As many of you probably know, Mark McGuire is the guitarist from Emeralds and has been recording boatloads of tapes and cd-rs both within Emeralds and of the solo variety. Many of these had been released in tiny editions of less than 100 copies, few of which probably travel beyond the Cuyahoga county lines and even fewer manage to end up west of the Rockies. It's been said that these small editions act as something of a musical diary for McGuire, but each of his recordings had been so fully realized that it's hard not to think of him as some ridiculous prodigy channeling the best lazer 'n' crystal Krautrock vibe from Manuel Gottsching, Achim Reichel, and Gunter Schickert.
A Young Person's Guide To Mark McGuire is the much-needed retrospective of a good chunk of those limited edition releases, offering further proof of McGuire's prodigy status. From the opening track on the first disc - 2008's "Dream Team" - all of the hallmarks of McGuire's soaring guitar techniques are present. This track is more in keeping with his 2010 Living With Yourself album on Editions Mego with its sorta-shoegazed blur of skyward gazing drones, that's almost jaunty in comparison to the melancholy that oozes from Emeralds. That's not to say that McGuire doesn't get moody elsewhere on this album ("Flight" and "The Path Lined With Colorful Stones" are excellent examples of this facet to his work). While McGuire is pretty keen on working through countless variations on layered melody and arpeggiated hypnosis, the breaks from that modus operandi are certainly intriguing. Take the Phillip Jeck like collage of operatic vocals and orchestral flares amidst a sea of low-end vibration on "Ghosts Around A Tree," and then there's the Vini Reilly / John Fahey interplay through the elliptically fingerpicked acoustic number "Sun Shining Through The Open Barn Door," that's about as aptly named as you could get.
A stunning anthology for sure!
Since Emeralds released their impeccable album Does It Look Like I'm Here in 2010, the trio has set a very high bar for themselves, not only for the next Emeralds record (whenever that may surface) but also for all of the individual members' various side projects. For the most part, everything John Elliott, Mark McGuire, and Steve Hauschildt have produced by themselves has not strayed far from the Emeralds aesthetic of luminous, analogue electronics that harkens back to the progressive sounds of Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, and early Tangerine Dream, and there have been some completely sublime moments that came close to Does It Look Like I'm Here. The Imaginary Softwoods double lp set was one such album, as was the McGuire solo lp Off In The Distance, and now we have this Mist 2lp, released through John Elliott's Mego-manufactured imprint Spectrum Spools. Mist finds synth-wrangler Elliott working with fellow Cleveland native Sam Goldberg; the two had previously released a couple of lps of sparkling electronics on Arbor and Am. While those records were quite good, House is fucking great.
Out of a tightly interlocking set of synthetic percolations, the opening track "Twin Lanes" launches upward into satellite orbit with an effervescent burst of shimmering noises and one of Elliott's impeccable bass-melodies (think back to "Candyshop" on the aforementioned Emeralds album Does It Look Like I'm Here). "Mist House" is a radiant track of tonefloat purity and church organ hallowedness that eschews the early tracks' step sequencing and arpeggios, while keeping the same sparkling atmosphere. The transition from the fuzzy static laden percolations from "Dead Occasions" to the Kraftwerkian sequences of the mechanical track "Ovary Stunts" is particularly dramatic, especially given the polygon layers of sci-fi melodic wander on the latter track that gives Mist a very Oneohtrix Point Never feel. The album's finale "P.M." fills up all of side D, with prolonged passages of hypnotic arpeggiations coated with interstellar space dust and girded with a sublime motorik churning of step sequenced bass synths. House is easily the best Mist lp to date, and ranks up there amongst the many Emeralds related projects.
Once again, the RETURN OF THE URNS!! For those keeping track, which is a lot of you we're guessing, considering how popular Monument Of Urns is around these parts, this is installment number SIX in the Urns' ongoing exploration of grim black dooooooooom, the sort of lurching, lumbering, blown out, downtuned ultraheaviness we can't ever seem to get enough of. Number six, The Old Man And Death, finds MoU returning to the format of the first 4 releases, a 3" cd-r, housed in a super striking, and meticulously designed oversized sleeve, this time around, there's a thick textured black screenprint of a skeleton riding a ghost horse on the front, and an on old style woodcut on the back, while inside, the disc sits in the middle of a geometric design, overlapping shapes beneath two angels.
And like the past installments, The Old Man And Death is a single track, just shy of 21 minutes this time, and is another corrosive, filthy slab of abject, glacial, tarpit heaviness, the guitars massive, the riffs Teutonic, the drums simple and spare buy crushing, the instruments locked into a sinister plodding death march. The guitars crashing, and then slowly decaying, the riffs transformed into crumbling superdistorted rumbles, before the next riff crashes in. Feedback swirls, the vocals a howling shriek, barely audible, buried in the murk and mire.
And while it's of course crushingly and suffocatingly heavy, it's also dark and droned out, strangely hypnotic, the arrangement very cyclical, repetitive, total trance inducing lowend black doom ritual for sure. Like SUNNO))) jamming with Monarch, or Khanate covering Winter, epic, majestic, slow and low, doom-drone-dirge bliss. Eventually some of the crush is peeled back, in a squall of feedback, revealing a strange muddy minimal riff, it too wreathed in feedback, but soon, that riff blossoms into another brutal black crawl, slithery and sinister, the sound even dronier, the vocals washed out and almost atmospheric, and so it goes, the Urns pounding and pounding and pummeling, until eventually, the sound seems to melt into a viscous black puddle, a swirling, oozing black mass, that rumbles and whirs and groans and buzzes in a gauzy psychedelic haze, before fading to black.
Yet another installment in what has to be one of thee most perfect bodies of work in the extreme ultra doom / black / sludge / drone / dirge underground, and again, all the folks who love Monarch and Bunkur and Moss and The Body and Trees and Habsyll and Fleshpress and Atavist and Orthodox and all the rest, should most definitely be bowing down before Monument Of Urns...
New Mexican Summer 12", from our favorite lady of late night dance floor slow burners. Nite Jewel continues to write really infectious songs that seep into your body and soul, making your body move in such loose and languid ways. We love both the new tracks on this 12" but we may even be blasting the B side more as the Dam Funk club dub of "It Goes Through Your Head" has summer jam of the year written all over it! Samps also does a great remix of "Natural Causes", and it's cool to go back and forth and hear the more organic sounding versions on the A side and then step under that hypnotic disco ball on the B side. Limited to 1000 copies, each hand numbered.
We've mentioned it before, but we do find it sort of strange, the device of doubling a letter in a band name (Mutiilation, Celestiial) or even adding s superfluous one (Wooden Shjips), and now we have Owwl, and granted, Owwl is a way cooler name that Owl. This German duo sent us their cd-r, and like many things, there it sat, for way too long, cuz when we finally did throw it on, we were pretty captivated. Guitardrone records are no new thing, but these guys definitely offer their own take, the instrumentation to begin with, guitar feedback and a 19th century reed organ, and that's it, improvised live in the studio, these three long tracks are lush and dark and haunting and hypnotic. The guitar and the organ both trafficking mostly in low tones so it's often difficult to tell which is which, deep rumbles, and layered whirs, keening almost melodies, the sound so thick at times it almost sounds orchestral, often building to epic crescendos, the sound threatening to crumble, the feedback just this side of howling, instead pulsing and undulating and adding a subtle, almost rhythmic component.
The tracks slip easily from high end thrum, to deep sonorous shimmer, the various bits of buzz and rumble, often turning caustic, the sounds becoming crunchy and crumbly, the distortion seeming to transform the notes and chords into strange decaying textures, sometimes splintering into near chaos, other times slipping into more meditative drifts. The final track is a series of dense swells, the layered tones pulsing and beating against each others, the various overtones creating strange overlapping rhythms, the sound seemingly alive, an active expanse of droneguitar on the verge of blossoming into pure psychedelia, especially when a cascading avalanche of high end tones rains down on the churning black rumble below.
