Portland's 31 Knots are one of those bands that just keeps plugging away, making amazing albums, to the great pleasure of their loyal fans of course, but we wonder why they don't in the course of things also, you know, get BIG. More fans, more pleasure. They should, or would, be huge if rock n' roll was a meritocracy (which it obviously isn't). This is their sixth full-length release, since their debut about a decade ago, and once again it's a enjoyable example of their trademark "Fugazi-meet-Yes", indie rock gone no wave prog sound. Hmm, maybe that explains why they aren't BIG... that's too weird of a formula. But then again, Radiohead, Muse, Mars Volta, Coheed and Cambria, they're popular, so folks who like the likes of them, should check out 31 Knots for something maybe knottier (though in no way naughtier, they're not that sort of band). Out of the 31 Knots discography, Trump Harm is as good as any (though maybe the cover art isn't), it's assuredly poppy, yet complex and bombastic, offering up ten new tracks that satisfy all our 31 Knots expectations, of earworminess and angularity, mathiness and melody, electricity and emotion. It's thinking (and feeling) man's pop music, that kicks ass too, with arty post-punkish power and precision. If just one person reading this review who has never heard 31 Knot before, decides to check 'em out and becomes a fan, we'll be happy. 100 people, that'd be even better!
Southern psychedelic post-metal heavies Across Tundras are another one of those bands, that for whatever reason we've neglected on the aQ list, even though some aQ-ers have been big fans for a while. This trio's latest, Sage, is another riffy, mathy, psychedelic sprawl, a bit like a less sludgey Neurosis, the same sort of instrumental heft, and moody epic heaviness, but spread out into something a bit more spacious, the postrock outweighing the metal, but only just barely, the songs slipping smoothly from downtuned bombast to spidery lope, from hazy psychedelic drift to almost Southern rock sounding stomp. The label references Neil Young and Johnny Cash, and we definitely hear some Crazy Horse going on, even weirdly enough some Raging Slab, even some Skynrd or Outlaws, as the record unfolds, the songs definitely reveal themselves to be some sort of metallized modern variant of classic Southern Rock, and it's a pretty bad ass mix, unlike most metal, where it's about the tone and the riffs and the distortion, Sage is definitely as much about the songs, melding hooks and killer choruses, actual singing, with stretches of soaring epic crunch, as well as moody minimal drift.
Many of the tracks don't get heavy at all, or at least conventionally heavy, instead, brooding and dark, dense and layered, sounding more like True Widow or the most recent Young Widows, that same sort of creeping post rock slowcore, while in places, the sound even drifts into Woven Hand style apocalyptic folk, all muted percussion, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, twang and jangle, even some boy / girl harmonies. Not to downplay the heaviness entirely, cuz plenty of this record IS heavy, big riffs, pounding drums, slow building metallic crescendos, shades of Neurosis (Crossed with Godspeed), sludge via Morricone, doom via Barn Owl, but all woven into their own distinctive sound, one that should most definitely appeal to any of the above mentioned outfits, as well as anyone into, sprawling psychedelic heaviness of any stripe.
Long before melodic post black metal or blackened shoegaze metal, or whatever you want to call it, became the flavor of the month (a flavor we continue to find delicious by the way), Alcest's 2 song debut came out of nowhere and blew minds. Not just ours, although ours were indeed sufficiently blown, but the metal world at large, the BLACK metal world, notoriously averse to innovation, especially of the poppy and melodic variety, with pretty much everyone freaking out over this French one man band, whose sound was a blend of Slinty post rock, spidery, shimmery shoegaze, and buzzing black metal. Since then, hundreds of bands have taken on the mantle of blackened jangle buzz pop, from Amesoeurs to Les Discrets, Deafheaven to Lantlos, but few releases, even later Alcest records, have managed to capture the same energy and intensity as these 2 songs.
The opening track "Le Secret", began long stretches of crystalline reverbed guitars, that goes on and on, 3+ minutes before the song proper begins, but then the guitars come buzzing in, thick, and crumbling, wrapped around an impossibly poppy melody, and then the vocals drift in, vocals which we initially thought were female, hazy, and washed out, high and softly plaintive, the track slipping easily from pounding blast, to loping midtempo, but always warm and washed out, softly buzzy and so divinely dreamy. Black metal perhaps, but smooth out some of the metallisms and you'd have a Lovesliescrushing tune, strip away the distortion and it might sound like Cocteau Twins.
The second track might be even better. "Elevation" begins with another long intro, this one all woozy shimmery synths, and when the 'band' launches into it proper, it's definitely buzzy and blackened, but again, infused with impossibly catchy melodies, and the vocals here are more black metal rasp, but somehow, the combination works perfectly, the riffs seeming to grow ever more epic and majestic, the pounding beats, blurring into another layer of pulsing buzzing sound. The sound does shift, from folky, clean guitar interlude, to lumbering midtempo chug and churn, which is when Alcest is at 'their' most metal, but the song drifts back toward the soaring majesty of the first half, droned out and hypnotic, buzzy and melodic and just about as sweetly warm and lush as black metal can get.
Even six years later, after hearing a million different bands employ this same strategy, these two tracks sound so fresh, so impossibly heavy and simultaneously so infectiously hooky, total fuzzpop blackbuzz dreamgaze bliss.
For this long awaited reissue, both songs have been rerecorded, these new version accompanying the originals, the liner notes explaining that Alcest mainman Neige was always unhappy with the sound, and the two new versions do sound a bit different, not necessarily better, but in some ways more lush and warm, less brittle and buzzy, even a bit more expansive and rich, although the originals were pretty dang perfect to begin with. Hard to say which versions we like more, but the fact that very little was changed besides the actual recording quality, means it almost doesn't matter!
The return of this grinding extreme black metal duo, another blast of sonic sickness that offers up everything we've come to expect from these guys, insanely furious riffing, impossible blasting programmed beats, throat shredding vokills, twisted, convoluted arrangements, seemingly continuing in their quest to create the sickest, blackest, buzziest metal ever. But weirdly enough, for as heavy and black and buzzy things are this time around, there's also a lot of other weirdness going on, which seems at odds with their core sound. But you know how we are - the weirder things are, and the less they make sense, somehow the more the record in question hits the spot. So Anaal Nathrakh circa now, are mixing in lots of clean vocals (something they began doing back on Hell Is Empty... or thereabouts), dramatic and almost operatic, giving much of the music here a Borknagar or Code vibe, not to mention, even the heaviest bits here are surprisingly melodic. Plus there's twisted stretches of effects drenched tunefulness, some downright psychedelic flourishes, midtempo grooves, industrial ambience, tripped out electronics, all woven into the band's core black buzz, and while on the surface, it could seem like weirdness for weirdness sake, it actually sounds more like those various not-strictly-black elements were borne out of vastly improved songwriting, cuz goddamn these songs are catchy, the riffs are killer, and none of that weirdness sounds at all out of place. Sure, a lot of the time it doesn't sound as much like Anaal Nathrakh as it does Khold or Code, but often those moments splinter into some blurry black blast that couldn't be anyone else.
As much as we loved their debut Codex Necro way back when, this new one, as different as it is, might just be catching up...
The return of the mysterious Anworth Kirk, an offshoot of hauntological electronica alchemists Demdike Stare, a 'groop' which professes to be a whole different entity, although as far as we're concerned, we imagine we might be hard pressed to find anyone that loves Demdike Stare, who wouldn't also love these guys (this guy?). Sonically similar, but more shrouded in mystery, and plenty of bizarrely esoteric descriptive psychobabble, the label explains that Avonwaith "constructs dense melodic and narrative sound poems upon a skeletal framework of non-musical elements such as basic magnetic communication, secular religion and primitive mechanical industry. Composed and compiled around fake-loric nonlanguage/electric codes and forbidden information, Anworth Kirk uses the phonographic format as an archive of sonic and poetic commentary (evidence) concerning corruption in pre-war local industry, perverted belief systems and scientific invention. Part musique concrete, part folklore, part-pulp-fictitious, part Neorealist, this indulgent patchwork of mechanical folk/pop and non-music combines essential influences of electric Smithsonian releases, sound poetry, Zden?k Liska, Ilhan Mimaroglu, basic Carnatic music, Letterism, Pierre Henry, Oramics in Ardwick, Massiera, Lloyd M. Williams, Stella Crenshaw, Bruno Nicolai, Suzanne Ciani, Eastern European fiction, AgitProp, L.S. Lowry, J.G. Frazer, Gurdjieff, Kommune pop groups and futen theater."
Phew. And yeah, while perhaps that is all in fact maybe sort of true, it might be easier to say, that it sounds a lot like much of Demdike Stare's Tryptych, equally hauntological, each track a miniature soundworld of electronic ephemera, of skeletal beats and bleep bloop electronics, haunting grey atmospheres, looped tribal rhythms, like a collection of mysterious transmissions from the ether.
Tracks are hazy, their borders constantly bleeding into one another, snippets of gauzy old timey easy listening, lightly dusted with distortion and reverb transformed into some sort of ghostly retro slo-mo electro pop, drifting through fields of tinkling chimes and echo drenched melodic swirls, peppered with muted glitchy pulses, field recordings of unknown provenance, soft focus smears of sun dappled shimmer, chanting children's rhymes, all woven into something strange and magical, very cinematic, a definite seventies giallo vibe in places, a little Euro, a lot jazzy, moody and atmospheric, the record unwinding in it's final movement with a distinctly horror movie like feel, brief melodic motifs repeated (a la Halloween), nestled in a black cloud of thick ominous synths, collaged voices, and laid over what sounds like some ritualistic pagan forest folk, skeletal and otherworldly, all flecked with odd buzz and Eastern melodies, darkly dreamy and beautifully bewitching.
LIMITED TO 420 COPIES, and one final recommendation from the label/groop: "Parts of this disc are presented in both Stereo and Mono and it is to be played at 45RPM with a low-gram stylus pressure." Indeed.
Arctic Monkey's 2006 debut, the awesomely titled Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, remains one of THEE best pop records of this new millennium, snarly, and crunchy, snotty and catchy as fuck, every song was a blast of youthful vigor and pop chops at odds with the bands' youth and the fact that Whatever was their debut. Subsequent records Favourite Worst Nightmare and Humbug showed the band toning down the snotty pop in favor of something much more measured, polished and refined, and while in some ways, that shift was a disappointment, it also revealed the group as something much more than an overhyped blogworthy flash in the pan.
