Is 'Moon' the new 'Wolf' or 'Skull'?, could be, as lately some of our favorite records have been coming from bands like Moon Duo, Moon Unit and The Soft Moon. Now we get to add Moonbell to the awesome list of psych driven moon moniker bands that we've been digging. We'd been having a lot of folks asking us about this band before we heard them, seems folks around town knew that this was a great new San Francisco band to take notice of. With a sound equally influenced by shoegaze and drugged out rock, Moonbell sound exists in some really awesome place right between Spacemen 3 and early Ride, Swervedriver, and Chapterhouse. Lilting vocals, soaring and dazed guitars all in a smoky vapor of entrancement. Such a great debut!
Almost like a teaser for the forthcoming Zombi full length, Escape Velocity, comes this killer two track 12" from one half of Zombi, Steve Moore, whose solo recordings are (thankfully) not all that far removed from the Zombi mothership.
It's easy to be dismissive at this point of this sound, cuz there are just soooo many folks doing it, sci-fi soundtracks, eighties straight to video B movies, John Carpenter, Goblin, but Zombi were there first, and still do it better than most, and hearing Moore's latest blast of cosmic disco sci-fi nu-age techno synthscapery it's easy to see why he and his two man crew inspired such a legion of similarly sonically obsessed sci-fi minions.
The title track here is a fantastic chunk of outer space sci-fi synth drift, the robotic pulse underscores sweeping swells of moody melody, pappered with occasional bits of percussive bloopery, the rhythms muted and minimal, the pulsing synths driving the proceedings more than the beats, but the beats are still there, adding texture, and eventually a skittery skeletal framework for Moore's cinematic synthesized cosmic drift.
The flipside begins all washed out and woozy, lush, layered synth swirls, a slow moving outer space shimmer, but soon, the synth low end begins to percolate right below the surface, not quite disrupting the new age vibe, but adding a bit of momentum and propulsion. Eventually the beat comes in, but it's not so much a beat, as a pulse, a single house-y kick drum, but the result is perfect, adding just the slightest bit of groove, allowing the rest of the track to swirl and whirl and drift, all hazy and dreamily druggy and spaced out, the sound building to a driving and dramatic crescendo, before slipping away in a soft hazy swirl of slow fading synth shimmer. So good!
Needless to say, absolutely required listening for fans of Umberto, Zombi, Xander Harris, John Carpenter, Goblin, Blizaro, Applehead, Gatekeeper, Expo 70, Roll The Dice, Nightsatan, Twins and all the rest. Packaged in a plain black disco style big hole 12"s sleeve.
Latest disc of pastoral dreamlike synthdrone ambience from this East coast duo, whose past records have been unanimous aQ faves, as this one is fast becoming as well. Every track here is a mini epic of slow building drones and lushly layered textures, the sound rich and full, strings buzzing, synths shimmering, sometimes stretched out for ages, but often blossoming into sun dappled Technicolor bursts of sweet sonic radiance, sparkling and glimmering, just as often wrangled into pulses, and crafted into weirdly sc-fi synthscapes, borrowing a page from the book of all the Carpenter/Goblin worshippers out there, but instead of creating some futuristically retro Euro disco, those pulses are blurred and layered, and turned into something more along the lines of Tangerine Dream, hazy and gauzy and deeply melodic and almost new agey.
Elsewhere the duo wreath their hushed high end drift in thick swaths of hiss and hum, creating Tim Hecker like landscapes of bleary eared ambience, all pixelated and indistinct, a soft focus shimmer, but Mountains add streaks of synths, again making it sound more like classic new age/krautrock than modern experimentation.
The second half of the record is heavy on the pulsing synths, simple lilting melodies, repeated, looped, layered, conjuring up mesmerizing chunks of electronic minimalism, that definitely look to Reich, and Riley, as well as Fripp and Eno, but in the hands of Mountains, at times much noisier, the sound more dense, but that warm glowing melodic sense always shining through. The record closes with a thick swath of warm whirring buzz, tangled melodies beneath think swirls of whir and thrum, crumbling synths, which fade out during the last few seconds, to reveal a guitar, which may very well have been in there all along.
Hmmm, we must have done something to obtain Satan's approval, since he has recently rewarded us with releases from two of our absolute favorite cult black metal bands, and both exceedingly idiosyncratic ones at that. There's Inquisition's highly anticipated and indeed amazing Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm opus, which we'll be reviewing next time (we ran out this week!), and this, the equally eagerly-awaited 2nd album from Negative Plane, whose 2006 debut caused us to describe them as "very special", a band so underground and cult that they require the devotion of "servitors rather than mere fans". As such, we bow and praise, for five years later, this second strike is another slab of antiquarian, abyssic genius.
Doomy, dramatic, delirious black metal that's so thick with true old school feeling that after a few spins, the only thing you can follow it with are crackly vinyls by '80s and early '90s underground overlords like Bathory, Venom, Celtic Frost, Possessed, and Mayhem. Yet their artistry is directed down their own path, not that of retro nostalgia, even if they stir up the same Satanic vibrations as those ancient ones.
Negative Plane are masters of mystique, their music a masterful combination of atmospheric (and not only that, but also interesting) interludes, that evoke eerie olde silent film musick, and much more metal onslaughts, that emerge intricately from the hissing murk with pounding drums, swarms of guitar, and raw guttural vokills. Field recordings, bells, cello, piano, organ, and some female vocals are all woven into the mix, creating something quite unique and effective.
These rumbling, rollercoastering compositions, with their sepulchral production and strangely classical motifs, are all cloaked in weird, haunting ambience, it's like they recorded with Leyland Kirby or Indignant Senility in the producer's seat. If it's truly possible for metal to not just be about the occult, but actually BE occult, the reverby rituals recorded by Negative Plane are, and leave us with a Lovecraftian "indescribable" to add to this review.
Vinyl version to be unleashed in March, FYI.
Collaborations in the experimental scene come and go, so it's so great to see one that has some longevity. This is album number seven from BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa, and the fourth released by the discerning Helen Scarsdale Agency label. Since this trio (Benny plus Sigtryggur and Helgi of Stilluppsteypa) unleashed their drunken drone trilogy through the aforementioned Agency, they've been venturing into all sorts of delirious bouts of murky psychedelic collages and imagined soundtracks. There were the weird ruminations upon a found cassette, turned into a mondo filmscore on Man From Deep River; and then the sci-fi opus of synth meanderings found on Space Finale. Now what may be the best to emerge since that earlier alcohol-inspired trilogy is this, the mercurial and hauntological album Big Shadow Montana. Two long-form pieces make up the album, with the A side standing as a hallucinatory foreshadowing of what is to come on the flip. Here, ghostly drones broadcast directly out of the haunted ballroom from The Shining, flickering with half-received transmissions, bumps in the night, and any number of other worldly sounds. Bits of structure emerge in this slow-motion churning of drone, shadow, and filigree coming across somewhere between the fucked up collages that seem to bring all of the Teenage Filmstars records to a close and the subterranean drone-rock sensibility of German Oak. When the record flips, a cosmic stream of vintage synths slump toward oblivion paralleling what has been done by Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never (both of whom have released work alongside this trio on Editions Mego), but before this can venture any further down the rabbit hole of Schnitzler and Schulze references, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa slip into a faux-exotica guise with cheap Casiotone melodies swaying to and fro through old Les Baxter and Martin Denny records. It's a signature move for Stilluppsteypa, if anyone remembers how they mustered a similar strategy on The Best Possible Yet back in 1997. But the maudlin organ harmonies and percolating tone-bloop oscillations are much more confident here, emerging perfectly out of the drone fog like those organ-led numbers on that Deathprod boxset, only to slip into a twin engine thrum of inner-space expansion. In listening back to the second side of the album, it's clear that the first is a lengthy dub of the second, recast and recontextualized as a percussive ghost. Totally captivating through and through, and with a damn trippy cover sporting a vibrantly hypnotic, candy-colored mandala. Yup, it does have a download card. Yup, it is limited. Yup, it is highly recommended.
Latest blast of avant UN-blackness from the awesome and unpronounceable Njiqahdda. The latest project of the man who seemed to single handedly define the UN-black metal scene we were so enamored of, with his label EEE, and his various other awesome and aQ approved projects Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial and a bunch of others. But Njiqahdda was always way weirder. Which is saying a lot considering that the weirdness of those other projects is precisely what made them so appealing to us in the first place.