LIMITED TO 70 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered. These are the last copies available. They come packaged in super swank hand made mini book-like sleeves, with an actual photo affixed to the front, while inside there's a nice printed vellum insert.
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The history of music is littered with could have been's and should have been's, and of course what ever happened to's? We all have a favorite band, that for whatever reason never quite made it, or perhaps did make it, but never got nearly as popular as the hundreds and thousands of seemingly less talented bands that did. Unfortunately, it's never just about the music when it comes to critical and commercial success. But it is ONLY about the music when it comes to the joy of creating that music, and the pleasure of listening to it, and the fun of mixtape making, and DJing and all the various other ways we share the music we love. But sadly, that love does not always coincide with the ever important 'right time, right place', and of course, there's so much going on behind and beyond the music. Bands poised for greatness often implode, creative differences, arguments over money, tragic accidents, lack of support from a label, then there's the fickle winds of change, the ever shifting tastes of the public, and well as cultural shifts, be they MTV or grunge or radio or downloads. In some ways, we're lucky, that folks are constantly looking back, and rediscovering music that was overlooked the first time around, or simply giving people a chance to discover something that perhaps happened before they were born, or when they were too young to enjoy it. There's also the regional aspect, there was a time before the internet (did such a time even exist???), where a band could be hugely successful in their hometown, but literally unknown a town or state away.
Back in the eighties, THEE place to be a band, especially a metal band, was Los Angeles. The Sunset Strip. Motley Crue and Poison and glam and hair metal. Los Angeles was the epicenter, and spawned band after band, Guns And Roses, Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns, Great White, and if you lived in Southern California, there were about a million other bands you could see and hear, all trying to make it big. And bands would come from all over the country, and the world, to Los Angeles, where they could find fame and fortune (oh, and girls and booze and drugs!). Which is precisely what a band of brothers from way up in Alaska did, moved to LA, made a handful of records, achieved moderate success, and then called it quits. That band was Pandemonium, and for us, they were THAT band, the one we were discussing in the first paragraph. A band that looked great, sounded amazing, wrote incredible songs, were ready, willing and able to go for it, who seemed poised for the big time, ready to sign to a major, play stadiums, tour the world, but for whatever reason, it just never really happened for them. And yet, they were always one of our favorite bands of the time. Their three album rank amongst our favorite eighties metal records, so much so, that when Andee and Allan, were planning on starting an eighties metal reissue label, with Pandemonium being one of the first releases (Rogue Male being the other!), Andee even got in touch with the band, and things were in the works, and it looked like it might actually happen, but then alas it did not. But at last, the band DID finally end up reissuing all three on hard rock reissue label Retrospect (who were responsible for that crazy hair metal festival Rocklahoma), and finally, these three records are available again, with new liner notes and even BONUS TRACKS, so after years of playing these records to death, and making tapes for everyone we know, and buying every copy we ever came across used to give to friends, we can now express out undying love for these records, so hooky and heavy, and like we said, some of the best eighties metal records you've probably never heard (or even heard of!).
Initially we wanted to make all three our Record(s) Of The Week, selling them as a bundle, since in our minds, they were sort of one epic collection of songs that we had been listening to all together for the last nearly 30 years, but then we figured we wanted folks who might not be that inclined to check out some obscure eighties hard rock, to give Pandemonium a chance, so we picked the first one, the one that made us lose our minds for these guys in the first place, the catchiest of the bunch, and while the band did get heavier, and less glammy, it's their first record that still might just rank as our favorite of the three, and really how could a record called Heavy Metal Soldiers NOT be our favorite??
Originally released in 1983, Heavy Metal Soldiers, their debut, and their first for Metal Blade, almost immediately catapulted them into the limelight, playing all the L.A. hotspots, with all the cool bands of the time, London, Ratt, Y&T, Bitch, Cirith Ungol, Steeler, Slayer, Warrior, White Sister, Leatherwolf, Great White, Wasp, in fact at one point, Metallica was opening for Pandemonium, which definitely spoke to their bright future. As did the songs, which were amazing! The band fusing the heaviness of '70s bands like Black Sabbath and Budgie with those hard rocking Sunset Strip bands with total pop hooks, a sound that immediately endeared them to the scene, the guys digging their heavy riffing, the girls digging the pop hooks. The title track with its haunting slow build intro, all shuffling snare and low slung bassline, and when it finally kicks in, the main riff is a killer, with a wicked galloping rhythm, and an awesome vocal melody, not to mention a drop dead chorus, which really pretty much describes all their songs, they really were like classic pop songs metal-ed up, heavied up, transformed into something super rocking, and while they looked super glam, their sound wasn't as fluffy and light weight as most of the other glam bands at the time (Poison, etc), and even with this first record, their desire to be heavy still managed to shine through, with the songs definitely striking a perfect balance, "Little Lady Lier" starts off with a woozy classical guitar intro, wreathed in hazy falsetto vox, before a quick build to a super chuggy riff, and more killer vocals, and another bad ass chorus. "The Prey" might be one of our favorites, total power pop in hard rock's clothing, the chorus an awesome slow build with a background vocal hook that will get stuck in your head like crazy. And then of course there's the sprawling apocalyptic epic "Radiation Day", about as doomy as these guys get, the song surprisingly dark, a super dynamic arrangement, and hooks to die for, definitely sounds like this must have been their big live set closer, epic and heavy and dark. And the thing is, even the poppiest jams, often explode into classic old school hard rock jams, with some amazing leads, shredding but also super melodic. And it's not just the guitars, the bass is super busy, and WAY melodic, often adding all sorts of texture and countermelody in the unlikeliest of places. And of course the vocals, super distinctive, powerful and melodic, with a keen sense of melody and arrangement, so much so that the verses are often as catchy as the choruses.
This reissue tacks on a handful of demos and alternate versions, as well as Pandemonium's track from the first Metal Massacre compilation. Also included are liner notes, tracing the history of the band by guitarist David Resch, loads of photos too. And sadly, vocalist Chris Resch passed away in 2007, even as the band was gearing up to maybe record new material. But what a legacy this record, and the other two are to him, his brothers, and the dream that almost was. And the records that were such a huge part of our lives, as a teenager, but also an adult.
Not sure what else to say, for 3 decades we've been listening to these guys, and we have yet to get tired of these songs, in fact the second the reissues showed up, we threw them on and have basically been listening to nothing else since. After all that, do we even have to say it? TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED! If you dig eighties metal and hard rock, or wonder what a NWOBHM band like Witchfinder General would sound like if they were from LA (via Alaska), this is a no brainer, but if that has never really been your thing, think about giving this record a try anyway, it's just poppy and catchy enough that you might be surprised. Check out the sound samples too, if you're anything like us, you might become equally obsessed.
And for those of you who think you might as well in fact want all three (which should really be ALL of you), look elsewhere on this week's list for a special three-fer bargain, and you'll find sound samples from the other 2 records as well.
We're making Pandemonium's Heavy Metal Soldiers our Record Of The Week, but as we mention in the review (reprinted below), we originally wanted to list all three of their just-reissued records together as a bundle, cuz they all rule, so for folks who dig that sort of thing, or are just willing to take the plunge, this right here is a specially priced 3 cd bundle, containing all three of Pandemonium's albums, Heavy Metal Soldiers, Hole In The Sky and The Kill, just add this to your cart and you'll get all three. And you won't be sorry. Worth it for the rad cover paintings alone!
