Our store is actually quite small, for folks who have never visited in person, so it always surprises us that stuff can get lost in the shuffle, and slip through the cracks, cuz when we talk about 'warehouse finds', we're really talking about the closet behind the counter where we store the backstock, or the back room where we do mailorder... But here we are again with another 'warehouse find', the only full length from Texas one man black metal horde Absonus Noctis, and it's a pretty fantastically fierce slab of buzzing USBM, the songs washed out and drenched in reverb, the riffing frantic, the melodies majestic and epic, the sound cavernous and a bit murky, the way underground bedroom black metal should be, the tracks slipping from dirgey pound to blazing blast, the guitars constantly shifting, gnarled almost DSO churn one second, blurred muddy Xasthur like fuzz the next, the sound heavily layered so one guitar will be spinning frenzied high end melodies, while another guitar chugs hauntingly, the songs peppered with occasional stretches of creepy abstract drift, smears of guitar buzz and anguished wails, or warm surprisingly melodic, pizzicato melodic interludes, and even the heavy parts are often underpinned by weird strum or spidery clean guitars, which gives the record a seriously twisted vibe, with many of the riffs and melodies slightly bent, a little atonal, again adding a serious sense of menace. The final track is a 17 plus minute epic, that begins as barely there clean guitar ambient drift, before transforming into heaving slo-mo dirge-droom crush, all woozy and melancholy, washed out and sort of doomily dreamlike.
We only have 3 or 4 of these left, and there's a good chance these will be the last copies we can get, so grab one before they're gone.
Latest from long time aQ fave one man ultra doom outfit, Amort, here expanded to a quartet, with extra members handling gong, keys, saxophone and extra guitar. Here teamed up with crusty black metal punks Ives.
Amort offer up a single 14 minute track, the begins with haunting female vocals, over deep reverberating piano, and rumbling low end drones, very ritualistic and choral, it's not until nearly 3 minutes in, that the song splinters into what sounds like some sort of abstract free jazz doom, the gong rippling out thick metallic waves of sound, the sax skronking and squeaking, all wrapped in thick whorls of rumble and thrum, a monstrous ominous slo-mo creep, until finally, the song proper kicks in after about 5 minutes, an impossibly glacial chunk of slow motion doom sludge, drumless, and surprisingly melodic, the melodies nearly pop, but the guitars oozing and blackened, the vocals a demonic gurgle, a strange combination for sure, this filthy downtuned evil sound, but the song itself almost happy, like some pop song slowed waaaaaaaay down and then filtered through Corrupted and Nortt and Bunkur, the prettiest, most melodic slab of ultradoom you'll ever hear. It does build, and get louder and louder, there are spidery guitar leads, and more piano, but the sound never gets any less melodic.
Ives are pretty much on the other end of the sonic spectrum entirely, spitting out blasting, thrashing crusty blackness, minor key riffing, furious pounding drumming, harsh vokills, sonically quite akin to the punkier Darkthrone sound, or classic Discharge, but for every bit of D-beat pound, the band unleash a blast of face melting black metal buzz, the sound lo-fi, but still heavy and frantic and frenzied, brutal and blasting, galloping and churning, crusty but plenty grim and black. Killer stuff from both bands, the Ives stuff is from an old cassette, so a little curious to hear more recent stuff, and Amort, well, we can never get enough of their/his gloriously abject slow motion piano pounding dismal doom...
Here's a new one from this Italian one man black metal band, the awesomely (and confusionally) titled Death Grows Into Sperm, with it's equally confusional cover, featuring some sort of demonic sperm/skull hybrid.
For a self described practitioner of "harsh impudent black metal", much of DGIS is surprisingly melodic and lush, especially the opening two part epic (and the closing two parter, but more on that in a second), the intro is all clean guitars, and swirling swells and proggy synths, when the track proper kicks in, the guitars soar majestically, the tempo more doomy and midtempo than black and thrashing, still heavy on the melody, until about 4 minutes in, when some frantic riffing surfaces, and the sound explodes into some seriously bleak and blasting blackness. But even, then the sound is infused with melody, a subtle poppiness, that manages to make the fury and force stick in your head.
The sound shifts quite a bit too, from Nordic style classic black metal, to more traditional eighties style heavy metal riffing, those elements woven together by serpentine guitar leads, and those aforementioned melodies. The middle chunk of the record is much more traditionally grim and black, buzzy and blasting, still rife with bits of melody and unlikely arrangements, until the final two part closing songsuite, which mirrors the opening, creating a super lush and intricate blackened prog epic, lots of spidery clean guitars, droned out buzz, some black blasts for sure, but way heavier on the melody and the atmosphere, especially the second part, which spends the majority of its 8 minutes blurring and swirling and drifting like some Tim Hecker-ish bit of gauzy atmospheric ambience, interrupted briefly by a bit of super melodic heavy riffing, but otherwise left to whir and chime and float and finally fade out.