So when we say this stuff is weirder, well prepare yourself. Sprawling super intricate and convoluted blackened epics, we hesitate to call it black metal, even though it most definitely is, guitars buzz, drums blast, the vocals and howled and anguished, the melodies minor key and majestic, but those tropes are all twisted up here, into something way more unique. More like a mathy blackened prog, or some avant blackened hypno-rock. Both would apply, the parts constantly shifting, the arrangements always in flux, the drums wild and dense and intricate, the guitar playing both gnarled and frantic, chiming and soaring, songs as likely to erupt into a grim burst of furious buzz, as a woozy, almost poppy bit of melodiousness. The sound too is distinctly un-black metal, and not UN-black in that sense, more like NOT black at all, murky and muddy, warm and a little washed out, not buzzy and brittle, the voice buried in the murk, the drums also a bit muted, occasionally some more traditional blackness surfaces, but usually just as quickly the sound shifts to something more rhythmic or mathy or proggy, tranced out and droney, all of the songs seemingly parts of a single massive and majestic whole.
The record's centerpiece, a 25 minute epic, even breaks down part way through into some glimmering shimmering post rocky drift, all hazy and washed out and dreamlike, acoustic guitars and little high end melodic trills, before disappearing in a cloud of alien FX, processed percussion, mysterious electronics, before finally emerging on the other side reverted back to its moody, murky, repetitive hypno rock blackness, somehow more melodic and poppy than ever.
The whole record is overflowing with sonic surprises, and yet somehow every random bit of sonic weirdness, doesn't stick out, instead it all sounds perfectly organic, from brooding acoustic folk, to manic mathy super frenetic stop start dynamics, from jangly almost post rock, to gnarled, almost impossibly complex blackprog, and from weirdly muddy washed out almost gothy sounding black buzz to abstract electronics flecked foresty folk.
As much as we love all the other Njiqahdda, and hell, pretty much all the other groups that came before, this one definitely takes the cake. Stretching the realms and bounds of the black metal sound about as far as they can go, while impossibly still managing to retain a sound that is both black AND metal. A new favorite for sure.
Some super stunning artwork as well, a massive booklet, filled with gorgeous photos of the sea, overlaid with blue metallic sigils and mysterious mantras...
Hot on the heels of their recent double lp singles collection comes yet ANOTHER new full length from local garage rock heroes Thee Oh Sees, and it's a good one, but unlike the sweaty stomp of blown out crunch of recent records, Castlemania is a bit more fuzzy and washed out, hazy and reverby, could be because it's not actually a 'proper' new full-band Oh Sees record, instead, it's a little bit like a return to Thee Oh Sees of old (back when 'they' were a 'he'), with Oh Sees mainman John Dwyer playing all the instruments himself, vocals, drums, guitar, flute, bass, clarinet, keyboards, trumpet, synth, harmonica and percussion, the whole thing recorded in his former Haight Street apartment (this being the last thing recorded there before, according to the liner notes, "control was assumed by rich assholes").
That said, Castlemania is absolutely an Oh Sees record, it only takes about 10 seconds of album opener "I Need Seed" before you're whisked away by Dwyer's reverby jangle fuzz pop, but as mentioned above, the vibe is way more summery and sunshiney, the guitars are acoustic, fluttering flutes, simple percussion, the vocals wreathed in reverb, but WAY less distorted than usual, heavy on the hooks, lots of jangle, background 'oooohs' and 'aaaaahs'. The awesomely titled second track "Corprophagist (A Bath Perhaps)" sounds like classic Oh Sees, but stripped way down, laced with bells and electronic bloops, with a killer main hook, some fantastic vocal harmonies, more flutes, the drums a minimal shuffle, and so it goes.
The rest of the record follows suit, from the string laden balladic wooziness of "Stinking Cloud" with its druggy atmosphere and twisted brass, to "Pleasure Blimps" that almost sounds more like the Fresh & Onlys than Thee Oh Sees. There are still some crunchy garage jams, but for the most part, it's way more strummy and jangly, groovy and fuzzy and catchy almost sixties style pop, appropriately warped and tweaked of course.
The record finishes off with some awesome (and unlikely) covers. "I Won't Hurt You" by sixties psychedelic pop folk outfit West Coast Pop Experimental Band is a murky brooding pop gem, with woozy washed out low end, muted propulsive rhythms, and some gorgeous boy/girl harmonies, the boy parts provided by Ty Segall, the girl parts provided by Oh Sees keyboardist Brigid Dawson. "If I Stay Too Long" by post Squirrel Bait Louisville rockers Big Wheel sounds like it could be an Oh Sees original, chiming guitars, a little bit of twang, big drums, and a super hooky falsetto chorus, and finally a song called "What Are We Craving" by sixties/seventies folk singer Norma Tanega (who dated Dusty Springfield!), also sung by Dawson, a loping simple rhythm emerges from a cloud of strange reverby percussion, droning wheezing organs laid over the top, the atmosphere hazy and softly psychedelic, the vocals angelic and drifty, a gritty garage rock vamp slowed down into a hazy strummy jangly fuzzfolk ballad, dreamy and druggy and divine.
On both cd and vinyl, the vinyl version is a double lp, the 4th side adorned with a killer etching by artist William Keihn who also did the cover art!
Dig the creepy cover, the extended claw like arms extended above a shadowy shawled woman, the whole image hazy and ghostly, and inside, strange electronic ghostly minimal dream pop that is the perfect soundtrack for that image, and for a lost world of similar sights, of blood red moons, of creatures in the dark, of low lit mysterious after hours underground gatherings, welcome to Witch House. No doubt most folks have already heard something about this new movement/genre, a twisted sample heavy dark minimal electronic music, which may have begun life as a witchy sort of house music, but has blossomed into a whole cadre of bands, make spooky, and evocative, and darkly lovely music. Most of these sounds released on limited tapes or cd-rs or as free downloads, the bands all named with strange option-control heavy keyboard characters, little black triangles, underscores, tiny crosses, jumbles of &'s and *'s, even OOOOO is written oOoOO, and who knows how it's pronounced. We could list some of the other bands, but it's probably just as easy to set your font for Zapf Dingbats and peck away at random!
But for all the secrecy and purposeful obfuscation, when you finally get your ears on this stuff, it is indeed, pretty fantastic. Woozy, warped, haunting, hypnotic, mysterious, dark, retro, futuristic, minimal, electronic, sampled, looped, depending on the group, it could be some sort of bewitching IDM shuffle, or some horror movie sampling bit of plunderphonia, or in the case of oOoOO, a gorgeous chunk of electronica flecked otherworldly dream pop. Skeletal and shoegazey, a soft pop cold wave wreathed in a ghostly haze, like Cocteau Twins or Slowdive but chopped & screwed. There's a little of that eighties sci-fi synth soundtrack stuff that's so popular right now, but somehow here it sounds more genuine, more a part of the admittedly twisted whole. Swirling effects, spectral ambience, atmospheric synth shimmer, occasionally slipping into some dark and sinister propulsive kraut disco, vocals clipped and looped into clouds of psychedelic soft noise, other times, the sound drifts more toward eighties MTV style yacht rock, but again, dubbed out, slowed down and wrapped in a blurred gauze, and throughout it all, the wispy angelic wraithlike female vocals, ethereal and ephemeral, a dreamy sonic thread that holds it all together.
Gorgeous stuff for sure. Anyone into all that hypnogogic pop stuff, or tripped out lo-fi cold wave, as well as folks like Zola Jesus, Nite Jewel, or even Beach House and other shoegazey dreampoppers, here's something just a bit darker, and a bit more out there, for when you're wandering the streets at night, or holed up in your house, lights out, candles lit and emotions dark, needing something pretty and poppy still, but infinitely more murky and mysterious.
How do you follow up one of the most well received and influential albums of the last decade? Well if you're Panda Bear you just make another brilliant record that isn't afraid to veer from the formula of the previous album, the beloved Person Pitch, and create a new tapestry of trance inducing unrivaled pop bliss. While not as immediately catchy and in your face as Person Pitch, Tomboy displays a more nuanced and subtle approach to Panda Bear's production and songwriting, while still filled with such lush sound and so many golden hooks and dreamy melodies. There is almost a song cycle feeling to Tomboy, each song interconnected and unfurling with such a tranquil and hypnotic flow It's remarkable how Panda Bear is able to sing almost nonstop throughout this album, yet his voice really does still seem like another instrument, perfectly floating just above the sea of sound below, radiating a glowing sonic warmth throughout the album.