For being maybe one of our favorite singer/songwriters EVER, Joel Phelps is definitely WAY underrepresented on the aQ site. Another instance of an artist whose recorded output either preceded the aQ list/website or was in the very early days of the new aQ, well before the long long reviews. Phelps was originally a member of long running indie rock outfit Silkworm, and as we've no doubt mentioned in Silkworm reviews, his departure definitely changed the dynamic of that group, and it was a long time before we could listen to them without missing Phelps too much to enjoy it. The upside of Phelps' departure was a series of solo records so stunningly sublime, in retrospect it was almost a relief to not have to review them. Phelps voice so distinctive, achingly emotional, the musical arrangements minimal, but simultaneously lush and expansive. Every single record Phelps released, on his own, or with the Downer Trio, was, and IS practically perfect. Most sadly long out of print, including this one, but the label that released this on vinyl found a stash so we grabbed a bunch and figured that plenty of folks may have missed out on this record, and on Phelps in general, which is a shame, cuz this stuff is so incredible.
Before we get to the review, let's just mention a list of artists and groups: Will Oldham, Songs:Ohia, American Music Club, Red House Painters, Herman Dune, Mt. Egypt, Mt. Eerie, Sparklehorse, Appendix Out, Smog, Souled American, Vic Chesnutt, Timesbold, we could go on, but anyone into ANY of those, will very likely love Joel Phelps, his music the same sort of super intimate, dark and emotional heartfelt sound that few are able to conjure up, and even amongst this esteemed company, Phelps is unique and distinctive. It's that voice. And his delivery. As we described in a review of another Phelps record: "there's something achingly gorgeous in the way he will s-t-r-e-t-c-h out a vowel until it twists upon itself painfully", his voice clear, and high, and powerful, slipping easily from moody croon, to emotional wail, and the songs here, and all of Phelps's songs in general, dark and delicate, haunting and mysterious. The opener here sets those vocals in a weirdly jazzy setting, upright bass, sweet sad horns, it's strange but it definitely works, although the next track is a tad more traditional, strummed acoustic guitar, woozy lapsteel, and Phelps plaintive wail. And so it goes. A very understated record, and sound, the drums, when there are any, shuffle sadly alongside the guitars, the bass a subtle anchor, the guitar, equally subtle filigree for Phelps' haunting lyrics and again, THAT voice. The vibe is definitely country, or folky, definitely a bit twangy, but set in a more timeless classic downer pop context, bittersweet ballads, that tug the heartstrings, but without being maudlin, instead, these are simply powerful, beautiful songs, from an incredible songwriter, one of our favorites for sure.
VERY LIMITED!!! Long out of print, these were a warehouse find, so we're not sure how many more we can get, if any, so grab one while you can. You won't be sorry.
Pink Reason are another one of those bands we dig that for some reason has yet to make it onto the aQ list, but that changes now. Pink Reason is the work of one Kevin DeBroux (not to be confused with Quiet Riot's Kevin DuBrow, R.I.P), and seems to have found the perfect home on Siltbreeze, with a sound that's murky and jangly, a dirgey minimal noise rock, that's not so heavy on either the noise OR the rock, instead, the sounds are lo-fi and a little ramshackle, a bit folky, twisted and tangled, druggy and psychedelic, although the opening track on this new ep definitely threw us for a loop, with its weird glitched out electronic beats, which quickly erupt into full on drum and bass, all skittery and stuttery, wound around jangly minor key guitar, ghostly droney vocals, not sure it even works, but it's pretty cool, and on about our 2nd or 3rd listen we were digging it pretty heavily.
Nothing on the rest of the record is nearly so radical, although it's all pretty great, more like the other Pink Reason records, woozy Velvets-y drone rock with a distinctly hazy Shimmy Disc like production, all laid back vox, and warped druggy guitar lines, fuzzy almost classic rock sounding noiserock, the guitars so distorted and in-the-red the riffs seem to be melting and crumbling throughout the song, jangly reverb heavy garage pop, a little glammy and swaggery, sounding like eighties Australia or nineties New Zealand, and then there's some murky drugged out psychedelic space rock, and finally, a haunting bit of strummy abstract folk, all atonal strum and warbly whistled melodies, a little bit damaged and dreamily off kilter. Way recommended, as are the other Pink Reason records, reviewed or not.
Earlier in 2011, this Polish powerdrone artist delivered a blistering crescendo of metal machine music at 23five's annual Activating The Music festival. His blister popping frequencies and sawtooth noise offered a potent display of controlled chaos through his minimal set-up of hacked modular synths whose emissions sent more than a few people to the back of the room in search of earplugs and / or shelter from the barrage. But, with this accelerating churning, Piotrowicz was keen on building complex phase patterns and subharmonic rumblings that reflected a composer's touch. This was not merely floorcore pedal stomp action, but something far more refined. Lasting Clinamen was a record that was released a couple years back through the Polish label Musica Genera, but didn't get much in the way of distribution here in the US, and we managed to grab Piotrowicz' last copies while he was in the States.
The album opens with a track whose strategy very much resembles what he did live, with a slow-ramp assault of synthetic noise that really sounds more digital than analogue. Perhaps all of the digital noise technicians with their Max/MSP patches had been mirroring the circuitry of analogue gear all along. When this track snaps to a conclusion, a deadened tone settles everything back down for Piortowicz to build phasing tectonic drones which display a nice chromatic shift away from that crisp sound and into something resembling the smoldering amplifier rumblings that Bruce Russell and Campbell Keale would bring to The Dead C and Birchville Cat Motel, respectively. Piotrowicz saves the best for last with his loping track of mechanoid pulses evolving upon more sawtooth waveforms cast in a frightening atmosphere of pending electrocution, suffocation, and / or immolation. Take your pick. Certainly for fans of Kevin Drumm's more noxious moments, anything by Matthew Bower over the past 15 years, and Zbigniew Karkowski's recapitulations of Xenakis. Limited stock on this title...
Both the Barn Owls have solo records on this week's list, elsewhere there's Evan Caminiti's new single on Trensmat, and then there's this, the long awaited new solo record from the other half of dronefolk duo Barn Owl, Jon Porras. We'd been hearing about this record for ages, Porras' long in the works heavy shoegaze record, but this is no MBV/Lovesliescrushing worship, nope instead, Undercurrent is a logical offshoot of the dark twang flecked drone and drift of Barn Owl, a bit less murky and more crystalline, prismatic, the opening track emerging from a cloud of swirling layered thrum, blossoming into something more more melodic than usual, spidery melodies, draped over a smoldering backdrop of rumble and drift, of hum and shimmer, the sounds a blurred chorale, building to a dreamdrone climax, epic and majestic and powerfully emotional.
The whole record reveals itself as a sort of hazy psychguitar gem, Porras deftly layering darkness and light, wreathing pop in shadow, infusing churning darkness with pop warmth, "Seascape" is a gauzy blisscape, but is underpinned by ominous roiling black sonic clouds, which build and build and eventually swallow the rest of the track, the drama in the melodies struggling to escape the pull of this black hole, haunting and ominous and so intense. "Shore" is another strange melding of hazy drift and rumbling blackened drone, only in this case, the blackness is driven back, revealing the warmth within, the song's second half unfurling all reverby and abstract, while that blackness whispers in the background.
The clean guitar sound is definitely reminiscent of Roy Montgomery, the same sort of softly effected shimmer, but it's that sound combined with the more dense and dark guitarscapes, that create Porras' distinctive Undercurrent, "Peering" another example, wreathing those soft smeared swells of sound with dark grinding slabs of blurred blackness, and roiling riffage. The record closes with "Gaze", a pulsing sprawl of washed out woozy guitarscapery, again a beautiful bit of atmospheric drift, disguising the darkness that lays beneath, but again, light triumphs over darkness, and the record unwinds with a stretch of super spare wide open ambience, the guitars letting lose tendrils of melodies, wrapping them in reverb and letting them float delicately in space, as they fall gently to earth. Eventually piling up into a gorgeously layered final soft squall of bleary and blissful psychedelic haze...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
This Swedish band's self-titled 2008 debut was hailed by us as one of the best - and blackest, in the Satanic sense - efforts of the New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal (bands like Enforcer, Cauldron, In Solitude, and RAM). Now back for their second strike, on new, bigger label Metal Blade, Portrait have produced another excellent, occult album of Mercyful Fate/King Diamond influenced metal mania. The 8 evil, and mostly epic tracks on Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae (we'll expect to see a posting about this title on that "Heavy Latin" blog sometime soon, eh) are once again raging, ripping, riffy speedsters replete with paint-peeling vocals, Satanic subject matter, shredding solos, and sinister melodies... Glorious!