Which brings us to their most recent, record number four, Suck It And See, which based on the title, we imagined might even signal a return to the snotty swagger of their debut, but if anything, the opposite is true. Easily the most 'mature' record yet, with the opening track, sounding almost like it could be some lost Supergrass or Oasis jam, brooding, and majestic, hooky and total classic Britpop. Which is pretty much where most of the record situates itself. But unlike Favourite and Humbug, this one is not a grower - it doesn't have to be, this one is hooky as hell right out of the gate, mixing in a bit of Weezer power poppiness into their distinctly British pop sound, the guitars jangle and chime, the rhythm section is tight and unobtrusive, the vocals are much more smooth and croony, than snarly and snotty, and like we said, the songs are to die for. Probably won't supplant Whatever as out favorite Arctic Monkeys record, but of the other three, it's rapidly becoming our number two...
Brilliant and tragic are both words that perfectly capture the the vibe of snarky new wave poppers Art Brut, whose latest full length continues to explore a world of jaded hipsters and bittersweet loneliness, of Peter Pan complexes and of misplaced childhoods, of drinking, partying and rocking, of football and Axl Rose. Axl Rose? Well this is Art Brut after all, whose sound is classic modern new wave power pop, think Maximo Park and the Killers and Franz Ferdinand and the Arctic Monkeys, but whose secret weapon is vocalist Eddie Argos, who more speaks than sings, and who is fucking hilarious, talking shit, confessing deep dark secrets, talking gigs and jazz and rehearsal spaces and girls and yeah Axl Rose. Simultaneously snotty and self important, self deprecating and confessional, Argos has such a way with words, whether it's lamenting the fact that they only play for nine minutes, have two songs and are "working in a genre you don't understand" on "Clever Clever Jazz" or proclaiming "I want to give the world the finger, with the exception of my favorite lead singer" on "Axl Rose", or how awesome it is to have ESP on "I Am The Psychic". Goofy, silly, energetic, caffeinated, hooky as hell, these guys are tough to resist, which is why we gave up trying a long time ago.
Originally released in the eighties on legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun, the Axemen's Three Virgins remained mostly unheard by all but the most extreme of NZ underground obsessives, sort of makes sense that it would end up on Siltbreeze, whose pop roster should give you an idea of what to expect from these Axemen: Strapping Fieldhands, Guided By Voices, Sebadoh, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, to those references you could also add the Velvets, Beefheart, and even more appropriately, to these ears at least, would be seminal East Coast outsider label Shimmy Disc. The Axemen traffic in a fractured, stumbling, keening, detuned lo-fi pop, the guitars atonal, occasionally buzzy and crunchy, otherwise spidery and jangly, the songs laced with plink plonk piano, whistling, the drums strangely produced, usually buried in the mix, spidery guitar leads wrapped around warped and warbly melodies, and the vocals, seriously out there, this is a pop record after all, so it's the vocals that really drive things, the various voices seem less concerned with being in tune, and more with energy and exuberance, they're high, whiny, plaintive, sorta sad boy, but delivered with gusto, howled in places, crooned in others, the harmonies slightly off, defiantly tuneless in places, adding another bit of whatthefuck to the already cracked vibe, which is augmented further by some awesomely tripped out weirdness, that sounds in places like a more tuneful (just barely) Dead C, or some primitive tape experiment, or some warped boom box DJ collage or even like some sort of lysergic sixties psych folk, all of the various elements constantly shifting, and mutating, and getting all tangled up with each other, the sound poppy one second, droney and dirgey the next, fuzzy and psychedelic one second, detuned and demented the next, but always confusional and off kilter, a pretty brilliantly baffling slice of primo eighties NZ underground sound for sure.
Pressed on nice thick vinyl, housed in an eye popping gatefold jacker, and LIMITED TO 600 COPIES!! Includes a download coupon.
Now sure how we missed out on these guys, they're called Barn Burner, their first record as called Bangers, and had an amazingly goofy cover, and song titles like "Holy Smokes", "Beer Today Bong Tomorrow" and "Wizard Island", maybe we figured it would just be some stupid joke metal thing, but then for whatever reason we threw it on and were BLOWN AWAY. Heavy, riffy, hooky as fuck, with REAL singing, killer guitar harmonies, classic rock, meets classic metal, meets Southern rock meets stoner metal, with amazing songs, with crazy catchy choruses, bad ass riffs and shredding leads. As much as we love us some black buzz or dirgey sludge, it's easy to forget how much we love metal that ROCKS. And these guys rock. HARD.
So here we have record number two from Barn Burner (and we can definitely get the first one for you, just ask), appropriately titled Bangers II: Scum Of The Earth, with yet another even more ridiculous cover, more killer song titles, like "Dark Side Of The Barn", "Keg Stand And Deliver", "Quest For The Cube", and "Skid Marks The Spot", and yeah, a whole 'nother batch of shredding, rocking heaviness, killer riffs and wild solos, the sort of shit they just don't make anymore, and yeah, sure it may ultimately be beer drinking party metal, but sonically this stuff KILLS, easily one of our new favorite metal bands, we've been listening to both records nonstop, but this new one, is rapidly becoming a contender for metal record of the year. Hell yeah.
A brand new musical missive from the psychedelic drone duo Barn Owl, an ep length follow up to their recent Ancestral Star album, which finds them expanding their sound even further, taking the dusky twang into realms more cinematic, with an opening track that is both haunting and ominous, allowing synths to play as big a role as the guitars, creating a sort of kosmische devotional music, unfurling a mesmerizing melodic motif, looped and hypnotic, while all around, deep swells rumble and whir, clouds of effects swirl and shimmer, it might just be one of our favorite Barn Owl jams yet, like the soundtrack to some obscure European art film, that synth melody also has a little bit of a Tim Burton vibe, playfully sinister? Regardless, the song broods and oozes like and inky black cloud, while that melody shine through like blinking lights on a stormy night. The label references Popol Vuh and Alice Coltrane, which we definitely hear, but all the usual suspects are present as well, Earth, SUNNO))), Morricone, but on the opening track, all of the influences, new and old, are transformed into something magical and new, a sound that by the end of its nearly eight minutes, has blossomed into something simultaneously thick and corrosive, but spiritual and transcendent.
The title track finds Barn Owl returning to more sonically familiar territory, a slowly unfurling landscape of spidery twang, of softly reverbed ambience, this time laced with subtle piano, not to mention some more distorted riffage, as the song progresses, more melodies surface, and become tangled in a slow swirl of minor key mesmer, while the final track, the 10+ minute "Infinite Reach" begins as a bit of sun dappled celestial drift, all hazy tones and disembodied melodies, before clouds pass over the sun, cloaking the sounds in shadow, everything becoming much more ominous, the previously ethereal drift, now infused with blurry buzz and jagged shards of high end skree, building to a pulsing soft focus squall of bleary blackened psychedelia, before slipping back into a slow, smoldering outro, all windswept and barren, droney and twangy.
As always, fantastic stuff, and well worth it for that opening track alone, a sound we hope Barn Owl will explore a bit more on future outings!
LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES. Includes a download coupon.
It's been couple years at least since we last heard from Beirut, and knowing the meticulous care that goes into each release, we imagined it would be well worth the wait, and were VERY excited to discover this brand new 7". Turns out that "East Harlem" while never recorded before, was written by Beirut boy wonder Zach Conden, when he was just 17 years old. An orchestral pop stunner on which he plays trumpet, ukulele, Hammond organ on top of his usual guitar and vocal duties. The B side is pretty dang great too, "Goshen" opens with somber piano and Conden's emotive vocals setting the stage for the perfect Sunday morning serenade. We hear bits of Rufus Wainwright, Antony, and Jeff Buckley in both these great tracks, and Conden has proven he belongs in that great league of amazing singers with equally stunning musical minds.
We had never heard of the artist known by the strange monicker Berber Ox, but we got two different releases from this Australian soundscaper recently, whose music the man himself described as "weird-ass psychedelic drone/field recording/collage", which most definitely sounded right up our alley, a dizzyingly dark assemblage of sounds, found AND created, woven deftly into droney psychedelic ambience that definitely has us kicking ourselves for not hearing this stuff until now.
As Mr. Berber Ox spent much of the last few years in Japan, where most of the sounds on these two releases were in fact recorded, the proceeds from the sale of both will be donated to the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Fund, which is another reason to grab both before they're gone...
Like the Trounce cd-r, this tape finds Berber Ox taking raw field recordings and folding them into generated sounds, electronic and organic, rendering them unrecognizable for the most part, and blurring all of those into hazy atmospheric sprawls, on the surface a warm whir, a bleary shimmer, but within those seemingly slo-mo glacial streaks of layered sound lurk hushed melodies, mysterious overtones and subtle rhythmic shifts, with the field recordings occasionally revealing themselves, adding a whole 'nother vibe to the sound, humanizing the dark drift with voices or snippets of conversation, or further obscuring their provenance in the form of muted clatter, buzz, or soft industrial crunch, but even so, everything in the world of Berber Ox is further blurred into some sort of hazy otherworldliness, a muddied, murky, muted swirl of softly chaotic thrum and whir, shimmer and drift, hum and buzz, the sort of sound that is so easy to get lost in, a sonic gateway forged from dreamlike minimalism and hushed, sculpted softnoise, so darkly divine. And like the cd-r, recommended for drone explorers partial to Chalk, Coleclough, Ora, Mirror, Monos, Brendan Murray, Peter Wright and the rest...
Packaged in cool eye popping full color J-cards in bright blue tape cases, and LIMITED TO JUST 111 COPIES!! We got a very limited number of those direct from the man himself, and we might not be able to get more once these sell out.
We had never heard of the artist known by the strange monicker Berber Ox, but we got two different releases from this Australian soundscaper recently, whose music the man himself described as "weird-ass psychedelic drone/field recording/collage", which most definitely sounded right up our alley, a dizzyingly dark assemblage of sounds, found AND created, woven deftly into droney psychedelic ambience that definitely has us kicking ourselves for not hearing this stuff until now.
As Mr. Berber Ox spent much of the last few years in Japan, where most of the sounds on these two releases were in fact recorded, the proceeds from the sale of both will be donated to the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Fund, which is another reason to grab both before they're gone...