It would have been easy for Panda Bear to do another take at Beach Boys influenced psychedelia, and there is plenty of that still present, but we love how he took his time making this record and really created a new record with a new sound with its own singular vision. There are moments of course, that seem to follow in the considerable wake of Person Pitch, but there are so many new sounds and approaches which all serve to make Tomboy its own fantastic and hauntingly original beast, as potent and satisfying as his past glories. Maybe even moreso. So great!
Leave it to Pantha Du Prince to breathe new life into the often tired world of remix records. It was last year that we became huge fans of his, thanks to the amazing Black Noise album, which was a unanimous AQ favorite and got us to dig into his back catalog and find so much more to fall in love with.
While remix records can often sound thrown together and all filler no killer, Pantha Du Prince keeps up his commitment to excellence and for HIS remix record recruited talented folks with a wide ranging sonic scope, folks like Moritz Von Oswald, Four Tet, Animal Collective, Walls, and Die Vogel. It becomes immediately clear that all these artists really understand and respect PdP's aesthetic and they do such a great job of subtly accenting it and giving these tracks a new sonic coat of paint. Another problem with other remix records is that they usually don't have their own cohesive flow. But these versions work so nicely with each other and most definitely create their own late night seductive sizzle.
FYI, the cd has 11 tracks, and but the vinyl just 5, hence the differing titles (apparently some of the versions left off the vinyl, appeared on other 12"s...).
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Leave it to Pantha Du Prince to breathe new life into the often tired world of remix records. It was last year that we became huge fans of his, thanks to the amazing Black Noise album, which was a unanimous AQ favorite and got us to dig into his back catalog and find so much more to fall in love with.
While remix records can often sound thrown together and all filler no killer, Pantha Du Prince keeps up his commitment to excellence and for HIS remix record recruited talented folks with a wide ranging sonic scope, folks like Moritz Von Oswald, Four Tet, Animal Collective, Walls, and Die Vogel. It becomes immediately clear that all these artists really understand and respect PdP's aesthetic and they do such a great job of subtly accenting it and giving these tracks a new sonic coat of paint. Another problem with other remix records is that they usually don't have their own cohesive flow. But these versions work so nicely with each other and most definitely create their own late night seductive sizzle.
FYI, the cd has 11 tracks, and but the vinyl just 5, hence the differing titles (apparently some of the versions left off the vinyl, appeared on other 12"s...).
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Why the hell would you call your band Peterlicker? And even if you did give yourself such a terrible name, why would you keep it after you broke up over 20 years ago, especially when the band in question hardly even managed a couple of practices and maybe one gig? These are the important questions we ask here at aQuarius, and perhaps we can feel justified in asking these questions, since they themselves admit theirs is a stupid band name following the tradition of the Butthole Surfers and Throbbing Gristle.
So, with that discussion out of the way, here at last is the debut LP from Peterlicker, a monstrously good electro-doom-dirge-noise-rock quartet featuring Peter (Pita) Rehberg. While Pita's brain-drilling power electronics are a component of the crawling noise structures in Peterlicker, it's clearly not just his project. F. Hergovich is the vocalist in the band, whose ominous deepthroating vocalizations loom over the entire production, timestretched into undefinable gaping bellows and monstrous Lustmordian howls. C. Schachinger takes his cues from Swans' stalwart guitarist Norman Westberg, in his bent atonal screeches, gritty crackling of white-hot distortion, and dive-bomb arcs of noise that settle upon the ever crawling post-doom basslines of G. Weissegger. Pita and Weissegger fill in the gaps with plenty of crunched noises that buttress the grim arsenal of crusty noise. Imagine Godflesh, if Broadrick forgot to bring his drum machine to the studio, or Swans (circa Cop and Filth) with Gira even more amped up on amphetamines and taking his vocals on a really fucked godhead trip. Needless to say, Nicht is pretty fucking brilliant, regardless of what they chose to call the band.
There was a time when it seemed like every month would see a new release by one of Scott Herren's projects. Whether as Savath & Savalas, Prefuse 73, Diamond Watch, Piano Overlord, Delarosa & Asora, etc. But it seems like he's allowed himself some breathing room and dedicated some real concentrated time and vision to craft this new Prefuse 73 album, which stands for sure as the most emotive and moody recording we've heard from him in ages. Without reading too much into the titles of these tracks like "The Only Valentine's Day Failure", "The Only Recollection Of Where Life Stopped", and "The Only Guitar To Die Alone" it's easy to believe that this may be the first true heartache/heartbreak record Herren has made so far. And while we're sorry if his heart has in fact been broken, we're happy with the intricate and witchy electronics that have been born out of that heartbreak.
The album finds Herren teaming up with some great haunting vocalists on a handful of the tracks including Zola Jesus, Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, and what may possibly be the last recording that Trish Keenan of Broadcast did before her passing earlier this year. In fact we get the feeling that Herren may have been listening to the great collaboration that Broadcast and The Focus Group made together as this album also is made up of ghostly miniatures that float and sway casting a mystical spell in their wake. So nice to be reminded that Herren is still one of the most talented and creative electronic music makers around.
Originally a special Record Store Day release, now sold out and out of print, we managed to get an extra little handful of these (we're talking 5 or 6) so if you were kicking yourself for missing out, grab one of these quick before they are really gone for good.
Puffy Areolas unfurl a slow burning sprawl of flanged psychedelic guitar riffage, and growled distant vox, into a strange bit of droned out strum and jangle, buried drums, fractured electronics and warped effects, wild wah guitars, all wound into a spaced out drift that ruptures a few minutes in and becomes a frantic space drone drugrock pound, the guitars swirling and whirling, the drums pounding, all tangled into a glorious and explosive bit of psychedelic space rock freakout, that wouldn't sound all that out of place on a record by White Hills or The Heads, endless wild riffing and soloing, over loose chaotic drumming, and clouds of constantly shifting effects, seriously druggy and damaged and divine.
Purling Hiss counter with some swaggery Stooges-y garage rock stomp, snarly vox over some sludgey fuzzy riffing, and some awesomely tweaked leads, infusing that Stooges-y swagger with the classic rock/power pop vibe that made us dig these guys so much in the first place, the result something much more dirgey and noisy, the track laced with falsetto vox, and layer after layer of noodly guitars, until the track shifts gears, and the band slip into an almost Aerosmithy style groove, which swaggers and slithers and unwinds woozily through clouds of psych guitar swirl as the track gradually fades out...
And as we mentioned above, crazy limited, as in THESE ARE THE VERY LAST COPIES WE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO GET!!
The Raveonettes have been on fire over the last several years. Their last two albums remain two of our favorite pop albums to come out last decade, and with their latest, Raven In The Grave, they've delivered another breathtaking and seductive set of songs that we've already been playing nonstop. This album finds the band exploring a grittier and darker vibe that really suits them surprisingly well. The songs are both dirgy and sexy, mysterious and catchy. Before the latest wave of girl group inspired lo-fi pop bands hit the scene, The Raveonettes laid some nice groundwork and offered up a blueprint for how to take those influences and incorporate them into a very modern sound. This album even has some really nice shoegaze undertones, that matched with the grit and grim and ominously dark production make for such a seductive listening experience. Like sleepwalking through deserted city streets on an extra dark night, these are perfect songs for dazed and glazed fever dreams. Highly recommended.
For some reason we didn't realize that Religious Knives was in fact members of late great noise/drone combo Double Leopards, but it does make sense. Religious Knives, albeit a lot less noisy, do seem to explore a similarly spaced out and psychedelically minimal path, but where DL wove thick drones, Religious Knives beagan to move away from the freeform drift and toward a sort of psychedelic spaced out krautrock, all low slung bass, tribal drumming, woozy wheezing organ, deep crooned vox, buzzing guitars all stretched out into longform slow burning space psych drifts that definitely exist in the same space as Wooden Shjips, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Naked On The Vague, Sun Araw, Fabulous Diamonds and the like. There's also a serious nineties New Zealand vibe going on, which has a lot to do with the deep vocals, but there are also female vocals, and those tracks tend to sound a bit more poppy, but all the songs are rife with long tones and deep drones, the organ thick and buzzy, the guitar spidery and minor key, all woven seamlessly into the band's blissed out psych jams. Hazy and druggy and so good. Kind of surprised more of the Moon Duo / Wooden Shjips / Lumerians / Carlton Melton space/drone rock obsessives haven't flipped out over these guys too, could be because they're less rocking, more moody and brooding and minimal and spare, but we're thinking even so, it's only a matter of time...