Intricate, energetic, and proudly retro, down to the silver cd face and old school Metal Blade bloody axe logo, Portrait aren't just for killing happy power metal poseurs, but are just the thing to put on (instead of most modern black metal) when you're burning the black candles for a night of devil worship, and would like to get some air guitar practice in at the same time.
By the way, if you liked the rightfully hyped Ghost's Opus Eponymous, but want something a bit more METAL, the much less poppy Portrait is the answer, cranking up the KD falsetto screams whilst dialing down the BOC to zero.
Avid readers of the list will no doubt be familiar with Pyha, the Korean one man black metal band, and his record, The Haunted House, which was recorded when he was just a teenager, and eventually, after much digging and emailing and tracking down, released on Andee's tUMULt label. Still ranks as one of our favorite black metal records ever. And as we proclaimed in the review of that record: "The essence of pure inspired ultra personal musical expression. Powerful and intense, blown out and buzz drenched, depressive and melancholic. Totally in the red, digital distortion, crumbling and furious. The vocals anguished wails and tortured howls, the drums simple programmed beats, weirdly clipped and processed, also wreathed in distortion, keyboards offering up more buzz and shimmer. Total bedroom lo-fi production, but completely idiosyncratic and inspired." We sold tons, and it inspired much worship from the aQ grim black hordes and rightfully so. The ultimate slab of genius outsider blackness, created with little knowledge of the genre, relying more on passion and creativity and ingenuity, and the results were more inspired and more inspirING than 90 percent of the black metal out there. If you've yet to experience that record, check out the review, listen to the sound samples, and GET ONE! You will NOT be sorry. But if you're already a fan, and perhaps, like us, listen to that record like crazy still, and wish you had more, well then this is your lucky day. Ours too! We had no idea this was even happening. There ARE several other actual Pyha records, but according to Pyha himself, this is actually a collection of sketches, rough drafts recorded between 2006 and 2007 for a new album that never materialized, originally intended to just be given out to friends, but then Korean label Misanthropic Art heard it and decided to release it, which makes sense cuz this stuff is KILLER.
Definitely well removed from the sound of the Haunted House, obviously since it was recorded years later. But in many ways it has the same vibe, the same energy, the guitars still buzz, and we're talking BUZZZZZ, but this time the bass is a driving force, thick and heavy, the tempos mid to plodding and doomy, the sound is last black metal and more dark blackened buzz drenched dirgery, the actual playing is definitely improved, the sound more melodic and less textural, at least on the opening track. But then the follow up, titled in Korean, is way more blasting and buzzy and black, the sound in the red and totally and fantastically blown out, but the bass here too, adds a cool melodic component, that makes the song sound more poppy than it is, but also more melancholy. The vocals are processed and seriously sick, but all woven together, it's darkly depressive and strangely pretty.
The next track is even more drenched in buzz, a white hot wall of white noise buzz, the vocals still harsh and demonic, but here the drums are weirdly loping, and the main melody manages to come through, again giving the song a distinctly lilting feel.
The further into the record you get, the more strange and experimental it gets. The next track is some sort of gloom pop, a thick crunchy guitar melody draped over a sea of static buzz, and some strange dueling vocals, clean and chantlike vs metallic shriek, it's almost like a blackened sea shanty, or some traditional folk number transformed into black metal. The following song is more of the same, more distinctly black metal, but again, crooned clean vocals, woozy bass and mournful melodies all woven in, and finally, the last track, the sound is much more murky and muddy, the sound blurred and warm, with some really cool guitar melodies wound into the otherwise droned out blackness. It's actually almost shoegazey at times, like M83 or MBV, the guitars washed out and hazy, and a main melody that's all spidery and wistful, transforming the buzz into some sort of blackened dream pop.
The bonus track is a nearly 14 minute stretch of black ambience, all deep drones, and whirling abstract shimmer, laced with bits of glitch and shards of electronics, the song is peppered with woozy synths, processed demonic vox, more a growly whisper, some disembodied piano, the sound shifting from tranquil to ominous to intense and finally back to tranquil again, eventually drifting off all meditative and understated. Incredible.
Sad to think that Pyha no longer makes black metal, but it's quite a blackened sonic legacy he's left behind, with more hopefully to be unearthed and released in the future...
Another fantastic slab of hushed drone synth minimalism from William Huston, aka Rale, this time around, two epic sidelong sprawls, the first balancing deep string like swells with absolute silence, building a super dynamic dronescape that is at odds with past recordings, which seemed more crackly and rumbly, tapping into the sort of gauzy dronescapery of Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck, but this is much more controlled. The sounds lush and smooth, the swells literally separated by fields of near silence (if not complete silence), each set of tones seeming to emerge from some bottomless black hole, it's not until nearly the second half, when streaks of high end enter the picture, bell like tones, a hushed field of metallic shimmer that drifts and hovers before being overtaken by waves of warm whir and soft focus buzz, and then finally the crackle and haze come in, a deft merging of synthdrone and field recording, into something warm and wonderful, but slightly ominous, and a little bit alien, the sound moving continuously from washed out melodic blur, to barely there ultraminimal drift.
The flipside is a thick wall of sound, a deep thrum wreathed in textured ambience, which gradually peels away, leaving a warm muted buzz, that fades again to near nothingess, a distant shimmer in a sea of crackling sonic motes, gradually building to something almost industrial, but still woozy and washed out, the crumbles and distorted crunch smoothed into textured drones. The crackles and various bits of noise growing in intensity, until finally the drone follow suit, exploding in a soft cacophony, which itself burns brightly, before fading out, only to burst into sonic flame once again. So nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! In a gorgeous fluorescent blue, silver foil stamped jacket.
- MPEG stream: I
- MPEG stream: II
Probably best known for their song "Prehistoric Dog" and its hilarious video, that found the big bearded Red Fang folks, rocking out in their kitchen, drinking about a million cans of beer, and then fashioning the empty beer cans into chain mail, helmets and various weapons, with which they proceed to beat the living crap out of a troupe of L.A.R.P.-ers in the park. That's 'live action role players', but the L.A.R.P.-ers have the last laugh as they procure a magic sword and proceed to slay the members of Red Fang, tearing them limb from limb, head from torso, Monty Python style. And somehow, those visuals perfectly suited the sounds a sort of big riff, slow groove, Karp meets the Melvins stoner metal crush.
This new record finds the band taking that same sound and polishing it up a bit, adding some extra psychedelic filigree, a pretty slick, ultra heavy production, the songs more complex and epic, with a killer bout of dueling harmony guitars, but the Melvins vibe looms large, the vocals sounding especially Buzz-worthy.
But then the second track finds Red Fang getting seriously poppy, slipping into Torche / Floor territory, which to be honest, they maybe weren't all that far removed from in the first place, And that song "Wires" is pretty killer, hooks galore, more catchy psychedelic guitars, almost Queens Of The Stoneage sounding vox, and what sounds like some thick buzzing organ. And actually, much of the record plays out like some alternate, heavier, weirder QOTSA, and hell we're not complaining. Those jams definitely harken back to that Kyuss / QOTSA transition, where the difference between the two was negligible, and the songs were simultaneously catchy as hell, but crushingly heavy. We're also reminded of Open Hand, who for a while seemed destined to be the new QOTSA. But it's not all sweet pop and catchy hooks, not by a longshot, even at it's poppiest, the sound is still heavy, and those poppier numbers sit alongside some serious sonic reminders of their old, more feral sound, that whole Karp thing for sure, but updated with the sound of groups like Kylesa and Baroness, epic downtuned crush and pounding mathy pummel woven into epic stoner metal grooves, which just so happen to be catchy as fuck. Nice packaging too.