Trounce is a super limited cd-r, released with minimal packaging on the esteemed Install label, home to Peter Wright, Gareth Hardwick, Horaflora and others. And Berber Ox sounds right at home, opening Trounce with with a thick humid cloud of sound, all rumbling whirring blacks and greys, shot through with all manner of field recordings, the thick thrum eventually recedes, leaving just a low level shimmer, laced with strange burblings, distant bird calls, that gradually builds and builds into what sounds like white noise surf, fading out in a blur of what sounds like canned mall music, leading directly into the hazy sonic gauze of the lengthy follow up, a nearly static drift of muted minimal hum, but within seems to lurk all manner of low end melody, subtle sonic shifts, all in their own way affecting the texture and timbre of the thick sound surrounding them.
And so it goes, the sounds tending toward the very minimal, long tones, draped over long tones, allowed to softly pulse, and gently undulate, creating ghostly overtones, and softly submerged almost-rhythms, these streaks and blurs infused with the chitter of insects, mysterious voices, snippets of traditional Japanese folk music, muted percussion, culminating in a final 20 minute sprawl of gently roiling gloom, beginning with a soft cacophony of tolling bells, one can imagine it's those bells that are blurred into Berber Ox's gorgeously murky gloom, a gloom that is transformed into what sounds like some sort of washed out doomgaze guitar buzz for the last few minutes, hypnotically heavy, yet still somehow hushed and dreamy.
Gorgeous stuff for sure. Recommended for anyone who digs lush, minimal drift and layered low end shimmer: Chalk, Coleclough, Ora, Mirror, Monos, Brendan Murray, Peter Wright et al...
VERY LIMITED, we got these directly from the man himself, and there's a good chance these will be the last copies we can get.
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The oddly monickered Blue Hummingbird On The Left are part of a new black metal movement, or scene, based in California, called the Black Twilight Circle, who seem to be loosely modeled after the infamous Les Legions Noires aka The Black Legions, which included Mutiilation, Belketre, Aakon Keetreh, Torgeist, Vlad Tepes and plenty more. The scene itself consisted of a handful of members, all of whom performed under different names, and in different combinations as different groups. Similarly, The Black Twilight Circle includes the groups Volahn, Ashdautas, Axeman, Arizmenda, Kallathon, Kuxan Suum, Dolorvotre and others, as well as these guys, Blue Hummingbird On The Left. Might seem like an odd name at first, until you discover it's actually a translation of the name Huitzilopochtli, an Aztec war god, okay, well it's still an odd name, and even more odd (and cool) is that these guys also incorporate FLUTE into their black buzz.
Originally released as a super limited (and now out of print) cassette and finally available again, on vinyl (also limited of course), Bloodflower is a collection of three blasts of raw, primitive, lo-fi blackness, the guitars a black blur, the drums a chaotic stumbling blast, the vocals a crazed maniacal bellow, occasionally slipping into a freaked out almost falsetto wail, the flute seems to just shriek in the background on the opening track, but on the second track, it flutters and flits offering up a sort of Native American sounding melody, which is quickly swallowed up by an avalanche of lumbering pounding black buzz. The title track is the riffiest of the bunch, starting out all downtuned and chuggy, before exploding into another stretch of pounding black fury. Fucking awesome. And anyone who likes their black metal raw and lo-fi, should definitely dig way deeper into the Black Twilight Circle.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
Another super limited sonic transmission from right here in the Bay Area, from AQ fave Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the man behind Tarentel, and the Root Strata label. Those familiar with Cantu-Ledesma's music, knows that he usually speakers in hushed whispers, breathy and breathless, soft sonic shimmers allowed to drift like billowy clouds into your ears. But here, CL is no longer whispering, instead he's breathing fire, his guitar a newly minted incendiary device. A sonic flame thrower, each track a layered assemblage of thick peals of sound, glowing tongues of distorted flame. A sonic assault more similar to Total or Sunroof! Than CL's usual output. Makes sense that the first song is dedicated to Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans (who also mastered it).
But all of this talk of fire and flame shouldn't scare you off, there is still plenty of delicate beauty to be had, it's just wrapped in thick sheets of sonic napalm, the guitar effulgent and glowing white hot, the chords washed out and the distortion crumbling. Melodies are jagged and dripping with hissy buzz, each track a glacial guitarscape turning your speakers to ash.
There are a few tracks, almost half of the 8 here, that drift in a soporific haze, and hew closer to CL's usual aesthetic, but here, they sound less like individual pieces, and more like interludes, brief moments of tranquility, a chance to catch your breath, let your ears heal, allow time for your speakers to re-solidify, before launching the next buzzing crumbling divinely distorted salvo of gorgeous blown out guitar bliss.
Fans of stuff like Nadja, the Yellow Swans, Tim Hecker, the Angelic Process, Fear Falls Burning, will be quite pleased with Cantu-Ledesma's visit to the sonic dark side.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in full color cardboard sleeves, with printed inserts.
Record number two from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project, whose last record, Persistent Repetition Of Phrases, was a unanimous aQ fave, and was of course one of Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, and was, and still is, one of our best sellers, and it looks like this one is likely to follow suit.
A sonic meditation on memory and loss, The Caretaker, takes old jazz records, various effects, and what sounds like a battery of old beat up Victrolas, and weaves Philip Jeck like soundscapes, but unlike Jeck, the source sounds here are not obfuscated, in fact, in some respects, The Caretaker records are almost like spectral spiritual otherworldly mix tapes, especially on this new one, which sounds like old 78s left to play in a big old auditorium, the room's reverb lovingly wreathing the music in a gauzy old timey haze, the surface noise, hiss and crackle and pop, somehow accentuated by the cavernous space. Better yet, replace the auditorium with an old abandoned mansion. Imagine the great room, animal heads on the walls, old oil paintings, a massive fireplace, charred black, old decaying rugs, all the furniture covered in white cloths, looking like ghosts, cobwebs in all the corners, the floor beneath a layer of dust, and in the corner, an old record player, lit up, its turntable spinning slowly, some old dusty record, to a room full of spirits, a sonic requiem for a time that once was, the music seeming to reflect the ever fading memories, and that's what these songs sound like, some sort of haunted house jazz, old timey seance blues, mournful melodies played on an old piano, muted trumpet, swoonsome strings, shuffling drums, a slow motion big band performing live in the ether, a spectral band playing lament after lament, dedicating it to their lost loves, and loves lost.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World plays like some archival collection of lost 78's, but where the records' provenance is unknown, timeless music that could have come from anytime, and anywhere, the imperfections and inconsistencies as much a part of the sound as the music itself, all of that hiss and crackle a warm wreath of time-transformed-into-sound detritus, the passing of time mad physical, a sonic memorial to the past. So utterly gorgeous.
Vinyl only for now, cd version to follow in a few weeks.
It's always difficult to know what to expect from these guys, every record seems to alienate their core fans. After years of being a caustic sludgey metallic behemoth, they abruptly switched gears and sounded like Radiohead style stadium rock. By the time everyone was used to that, they suddenly got heavy again, REALLY heavy. Then they tried a mix of the two. And the thing is, we love it all. These guys are incredible, whether it's a face melting blast of downtuned metallic sludge, or a soaring chunk of blissed out melodic bombast, few can beat these guys on either count. But what that DOES mean, is that with every record, it could go either way, heavy or hooky, crushing or catchy (although to be fair, all their records are heavy AND hooky, crushing AND catchy, but you know what we mean), and for whatever reason, we were guessing pop, even though they seem to have been heading heavy-ward lately, it seemed like the perfect time for them to confound again, and make another bid for mainstream success. But lo and behold, this shit is FIERCE, and fucking HEAVY, no pop pretense at all, harkening back to Until Your Heart Stops, right out of the gate, the record explodes, replete with harsh almost black metal vox, wrapped around super distorted guitars, and to be fair there's a cool melodic component, a good balance, that again could have these guys going either way, but then "Serpents" drops, and it's all out grind and crush and pummel and pound, Stephen Brodsky's vocals a glass gargling yowl, the guitars frenzied and frenetic, the drums crushing, but the whole thing laced with synths, adding a whole 'nother vibe to the sound, but not taking away from the heaviness in the least.
But you can't completely take the pop out of the band, so throughout White Silence, and amidst all the downtuned bombast, there are plenty of killer pop-isms, "Sing My Loves" is total Torche style sludge pop, "Centered" wraps glitchy electronics and thick grinding guitars around some soaring clean vox, and some serious hooks, "Summit Fever" too is pure pop but in sludge metal clothing, might be THEE heavy jam of the year, and is where the record begins to sound to us more and more poppy, the poppiness seeming to blossom as the record progresses, even at its heaviest, somehow still exuding some sort of hookiness.
"Heartbreaks, Earthquakes" harkens back to Brodsky's Beatles-esque solo records, and "Iron Decibels" defies its title by also being a chunk of super melodic jangly pop that again sounds like a Brodsky solo jam, and then finally, "Reanimation", is a gorgeously hazy bit of crooned acousticky drift with a bombastic almost Queen like crescendo, which of course leads to the obvious observation that the second half of the record is INDEED more poppy and less heavy, and after more listens, White Silence reveals itself as a pretty genius progression, from all out metallic onslaught, to hushed prettiness, each song an ever softening gradation, and as always, these guys are equally adept at both soft and hard, loud and quiet, pop and metal. And as always WAY recommended.
BACK IN PRINT, WITH DIFFERENT ARTWORK!!!
Here's the cd reissue of a 2009 cassette from the emissary of British dronemusik, Andrew Chalk. That cassette, like this cd version, had been released by the Japanese imprint Siren Records, although it seems that Chalk himself did all of the printing as with all of his Faraway Press productions. So, it certainly looks as lovely as it sounds. The album opens with a 22 minute abstraction of piano tones, smeared, stretched, and warbled by a process that seems more attuned to tape decay techniques than the placid smooth surfaces that have come from Chalk's recordings as of late. This has the sound more of the misty psychedelic ambient tapestries from Natural Snow Buildings or the hauntological loops of Indignant Senility. There's something very prescient about this track, as if Chalk were responding to many of the divergent streams of drone-based constructions that are happening throughout the world right now. The rest of the album is definitely a detour for Chalk, as he presents a series of sad, sodden snippets composed on guitar, koto, synth, piano, and field recordings. Unlike so many who attempts an album of gossamer, minimalist sounds, Chalk seeks the same chromatic hues through his sources. It's the same melancholy which runs through his impressionist drones that can be found in an ellipsis for untreated acoustic guitar or a melody upon cosmic-minded synth or an atypical strum upon his koto. That makes for quite a remarkable album for Mr. Chalk, once again.