Full length number two from Rene Hell, aka Jeff Witscher, is, according to the man himself, a bit of a departure from the sound of his first record, the aQ beloved Porcelain Opera. The Terminal Symphony, is as the title suggests, Witscher's stab at creating a modern minimal classical music record, using the same sounds and tools as he did to create his first record, but here, reimagining those sounds in a different context. The songs tighter, more controlled and composed. The opener is a thick caustic corrosive drone, the synth sound super buzzy and distorted, dense and pulsating, wreathed in effects, and pelted by blasts of static and industrial crunch, seemingly random rhythms careening back and forth, very dark and meditative, before giving way to the sci-fi synth pulse of "Quiet Detail Muse", murky effected vocals riding atop the undulating synths.
"Cello Suite #3" is most definitely not, instead it's a dizzying collage of random voices, bits of glitch and hiss, a looped high end melody, flurries of fragmented effects, the result a sort of creepy electronic ambience. "E.S. Des Grauens In Fifths" sounds classical, but more like alien kosmische new age krautdrone synth classical, percolating melodies, buzzy and fuzzy over sweeping swells and lush layered shimmer, the sort of soundtrack that must accompany watching an alien star emerge from some distant planet. "Baroque Ensemble Coda" too is a strange little cloud of swirling electronics and intertwined melodies, looped and rhythmic, and in its own way strangely psychedelic, the track soon shifts gears and becomes a landscape of rubbery pulsations and layered shards of buzz and hum.
The whole record, for all its classical aspirations, manages to be dark and droney, softly chaotic and lushly layered and looped, and without the background on the record and its genesis, one might not notice anything 'classical' about it, playing out instead as just a super melodic, fantastically varied, and surprisingly dreamy experimental minimal electronic record, bloopy and bleepy one second, a frantic avalanche of overlapping melodic loops the next, warped and atonal outer space psychedelia one second, blurry, bleary sun dappled new age synthscape the next.
Fans of The Porcelain Opera will definitely dig this, and again might quite possibly not notice a dramatic difference, but then does it really matter, the sounds are divine, and to some they may sound more 'classical' to others they may just sound like more of the same, either way, we're digging it.
Usually here at AQ, when we have a record that's pertains to witches and/or witchcraft in some way, it's from a metal band... like, obviously, Acid Witch, or Witchcraft, or Witch... then there's the "hauntological" likes of Broadcast & The Focus Group, and Demdike Stare, and let's not forget witch house... And, ok, the '70s Afro-fuzz of the other, original Witch from Zambia.
But THIS witchy record isn't like any of those, at all. It's a B-Music release and has a lot more in common with another B-Music fave, the soundtrack to Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders! This is a soundtrack too, and also from a cult New Wave Of Czech cinema flick from the early '70s. Unlike Valerie, we've never seen this movie, but we'd like to, based on this quirky, cool soundtrack. The music for Valerie was dreamy and delirious, suitable for a phantasmagorical, dark fairytale, and some of this is too. But since Saxana is about the more lighthearted adventures of a very modern teenage witch (we're thinking Daisies meets Harry Potter??), it gets a more suitably groovy, modish, jazzy score, with "psychedelic effects". There's lots of spooky and/or sprightly instrumental interludes, with titles like "Rats And Rodents", "Haxipola's Trip", and "Algebraic Airbrush", along with a couple songs sung by Czech chanteuse Petra Cernocka, including a version of the film's infectious theme song. Of the 27 tracks here (including one bonus cut from a 45rpm single), five of 'em, interspersed throughout, aren't actually songs or music, but "spells" - Latin sounding arcane incantations presumably uttered by teen witch of the title, each one heralded by those psychedelic effects, ominous echoings conveying magickal mysteries. Quite (literally) charming, as is this whole previously unreleased soundtrack, and nicely presented here with a thick booklet of text and graphics, by Finders Keepers/B-Music (of course). Oh, and there's an import vinyl version on the way, we'll have it soon too.
It's hard to know what to say about Superchunk after all this time. Easily one of the best, and most consistently GREAT indie rock bands EVER. We can't actually think of a Superchunk record we don't love. And sure, while some are in fact better than others, every single one has at least a few tracks that rank among their best. And Here's Where The Strings Come In is no exception. Their fifth record, originally released in 1995, and re-issued/re-released for this year's Record Store Day, Here's Where The Strings Come In starts off with what has to be one of our favorite Superchunk jams ever, the super kinetic and wildly rocking "Hyper Enough", with its unforgettable main guitar melody and killer chorus, Mac's impassioned vocals, it's pretty much a perfect slab of indie rock power pop. And an auspicious start to a killer Superchunk record. Elsewhere there's the equally hook filled and rocking "Detroit Has A Skyline", the more jangly and laid back "Silverleaf And Snowy Tears", and the crazy catchy title track, and hell, pretty much every track in between. The cool thing about Superchunk is that even though this is record number 5, it could just as easily be number 1, or 2, or 8, their sound timeless, their songwriting perpetually brilliant, the playing energetic and rambunctious, one of those one-in-a-million bands where all the ingredients, the members, the songs, the sound, all coalesce perfectly, and create something special and magical and totally kick ass.
As with all Superchunk records, totally and wholeheartedly recommended. And the video for "Hyper Enough" is pretty great if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7YK6zW4nI
Considering that Norwegian "death jazz" unit Supersilent began their recording career with a triple cd release entitled Supersilent 1-3, it's not so odd that they'd overwhelm their fans, these several years later, with the near-simultaneous release of both installments 10 and 11 in the Supersilent discography. As it happens, 10 features their newest recordings, while 11 consists of somewhat older material, tracks left over from the sprawling sessions that produced Supersilent 8 back in 2005. That's apparently why Supersilent 11 has been done as a vinyl-only release, while Supersilent 10 is on cd (and, eventually, but not yet, also lp).
Now, for those of you who already have a good proportion of Supersilent's 1 through 9, need we really say much about 10 and 11? Each numbered Supersilent release thus far has been brilliant, right? Yet each somewhat different, in representing Supersilent's unique style of electronic / acoustic improv, which can range from glacially paced, spacious ambient drift to fractured rhythmic glitch, from mellow melodic bliss to distorted noisy chaos.
In the case of 10, it's tilted toward the hauntingly atmospheric, following on from the minimalistic approach of Supersilent 9 (wherein the group, without their former drummer, all played Hammond organ). These twelve (also simply numbered, as usual) tracks make evocative use of Arve Henriksen's limpid, moody trumpet solos, Stale Storlokken's sparse, somber Steinway grand piano, and the quietly droning, slightly gritty "audio virus" of electronics expert and producer Helge "Deathprod" Sten, who also plays electric guitar (whilst the other two in the trio contribute on electronics as well). Intriguing, gorgeous, suspenseful soundscapes are the result, replete with fragile melody and distant drone, and Supersilent 10 thus rates a 10 with us. So if you're just encountering Supersilent now, this would be a fine starting point, and then working backwards from 10 wouldn't be a bad idea.
Fans of course, at least the turntable enabled, will want 11, too. Apparently the studio sessions for Supersilent 8 resulted in a lot more music being made than they could fit on one cd, and after editing, there was enough good stuff left over that they felt they should eventually also release (in fact, they almost just made 8 into a triple cd), and indeed they were right. That 8th Supersilent we recall as being possibly their most "rock" effort, and also a quite varied one, and 11 could certainly be considered utterly worthy "bonus tracks" to that effort, and in addition it's a lovely limited edition fetish object, 180 gram vinyl, lots of room for the artwork (hahaha, that's a joke, since as with all Supersilent releases, the Kim Hiorthoy cover design is a solid color with white Helvetica text... looks great though!).
This local black metal / drone-noise duo have been cranking out recordings like crazy, not that you would ever know it, as all of them were released as lavishly packaged, outrageously limited cassettes (and all in batches of something like 50 copies). Finally, the band seem to be making waves beyond the WAY underground, and a comprehensive reissue campaign is under way, as well as a whole spate of about-to-drop new releases. But THIS, this is the first recording we've been able to get from these guys to list, and fans of noise drenched blackness, and super distorted psychedelic heaviness will be in heaven (hell?). A blasting, blown out, ultraviolent blend of raw, primitive black metal buzz, dense drones, lysergic psychedelic atmosphere and caustic abrasive blacknoise, these two tracks require iron ears, a black soul and preferably some headphones to get lost in SH's bizarre black cacophony.