And in case you somehow never saw that video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuRKRFjm-HA
The Way Things Go is a very impressive electro-static drone anthology documenting a bunch of barely released material from the Texas gear junkie Rick Reed. This is a man who's been tinkering with vintage synths, shortwave radio, and sinewave generators for well over 25 years, woak from the classic progressive electronic sound of the likes of Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler, through the nihilism of the post-industrialists (e.g. MB, Arcane Device, John Duncan, etc.), and into post-noise constructs of liquid psychedelia from Emeralds and all of their satellite projects. In so many ways, this could have found a nice home on John Elliott's Spectrum Spools imprint, but Reed stays with the ever impressive Elevator Bath.
There is some overlap between this collection and the self-published Celestial Mudpie album that Reed issued a couple years back. In particular, there's Reed's very evocative and chilling soundtrack to the Ken Jacobs film Capitalism: Child Labor that is an intense piece of tonal vibration, slipping from Andromeda Strain styled pulses upon rotating layers of a atonal hums, arching drones, and nervous lines of analogue static. Another high profile soundtrack is "Hidden Voices Pt 1." which was composed for the Hermann Nitsch gallery exhibit "The Orgies Mysetries Theater" in Houston back in 2005. This track contains the bloodcurdling atonality that Nitsch composes for his own aktions, but Reed twists the stratified dissonance with deep space blorp, shards of Birchville-esque distortion, and shortwave SSB detunings. The whole album follows suit with muffed static cracklings amidst radioactive clouds of analogue fired tone float, sulking at times into a melancholy atmosphere but always immensely complex. Very highly recommended stuff, and yes this does come with a download card. Nice.
Killer split from these two bands, RST most AQ folks should know by now, New Zealand guitarist Andrew Moon, who delivers another fantastic chunk of dark, dense, humid guitardrone, darkly meditative, but surprisingly active, the swirling blackened churn alive with buried melodies, and ever shifting textures, spaced out and psychedelic for sure, but more a softly swirling bit of layered mesmer, rife with muted feedback, and jagged shards of fragmented melody buried in the mix, kinda wish this was a 12" and this track was waaaay longer.
The flipside comes from US outfit Insect Factory, who we had never heard before, but who apparently played the Terrastock festival back in 2008, this being their first recording since. Good stuff, and a nice contrast to RST's darker drift. Insect Factory are a much noisier proposition, a warped psychedelic collage, muted percussive loops, all woozy and warbly, wheezing melodies, layered textures, softly distorted and dreamily chaotic, it sounds a lot like a more dreamy drifty Our Love Will Destroy The World, with a similarly skewed kitchen sink style, all the sounds blurred into something more washed out and melodic, druggy and hypnotic.
We first heard these occultic stoner psychedelic black doom Swedes on the 4 way split On The Powers Of The Sphinx, where they were teamed up with Aluk Todolo, Nightbringer and Nihil Nocturne. We were pleasantly surprised, as we were expecting some sort of black metal, but what we got was way more stonery and psychedelic, and as we described in that review sounding "like Kyuss at 16 rpm", which still pretty much holds true. This is tripped out, downtuned lysergic heaviness, thick stoner riffs, wild wah wah guitars, swirling occultic atmospheres, woozy low slung basslines, some serious grooves, and some totally tripped out, heavily effected vox, Electric Wizard fanatics might have just found their new band, that is if they were dreaming of a band that sounded sort of like Electrix Wizard, but WAY weirder and WAY more druggy and seriously fucked up. Which is pretty much what these guys are.
Laying down massive thick, super distorted riffs, the band slow motion swinging, slipping from stoner groove, to doomy churn and back again, the bass doing that weird walking thing that was all over Sabbath songs, the guitars occasionally erupting into little druggy effects drenched licks, and then the vocals, drawled and woozy and hazy and laid back, also wreathed in effects, a sort of true doom croon, but run through a wall of blown out fractured effects, and it's not just the sounds, the songs are pretty fucking bizarre too. "Aion Of Drakon" builds the whole track on a weird effected stuttery guitar loop thing, making it sound super hypnotic, a pulsing and pulsating groove, still super saturated, and in-the-red, but warped and subtly rhythmic, wound around big pounding drums, and all blurred into heaving black swells, the sound building to almost raga like tranced out stoner doom rituals, super psychedelic and seriously freaky.
Some of the other tracks slip into a more straight forward lumbering lurch, but even then, things continue to twist and transform, while other tracks, weave all manner of sounds, high end streaks, flute like flutters, warped effects, processed vox, into impossibly damaged, bit irresistibly mesmerizing slo-mo grooves, some tracks with dubbed out drums careening all over the place, sounds weird, and it is, but it works. Imagine a Sabbath 45, dipped in peyote, melted a bit over an open flame, and then spun manually on an old victrola, broadcast through a wall of Orange amps, heavy heady, far out and fucking absolutely incredible. Just might be our new favorite metal record. And was we mentioned above, all of you folks freaking out over Electric Wizard, Saturnalia Temple is what ET would sound like if you were dosed with PCP and horse tranquilizers, which is, at least in this case, a very good thing...
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.
So often you might read about an album we carry here at Aquarius that sounds as if it were recorded in a bunker, a tomb, a sewer, a cave, a warehouse, or some other nasty, gritty space whose nastiness and grittiness seeps into the recording itself. As much as we would like for each of those times we make such allusions to be true, it's actually quite rare that musicians would record an album in such a location. Conrad Schnitzler and Wolfgang Seidel have done just that, as they brought a bunch of synthesizers down to an abandoned cellar at the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin to record this excellent set of Kosmische electronic blorp. Schnitzler, of course, is a Krautrock legend having worked with the earliest incarnations of Tangerine Dream and the first sessions in Kluster (before the K became a C), and moving on to producing some of the finest examples of claustrophobic proto-electronica from the Krautrock era (e.g. Con and Ballet Statique). Seidel had worked with Schnitzler in the aforementioned Kluster as well as Eruption way back in the day, with sporadic collaborations throughout the past couple of decades. It's impossible to tell who's doing what on this recording of oblique electronic mashings that are equally psychedelic and claustrophobic. Warbling structures of algorithmically complex patterns get torn apart with thrumming electronic noises, weird semi-melodic clunkery, and mad-scientist erratic behaviors. Consequenz 010B is a full 65 minutes in length, but it's limited to 250 copies of which we have limited stock.
Just in time for summertime, it's two new jams from San Francisco's finest garage rock wunderkid, Ty Segall. Both of these tracks prove once again that Ty doesn't even need to be lo-fi or or in the red to sound super rad, cuz the fact is he can write seriously and undeniably damn good songs. Both of these tracks have a sun soaked and dusty quality that burns with such a nice slow sizzle. Hot on the heels of his record store day release of T. Rex covers, you can tell Ty's been basking in some '60s and '70s psych glory as of late. There are nice echoes of Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, and Moby Grape in these two tracks. Whether his songs are full throttle rockers or more mellow and spaced out like these two are, they always sound so damn good!
Featuring one part Kentucky crusty black metallers Panopticon, and one part Kentucky blacknoise buzzers Wheels Within Wheels, one might not have expected something so melodic, but for all its melody, the debut from Seidr is also a crushingly heavy slab of doooooooooom. Laced liberally with post rock, shoegaze, blackdrone, and really pretty much anything else these guys felt like mixing in. The good news is that somehow, even with all of those disparate elements, the final sound is so much more than its constituent parts.
The tracks are long, and they build slow, the guitars spidery and softly reverby, the drums tribal, eventually exploding into thick swaths of blackened doom, the guitars grinding and chugging, the drums pounding, the vocals a demonic bellow, but even once the heaviness ensues, those spidery guitar melodies keep right on, intertwining with the heavier chug and churn, transforming what would otherwise be more standard doom/sludge into something weirdly washed out and sort of pretty. And yeah, we know you're not supposed to describe stuff this heavy as pretty, but fuck it, we're pretty sure that's what these guys were going for, the perfect balance of extreme heaviness and delicate melody.