Yeah. It's $45.00. But when you see the stunning packaging, you'll understand why. There's the outersleeve hand-wrapped in bookbinders cloth with a hand-printed reproduction of a Bosch-like etching of wolverines or badgers engaged in cocktail party conversation, and printed text all in Japanese. At the opening of the outer sleeve, you will notice a thick wooden dowel mounted to a thick piece of paper. This assembly houses the innersleeve which in turn houses the very thick vinyl. It's quite a feat of engineering that Mr. Chalk manufactured all of this in his cottage in the north of England. It should also not be a surprise that this album is ridiculously limited, and the production of which has been hampered by the amount of time each object takes to fabricate. So know now that we will probably not be able to get any more copies of this stunning objet d'art, which was released in an edition of just 350 copies.
Then, there's the music, which is equally sublime. The work of Andrew Chalk has become synonymous with the drone supreme, but one that shifts from the tonal aggression that Tony Conrad and LaMonte Young would conjure, and toward something impressionistic and melancholy. As Chalk developed his craft on long-form masterpieces like East Of The Sun and Sumac (in collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough), he began to explore the nuances of melody through a rainy-day kaleidoscope of repetition. At the same time, Chalk has been mastering techniques of source abstraction which are entirely his own, creating haunted smears that are curiously inviting, reminiscent of the tape-loop effects that Basinski would generate, but with less reverb and delay. On such recent work as Ghost Of Nakhodka and The Cable House, Chalk's immaculate drones have been compacted into Eno-like miniatures of mirage, shadow, and filigree, all leading to the quiet, impressionist beauty of Violin By Night. The album might be sourced from piano, guitar, field recordings, and / or synths, but with Chalk's ability to twist any sound into his particular shades of grey, a discussion of origin is irrelevant. Each of the tracks on Violin By Night fade in and out of darkness like communications from a lonely satellite, whose existence is spent transmitting mundane blips down to earth with nothing being sent back in return. As the passing orbits cross the night sky, the transmissions come into focus revealing their muffled melodies only to dissolve as the satellite ventures into more desolate territories, such as the vast tundra of Siberia or some nameless island near Antarctica. There is a wonderful poetry hidden within these flickering tones and dissolving melodies that yearns for human contact and cast with maudlin hues when that contact is lost. Worth every penny and then some.
AVAILABLE AGAIN!!!
Finally one of our all time favorite Circle records back in print! We first listed this way back in 1999, and it was for many people their first exposure to this amazing and mysterious, dreamy and hypnotic, modern spaced out krautrock band from Finland. By now, Circle is practically a household name, at least for those of you living in a seriously cool music household, having released about 15 or 16 records since Andexelt. But way back in 1999, Circle were a a brand new discovery for most American weird rock fans, and Andexelt knocked everyone on their asses.
A delirious dose of droning, hypnotic neo-kraut rock that effortlessly managed to out-post most post rock bands and out-space most spacerock bands. Circle were (and are) the northernmost heirs to the Krautrock tradition. On Andexelt, the band were taking basic riffs, stretching and reshaping them, twisting them into brand new shapes, creating bleak, ever shifting underwater grooves and dizzyingly repetitive rhythms, sounding like an otherworldly This Heat or a more damaged Can. A mesmerising wall of sound delivered with the sheer force of Loop or Godflesh, but with dark precision and melodic restraint. Mellow, delicate jazzy passages intersected with crushing Bonham-esque beats. Fans of Circle's other great records, past and present, can already guess that this is completely amazing and absolutely essential!!! While fans of Salvatore and Tortoise and Mogwai and�TransAm and all other practitioners of epic bombastic hypno-rock, mesmeric math rock and even the current crop of sludgy metallic post rock, would do well to pick this up if they missed it the first time around. Andexelt is the perfect mix of their current more metallic drone rock pummel and their older more mesmerizing krautrock groove bliss. So absolutely brilliant and completely and utterly essential.
Exactly the same as the original tUMULt pressing, including the 10 minute bonus track and kick ass secret song not included on the import version, originally released on Finnish weird-prog label Metamorphos. SO AWESOME!!!!!
One of the great things about doing our list, is reviewing reissues of stuff we LOVE that we never got to list before. Old faves from the pre-list days. Of course, it's always tough too, when you want to explain just WHY something is so amazing and essential. When it's a record you've loved for years and years, there's a lot of pressure to do it justice. This list, for instance, you'll find our review of Oxbow's King Of The Jews, These Trails, and surely a few other old faves, this Nels Cline album most definitely among them, and its hard not to just say, in all caps, BUY THIS DAMMIT, YOU WON'T BE SORRY, IT'S THE BEST!!!
That's our feeling about this for sure. The very first Nels Cline album we came across, and the first by his Trio, originally released on Enja in 1992, out of print for ages, now finally reissued in a spiffy new digipack. Nels Cline then was an underground jazz guitarist, who has since become an alt-rock guitar guy too, playing in Wilco, and with Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, and others, amassing a diverse and impressive discography.
Silencer is "jazz" all right, and jazz too, without the quotes. Ten tracks, epic and exquisite instrumentals, full of out-there skree and sublime beauty, performed by Nels on guitars, with Michael Prusser on drums and Mark London Sims on bass.
This album eases the listener in, beginning with a take on Gil Evans' "Las Vegas Tango" (all the other tracks are Cline compositions), that's just lovely, Cline's guitar with soft edges on it... then as the album progresses, the "dangerous" side of his playing is revealed. The soft edges remain, but there's jagged ones too. But even when things get tangled and noisy, it's gorgeous, and still swings. The trio has great chemistry, it's not just all about Cline's guitar (though he's definitely the star). Some highlights: the bumptious "Broasted" (which gets heavy/distorted enough to almost pass for a Stinking Lizaveta track!), the spacious 14+ minute "Lapsing (Part 1&2)", the subtle skronk of "Silencer", and the moody hum/hush of "Exiled" (one we think Bohren fans would appreciate)...
This came out not long after the late, great guitarist Sonny Sharrock's final, brilliant album Ask The Ages (which really needs to be reissued too!!), we'd probably just discovered him about the same time we got clued into Cline. If you like Sharrock, Cline is certainly one of his spiritual descendants, in the realm of "free" "jazz" "fusion".
Maybe 'cause it was our first Nels disc, but also 'cause it's so good, this has always been our favorite, though you can't go wrong with anything the man has ever done as far as we're concerned. So very recommended, as if you couldn't tell already.
The Buried By Time And Dust label, as their name implies, specialize (mainly) in digging up dusty old treasures from the vaults... of DOOOOM! In the past, they've brought us vinyl reissues by such doom metal legends as Witchfinder General, Pagan Altar, and Solstice.
This latest release digs even deeper into the underground. Cold Mourning were (are?) a bona fide cult doom metal band, from the '90s, based in the "misty and miserable" locale of Monterey, California. They released one full-length cd back in the day, Lower Than Low on Game Two Records, and also did a lot of splits, with the likes of While Heaven Wept, Officium Triste, and Twisted Tower Dire.
If you haven't heard of Cold Mourning before, you might still be familiar with their guitarist Angelo Tringali 'cause he's member of AQ faves Slough Feg (he replaced Hammers Of Misfortune's John Cobbett on second lead guitar some years back). While Slough Feg have their occasionally doomy moments, Cold Mourning are a much sludgier proposition, inspired especially by Saint Vitus, but more grim and freezing.
Their songs from the abovementioned splits are all found here, along with demos, previously unreleased rehearsal recordings, and more, circa 1995-'98, including their track "Boggy Creek" from the Miskatonic Records cd comp At The Mountains Of Madness.
True doom fiends will definitely want to get their doom on with Colder Than Thou. 'Tis for fans of Vitus as well as The Gates Of Slumber, for instance.
Deluxe gatefold double vinyl, packaged with an eight page booklet full of b&w live photos, demo tape covers, lyrics, etc. Suitably thick and heavy, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Sadly, the legendary Japanese label HG Fact, longtime home to sludgelords Corrupted, closed up shop recently, rendering loads of amazing records gone for good, but Corrupted managed to acquire a handful of remaining copies of this otherwise out of print doom/sludge classic, and we got as many as we could from them - not many. So this is indeed available again, for what we're guessing will be a very, very limited time...
Here's our review from way back in 2000 when we first listed the all-time classic Llenandose de Gusanos, and in fact made it a Record Of The Week:
Japanese sludge-core doom merchants Corrupted return with this monumental effort. Their previous album consisted of one long, crushing song. Llenandose improves upon that by taking TWO full discs for two tracks. WARNING: if you already intend to purchase this incredible album, read no further. Your enjoyment will be enhanced by not knowing the precise musical details that we are about to reveal...Disc one begins not with the expected wall of brutalizing guitar, but with quiet, hypnotic piano playing. An eerie voice begins to croak softly in Spanish (did we mention that for some reason Corrupted's lyrics are always in that language?) but the music is almost pretty, lulling the listener into a stupor that sets them up for the eventual entry (after 25 minutes or so!) of a slow-moving but awesomely heavy guitar/drums dirge. Eventually the piano re-enters and the disc comes full circle. Beauty and depression co-exist on this disc like none other, it's like George Winston at 16 rpm with Burning Witch playing in the background (and diabolical whispers in your head).. Disc two is the "ambient" disc, and is also really well done, a creepy quiet grey wash of sound, the sound left in the world AFTER its destruction... One of the best releases of 1999. Fans of Esoteric, recent Neurosis, Sleep, Earth, Skullflower, etc. should bow down to Corrupted. Additional information for Japanese-music-o-philes: Corrupted's drummer Chew used to play in Omoide Hatoba.