"Bled Thy Likeness" is a blurred and muted expanse of crackly, staticky black thrum, murky and muddy, a writhing, swirling sprawl of hazy washed out minor key riffage, laced with streaks of soaring guitars woven into a background of distorted black ambience, eventually exploding into a whitenoise drenched blast of heaving, crumbling, ultra distorted blackdrone crush, hellish shrieked vokills smeared into undulating sheets of Merzbowian buzz, all underpinned by a haunting monkish chantlike melody, adding a strange bit of melancholy mystery to the harsh hellish buzz.
"Murmur" is just as intense, a wild frenzied blown out assault of fierce and fucked up blacknoise chaos, the shrieked vox distorted and processed into another layer of furious buzz, tangled up in the frenzied berserker riffing, the whole sound a twisted, gnarled tangle of face melting, ear shredding, soul shearing fury, the song somehow blossoming part way through into something subtly more melodic, the blacknoisebuzz and grim black-blast infused with a strangely lush and warm melodic undercurrent, a deep sonic swell, rife with epic black metal majesty, but nearly suffocated by the caustic clouds of brittle buzz and in-the-red roar overhead.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Super striking, thick black and white jackets, and printed on nice heavy vinyl...
Originally released way back in 1999, this strange split/collaboration was at the time, just about the coolest weirdest black metal (and otherwise) record we had ever heard, a record that really sounded like it was made just for aQ, unfortunately, that was long enough ago that the aQ list was still in its infancy, and thus, this amazing and baffling and brilliant record got short shrift. Just three sentences. But really those three sentences should be enough to convince you:
"Emperor covers Thorns songs, Thorns covers Emperor, although it's hard to tell which band is which, a good thing we think. Ends up sounding like a gothic, black metal soundtrack that's been given a John Oswald-style Plunderphonic treatment. The most evil use of Cubase we know of. Bizarre and amazing!!"
If there was ever a should-have-been-Record-Of-The-Week, this was most decidedly it. Thankfully, this just got reissued, and with bonus tracks to boot, so it seemed like the perfect time to revisit, and give this record the aQ love it so very much deserves, and heck, odds are lots of current aQ customers might not have been getting our list back in the day, so this is for you, and for anyone who needs (or just wants) a little more than those three sentences...
Emperor should need no introduction, they are elite members of the black metal pantheon, alongside Burzum, Satyricon, Mayhem, Immortal, Ulver and Enslaved. Their sound epic and majestic, symphonic and super technical, easily still one of our favorite black metal bands EVER. Thorns however might need a bit more of an introduction. Folks who read Lords Of Chaos, might recognize Thorns mainman (only man!) Snorre W. Ruch as having played a part in the infamous murder of Euronymous, by Varg Vikernes of Burzum. Ruch was with Vikernes that fateful night and was sentenced to 8 years in prison as an accessory to murder. Thorns only ever released one proper full length, and that was not until 2001, well after this collaboration.
But this collaboration, wow, not sure where to start, and not even sure how it came to be. It seems it had been years since the very first Thorns demos (not to mention the pre-Thorns outfit Stigma Diabolicum), so this split was intended to introduce Thorns to the scene, in preparation for his upcoming full length, and featured various older Thorns tracks reinterpreted by Emperor, as well as Thorns covering some classic Emperor jams. It was Thorns first new material since 1992, and weirdly enough actually featured Satyr from Satyricon on vocals. So it sounds like a pretty bad ass black metal match up, but it doesn't necessarily explain how goddamn weird it turned out.
The opening Emperor track is some strange sample heavy orchestral industrial workout, all looped samples, field recordings, strange metallic clanks, martial snares, moaning horn like melodies, faux strings, bursts of glitchy distorted vocals, frenzied guitars, and a super intense cinematic orchestral outro that leads right into a new version of Thorns' "Aerie Descent" from his first demo, a buzzing midtempo bit of blackness, laced with soaring synths, programmed electronics, definitely that modern Moonfog black metal sound that came to define the label and the scene, there are some strange samples, but for the most part the song is a dirgey bit of black metal buzz, laced with various bits of strange sonic filigree, finishing off with a stretch of church organ, haunting and mysterious.
The next track is where it gets really strange, a new Emperor created from various bits of an old Thorns demo, and it begins as a strange collage of weird electronics, backwards rhythms, whispered vox, disembodied guitar buzz, again weirdly industrial, before the black buzz kicks in, but it's all wrapped around that electronic skitter, not to mention some bizarre industrial percussion, the sounds looped and chaotic, changing speeds, the voices processed, skittering and stuttering, laced with rhythmic bursts of static, circus calliope, and then finally a furious blast of looped black metal right at the end. Still one of the coolest and weirdest black metal jams EVER.
Next up Emperor tackles Thorns' "Aerie Descent" and it sounds like classic Emperor, epic and majestic, furious buzzing, super intricate and heavy, the drumming incredible, the production massive, the organ outro somehow even creepier here. Emperor go again with "Thus March The Night Spirit", a classical reworking of their classic "Thus Spake The Nightspirit" from their brilliant Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk, and the black buzz of the original is transformed into some Tim Burton-ish soundtrack, all soaring strings, darkly moody and tense, with flurries of rapid fire notes, and soaring strings, no wonder Emperor sounded so majestic.
Thorns takes control again, redoing yet another old demo track, a creepy almost industrial sounding crawl, the guitars liquid and warbly, the riff slippery and strange, while a mechanical rhythm plods and creaks, the guitars get buzzier, the song gradually growing more and more blasting and black, but the vocals are weirdly processed, and even at it's pounding heaviest, the song is peppered with strange programmed beats and subtle electronics, exactly the sort of stuff that would end up defining Thorns weird mechanized take on black metal. "The Discipline Of Earth" is a Thorns original, and is the perfect blend of orchestral bombast, technical black metal, and brooding black ambience, again laced with programmed rhythms, swirling FX and electronics, creepy vox, before finally erupting into full on black buzz mode, only occasionally slowing down, at which points the underlying electronics and programming come to the fore. And finally, Thorns finishes things off with a cover of Emperor's "Cosmic Keys To My Creation And Times", a plodding doomy dirge, with huge crumbling chords, strange sung/spoken vocals, thick swaths of buzz, muted Teutonic pounding, all strangely and fantastically mechanical and industrial.
In addition to the record proper, this new reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, two pre-production mixes of tracks from the record, and a previously unreleased track, the Thorns demo "You That Mingle May", featuring Satyr again, but also Fenriz from Darkthrone. So totally essential, black metalheads who have somehow made it this far without owning this, right that wrong RIGHT NOW. And the thing is, this record is so cool and weird and varied and textured, that even folks with only a passing interest in or curiosity about black metal, might just find themselves blown away...
The late great Bunnybrains were definitely an acquired taste. One usually only acquired by folks who already had a taste for Harry Pussy, Liquorball and other purveyors of a similarly difficult sound. With the death of Bunnybrains, thus was born Ultrabunny, a band that on the surface, seemed to be less fucked up, and less jokey than the Bunny that came before, their sound more noise rocky, more spaced out and psychedelic, heavy and druggy and more musical. But fear not, it's still plenty fucked up.
On this latest full length, presented as two side long song suites, each meant to be listened as a whole, the band begin the first movement with a hazy bit of tripped out drone swirl, some deep, blackened drift, which quickly erupts into some seriously cacophonous rhythmic churn, super tribal rhythms pelted by sheets of hiss and skree, a bit like some strange Crash Worship / Merzbow mashup, but soon the sound transforms into some heavy, fuzzed out noise rock, droney and hypnotic, a sprawling bit of almost-groove, the guitar gnarled and tangled, twisted and psychedelic, a sound not all that far removed from groups like Burnt Hills or The Heads, equal parts space rock, krautrock, and that classic Homestead Records Midwestern pigfuck noise rock, culminating in a glorious spaced out buzz drenched psych jam outro. The second side/movement is way more relentlessly rocking, slipping from Butthole Surfers style dirgey rhythmic freakouts, replete with helium-ed processed vox, to trippy psych drone ambience to pounding druggy space/noise rock pummel.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered, packaged in old school paste on bootleg style sleeves.