The obvious comparisons will be Neurosis, Isis, Pelican, even Asunder and Agalloch, but Seidr's sound is way more black and way more doooooooomy, plus there's definitely plenty of Mogwai and Godspeed and Explosions In The Sky going on as well, which is fine with us. The sound is darkly emotional, heavy as fuck, and super melodic, even at its heaviest, the sound manages to exude emotion and melody, which is rare, especially without losing any of its heft, Seidr definitely seem like the oddball on Flenser, which has so far trafficked pretty much exclusively in black metal, but Seidr's sound is still pretty black, and hell, maybe this is the band that gets Flenser noticed beyond the grim kvlt underground. Although, that said, for all of Seidr's post rockisms, and melody, they're far from being anywhere close to mainstream, this is still some seriously twister, blackened postrock black doom heaviness, and we're digging it big time.
Another official GoD vinyl reissue (following the Kalacakra we listed not long ago) of a krautrock rarity. Well, is it krautrock if it's from Switzerland? Sorta, it's heavy progressive Sixties blues psych in any case, full of hammering Hammond organ. And being Swiss, these guys were lucky enough to obtain appropriately shiver-inducing (and sexually suggestive) cover artwork by H.R. Giger, for their lone, rare, 1969 album release!
The music isn't quite creepy enough to live up to Giger's cover, though The Shiver can certainly get moody. The opener is fairly ominous, an instrumental called "Repent Walpurgis", with weeping wailing guitars and organ, and bombastic drumbeat breakdowns, though it has a nicely melodic piano passage too. And they sound quite liturgically somber - as well as psychedelic - on "Hey Mr. Holy Man", another of the other tracks here that might invite comparisons to AQ-fave Austrian krautrockers Paternoster. Also, we dig their downer cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", clearly inspired by The Animals' version more than that of Nina Simone.
While this is "pop music" it's certainly got something of a dismal, druggy vibe. Also this album is most definitely bluesy - and if you don't like that, then their song "What's Wrong About The Blues" will answer its own question!
Gatefold sleeve, numbered limited edition of 1000.
It's been years now that we've been singing the praises of Canada's Sloan, easily one of THEE best power pop bands EVER. And certainly one of Cup and Andee's favorite bands ever. And while we'd always suggest that Sloan newbies start with Smeared or Twice Removed or One Chord To Another, we'd absolutely stand behind each and every one of their records. And while we often find that some of 'em are slow growers, we realized that it might be because we're always anxiously waiting for a new Sloan record, and all that time we're listening to the one before it, until it becomes our favorite and so the cycle continues.
This record though, is kinda crazy catchy right out of the gate, "Follow The Leader" is some seriously hook filled organ driven power pop, and immediately sticks in your head, fuzzy and jangly, with some cool unlikely instrumentation, and that immediately recognizable Sloan melodic sense, and it's also weird, beginning the record as they often do with some strange sonic something, whether it be a fake live audience, or a snippet of a different song, and here they even mess with the end of the song, starting what does in fact seem to be an entirely different song during the last 30 seconds, sounding totally melodically unrelated, until it sort of seems to tie back in, but instead it just becomes the next track, another killer catchy jam. String laden, super melodic, and again jangly and hooky as hell. And so it goes. Of the last few Sloan records this one is definitely the least in need of repeat listens to lodge itself in the pop center of your brain. If you're a fan you already own this. If you're not, but you've got a pop sweet tooth, give this a try, and for goodness sake, grab those other three Sloan records. Odds are you'll become obsessed, as most Sloan fans do, and need em all. We can only do so much proselytizing, needless to say, Sloan is one of the only bands whose records get played all the time by the popnerds around here, all their records, all the time, STILL. And we've been listening to this one like crazy since it came in. Which is really the best recommendation we can think of.
Ok, well if the world really ends this weekend ("Judgment Day" Saturday May 21st y'know) then I think THIS is what we plan to be listening to, and loud, when the Christians get Rapturously sucked up to heaven leaving the rest of us to deal with God's wrath or whatever. Hella epic doom metal here folks, it'd make the perfect soundtrack to all that apocalypse... This cd is a remastered reissue of the two cult cassette demos done by this Swedish band back in the day (circa 1989 and 1992), almost 80 minutes of music in total. Majestic, massive, mystical, and as you might expect, manna to Candlemass fans, this band's closest comparison.
Includes the song "Queen In Black", typical of Sorcerer's grandiose, dramatic style, one that was covered by modern day Puerto Rican epic doom metal mavens Dantesco on a recent release reviewed here, you may recall. And speaking of covers, this disc contains one too, an impressive take on Rainbow's classic "Stargazer", with Sorcerer's vocalist ably acquitting himself in the Ronnie James Dio role.
This edition (nicer than the cd compilation done in 1995) includes new liner notes from long time Sorcerer fan John Perez, of equally epic doomsters Solitude Aeturnus (a big enough fan to have reissued this on his own label Brainticket!). Lyrics also included in the cd booklet, along with art from the original cassettes.
So if you dig old school, melodic metal with leaden riffage, squiggly guitar solos, the occasional tolling bell, and - most significantly perhaps - soaring, cathedral-spire-ascending vocals, a la Candlemass, Solitude Aeturnus, Dantesco, Savatage, Memory Garden, etc., then Sorcerer is a definite must-have. Too bad they broke up after making these two tapes (which sound fantastic, by the way, not at all like "demos"), no doubt on account of how this style wasn't terribly in vogue at the time... but apparently now they've reformed and have been playing some European festivals, so maybe there will be more to the Sorcerer discography sometime soon. Well, long as Saturday isn't really Judgment Day, that is!
NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! Here's some of what what we wrote about this way back when it first came out as a vinyl release:
It's hard to believe this is real. In fact, it took a lot to convince Andee, who was sure this was some sort of elaborate prank. But it's one of those things that just makes you proud / embarassed to be an American. Elizabeth Clare Prophet purchased 24,000 acres in Paradise Valley, Montana and started The Church Universal and Triumphant, a creepy new age doomsday cult in which Prophet channeled spirits such as Jesus, Buddha, K-17, Morya, Quan Yin, Afra, Hercules, Mighty Victory, Astrea, Shiva, Pope John XXIII, and more. (Sort of like J.Z. Knight of Yelm, Washington and her channelling of "Ramtha" except even more scary.) Prophet and her husband stockpiled arms, built giant bomb shelters, and coerced their devotees to purchase their own survival equipment at exorbitant prices. Throughout its existence various members of CUT were indicted for kidnapping, lost custody of the children who belonged to the church and were investigated for tax exempt status and firearms violations. In 1995 former member Joeseph Pietrangelo Jr wrote a book condemning CUT entitled "Lambs to Slaughter: My Fourteen Years with Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Church Universal Triumphant".
But the thing that really puts CUT on the map for us is their way of conducting their religious services. The tapes of these services have been floating around for years already. Those of you familiar with Negativland's 1989 album "Escape From Noise" will already be familiar with an excerpt of one of the tracks on this album, as they used it for the track "Michael Jackson", and Steve Fisk has been using these tapes for years as well. This record features live recordings of Clare Prophet 'speaking' out against the evils of rock music. She sounds perfectly normal as she introduces her 'psalms' or 'songs' or 'speeches' or whatever they are. But when she gets going, it's amazing. And so goddamn insane sounding. Her rapid fire high pitched testifying sounds a bit like an impossible mix of an auctioneer, a yodeller, the guy who sings the directions at a square dance, Neil Hamburger huffing helium and variations of baseball's 'hey batter batter' chant only faster. It's like that sound you make when you sort of hum/breathe out and move your finger up and down between your lips making a sort of 'bebubebubebubebubebubebubebubebu' sound. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever heard! A must for all cult fanatics, new age withdrawal victims, seekers of the truly strange, and fans of extended, trancelike vocal techniques. Ever so highly recommended! We'd almost have made this cd edition our Record of the Week if we weren't certain that it would probably bug the heck out of more people than (like us) would love it!!
