even a 45 minute dress rehearsal for a show that ended up being scrapped, the rehearsal much more raw and immediate anyway. One track was recorded live on the California coast in the Redwoods Jewelled Antler style, employing such odd instrumentation as bicycle, wind, sticks, musical saw and a '77 Chevy van, although the results are much more dense then you might expect, a thick, heaving, mournful dronescape, all buzz and whir, wrapped in aching slow motion melodies.
From spare psychedelic flute flecked folk, to churning blackened dronescapes, from chopped up analog tape experiments to swirling, hypnotic tribal rhythmic workouts, from clattery electronic flecked rituals, to washed out almost new agey drift, an incredible collection of dark droning mystery, that we'd imagine will no doubt appeal to aQ-ers. especially fans of minimal drone music and haunting, rhythmic ritualism.
Housed in a cool two sided double digipak.
A.C. Way has been a fixture in the Bay Area noise community for close to a decade now, performing constantly and within a number of ensembles (Maleficia, French Radio, Riqis, Carrion, NF Orchest, etc.), but his recorded solo output has been woefully under-represented. He's one to start furiously on projects only to shelve them either out of frustration with the process or if another opportunity might come along. However, the strength of Odo is such that Way should delve back into that repository of mangled tapes and extract more material like this. His means of production often involves a beat-to-shit turntable, a similarly beat-to-shit sampler, vocal growlings, and a noise-freak collection of pedals, resulting in a black noise miasma orbiting around MB, Lasse Marhaug, and Locrian. Odo is a comparatively brighter affair of harmonically interwoven tones and field recordings, but Way's menacing noise lurks throughout. The first of three pieces layers a set of harmonium-sounding drones whose linear stasis is upended by an arching churn of growling, low-end feedback, snapping into the second track of watery field recordings and subterranean drippings sutured to a chorus of mid-range sinetones. The final track engages an uneasy set of feedback tones made even more unsettled by a distant blackened cloud of rumbling distortion slowly joined by a metallic clamor and spectral blasts of wintery black noise. Think the more psychedelic noise of Ramleh, the transitional recordings by Emaciator from noise-to-drone, and most everything that comes out on Utech. Just 20 minutes long, but the price is certainly right!
Yeah, she covered a Burzum song before releasing this album, but there's a hell of lot more to Chelsea Wolfe than copping a few moves from Mr. Vikernes. This Los Angeles minstrel has quipped she writes "spiritual realm funeral songs," and that's a pretty apt description given the acoustic guitar dourness, doom-laden atmospheres, grimy production values, and witchy goth-folk vocals that come together as the perfect hybridization of Zola Jesus and PJ Harvey. Her arrangements are pretty stripped down with little more than acoustic and / or electric guitar occasionally fleshed out with a rhythm section. She puts an outsider folk spin on her songwriting, as if she were penning acoustic black metal songs channeled through the freak-folk mysticism of Topanga Canyon. This also has a lot of similarities to the apocalyptic folk stylings of Death In June / Sol Invictus / Current 93 circa 1992 although Chelsea Wolfe is far less precious with the song and is not afraid to let some blood spill as she violently scrapes her knuckles on the guitar strings. In so many ways, what she does is so much better than what Douglas P and Tony Wakeford could conjure through their cryptic folk songs. The haunting "Cousins Of The Antichrist" is one track that effortlessly exceeds the songwriting achievements of those aforementioned British esoteric musicians, with the urgency of the violent strum on her acoustic guitar stuck in minor chords buttressing the soaring vocals.
Similarly, "Deep Talks" works its blown out 4-track recording of her grab-every-string-on-the-guitar-and-pull method of playing along with her wordless vocal delivery that's as impressionistic as Grouper, but with Grouper's narcolepsy replaced by night terrors. "Moses" (a track which interestingly follows "Cousins Of The Antichrist") plays on stomping Southern spirituals but turned ashen and turgid in pace and demeanor. And the album's closing number "Widow" is a bleak, half-whispered song mired in morose atmospheres and just the right amount of narcotic smoke and exhumed-from-a-swamp 4 track production values, sounding a lot like the criminally underappreciated Corpses As Bedmates (whose sole album was reissued under an entirely different band name - Venus Handcuffs, probably worsening things for the band, but we digress). The short of it is that Chelsea Wolfe's The Grime And The Glow is fucking great and marks another killer release in the growing catalogue of witchy releases by Pendu Sound, following an lp from Sasha Grey's Atelecine and a single from witch house maven Mater Suspiria Vision. Highly Recommended!
Oh-la-la - this young French lady makes some of the most exciting and satisfying dance music around. With her second album she's proven she is no fluke, or one hit wonder, as this is just as action packed, fun filled, and free flowing as her great debut. It's really hard to make a solid dance record that doesn't just rely on a few hits and then the rest is just forgettable filler, Yelle has no room for filler in her life, as every single song on here brings the goods with such exciting results. This makes us think of what it might sound like if some really cool French electro-producers produced a record by Kylie Minogue or Goldfrapp. But it's really Yelle's energy and charisma that makes her stand way ahead of the electro-dance-pop pack, as you always feel such a human and real element driving these contagious songs. This has summer jams of '11 written all over it!
Originally released last year, and just now getting issued stateside by Kemado, this chunk of psychedelic noisiness comes courtesy of an Aussie combo called Zond, who, we were led to believe from all the various online descriptions, not to mention the ridiculously hyperbolic label blurb, were gonna sound like some super sludgey, metallic sludge noise rock juggernaut, when in fact, while noisy and heavy and spaced out and druggy, are way more shoegazey and washed out, and WAY more psychedelic.
After a slow brooding, shimmering ambient intro, the band kick off the record with a sonic squall that to these ears sounds like some supercharged hybrid of Bailter Space, My Bloody Valentine and Loop, mesmerizing, repetitive, hypnotic, the vocals hazy and buried in the mix, the sound a wall of swirling blurred sound, blown out and in the red, but still melodic and dreamy and fuzzy and totally blissed out.
In fact the whole record plays out like some unhinged shoegaze noiserock feverdream, the drums pounding away, buried beneath layers upon layers of coruscating distortion, of wild swirls of soaring psychedelic skreee, the vocals too, a plaintive croon, barely audible, a ghostlike presence beneath the roiling, churning heaviness.
Think the above mentioned bands, but also A Place To Bury Strangers, White Noise Sound, Swervedriver, Jesus & Mary Chain of course, even some modern more space rocky outfits like White Hills and the Heads. This stuff is the perfect fit amidst all those, the sound is heavy, and dense, layered and intense, hazy and druggy, washed out, blurred and blissy and super psychedelic, with a sound like this, a little surprised these guys aren't already blowing up. Imagine it's only a matter of time. Definitely a new aQ fave...