Some of you may have heard of Unholy Cadaver. But a LOT of you have heard of Hammers Of Misfortune, San Francisco's best rock-operatic political power prog metal (and more) band, featuring members of Ludicra and (formerly) The Lord Weird Slough Feg, among others. Our own Andee's tUMULt label put out their first album, The Bastard, in 2001. That's been followed by three (or four, depending on how you count, 'cause one was a double!) albums for Cruz Del Sur and Profound Lore. Their entire discography was then recently reissued by Metal Blade, who also signed the band for a new, upcoming opus.
Well, not quite their entire discography... 'Cause before The Bastard, Hammers Of Misfortune were known by another name - Unholy Cadaver. Who recorded an unreleased album back in 1997. They put out a rare demo cd-r at the time, with just three of that album's nine tracks on it, none of which sound like "demos" despite being recorded in the band's practice space. But until now, the entire hour-long recording - which includes a song called "Hammers Of Misfortune", by the way, a nearly 15 minute epic, all of side C here - has never been properly released. The always on top of it (when "it" is cult metal) Shadow Kingdom label has rectified that, and then some, with this limited, deluxe edition of what's essentially the real Hammers Of Misfortune debut, done as a double vinyl lp with cd version also included!
This is where it all started, mastermind John Cobbett & Co.'s unusual, amazing mash up of epic / traditional stylings with "extreme" metal mayhem, with loads of guitar shred, dramatic dynamics, majestic bombast, and an influx of avant garde / black metal weirdness. Unholy Cadaver's line up consisted of Cobbett (guitars/vocals), Chewy Marzolo (drums), still the core of Hammers today. They enlisted several guests for the male and female "operatic" singing parts: Mike Scalzi (of Slough Feg), Erica Stolz (of Lost Goat), and Lorraine Rath (currently in Worm Ouroboros, formerly of The Gault), who also did the cover art and logo. In some sort of quid pro quo, Cobbett joined up for a stint in Slough Feg on 2nd guitar not long afterwards, and Scalzi stayed on with Hammers for their first three albums, playing guitar live as well as singing.
The prototypical Hammers herky-jerky stop-start loud-soft songwriting style is already in full effect, incorporating glorious guitar harmonies and bludgeoning brutality both... with social commentary (and a sense of humor) hidden, or not so hidden, in the often allegorical fantasy lyrics. Signs of their origin in "abso-futurist" metalpunk band Thunderchip remain, both the presence of John's rasping black metallish (and guttural death metallish) vokills (which were dropped entirely after The Bastard), and seemingly silly (but actually serious) song titles/concepts like "Fuck The Galactic Police".
John and Chewy also do clean, sorta chant like vocals on some of the tracks, presumably written/recorded before they had availed themselves of Mike's triumphant baritone, the inimitable sound of which you'll hear here, appropriately enough, on the aforementioned epic "Hammers Of Misfortune", that's where they really become Hammers Of Misfortune! Not that the rest of this doesn't sound like Hammers, it sure does, but the male-female mock-operatic thing utterly comes to the fore, on that tour-de-force of a track (which also features a surprising amount of profanity from Rath's "caged princess" character).
We should also mention the final cut, all of side D, the nine-minute "Kloven Septum", which is more of an experimental, freaked out "noise" composition, but still metal. We expect the unexpected from 'em, but yet it's unlike much else in their discography, and actually we could do with a whole album of this, too! It and the other extreme metal aspects of Unholy Cadaver perhaps could be seen as feeding in to Cobbett's Ludicra project later on, as well.
Eventually Janis Tanaka took over the female vocalist/bass player position from Erica, and with a solid, full band lineup instituted, they relegated these early recordings to the vault, changed the name (good call) and plunged ahead into forging The Bastard... but Unholy Cadaver's long lost album was definitely more than a warm up, hearing the whole thing now we wonder why it took so long for this to finally see the light of day.
Considering that The Bastard happens to be our favorite of the Hammers albums, and this is what led up to it, a most welcome and highly recommended release! And we're guessing it's kind of limited, too. The packaging is quite fancy, a double gatefold lp, with one of the inside panels holding the compact disc version. There's also a 12"x12" insert on some sort of glossy photo-paper, with old b&w pictures of the band back then, complete lyrics, and new liner notes giving the history of UC/HoM. The cover features L. Rath's painting, originally used for the demo cd-r, bigger and better than before, 'cause it's now in full color. Oh and both the vinyl and the cd versions have been individually remastered! Nice work. Epically recommended!!!
A few years back, Minimal Wave offered some choice crate digging collections of nearly forgotten darkwave and post-punk electronics through their Lost Tapes and Found Tapes collections, highlighting the differences between the European and American models of underground new wave. Dark Entries produced this anthology in that same tradition, focusing even more tightly on the geography of the Bay Area. As Johnny Ray Huston so rightly points out in the liner notes, San Francisco in the '80s had its own unique crucible of local events that shaped the Bay Area's particular sound (e.g. the assassination of Harvey Milk, the growing AIDS epidemic and the fear surrounding the disease, etc.). While there's none of the art-damaged abstraction filtered from The Residents, Snakefinger, or Tuxedomoon in an obvious lineage to the artists featured here, BART (named after the subway that connects Oakland, Berkeley, and other parts of the East Bay to San Francisco) is a great collection of quirky minimal wave electronics, with a fair amount of unreleased material from obscurant Bay Area new wave bands.
Nomimal State opens the compilation and was from the suburban hamlet of Danville, recording this demo 1983 with a militantly uptempo drum machine and urgent synth lines. It's a track that easily fits next to the likes of The Units and Nervous Gender in terms of manic, punkish use of electronics. Speaking of The Units, they round out the compilation in contributing their sci-fi pop anthem "Mission," which is still bitchin' after all these years! Voice Farm is the other 'big name' to appear on this compilation, contributing a sinewy darkwave number from their 1982 album "The World We Live In." Batang State, Quiet Room, and Necropolis Of Love offer more Joy Division / Wire / Kraftwerk atmospheric post-punk number with considerable panache. The Wasp Women were a crossdressing trash-punk outfit, whose demo featured a wastoid lo-fi number and had appeared in the 1982 film "What Ever Happened To Susan Jane." Danny Boy & The Serious Party Gods offer a fabulously campy disco number with suitably over-the-top raunchy lyrics that ramble on and on against anthemic synths. If there's one track that you need to hear from this compilation it's this one! But the whole collection is very well done, and comes highly recommended as with everything that Dark Entries releases.
Once again Soundway continues to unearth amazing tracks from yet another overlooked international scene. This collection digs into the cumbia and descarga sounds out of Columbia in the '60s to early '70s that were being released on the Discos Fuentes label. Jose Maria 'Curro' Fuentes ran the label which would become Columbia's largest. In many ways he was like the Berry Gordy of Columbia, using his immaculate taste to curate an amazing roster of musicians. Sadly most of these artists never had their music heard or even released in other parts of the globe, so this release marks the first time most of these nineteen tracks have been released anywhere outside of Columbia. The raw recordings really serve the music so well as these aren't the kind of tracks you would want overproduced or with a shiny slick veneer. Instead the infectious rhythms within the songs emerge organically with such rich and warm grooves. With sunshine time hitting us in a big way the past week, this is becoming the perfect soundtrack to outdoor get togethers and rooftop afternoons. No denying how damn hot this is!
We can't remember the last time a compilation so captivated everybody here, but this collection is really something else. A gorgeously compiled cd-r of tracks sourced from Japanese lps circa the years 1980-1986, featuring at least a few names we'd heard, like Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Inoyamo Land, but so so many we hadn't: Mkwaju Ensemble, Yasuaki Shimizu, Seigen Ono, Masahide Sakuma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Danceries, Dip In the Pool, we could go on, but we're guessing these are all new to you too. It's a single 74 minute continuous mix, that slips dreamily from synth and percussion minimalism, to mysterious electronic laced rhythms, from new agey krautrock to dreamy clouds of percussive melodies, from playful childlike toy piano melodies to synthy sci-fi drones, haunting electronic flecked Asian ballads to fluttery flute folk, from mesmerizing vibraphone melodies underpinned by haunting drones to loping jazzy almost prog, from hazy washed out kosmische electronics to lush layered chorales and on and on and on.