Another amazing release from VHF (who also brought us the Record Of The Week by Alexander Turnquist), and another fantastic disc of modern minimalism / 21st century classical, this one from the duo of Jesse Sparhawk and Eric Carbonara, who play the 38-string lever harp and the 22-string upright Chaturangui guitar respectively, hence the sixty strings of the title. Carbonara was trained by none other than Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, so there is definitely an Indian vibe to the proceedings, a dreamlike Raga feel, but Sparhawk also plays in psych folk outfit Fern Knight, so there is a bit of that sort of buzzy dreamy dronepsych going on as well.
Two long tracks, sprawling and spacious, the two instruments weaving lush webs of melody, those melodies constantly shifting and intertwining, like the dreamiest and new agiest krautrock, warm and tranquil, deeply mediative and mesmerizing, the harp melodies often leaping to the fore, while the guitar buzzes sitar like beneath. The second track is a bit more folky, the guitar urgently strummed, while the harp offers some melodic counterpoint, the overall sound very dark and percussive, eventually settling down into something a bit dronier and driftier, which is when a snare drum enters the mix, seemingly replacing what would normally be tabla, and playing tabla like rhythms, shuffling and skittery, the effect is quite fantastic, not so much propulsive as textural, the guitar melodies beginning to sound almost flamenco, as the harp takes on the supporting role, unfurling a gorgeously repetitive loopscape, which the guitar soon mirrors, until the two are engaged in an impossibly tangled dance, before the song finishes in a folky flourish. So incredible. The sort of record we want never to end...
Hot on the heels of the recent super limited cassette on Flingco (got a few left, ask if you want one), comes this also limited lp from Gareck Druss, aka A Story Of Rats, who might be more familiar to aQ folks as a member of PDX doomdronedirge outfit Tecumseh. And A Story Of Rats actually seems like a logical extension of the Tecumseh mothership, a more minimal, hushed sound, but definitely the same sort of dirgey drift.
Thought Forms is a single sprawling epic split up into two sidelong movements, the first is as you might expect, a creepy atmospheric dronescape, all distant sounds, reverbed field recordings, warm whirling tones, the sound drifts meditatively, but begins to grow more industrial, as the sounds grow more caustic, bell like chimes, are wreathed in distortion and begin to crumble, vocals buried so they sound like more rumbles and whirs, keening fragmented melodies drift beneath the surface, the sound constantly in motion, but subtly so, shifting from deep somnambulant creep to washed out shimmer and back again. The second side/movement is more looped and hypnotic, woozy and psychedelic, the sounds more hazy and softly swirly, melodies blurred into chordal thrum, it's prettier than the A side, but the darkness seems to grow gradually, a droned out soft noise that builds and builds into a crumbling and ominous black buzz outro. Most definitely for fans of all things slow and low, minimal and droney, dark and drifty.
The packaging is incredible, hand screened jackets, black and metallic gold ink, the vinyl pressed on swirled black and grey vinyl, packaged with a super swank insert, again hand screened in metallic gold ink, on heavy textured paper.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
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...
Long in the works debut from this Oakland co-ed doomdronedirge duo. And we pretty much already knew we were in for something good. C'mon, they're called Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, the record's called Kosmiche Death Worship, it comes in a cool silver stamped envelope, with a silver ink printed insert, the song titles and label info are physically carved into the cassette itself, and apparently the first few copies included an actual deer tooth. How bad ass is that? Suitably bad ass for the dark sonic rituals housed within, long sprawling droned out landscapes, bleak and barren, guitars, synths and electronics, woven into churning pulsing expanses of black ambient shimmer and droning industrial drift, think Wolf Eyes, Brighter Death Now, Wicked King Wicker, MZ412, this is some serious black ambient terrorism.
Fields of static cloak smoldering low end murk, jagged shards of feedback drift atop filthy pitch black sonic swells, fractured electronics are wrapped around minimal synth thrum and smeared into hazy dirgescapes, that creep and drift and ooze, the melodies buried and tangled in each tracks muted and muddy sonic morass, but definitely present, and infusing these songs with some sort of melodic core, which definitely makes these haunting sonic rituals actually musical, instead of just textural, the various sounds coalescing here and there into ghostly almost rhythms, but just as often slipping into a sort of blurred shimmer. The final track is the most majestic of the bunch, jettisoning most of the noise, and letting the synths and electronics carry the sound, resulting in a sound both epic and majestic, like the coolest black metal intro ever, stretched out into a cinematic creepscape, the sound growing more and more dense and chaotic, before slipping into a weird pulsing almost sci-fi sounding synthdrone outro. Definitely down to hear more from these two...
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!! And as mentioned above, housed in silver ink screened envelopes, with silver ink screened inserts.
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We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it.
We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned...
Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears...
Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around.
So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today.
Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe.
Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily!
Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be.
The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort.
Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty.
Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Even moreso maybe than The Puritan album we ROTW'd last time, being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help.
If we can persuade a ton of folks to buy this, hopefully that won't make Tony Tears any -less- unhappy, because we're looking forward to more from this miserable, mesmerizing, and altogether unique act... stay doomed Mr. Tears!
The last record from Alexander Turnquist, the lovely and exquisite As The Twilight Crane Dreams In Color, was a fantastic surprise from this fairly new to us (but quite prolific) composer/guitarist. That record was a lush landscape of glimmering harmonics, and crystalline ambience, all woven around Turnquist's strange and inventive guitar playing. This new record seems to follow suit, with Turnquist again setting the foundation with impossibly dense little soft squalls of steel string tangle, lush with overtones and unlikely harmonics, it's like some avant Appalachia, a sound we wish would go on much longer than its way too brief 2 minutes. But then that feeling is washed away by the equally lovely title track which follows, a swirling, sweetly melodic guitarscape, again, a looped set of steel string tangles providing the anchor, creating a billowing cloud of washed out melody, not unlike pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, a rapid succession of notes somehow transformed into something tranquil and serene, the tangled melodies further tangled by vibes and violin, those two elements providing the melodic counterpoint, and some extra sonic pathos, adding a dark bit of tension, and a sweet melancholia. The sound is dense, while remaining ethereal and dreamlike, the repetition adding a drone element, that makes everything hypnotic and totally mesmerizing.
On "Spherical Aberrations" the trio apply the same methodology to chamber music, the vibes almost jazzy, the violin achingly melodic, all the while the guitar spinning impossible webs of melody and texture underneath.
The record's centerpiece would have to be the sprawling "Waiting At The Departure Gate", which take Turnquist's Reich/Riley compositional style and lets it spread out into a gorgeous layered epic, the guitars impossibly intricate and dense, eventually sounding nothing like guitars at all, instead like some sort of sound generator, while the vibes and violin weave magical melodies over the top, the sound stately and darkly romantic, Turnquist's guitarscapes constantly slipping from background texture to main melody and back again, before finishing off with a bit of minimal Appalachian folk drift. The record is bookended with another brief bit of harmonics heavy steel string tangle, that sounds like a way more avant experimental Michael Hedges. So fantastic. Turnquist is fast becoming one of our favorite modern composers/guitarists!
You'd have to have been living under a rock, to not have heard all the hype about Tyler the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt and the rest of the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All crew, a collective of teenage rappers, producers, skaters and visual artists, who have in a matter of months gotten the whole underground all in a tizzy, the blogs gushing over every single thing these guys have done. And as always, our first impulse was to dismiss the whole thing as just another overhyped bit of internet bullshit. But all it took was hearing a couple songs, seeing the twisted videos, and seeing their killer live performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, to convince us that for once, the hype was well deserved.