And here's a 'customer review' (which just happens to back up our claims above), emailed to us by recent purchaser-of-Corrupted and classical music fan John Botz: "The Corrupted album (Llen...Lleandos...uh...something about 'Gusanos,' i.e. 'worms') absolutely kicks ass. It's hard to accurately describe just how far beyond my expectations this album is. I was totally willing to go with Andee's recommendation on this one, but I was half expecting the three main parts of the album to be: banal, new agey, minimalist piano followed by some fairly generic bongtar sludge riffs, followed by fifty minutes of gray-washed amp noise. Not Even, dudes! These guys have obviously had some classical training, and this album is further proof of how much more depth
ANY music acquires when there is some solid classical training behind it. The opening piano section, far from sounding like ambient/new age drivel, sounds like Rachmaninoff on codeine and muscle relaxers. The entry of the 'metal section,' with portentous feedback, makes a real impact, and the choral ambience of the keyboards at the end, added to the piano sound, sinister vocals, and distorted guitar makes for an even more ominous feeling at the apocalyptic conclusion of the first disc. Wow! But maybe disc two was the most pleasant surprise of all! This is genuinely atmospheric (and good) ambient drone, with enough variety and layering of sounds to keep one interested for the full 74 minutes. I kept thinking of the spacey, eth-eerie-al, sections of 2001: A Space Odyssey (one of my two favorite movies, by the way; and my favorite soundtrack: Kubrick's choice of Ligeti's otherworldly choral/orchestral music juxtaposed with the majesty of R. Strauss, the grace of J. Strauss, and the austerity of Khachaturian's adagio was truly an inspired stroke of genius). Perhaps the Corrupted is the REAL 'Soundtrack of the Apocalypse.' Anyway, your description was apt/excellent, and this album become one of my instant favorites, not just a curiosity. And, by the way, whoda thunk that the Spanish vocals would be so effective, adding an esoteric arcaneness to the album?"
Sadly, the legendary Japanese label HG Fact, longtime home to sludgelords Corrupted, closed up shop recently, rendering loads of amazing records gone for good, but Corrupted managed to acquire a handful of remaining copies of this otherwise out of print doom/sludge classic, and we got as many as we could from them - not many. So this is indeed available again, for what we're guessing will be a very, very limited time...
Here's our review from way back in 2004 when we first listed Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos (and back when Boris were still a doom/sludge band as well):
It's time.
Be afraid.
Very afraid.
Or if you're a typical AQ customer and love your rock music glacier slow, tarpit thick and skull crushingly heavy, well then, in that case there's nothing to be afraid of!
Everyone may quake and tremble when the mighty Boris unleash a new slab of black hole mega dense heaviosity. And rightfully so. Few can keep up when it comes to slow motion riffage, tectonic pummel and massive planet destroying rock. But there is another....one who came before....one who resurfaces occasionally....to remind the world that this sleeping behemoth can rise at anytime and raze all that dare proclaim themselves HEAVY. That beast...is known as... the Corrupted. One of the few bands in Japan, nay the WORLD, that can go toe to toe with Boris and hope to survive, perhaps even triumph. Some of you may remember Corrupted's massive two disc set Llenandose de Gusanos, from 3 or 4 years back, one disc of minimal drones, one disc of crushing sonic sludge (and piano). Maybe the finest document of death/doom/drone/sludge ever recorded - except perhaps for the rumoured-to-exist triple disc (!) SINGLE SONG (!!) Corrupted epic that has yet to surface. But for now, we'll have to be happy with this new 35 minute monster. The disc opens with a 17 minute ambient folk dirge, just acoustic guitar and harshly whispered/grunted vocals. In Spanish (as always) and rumblingly hypnotic. Like a ultra grim, creepily acoustic Neurosis, all stripped down and stretched out. Never imagined just a voice and an acoustic guitar could be so fucking scary, but for almost twenty minutes, the low end folk sludge stretches on seemingly forever, narcoticizing and mesmerizing, before the second track drops like a ton of lead Marshall stacks. Massively loud and perplexingly heavy, HUGE slabs of downtuned guitars pour molten riffs down your willing throat, filling you with black tar melodies, jagged limb smashing drumming, and bass so low it seems to loosen the earth's crust around you. The final track picks up the pace, to barely midtempo, but certainly a breakneck speed for a lumbering behemoth like the Corrupted. Drummer Chew (formerly of Omoide Hatoba) gets to go all Animal on this track, smashing everything within reach, the only thing keeping him behind the kit is the impenetratable wall of mile-thick ocean-deep sonic sludge, like pouring a bucket of hot molasses on a porcupine. Or dropping a sea anenome in a vat of hot glue, or like listening to Black Sabbath with your ears full of mud. Where Boris is channelling all sort of seventies rock, and stoner riffage, albeit through their own slow motion filter, Corrupted are just really fucking scary. A huge uncontainable, slithering, squirming, unstoppable, slow-motion, crusty metallic black hole.
Not sure how it worked for other folks, but discovering On-U sound back in the eighties was definitely a gateway into classic dub, the On-U stable of bands like African Headcharge, Dub Syndicate, New Age Steppers, those Pay It All Back comps, the On-U sound was an electronic dub rooted in punk rock, that while true to the roots of reggae and dub, also pushed the sound in stranger, more cosmic and psychedelic directions. For us the ultimate dub music came courtesy of another non-traditonal electro-dub outfit, the Bush Chemists, who pushed dub to it's very breaking point, slathering sounds in ridiculous amounts of delay, sending beats careening into the ether, rhythms constantly collapsing and crumbling, before reconstituting only to do it all over again, while all around, the vocals and other instrumentation got the same treatment, for a non pot smoker, it was about as close to stone-y musical bliss as one could get.
But a close second in terms of tripped out psychedelic dub, was no doubt this one, Creation Rebel's Starship Africa, from way back in 1980, described by the label as some of the "greatest sci-fi dub soundtracks never put to film", which is really not that far off. We never really think about dub being space-y or psychedelic, but Starship Africa most definitely is, it's core sound is pure dub, upstroke guitars, wheezing melodica, woozy groovy basslines, swirling synths, and of course hypnotic rhythmic grooves, but in the hands of Creation Rebel, these sounds seem to blur into something else entirely, melodies shift, sounds blossom and expand outward like some exploding star, the drums occasionally splinter into fractured rhythmic shards, weird processed alien vocals hover in fields of reverb, the basslines thick and low slung, also seems to ooze and warble, anchoring all the other sounds, but in their own way stretching out to the heavens as well, and the tape speed constantly warbles, even slipping into an old school DJ style rewind, only to slip right back into another spaced out psychedelic groove.
Just check out the sound samples. Total druggy, dreamy, drift off headphone bliss.
It's easy to see why this boy/girl duo Cults have been getting so much hype, they traffic in the same sort of jangly retro girl pop as all the current 'girls' bands (Dum Dum, Vivian, At Dawn, etc), their contribution to / variation of THAT sound is adding some electronics, bigger beats and a WAY bigger production, which actually works, the sound is pretty dang irresistible, imagine the Dum Dum Girls mixed with Sleigh Bells, but with more of a droney, druggy, softly psychedelic vibe, not to mention some sweet catchy songs. "Abducted" the first single splits the verses between the boy and girl, but the chorus is all her, chiming melodies, handclap percussion, fuzzy bass buzz, plenty of reverb, soaring vocals and a divine hook, a cool swirly psychedelic breakdown rife with plenty of garage rock guitar twang, not to mention a seriously striking and way creepy video. The second track is a good one too, "Go Outside", which sounds a bit like Best Coast but with programmed beats, and a more modern sheen, and again, a killer catchy chorus.
The sound of Cults is just really great, equal parts modern and retro, snaps and claps and reverby girl group vox, mixed with programmed beats, and swirling synths, some tracks all torch songy and ballady, others more propulsive and electronics, hard to imagine that fans of the above mentioned bands, as well as maybe the Raveonettes, not flipping for these two, we sure did.
So crazy to think that it's been well over a decade since we first became smitten with the hearts on sleeves, bittersweet indie pop of Death Cab For Cutie. Those early records (Something About Airplanes, We Have The Facts And We Are Voting Yes) will always be so near and dear to our hearts. In fact DCFC played an awesome instore at aQ back in the day.
Codes And Keys is their eighth full length, and their third for Atlantic. Not tons has changed with their sound over the years. This outing does find them introducing more layers and subtle bits of electronics into their sweetly melancholy indie pop sound. Ben Gibbard sounds as introspective as ever, and the songs are filled with the kind of hooks and melody that have made them the perfect band to put on mixtapes for crushes for over a decade now. Dedicated fans will find lots to love on this new outing.
Metal mag Decibel's motto is "extremely extreme"... but maybe not "Too Extreme", which is believe it or not a song title on the "controversial" (read: terrible) new Morbid Angel album, who garner the cover spot this issue for their efforts. A whole article basically about "what the heck happened there?". We're actually pretty interested in reading this piece, about the legendary death metal band, now reunited with vocalist David Vincent, making their first album in 8 years, and unfortunately losing the plot big time (though Andee here is threatening to give it a positive review, just to be contrary).
Besides that, also this ish: the Melvins, Boris, Autopsy, Demonaz of Immortal, Deafheaven, Wormrot, Loss, Exhumed, Baroness (well, one of their moms), Graveyard, NWOBHM Lazaruses Hell, a live report from Roadburn, and more. Including the usual amusing columns, opinionated reviews, etc.
Oh, and this issue's Hall Of Fame inductee? Underrated Swiss thrash gods Coroner and their 1989 album No More Color!
Vladislav Delay continues to drift ever further from the spaced out minimal electronic dub and spare skeletal Chain Reaction techno that so defined him, this being maybe the strangest thing we've heard from him, this newly formed Quartet finds Delay (aka Sasu Ripatti) back behind the drum kit, where he started as a young jazz drummer, teamed up with Lucio Capece, Derek Shirley and none other than Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio (which makes sense as Delay now calls Finland home). Besides Delay's drums and percussion, the sound is rounded out by an appropriately eclectic, and is some ways traditionally jazzy array of instrumentation, acoustic bass, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, sruti box, preparations, electronics and live processing.
The opening track is an impressionistic soft noise blur, all hazy thrum, murky electronic burble, and what percussion there is exists more as barely audible skitters, and reverbed sizzle and clang, but it's an arresting introduction, dark and dense, washed out and psychedelically laced with the buried skree of horns and constantly shifting textures, the perfect lead in to the first 'proper' track, the nearly 12 minute "Santa Teresa", which is super minimal, low slung, Delay's drums spare and skittery, the bass locked into a warm jazzy pulse, the horns emitting sheets of brassy shimmer and skree, hard to say whether this is minimal experimentalism, or far out deconstructed jazz, or freeform improvised electronica, it actually sounds like all three, dark and haunting, dense and tense, with the drums marvelously effected, giving the sound a darkly dubbed out vibe as well.