The tracks are so perfectly combined, and so seamlessly mixed, it almost sounds like it could be the coolest, weirdest record ever by some impossibly brilliant single artist, who somehow crafted one epic sprawling sonic exploration, a series of sounds that manage to be at once warm and familiar, yet also strange and mysterious, strange looped birdsong lays atop distant choir like vocals, and a strangely mechanical rhythm peppered with strange symphonic bursts melts into soaring strings, chamber music devolves into some fantastically dada-ish assemblage of voices and sound effects, thick sitar like buzz underpins deep foghorn like melodies, the vibe strangely melancholic, deep, dense new age swirls hover above a super minimal dripping faucet rhythm, warm, muted melodies unfurl over distant bells and deep reverberating tones, vibraphone melodies are layered atop a groovy, almost jazzy rhythm, and a mournful brass melody before gradually disappearing in a washed out woozy sonic haze
So fantastic, and so cheap too! Besides being just about the best mix/comp/collection we've heard in forever, odds are it'll have you trying to track down records by all the artists, which is always the sign of a good mix. The entire list of artists (some with more than one track): Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mkwaju Ensemble, Mariah, Yasuaki Shimizu, Mkwaju Ensemble, Seigen Ono, Masahide Sakuma, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Yasuaki Shimizu, Danceries, Yukihio Takahoshi, Dip in the Pool, YMO.
So great! And so utterly and unequivocally and whole heartedly RECOMMENDED!!
LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Packaged with full color covers in plastic mini dvd-style sleeves. And nicely priced! We're one of only two places in the whole world where you can get these, and we're guessing they're gonna go fast, so grab one quick before they're gone.
Yo, people!! One word: NECKS!!! Whoops, we could have easily overlooked this, a soundtrack to some foreign film we'd never heard of, but thankfully we did happen to notice the artists involved (which, to make sure YOU don't miss this, we've noted above). One of our all time faves, Australian drone-jazz trio The Necks, happens to appear here, track one "Transparent Roads" is theirs, the title track, and it's over 28 minutes long! So, right there, your money's worth, the rest of the disc could be considered a bonus. And a very worthy bonus, considering it includes diverse contributions from a bunch of interestin' artists in their own right, namely David Grubbs, Mira Calix, Mute Socialite, and O-Type. Quite a varied, even unlikely group, we're curious how they all happened to be invited to make music for this project, which was an Italian art film apparently about a bus trip through the Brazilian countryside, a "cinevoyage" visiting both the land and people. The film's director, Augusto Contento, certainly avoided using the obvious - Brazilian music - though a few of the tracks here do give a nod to such, Mute Socalite's song for instance titled "Samba Outlaw".
First, though, The Necks. Their track is, as any fan might guess, glorious. It's a quite Alice Coltrane-ish sounding Necks set, glittering cosmic jazz hypnosis. If you've heard The Necks, you won't be surprised - though the instrumental textures of "Transparent Roads" differ somewhat from their most recent album Silverwater. Skittering drums, repeating, brief piano melodies, and what sounds more like an electric guitar than their usual stand-up bass, all locked into impossibly precise yet organic sounding pulsations, surging, cyclic, building building building. With subtle complexities, incredible control, The Necks are truly masters of their art. Hard to imagine that they use the entirety of his piece on the soundtrack, that would be a bus trip through otherworldly realms, leaving Brazil, however beautiful and fascinating, far behind. Whew!!
A tough act to follow. After that, what? David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, Bastro) is up next, his ten and a half minute solo electric guitar track "To Know A Veil" acting as a palate cleanser, sparse with simple clangorous chords ringing out, abstract scrabbling filling the spaces, or not, drones forming in both memory and reality, it's pretty powerful, like a no wave SUNNO))) perhaps. So that plus The Necks, and good grief, this is worth buying twice, already.
Then Warp's Mira Calix contributes "I Carry You In My Heart", a moody pitter patter percussion piece, over twelve minutes long, quite nice (it kinda goes with another release on this particular week's list, the Fairlights Mallets And Bamboo mix of '80s Japanese avant-bliss). That's followed by the Bay Area's own avant-weirdos Mute Socialite, who really begin to echo or suggest some sort of Tropicalia vibe, however abstract. Their rather groovy "Samba Outlaw" (5:23) turns this disc into the sort of dance party to which you'd invite the Sun City Girls... Another good one. And then finally, there's former MX-80'ers O-Type (featuring guitarist Bruce Anderson) offering up an amazing 23 minute finale to the soundtrack, "Shadowgram" giving The Necks a run for their money in fact, in terms of making repetitive, mesmeric music that actually reminds us a lot of Circle (a tropical Circle?), with shuffling rhythms and nervous textures that makes you wonder just where this Brazilian bus ride is going to end up, or if you want to find out.
So, buy this for The Necks for sure, but stay for the rest and you will be extra pleased. Again, we've never seen the movie and are quite curious, just to see how it could live up to its own soundtrack, which rules!!! More Italians should make movies in Brazil and have soundtracks commissioned for release on German label Staubgold, based on how well this turned out...
Chicago's power acoustician Blake Edwards has been recording as Vertonen for years now, with plenty of caustic noise and atonal hums that draw parallels to the likes of John Duncan, CM Von Hausswolff, and Joe Colley (who has released a number of works through Edwards' own C.I.P. imprint). Yet, this album is easily the most subtle production for Edwards, and it's almost as it he's gone out of his way to burnish away almost every plausible signifier to this album, leaving behind a stately drone construction of phased vibrations and bellowing rumbles. All he provides from the outset is a statement that his source material was culled from a tape made in 1979. While he doesn't come outright and say who made the tape, if you were to ask him (we did), he would honestly say that the tape was from Jonestown; and the title itself comes from the People's Temple book of shortwave radio codes, which is code for "this is not a code." His obfuscation of the source material was intended not to shroud the material further in occluded transgression, but an attempt to remove the potent sensationalism around the Jonestown massacre all the while trying to articulate his own metaphors of horror, control, and fear through an act of negation. The slowly developing passages of flickering, long-stare drones is thick with a creeping sense of dread, even as Edwards makes plenty of compositional gestures to the likes of Eliane Radigue and Roland Kayn. It's as if Edwards has erased everything from that Jonestown tape, except for feelings of tranced-out exhaustion and sun-bleached humidity from the People's Temple members who had left everything behind in the US to embark upon a utopian project that had already turned ugly but soon was to become tragic. This is probably Vertonen's best work to date and certainly comes recommended.
The Swedish conceptualist took a trip to Harar, Ethiopia at the behest of a director for a theater in Sweden who was going to be putting on a play based upon the life of Arthur Rimbaud and asked Hausswolff to compose the score. Harar was one of the last stopping points for Rimbaud in his peripatetic and often debaucherous life; and Hausswolff used that particular location as the jumping off point for his composition involving little more than field recordings, his trusted oscillator, and drones culled from a krar, a tradition Ethiopian lyre. The piece follows Hausswolff's signature ultra-minimalist strategies found on many of his earlier recordings, but the use of the krar as a sound source has proved to be a major find for Von Hausswolff. On the three part "Day And Night," he's built a series of subtle modulations from the sonorous low tones of the krar whose rasping dissonance gives more than a passing resemblance to the work of Eliane Radigue and Phill Niblock, accompanied by the field recordings of wind, insects, rustling leaves, and water. The final piece "The Sleeper In The Valley" is sourced from the Rimbaud poem of the same name, but fear not, this is not a spoken word piece as Von Hausswolff tells us that the morse code blips that run through the layered arcs of low-end sine tones are a transcription of that poem. As common as this is within the Hausswolff vernacular, it's hardly the dead-line drone that Hausswolff will sometimes produce in installations. Instead, this is much closer to the more composed (albeit minimally) of his classic collaborations with John Duncan and his Operation Of Spirit Communication album. Excellent stuff.
Whoops, almost skipped an issue... on the cover of this special "dance issue" Juan Atkins, on account of The History Of Detroit Techno found on page 74. Other articles: Bohannon, Ron Hardy and Chicago House, Konk, Tom Moulton and the Disco Edit, disco diva Jocelyn Brown, an obit for Teena Marie, and a ton more, all profusely illustrated with color photos and vintage record graphics. Get schooled on dance music history, here!
More of a jazz-oriented issue here, the theme is in fact "Jazz's Mad Men". George Benson (on the cover), Billy Cobham, Phil Cohran, George Duke, and many more... also a piece on John Coltrane's lost recordings (or some being reissued), and Nostalgia 77.