Their sound definitely recalls the horrorcore sound of the nineties, especially the Gravediggaz, and while the band publicly deny the comparison, it's hard NOT to hear the connection, the vibe and production is super spare, creepy and intense, Tyler and his crew definitely strip it WAY down though, often JUST the beat, the rhymes, and a minimal amount of creeped out ambience. "Yonkers", the first single is the perfect example, with its super stripped down beat, weird industrial loop, and low slung bassline, over which Tyler spits some seriously fucked up and off kilter rhymes, and if you've seen the super stylized video, where he eats a live beetle and then hangs himself, it's pretty bad ass. "Sandwitches" is another good one, with it's horror movie like synth melody, draped over a swaggery, lumbering beat, a definite witch house vibe, but here all chopped up and stuttery, woozy, druggy and seriously demented. On a few tracks, Tyler dips into some warped woozy R&B, his flow transforming the sound into something that sounds more like Ariel Pink than R. Kelly, his vox pitched WAY down, multiple voices all tangled up, engaging in strange surreal conversations, but before too long, the sound slips right back into another sprawl of fractured warbly hip hop, oozing blackened off kilter grooves, the loops twisted and unraveling, the pitch constantly shifting, the perfect fucked up and fractured backdrop for Tyler's baffling and brilliant flow.
The first thing you notice is the goofy Eddie Murphy cover art, with the altered tagline "He's been ZUULed, thrown through a window, and arrested." The second thing you notice are the equally cheesy sounds inside, channeling the same eighties VHS soundtrack grooves as before, but somehow, where in the past, Umberto sounded like horror movie scores, or lost John Carpenter soundtracks, or sci-fi fantasy weirdness, this one sounds like it COULD actually have come from an Eddie Murphy movie, funky synthed out grooves, programmed drums, faux horn melodies, at least on "Put An APB On Those Bastards". "Common Street trash" almost sounds like it could have been titled "Love Theme from Common Street Trash", all hazy washed out melodies, another weird horn like refrain, everything super dramatic and heartfelt and again fantastically cheesy. "Going Rogue", laces some piano over soaring strings, some big stadium drums, a slow building super tense, but all too brief bit of dramatic musical tension, before the big finish, "Illegal Entry With Intent To Zuul", with its Barney Miller bassline, sizzling high hats, new wave drums, and yep, another cheesy electronic sax solo, all washed out and woozy, as faded as the crappy VHS print of whatever imaginary movie this came from, the funky bass rooting it solidly mid eighties, same with the sax, the second half gets a little more far out and new wavey, with some strange synth melodies, all the while teetering right on the edge of goofy retro synth revivalism and the sort of thing we weren't sure we understood even the first time around... Goblin fans should be pleased!
Wheels Within Wheels is the curiously monikered project of a man called Crow (one half of the black doom duo Seidr, whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and is a fantastically brutal and blown out collection of isolationist blacknoise buzz, each track a suffocating black hole of sound, the buzz so intense it seems to define the sound, reminding us of Wrath Of The Weak or Paysage D'Hiver, and other sonically like minded bands, in that the BUZZ IS ALL. WWW definitely tempers his black metal buzz with plenty of industrial drone and abstract noise, the opening track in fact is more noise than black metal, but still, there's the buzz, thick swaths of static guitarbuzz, sprawling and tangled into heaving black swells. It's a bit like black metal with the drums removed, and the riffs slowed way down, the distortion cranked way up, although about 6 minutes in, the buzz seems to coalesce into actual riffing, and it's a glorious buzzy crawl, the sound so hot and in-the-red it seems to be constantly peaking, making the sound even more distorted and fractured sounding. And once the sound gathers momentum, it's the perfect black metal, washed out, blurred and blown out, almost like a Merzbow / Tim Hecker / Pyha mash up, and if that doesn't sound fucking bad ass. Weird that when the buzz finally abates it reveals an acoustic guitar strumming away underneath, which has us wondering what else is going on beneath the surface.
The next track, "Galvanzied Astral Corpses" is even more distorted, if that's even possible, but instead of sounding heavier or more black, it somehow sounds dreamier, almost shoegazey, like a blackened Nadja or something, the main melody lilting and lovely, but buried beneath layer after layer of heavily distorted riffage. There also seems to be some sort of echo drenched sampled vocals, very haunting and mysterious, but this is totally the sort of stuff that hits the spot, simultaneously heavy and buzzy, but also dreamy and droney and hypnotic, this is not the sort of black metal that induces headbanging, it's the sound that brings on deep trance, this is drifting off tripping out heaviness of the highest order.
And the whole record is equally entrancing, impossibly dense and oozing with black buzz, this is the rare black metal record, that while grim and bleak and black and seriously punishingly heavy, it's also droney, and abstract, and weirdly blissed out and dreamy, there's even bass, a rarity in black metal, but it adds to the weight of these jams, and even gives a few of the tracks a sort of groove, but as mentioned above, it's all about the buzz, and metalheads and dronelords can all agree on the power of the buzz, and Wheels Within Wheels is one of the few bands who seem to be creating blackdrone rituals for both.
VERY VERY LIMITED. We got our copies (in)directly from the band, but as this came out last year, these could very well be our last copies ever...
Artsy mathrockers Battles are hanging around colorfully on the cover, cool pic! Inside, they talk about their new album Gloss Drop, which features guest vocals from both Eye Yamantaka and Gary Numan! Also in this issue of this monthly must-read for musical obsessives like us, there's interesting essays from Chris Cutler (against filesharing) and Simon Reynolds (about the current trend of "retromania"), an "Invisible Jukebox" session with Demdike Stare, a feature on sea shanties, and a scene report from Hong Kong, amongst other interestin' stuff... Plus the usual news, reviews, etc.
Zombi must feel like Neurosis did back in the day. Returning after a few years with a brand new record, only to gaze out on a sea of bands who sounded just like them. And discovering that their sound, in their brief absence, had become an actual genre, and a ridiculously overpopulated one at that. But like Neurosis, Zombi return as royalty, their cinematic space psych and soundtracky synthscapes untouchable, even by the legions of wannabes, fellow Carpenter / Goblin worshippers all, Umberto, Applehead, Zander Harris, Gatekeeper, Dylan Ettinger, Nightsatan, Roll The Dice, Soft Metals and all the rest, as good as they may be, and as much as we dig all of them, still bow before this dynamic duo, whose epic stretches of spaced out synths are wrapped around REAL drums, propulsive and powerful, the sound a perfect hybrid of washed out retro-futuristic synth swirl, and churning kraut flecked post rock, the tracks extended trancelike epics, the pulsing synth bass looped and mesmerizing, peppered with warm melodic swells, the drums pounding out equally mesmerizing tribal rhythms. The opening title track here sounds almost too short at 7 minutes, and like it could erupt at any moment into a second, even more epic movement, but instead, remains locked tight, cyclical and hypnotically repetitive.
The next few tracks slip closer to the cosmic dancefloor, wild squalls of tangled synths, woozy, melancholy melodies, but again, the real drums make all the difference, on "Slow Oscillations" adding some awesome rapidfire fills and flecking the grooves with little bits of double kick filigree, while on "DE3" twisting up a classic disco rhythm into something a bit more fierce, anchoring the new age swirl, all building to a seriously epic sci-fi climax. "Shrunken Heads" is a minimal groover, the synth buzzy and distorted, but the rhythm more programmed sounding, a looped chase scene soundtrack, tense and intense and darkly propulsive.
"Time Of Troubles" finishes things off, beginning with a hazy cloud of softly swirling sun dappled synth shimmer, and then big ominous low end, the perfect ending, especially if Escape Velocity was actually an eighties soundtrack, you can almost imagine the credits rolling as the hero and his motley gang of intergalactic misfits walk off off into the alien sunset, the sound majestic, but minor key and a little bit melancholy, the drums adding a sort of kraut/post rock vibe, totally mesmerizing, and definitely making us wish the deliriously over the top cover art (replete with running naked women and, yes, a Delorean, gull wing doors wide open, on what appears to be the floor of a sauna floating in a blue sky) was in fact a real film, and this was the soundtrack!