"Des Abends" at its core is a variation of that opening track, but way noisier and dirgier, the sound more chaotic and distorted, the sound more industrial, laced with fragmented grooves, and thick clouds of blurred electronic noise.
And so it goes, from crunchy, buzz drenched low end dirgery, to charged electronics wreathed pulsing drones, from tripped out celestial kosmische electro-jazz to hushed, blurred, almost Portishead sounding downtempo slither, and from noisy cinematic horn flecked chaotic crunch to lush haunting layered ur-drone mesmer. Fantastic stuff.
A sprawling and expansive career retrospective from seminal militaristic folk / post industrial / dark ambient outfit Der Blutharsch, whose sound, while ever shifting, has remained constant in its dark mesmer, each record, and every track, a miniature epic, harrowing and hypnotic journeys through war and hell and the dark side of human nature. Weaving together children's choirs, maniacal growls, martial drumming, dark ambient drones, epic cinematic soundscapes, soaring strings, mumbled spoken word, pagan folk, found sounds, wartime propaganda soundbites, industrial rhythms, and apocalyptic / nihilistic lyrics.
Imagine a renaissance faire, strolling minstrels the whole bit, but suddenly the sky starts to darken, shadows lengthen wrapping everything in inky blackness, the strolling minstrels slowly take on the appearance of demons, and the music loses its sunshine and cheer, becoming more and more ominous, major keys change to minor, bells toll, the men start chanting, invoking some unspeakable mystery, while the children's eyes turn black and they begin to sing as well, as if in some sort of trancelike state, the whole thing becoming less of a celebration and more some sort of ancient pagan ritual. DB take the apocalyptic folk of Death In June and fuse it to the Teutonic metallic stomp of Rammstein, wind it all up in the clattery industrial cabaret of Einsturzende Neubaten, before dousing it in the swampy fire and brimstone dirge of Sixteen Horsepower and the dramatic gothiness of Sisters Of Mercy or Bauhaus,.
Elsewhere the sound is even more dazzlingly disparate, a roiling sonic cauldron equal parts Dead Can Dance, Laibach, Comus, Current 93, Magnetic Fields, World War 2, In The Nursery, Ennio Morricone, a gypsy caravan, all the great black metal intros ever, all of those disparate elements deftly woven into something dark and delightfully dreary, creepy and sometimes truly haunting...
Der Blutharsch's music most definitely mutated and transformed over the years, the core sound still dark and droning, but the rock element much more noticeable, with a seemingly omnipresent churning low slung bass weaving a dense framework of rumbling low end, supporting doom laden soundscapes constructed from moaning cellos and martial snares, wartime sound samples and military speeches, pounding rhythms and dramatic Teutonic vocals, gypsy violin and distorted guitar. But even within this industrial doom rock framework, DB managed to inject all sorts of truly unexpected twists and turns, like some hellish take on a Morricone spaghetti western with little bits of blackened twang one moment, and like a lost track from some sixties girl group, albeit in this case, swathed in dark sonic swirls and all sorts of rhythmic interference, the next.
This later sound something like a blackened, post-industrial Loop or Jesus and Mary Chain. Or maybe even what the Birthday Party would've sounded like if they were a suicidal '70s psych group. Staccato dirges grab distorted basslines and ride them into droney psychedelia, underneath a sky of swirling guitar leads and brutal, and of course the apocalyptic prophecies, mantras, and manifestos spewed forth from the DB mastermind Albin Julius...
"Uniforms are always changing, rock n' roll will stay forever" is boldly emblazoned on a later DB release. And if rock n' roll's main objective is to scare parents, or the majority of society in general, Der Blutharsch are definitely a rock band. And really always were....
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, on 180 gram vinyl, with hand numbered inserts, housed in black and red foil stamped jackets, odds are these could very well be the only copies we ever see...
This is the first we've heard from these Irish heavies, who specialize in a face melting brand of pulverizing metallic crust, liberally dosed with heaping of good old noise rock, and Southern style sludge. The label cites Eyehategod and His Hero Is Gone, which is definitely pretty spot on, but there's plenty more happening here, for us the noise rock thing seems to dominate, a sort of Black Flag meets Unsane or something, but then just as soon as we're feeling that, the sound switches gears, and the band is pounding out a punkish blast, but then it's right back into the warped stuttery noise rock, which is maybe why we dig this stuff so much. They sort of take all our favorite things and jam them together. That same song we were just describing, well, there's some seriously sludge-y Eyehategodisms going on there too. But somehow, all of those disparate parts fit together pretty perfectly.
The guitars are crunchy, distorted, super noisy, droned out too, with riffs blurred and smeared and stretched way out into super tense high end sprawls, which only makes it that much more dramatic when the song collapses back into some roiling noisy convoluted churn.
There's plenty of melody going on too, but these guys definitely don't flaunt it, instead just occasionally slipping into a little drift before the next avalanche of downtuned crush or explosion of frenzied pound. But for all of their influences, these guys definitely have their own thing, they're masters of dynamics, and tension and release, with weirdly structured arrangements, and ever shifting tempos and parts, mixing in long stretches of processed noise, weirdly distorted FX, letting chords ring out and crumble, turning sludgey doom into something weirdly groovy, and taking punked out metal and making it almost proggy, a sort of super heavy math metal sludge, that as if you couldn't tell by now, RULES.
And So Our Troubles Began is actually a compilation, gathering up two out of print vinyl eps, but somehow it plays pretty well as a single album proper, although we're primed now to hear what they come up with for a proper full length.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one machine numbered.
One of the finest examples of California post-punk gets a well deserved vinyl reissue. The Dream Syndicate, long associated with the early eighties Paisley Underground scene with The Bangles, Three O'Clock, and Rain Parade amongst many other bands, had a much more dour Velvet Underground inspired sound than their contemporaries, marked by long feed-back riddled passages. "When You Smile" and "Tell Me When It's Over" are exceptionally perfect gloomy anthems. Released on Slash in 1982 and produced by Chris D. (The Flesh Eaters), the band features Kendra Smith (Opal) on bass and vocals. Essential!
Another list, another batch of mysterious cassette sounds from Root Strata, check out the Father tape elsewhere on this week's list, which arrived alongside this, a clinically titled new release from a group/person called Driphouse, who like Father, we know next to nothing about, other than Root 91 is created from piano, harpsichord and synths, all woven into strangely cosmic sonic experiments, that range from swirling, electronic synthdrones that sounds almost like some crazy soundtrack to an alternate universe's planetarium show, to bizarre robotic electro, cobbled together from short bursts of static, bits of glitch and squelch, all wrapped around plink plonk piano melodies. There's also bleepy Radiophonic Workshop style analog electronic bloopscapes, minimal cinematic synthwave rife with shades of John Carpenter, but deconstructed into something much more abstract, super intense blasts of fuzzy shoegaze new age shimmer, this too peppered with starburst effects and sci-fi squiggles, haunting almost soundtracky sprawls of glitchy synth drones and processed minor key melodies, and some seriously creepy sing songy electro wrapped harpsichord, draped over softly swirling string like shimmer, and sounding a bit like the soundtrack to the unsung Halloween III. Cool, strange stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Housed in a super striking, embossed/debossed J-card, the cassette also strikingly printed white on white.
Man, with so much music coming through our doors every day... week... month... year, we try to stay on top of things as best we can, but it's inevitable that sometimes a wonderful release will slip under our radar and be sitting right under our noses. Case in point, William Duke's The Ghost That Would Not Be which we have carried in the store for the past couple years, but somehow never reviewed. 'Tis a fine folksy west coast pop album. Lush, earthy, sun-baked and just a little bit melancholic... just the way we love 'em! Better late than never though, right!? On this his solo debut, Mr. Duke certainly draws plenty of inspiration from pop greats The Beatles (he even does a rendition of "Baby's In Black"), The Beach Boys and The Byrds, as well as the classic rock of the '70s. For more recent touchstones, we can say that this is definitely for fans of the New Pornographers, Pernice Brothers, Grandaddy and Sloan. Y'know, bands who don't shy away from a clear-as-a-bell melody, an irresistible hook or a generous tug on the heartstring, but who also flesh out their songs into more elaborate arrangements. Actually, Mr. Duke's voice reminds us quite a lot of Sloan's Chris Murphy, New Pornographers' Carl Newman or a young Elvis Costello. It's got an earnest emotiveness and boyish charm that we dig. Sweet backing vocal harmonies and warm keyboards soothe and smile their way around the comparatively snarlin' gritty electric guitar and occasional quirky synth lines. Scattered throughout the album are a few brief instrumental, soundscape-y and collaged interludes, offering some nice pauses for reflection. Recommended!
Psst, letting the cat out of the bag... even though there's fifteen tracks listed on the digipak, there is actually a generous nineteen including the abovementioned Beatles cover, some demos, and alternate versions.
One of two new tape releases from Root Strata this week, this one from the cryptically monikered Father, who we know absolutely nothing about, but whose sound will no doubt hit the spot for fans of other recent Root Strata cassette jams from Arrow Kleeman, Ekin Fil, Tom Carter and Ben Vida.
Return Of The Father is a hushed blurred shimmer of sounds, a collage of what sounds like tangled melodies, finger picked guitars, deep resonant drones, all smeared into hazy, gauzy, shapeless atmospheres, lush layered clouds of disembodied melody drifting through grey skies, a muted murky bleary eared churn one second, a soft cacophony of chimes and tinkling melodies the next, occasional tiny avalanches of percussion woven into dreamily clattery drift, but the sounds seeming to all slowly gravitate toward a gauzy pop ambient blur, channeling Tim Hecker, Belong, Mountains, Klimek and other similarly minded sonic obfuscationists. So nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
The latest epic slab of atmospheric black metal from this Northern California black metal duo begins with a warm bit of swoonsome, softly pulsing synth swirl, before the band launch into the first of two sidelong tracks, and immediately, the sound here is harder, and harsher, and heavier, the vibe is definitely atmospheric, but much more grim and buzzy, the two immediately locked into a hazy galloping expanse of majestic melodic blackness, droned out and trancelike, hypnotic and mesmerizing, sounding like it could (and maybe should) go on forever and ever, until the sound suddenly and gloriously ruptures, the song exploding into a gout of gnarled mathy chaos, before slipping right back into the trancey buzz.