Available once again, this legendary doom/death classic, done up deluxe by Southern Lord. Available on vinyl for the first time in about 20 years, and again on cd...
We're always excited to sing the praises of this record, it's been one of our favorites for years, always on the iPod, and never far from the stereos of those of us into the DOOOOM. The last reissue came out way back in 1999, but wasn't always that easy to get, and so were were psyched about this new one, and Southern Lord's version makes perfect sense, especially with the ongoing interest in all things doomy and sludgy AND the fact that probably EVERY SINGLE band on SL owes a HUGE debt to these doom / sludge forefathers. We bet there's even some folks out there who don't realize there was any doom pre- Corrupted / Boris / Earth / SUNNO))). Well let's go all the way back to the very early nineties, head out to Long Island and re-discover the pummelling majesty of the mighty Winter. There's not a doom band worth its stripes who wouldn't cite Winter as an influence, and one listen proves why. Crusty, downtuned sludge metal, but unlike the current crop of ultra doomsters, Winter's roots were in much more traditional thrash and doom metal as well as crusty punk. Often described as a slowed down Celtic Frost, due in no small part to the vocal delivery, Winter managed to mix elements of Black Sabbath (obviously, what doom band doesn't), Hellhammer, diSEMBOWELMENT and UK political crust band Doom into a slithery, creeping, suffocatingly dense blast of chugging guitar, pounding drums and creepy growled vocals. On closer listening their are also strange bits of organ and found sounds and bizarre vocal snippets scattered throughout and buried here and there. There are even guitar solos!! But no normal solos, no these are all spikey and twisted and serpentine, chaotic squalls of prickly squealing freakout that fit perfectly into Winter's desolate doomscapes. The other thing worth mentioning is the lyrics, which at the time got them a lot of attention / flak, quite cryptic for sure, but they seem to focus on saving the environment, anti-pollution, anti-technology, ecological awareness (Exit-13 anyone?) displaying their crusty roots there for sure! Fans of the new crop of doom and ultra doom would do well to take a peek at a band who truly was ahead of their time, a band who helped lay the groundwork for the sonic pummelling provided to you on a daily basis by bands like Skepticism, Esoteric, Rigor Sardonicous, Moss, Bunkur, and even Electric Wizard and Sleep, who might not even exist were it not for Winter.
The vinyl is housed in a super heavy, deluxe, Stoughton style gatefold jacket, and both versions, vinyl and cd, include a big booklet full of lyrics, artwork and old flyers (the lp's booklet in the form of an oversized newsprint insert!)..
The only bummer about the Southern Lord reissue, is that for some reason, this version leaves off the bonus tracks that were included with the previous cd reissue, the equally kick ass Eternal Frost ep, but maybe/hopefully Southern Lord plan on reissuing that one later, on its own. Here's hoping!
Sometimes it gets pretty overwhelming with all the black metal we get coming through these doors, not that we don't love it, but it can become easy to lose track of everything. Which of course makes it really awesome when something just blows you away and reminds you why you got into black metal in the first place. Britain's Wodensthrone happen to be one of those bands. Not that there's anything mindblowingly original about these guys, it's just that Loss is delivered with a sincerity, not to mention an expert musical prowess, that really makes this one stand out among the sea of bands currently making the rounds. Featuring members of Atavist and Winterfylleth and recalling the majestic approach of bands like Emperor, Enslaved, Weakling, and Wolves in the Throne Room, Wodensthrone would be a pretty good example to explain what black metal sounds like to the uninformed. "Epic" would definitely be the word to use here, and this actually caught us a bit off guard considering how many bands have been taking a more raw approach as of late.
Wodensthrone are one of those bands who will remind you that synthesizers can be used for more than creating Cradle of Filth styled ridiculousness, as the keyboards here are both cinematic and sprawling, adding essential atmospherics to make you aware of black metal's obsession with the natural world. While these elements could very easily suck in the wrong hands, here they fit perfectly in conjuring Britain's pagan past. The production on Loss is enormous, and it makes total sense that the band ventured to Romania to record with members of Negura Bunget at their studio. Like Negura Bunget, Wodensthrone expertly merge folk-inspired elements from the respective country with a gigantic metal sound. It's worth noting the pagan influence here, as the melodies and overall mood of the album appear to be a little more, shall we say "positive", when compared to the all out evil of satanic black metal. There seems to be a serious awareness of classic British folk with melancholy acoustic guitars, mandolins, and flutes all commanding a pretty significant presence here, even in moments of all out metallic fury, and it's really refreshing to hear this stuff done so well. Definitely a nice surprise here, and enough to ensure that Loss will be on seriously HEAVY rotation for quite some time.
Electronic/indie music magazine XLR8R is on our reading list this month for sure, with Kode 9 + The Space Ape on the cover, also pieces on Tim Hecker, Hype Williams, Carl Craig, Rainbow Arabia, Seefeel, Mogwai and plenty more!
Yan Jun is quite the mover and shaker in the experimental sound arts community in Beijing; yet unlike the avant-garde of China's visual artists, the big names of Chinese sound art are hardly known outside of the metropolitan areas of China. FM3 would be the only act that most people have heard of; yet artists like Yan have been very active bringing a number of European, Australian, Japanese, and American artists to the mainland as an act of cultural exchange. At the same time, Yan has been producing his own exceptional works including this contemplative album of innerspace travel. The album transcends its humble productions of sinusoidal flutterings of pedal sourced feedback and squiggling aquatic field recordings treated with ring modulation, as Yan seeks a radically different approach to the cosmic listening embarked by the likes of Cluster and Tangerine Dream, whose baroque expansiveness has been subsumed by the vacuum of outerspace (remember the vacant sound design of Stanley Kubrick's 2001?), with just those two sources intertwining in an endless mobius strip of silvery drone and pointilist tactility. It sounds more like Steve Roden taking over an Asmus Tietchens album and allowing the electronically treated sounds and tones to organically evolve into a radiant blossom instead of the purposefully cold and sometimes stiff compositions that Tietchens often produces. A very intriguing record to say the least! Limited stock on this one.
Up until now, Louisville noise rockers Young Widows have trafficked in a dense, bass heavy almost sludgey sort of crush, more in line with groups like Jesus Lizard, Harvey Milk, Karp, Lubricated Goat and Drive Like Jehu, total AmRep old school knuckle dragging, ass kicking pound and pummel. But over the course of the last full length and the series of 7" collaborations, the band did not shy away from melody, and displayed a keen pop sense, that in other bands might seem out of place, but YW just folded that poppiness right in along with the crashing drums, and buzzy basslines, and while we should have been prepared for this, we really just weren't. Some of that sound and vibe is still present, but In And Out Of Youth And Lightness is a whole 'nother kind of beast. Brooding and slithery, a little bit twangy, low slung, druggy and hazy and a little washed out, imagine a noise rock version of aQ slowcore faves True Widow, and you'd definitely be close. The drums are muted and minimal, shuffling more than pounding, the bass still thick and buzzy and driving the proceedings, but here it's more gloom pop than noise rock. The guitars are spidery and skeletal, minor key, unfurling haunting melodies and woozy chords. The opening track sounds like it could burst into proper noise rock action at any point, but it never does, it doesn't need to, instead, it just drifts drowsily, all drugged out and sun baked and gloriously languid.
But the band haven't ditched their noise rock past completely, they can still whip up a serious din, like on the churning riffy "Future Heart", but even then, the vibe is way more post punk, old school gloom rock, all wound up in TW's heavier guitars and mathy crush, yet even amongst all this roiling heaviness, the guitars are reverby, the vocals deep and dramatic, the sound not so heavy as moody, and then just as quickly as the band exploded into noise rock action, they slip right back into brooding blackened ballad territory, "In And Out Of Lightness" sounding a bit like Woven Hand or Sixteen Horsepower, all grimly bluesy, swampy, murky and moody. "Lean On The Ghost" is another slo-mo doom pop twang folk trudge, a hazy chunk of slowcore blues that melds Amrep to apocalyptic swamp folk, and on it goes.
The band having essentially totally transformed into a some glorious sort of of post punk slowcore combo, and as much as we loved them before, this new sound is WAY hitting the spot. Every song a grim black gem, heavy, hooky, haunting, the more we listen, the more we think this might be challenging the most recent True Widow as our record of the year. And it has us imagining our dream tour: Young Widows, True Widow, Crystal Stilts, Woven Hand... if only!