The sound does eventually shift, the guitars soaring, fast picked melodies all tangled up with the relentless drum pound, eventually the song settling into a woozy, moody, buzz free creep, just mournful guitars wrapped around melodic bass, and a plodding almost doomy dirge. The band slowly build adding layer after layer, eventually returning to a furious tranced out buzz once again, but here the guitars seem slippery, the riffs even more tangled, the sound warped and even more chaotic, the black buzz slipping into almost white noise territory before finally collapsing into a long stretch of muted, murky grumbling grey drones.
The B side starts off distinctly more doomy, thick, reverbed minor key chords drift over a simple, slo-mo drum trudge, atmospheric, ominous, haunting, it's only a minute or two before this track too explodes in a frenzy of musical violence, an avalanche of blackened chaos, careening riffs, buried howls, splattery drumming, the various elements eventually coalesce into something more solidly black and buzzy, but before too much time has passed, the band transform it into some strange black doom, the chords tarpit slow, but the drums still blasting away, the vocals a beastly gurgle, before once again letting the buzzing blackness overtake them. This track, like the first side, is constantly shifting, from more clean shimmery ambience, to some gorgeously melodic churning guitardrone, that sounds like BM riffs blurred into hypnotic muddy swirls, and like the A side, this track finishes with a long stretch of minimal drift, this time, hazy synths, minimal percussion and haunting cinematic piano stabs, creepy, and harrowingly beautiful.
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES, pressed on thick vinyl, and housed in super heavy jackets.
Channel Pressure is a record that seems wholly devoid of irony, even though everything indicates that it should be dripping with it. Daniel Lopatin is the mastermind behind the polygon electronica of Oneohtrix Point Never, and together with Joel Ford, he recorded one hell of an electro-pop single as Games that could have been lifted from any club circa 1986. That sense of time travel is still being dialed in for Channel Pressure (authored by Ford + Lopatin, who have dropped the Games moniker for something more in keeping with Stock, Aiken, and Waterman, although their sound is firmly American). This album is completely unashamed of its mid-'80s electro-pop aesthetic, with many of the boyband falsetto vocals popping out of the slick, urban-pop productions like ghost-jams of forgotten MTV wannabes of that time period. The spry electronic rhythms and bent-synth melodies become all the more ridiculous with the hair-metal guitar solos that spring to life for no good reason other than because they could. Ford + Lopatin even managed to convince Mexican Summer to spring for them to record in Jan Hammer's studio. Yeah, the same Jan Hammer who scored the Miami Vice theme song! Where Oneohtrix Point Never expresses some dripping emotions through the mainframe of sci-fi computing, Channel Pressure has its head buried in a pile of cocaine, imagining itself as a sci-fi lovestory with robots and super-computer, but comes across more as a pretty straight homage to the production styles of Nile Rodgers and Harold Faltermeyer. A new New Jack Swing awaits.
Foreign Cinema's debut ep was a huge hit around here, about a year ago when we finally realized it had been sitting in a box of cds to check out for way to long, we put it on and were totally blown away. In fact it's become one of those cds that pretty much gets played in the store every week at some point. It's just so perfect in its shoegaze, daydream perfection. They seem to be taking their time crafting a proper first full length (The Soft Moon were equally wise in releasing a handful of 7"s before their first album). These two new songs show there's plenty of wonderful, dark and breezy shoegaze pop to come from this awesome duo in the near future (we hope). We gotta give them extra props for naming the A side "Palace Of Fine Junk" after our favorite random junk/thrift store in the Tenderloin. In fact listening to Foreign Cinema is a lot like taking a dazed and hazy late afternoon walk through this city. "Velvet Sky" may be on the B side, but damn if it's not one of the most seductive and sensual slow burners of the year!
Beautifully packaged, hand stamped, and limited. So grab one while you can.
Full length number three from everybody's favorite progressive punx, and this Canadian sextet continues to polish and hone their ever unpunkening sound, with the band apparently openly fessing up to no longer being a punk band. Which really what was so special about these guys in the first place. Back in the early days, when they most definitely WERE a punk band, they seemed to have sonic aspirations beyond punk rock, and the fact that Fucked Up was populated by a bunch of well listened music nerds, most definitely informed their sound, a sound which as it stands now, is as much indie rock as punk rock if not more.
Just check out the opening of "Let Her Rest", sure it's an intro, but it's a dreamily jangly one, super melodic, a gauzy bit of distorted buzz over a sweetly tinkling guitar, and even when the second track kicks in, it's hardly punk, kinetic, caffeinated, super hooky jangle pop, which as far as we're concerned. The punkest part at this point is frontman Damian Abraham's raspy bellow (which is sometimes distracting as he's a dead ringer for the singer from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, or maybe John Brannon of Negative Approach / Laughing Hyenas is a cooler comparison, or the dude from Scissorfight), but even those vocals have grown progressively more melodic, and the fact that there are some sweet female vox (via the woman from Cults reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) to balance them a bit, only presses the non punk point further home.
The multiple vocals are also part of the concept, as this is a rock opera of sorts, about a worker in a lightbulb factory, but unlike many 'rock operas' it definitely plays just fine removed from the concept as just a kick ass heavy indie pop record. Guitars crunch, drums pound, melodies soar, the sound as polished as ever, it's obvious these guys camped out in the studio and made that extra time count, there are hooks galore, the songs crazy catchy, those gruff vox keeping it from being pure pop, but just barely, a kick ass melding of modern indie rock, eighties post punk and Britpop into something that is most definitely Fucked Up.
While she sometimes gets overlooked, France Gall is one of French Pop's greatest treasures. She's been making great records from her beginnings way back in 1963 all the way to the present day. This collection draws from her early years ('63-'68) and demonstrates what French pop perfection and fun is all about. With many of these songs written and arranged by Serge Gainsbourg (of course), Gall displays an incredible talent at such a young age, evoking such playfulness, innocence, and smoking sensuality. These early years find her in full on ye-ye girl glory. Her poppiest and catchiest tracks for sure, but also showing the range in her delivery in some of her more slow and midtempo numbers which really floor us the most. These are songs with the same kind of undeniable charm that early works of Nancy Sinatra, Bridgett Bardot, and Francoise Hardy also exuded. An absolute must have for any fan of French pop, and well just great pop period!
Another supergroup / side project from kick ass 7" label Valley King, after a Carlton Melton single and a Sweet Apple single, came the ruling Nothing Like You 7" from Spiders, a new Swedish outfit that includes members of Graveyard and Witchcraft, now we have Golden Void, another new band, this one made up of members of San Diego shredders Earthless and Bay Area psychedelic stoners Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, recorded right here in SF by Phil Manley (Trans Am, The Fucking Champs, etc.).
Golden Void's sound is SO kick ass and SO hits the spot, totally heavy, hooky, groovy stoner rock, big riffs, lots of organ, soaring vocals, and yeah, of course some seriously shredding leads, totally catchy, a modern take on some mix of all your teenage faves, Kiss, Thin Lizzy, Skynrd, just totally rocking, laced with plenty of psychedelic swirl, and a distinctly laid back classic rock vibe. Also reminds us a LOT of aQ stoner rock faves Freedom Hawk, the A side of this here single, might be THEE rocking jam of the summer. And we're thinking that when these guys come out with a full length, we might just have us a new favorite record...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Each cover beautifully silkscreened, hand numbered, and signed by the cover artist
Not to be confused with Stevie Wonder's album of the same name, this is a new collaboration between Bill Gould (of Faith No More as well as numerous other diverse international projects) and Jared Blum (whom aQ followers may recognize from his numerous musical aliases such as Beaks Plinth, Blanketship, Vulcanus 69, and their Bay Area parent indie label Gigante Sound).
Perhaps needless to say, this is quite different than the elder Talking Book or than any of Gould's past predominantly metal-rooted musical pursuits for that matter, but it's very much in familiar abstract sound shaping territory for Blum. Indeed, although you will find keyboards and synthesized sound here as you would on Wonder's 1972 classic, Gould and Blum sculpt them (as well as tapes, vintage vinyl and acoustic instruments) into shadow shrouded soundscapes instead of driving funk or soulful pop. The album starts out lurking in the dank gloom of earth-bound recesses, but later tracks drift out into the heavens with shimmering melodic guitar lines. Nice! It's an effective collaging together of the hazily delicate and the gristly dissonant. Soft crackle and hiss suggests something aged, dusty and weathered. Haunting moods are conjured by shifting tonal and textural layers with shards of piano and guitar cutting through the foreboding clouds. A darkened room and headphones are most certainly advised to best experience Gould and Blum's assemblage of blistered drones, faded abrasions, buzzing protrusions and bass-heavy contusions. Recommended for fans of Aidan Baker (Nadja, Arc), BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa, Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Our Love Will Destroy The World, TRMRS) and followers of the abovementioned Gigante Sound label. Released on Gould's Koolarrow label.
Don't know much about these guys, but just now we LOVE 'em. Fuzzy gloomy reverby doom pop, all hazy and distorted and shoegazey, with Cure like guitars, Spacemen 3 like droned out space rock tendencies, Big Black like drum machines, warm, weird, multi tracked and reverb drenched vocals, the tracks separated by strange samples, the sound distorted and in-the-red, muted and washed out, but the songs, oh the songs, so haunting and catchy and a little bit gothic, a little new wave, a sort of electro fuzz punk, lilting melodies over those crunchy rhythms, hooks galore, slipping from pounding drum heavy crush to minimal stripped down krautrocky drift, a detached weary vibe, equal parts Blessure Grave, Cold Cave, Black Bug, the sort of thing that definitely would be right at home on Captured Tracks, but for all its similarities to other sounds and groups, Grave Babies definitely sound totally like their own thing, and the more we listen, the more this becomes a new favorite.
WAY recommended for anyone into the current wave(s) of downer pop / electro punk / neu goth / cold wave...
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES!! In a plain white sleeve with paste on front and back cover images.
We've been wanting to list this for awhile, but the first pressing went out of print rather quickly that it took us awhile to get enough to list from the second pressing. And you can see why it's been so popular, what with all the love for rare kosmische music, and this one is a stunner!
Before 1979, Harald Grosskopf was mostly known as a percussionist for Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers and Klaus Schulze. But during one bleak summer where his girlfriend left him, he fortuitously met up with two musicians who he would later collaborate with in the band You (whose 2 releases are soon to be reissued on Bureau B!). One of them lent Grosskopf his flat for the summer and a mini-Moog and sequencers to work on a solo record. With a reel to reel and eight track recorder he received from Schulze as compensation for his contribution on some recordings, Grosskopf then had to teach himself how to use all the new equipment, which was no easy task. But his perseverance paid off as the result is one of the finer synth outings we've heard from the era. There is a nice percolating exuberance to the tracks aided with the forwarding momentum of percussion that keeps things moving along, while other tracks show a deep space ambient side. Definitely a precursor for what much of what Jonas Reinhardt and Zombi are doing nowadays. In fact, included with the lp is a cd of 11 reworkings of Synthesist by the newer vanguard of electronic artists including: Oneohtrix Point Never, Arp, James Ferraro, Pink Skull, Bronze and Stellar Om Source. Highly Recommended!!!!
We didn't know too much about this, other than it's a lost eighties recording of turntable manipulation and plunderphonia from a member of Homosexuals related outfit Milk From Cheltenham (the band whose name inspired Stephen Stapleton of Nurse With Wound to name his label United Dairies by the way), but really they had us at turntable manipulation and plunderphonia, and that's just what this is, split into a bunch of short tracks, this plays as a single sprawling dizzying epic, which apparently was born of multiple mixes of a song built from a ROOM SIZED 24 track loop, and it's pretty crazy, sample voices, snippets of orchestras, pounding percussion, woozy strings, the sounds warped and warbly, distorted and a little crackly, booming reverbed pianos, creepy snippets of soundtracks, bleating horns, excerpts from some old language lesson tape, skittery jazz, constantly shifting pitches, lots of warble, the sounds themselves strange, but their condition, and their treatment, including what sounds like manual finger on the record manipulation, is what really makes this so psychedelic and tweaked sounding. Many of the sounds here were unused and remixed excerpts of recordings which would eventually become the title track of the Milk From Cheltenham lp, which according to the label was "a tape collage of the live mixdown of 17 cassette recordings of locked record grooves, simultaneously, with stray radio and an infernal matchbox."
Apparently, the second disc is a collection of recordings discovered while digging through tapes in search of a master for disc one, and plays out much like the first disc with the main difference being a bit of bizarre and primitive drum programming, otherwise, it's another dizzying collection of strange sounds, mysterious voices, sonic snippets, all constantly manipulated and messed with. Although those rhythms somehow make it sound even more fractured and fucked up. Definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of John Oswald, Negativland, Philip Jeck, Otomo Yoshihide, Strotter Inst, LAFMS, Dennis Duck, Martin Tetreault and other tape loop / turntable experimentalists.
Both discs include lengthy bonus tracks featuring yet more material, in this case intended for a never realized second Milk From Cheltenham lp, and while there's a booklet / poster, it doesn't offer much in the way of liner notes...
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Up until now, we knew Hyetal as a Bristol based dubstepper, with killer jams on all sorts of labels from Punch Drunk to Planet Mu, his sound a soulful, tripped out variant of classic dubstep, but who here, on Broadcast, has ditched the whole dubplate / 12" single / dancefloor driven approach and crafted a record proper, one that plays out like some strange Eighties giallo soundtrack, equal parts Goblin, John Carpenter, witch housers Salem, and nineties IDM, not to mention some serious soul. Opener "Ritual" is the grimmest of the bunch, and the most witch house-y, total blackened synth heavy drag, the sounds distorted and crumbly, the beat a soporific creep, lots of buzz, and swirl, and some total Carpenter like soundtracky melodies, all minor key and haunting as hell. "Diamond Islands" continues the vibe, with a skittery abstract beat, some woozy, sinister synths, some big eighties drums, breathy vocals suspended over the swirling electronic backdrop, the vibe low slung and retro, but also weirdly abstract and futuristic.
"Phoenix" takes some swaggery dubstep, stirs in some 8 bit eighties video game sounds, and some cheesy soundtracky synths, into some total VHS dubstep new age soundtrack soul, while "Beach Scene" conjures up the exact opposite, some grimy chase through the gritty streets of some post apocalyptic wasteland. And weirdly enough, "The Chase" doesn't really evoke a chase, but is darkly tense, a pulsing new wave synthscape, that leads directly into "Searchlight", which takes Boards Of Canada style warm and washed out IDM, mixes in some weird eighties synths and some blooping bleeping video game music, not to mention some fragmented soul vox, for a dizzying bit of haunting skittery electro wave.
"Dimepiece" is all minimal and stripped down, with distant melodies, a churning propulsive melody, but with some awesome swaths of dubstep bas wobble, underpinning echo drenched disembodied female vox.
The record continues on, straddling the line between abstract dubstep, vintage Carpenter soundtrack, old school IDM, and dark minimal electro soul, finally finishing off with the haunting and gorgeously brooding "Black Black Black", a sort of post Portishead chunk of downtempo slither, sexy female vocals crooned over a Burial style slo-mo dubstep beat, all wound up with pulsing synths, and deep thick swells of haunting ambience, and draped with some chiming, lilting eighties pop melodies, only to fade out into nearly two minutes of crashing surf. So nice.
Note: the double 12" vinyl version only includes 5 of the 10 tracks found on the compact disc format.
Lovely lovely lovely. Originally released way back in the magical musical year of 1971, on the French label Flamophone, the sole album by the youthful hippie duo of Bernard Ilous and Patrice Decuyper is just that, lovely. And pretty darn obscure. Amazing how reissue labels like Lion can dig up such things, as good as this elegant piece of psych-tinged, pastoral pop, replete with lush vocal harmonies, careful arrangements, and gorgeous melodies! So who were Ilous & Decuyper? Beatles-fan Ilous was already an accomplished professional composer, with a desire to at last sing his own songs rather than just write for the French pop stars of the day. He teamed up with likeminded folk guitarist Patrice Decuyper, and via a "confrontational" collaborative song-writing process that highlighted the emotional content of their music, this album was created. Doubtless the symphonic, sophisticated sound of Ilous & Decuyper's record wouldn't have been possible, except that luckily they had off-hours access to a big league, 16-track recording studio -- and spent, like, a year making this album, playing almost everything themselves and finding creative ways to do so.
We can't conclude this review without mentioning their amazing cover of "Eleonor [sic] Rigby", a wonderful, almost-hard-to-recognize-but-not-really reinterpretation of that famous Lennon/McCartney tune. Beatles fans Ilous & Decuyper were indeed, though for every part of this album that sounds Beatlesy, there's also parts that sound as much like CSN&Y, or Led Zeppelin, or Ennio Morricone, or the Bee Gees, or some sort of psychedelicized, Francophone variety of "yacht rock"!
As we've come to expect from reissues associated with Lion Productions, not only is this a pretty great, totally obscure treasure, but they've made sure to include copious liner notes and complete lyrics in the thick cd booklet. And there's also two bonus tracks from a post-album single. Quite nice indeed.
Another warehouse find (or closet find, since we don't really have what one might call a warehouse), this one, the 2005 full length from Russian funeral doom duo Intaglio, whose sound is a ponderous downtuned plod, a blackened, sprawling slo-mo creep, the guitars oozing and droney, the drums a spare thud, the vocals a guttural gurgle, the sound melancholic and mournful, this is the sort of doom that is tranced out and meditative, not sick and sinister, trafficking in a vibe similar to Skepticism or Thergothon or Evoken, these guys create epic expanses of slow, smoldering heaviness, no extreme dynamics, no blasts of black buzz, instead, simply, an ever expanding black cloud of sound, woozy and washed out, the chords ringing out, the notes fading into blackness before the next chord crashes in and takes its places, the melodies unwinding almost dreamily, minor key, darkly melodic, this may be heavy and 'doom', but to these ears it almost sounds like perfect late night drift off music for metalheads.
Only a few copies of these in stock, once they're gone, we might not be able to get more...
Man, do we at ever AQ love that Japanese '70s group the Taj Mahal Travellers! Masters of organic drone, utilising bowed cymbals, violins, loudspeakers, tape loops and all sorts of unique source material. And we've been blessed of late with the reissue of lots
Wow, for a band that legendarily never really made, like, any "official" albums, certainly no studio ones, we sure have written a lotta reviews of releases by 'em! Not that we're complaining, we'll happily gobble up whatever obscure documents by these gents that reissue labels like Phoenix manage to dig up. After all, these Japanese Seventies psych subversives are one of those bands that inspired an entire scene, it seems, with all shades-wearing Tokyo psych acts of the modern era (Fushitsusha, LSD-march, Up-Tight, Miminokoto, etc. etc.) owing them allegiance. Themselves inspired by the dark urban psych of the Velvets, plus a dose of oddly enough Motown rhythms... and an even bigger dose of hiss, distortion and feedback. All noise / psych rock freeks definitely should delve into the mystery and murk of Les Rallizes.
This one, named for a 1970 Sam Peckinpah western (?), is a soundtrack to a live VHS video (we've never seen) released back in 1992, compiled by Rallizes leader Takashi Mizutani himself, a "best of" of sorts, demonstrating that these psychedelic hermits have sounded always as blisteringly blown-out and otherworldly rockin' and rollin' since their inception in 1967... it could be '72, it could be '79, it could be '83, it could be '92, it doesn't matter, when Les Rallizes take the stage they're in their own universe anyway, where time and other natural laws (musical ones too) operate differently. Where were we in '92? Just discovering Fushitsusha, probably, not yet hip to the true godhead that is Les Rallizes.
At first, when confronted with the heavy duty, distorted throb of the first few tracks, you might think, cool, but this does sound like stuff you already have heard by Rallizes, so do you really need more? Well, first off, if you're like us, you probably do... and anyway, wait, 'cause this is a sprawling double cd set after all, and eventually it reveals some sides to Les Rallizes that seemed new to us. Stuff that's so amazingly echoed-out, it's practically dub music. Beyond dub music, even. (Hmm, that'd be interesting, if someone did a dub version of a Rallizes track... would it collapse in on itself somehow?). There's also moments that have to be some of the most melodic, prettiest Rallizes to ever grace our ears... and some of their heaviest stuff is here too.
'Cause this is sort of a "greatest hits", the tracks that sound familiar are of course performances of songs we've heard in other incarnations on other Rallizes releases, and again they are as 'perfectly' realized (Rallizesised?) as any renditions you'll hear.
So, yeah, Cable Hogue easily winds up in the "essential" category... with almost all the other Rallizes records we've heard. Limited, numbered, cardstock "wallet" packaging.