Grim, black, majestic, epic and melodic, and way recommended for folks who dig that sort of thing. Which we're guessing is a whole lot of you.
Local art pop outfit Art Museums know that a really great pop song can and maybe should be less then two minutes long, yet still be filled with so much punchy sonic style and flare. With "Dancing With A Hole In Your Heart" they have crafted one of the best 88 second pop songs we have heard in ages. It makes us think of early Magnetic Fields covering The Vaselines, in other words pure pop perfection!
The other two songs are no slouches either, in fact they are as strong as anything that was on their great full length debut, Rough Frame. This makes us excited for what a new album would sound like, as they seem to only be getting better with time... except we think maybe they just broke up, if so, bummer!
A few lists back we hailed the return of the Mausoleums, our coworker Andrew's band which had lain dormant for far too long, and who in that time seemed to have morphed into a completely different beast, trading in the schizophrenic black metal weirdness for something much more droned out and psychedelic. And apparently that sonic shift also inspired the formation of a new band, this one called Avian Bones, which traffics in a similarly murky psychedelic krautdrone sound, taking obvious inspiration from Spacemen 3, Loop and other purveyors of druggy hypnorock, the emphasis in AB seeming to be much more on propulsion, the rhythm mixed way higher and giving these songs some extra heft, and some propulsive momentum. And the murk being such that it often seems to blur the riffs and other instrumentation into clouds of shimmering sound, more of a textural backdrop for the rhythm and the fore, the sounds shifting melodically, but drifting dreamily into oblivion.
After a brief lovely reverbed guitar intro, AB lunch right into a long droned out stretch of dronerock bliss, the shifting sounds subtle enough, that it almost feels looped the song trancelike and fantastically relentless. "Going Somewhere Else" is another slab of similarly murky mesmer, the drums a bit busier this time, a bit loose limbed which gives the track a more organic feel, as if it could derail at any point.
It's not until "Only You Will Know" that the songs shifts dramatically, the drums machinelike and skittery, the droned out noise of the first few tracks dialed way back, leaving the sound more low slung and slithery, but gradually building to another spacey psychedelic sprawl, and once it reaches that point, the song locks tight, and we're once again carried away by the endless riffing and motorik rhythm. "Anoxia" offers up a false start, before lurching into a strangely spidery abstract bit of psychswirl drift, the guitars spare, the drums simple and skeletal, the guitars over the course of the track's 8 plus minutes, growing more melodic, but not necessarily louder, the track remaining spares and spare, but building in intensity, which is a nice effect, and leads right into the caustic crunch of the closer, a heady chunk of Loop meets Jesus And Mary Chain, with most of the JAMC shoegaze noise pop blurred into Loop-ed expanses of soaring melodies, and swirling distorted murk, and again, the song locks into a lumbering groove, and proceeds to churn away, with the clouds of guitar overhead swirling and constantly shifting, a seriously blissed out drone-psych coda.
And like the Mausoleums record, this one too is cassette only, the low fidelity and tape hiss only serving to enhance AB's marvelous murk. And we'd be surprised if the psych rock obsessives who freak out over every Carlton Melton / White Hills / Wooden Shjips release, finally started getting hip to the newly (re)launched Mausoleums / Avian Bones sonic axis...
Record number two from this US black metal horde, masterminded by Nachtmystium member Andrew Marukszewski. While Nachtmystium seems to have gradually been moving away from black metal and toward a sound more distinctly psychedelic and progressive, in Avichi, Marukszewski hews closer to classic black metal, but within that framework, he manages to craft something definitely out of the ordinary, channeling the same sort of post black metalisms as Deathspell Omega, but with more of a classic metal vibe, the guitars cleaner, the riffing slightly less gnarled, with some extreme dynamics, and a killer not at all traditional sound, the drums especially, dry and HUGE (it was recorded at Albini's Electrical Audio after all), with the band often locking into these soaring majestic crescendos, that remind us of fellow USBM-ers Woe, a sort of indie/post rock sensibility informing the sounds, but in a much more subtle way here, but it IS there, and it definitely affects the vibe. And when the guitars and drums are locked tight, it's mesmerizing and trancelike.
It's during the slower parts (some of them at least) when the DSO comparisons seem especially apt, that sort of Slintiness, and Avichi take that sound even further in places, slipping to into post rock that most actual post rock bands would kill for, drum sound and all, but obviously heavier, and usually those moments are precursors to the song exploding into something more black and buzzy, although the band have mastered the art of melding those two extremes.
The final two part nearly twenty minute epic title track is where the band really lets their post rock flag fly, definitely risking alienating the true grim hordes, but, the band already were well removed from true kvlt black metal anyway, but on the second movement, the band do all sorts of cool crazy stuff, blasts of frenzied muted riffing, lurching start stop mathiness, peppered with wild guitar licks, and after a brief blast of more traditional black buzz, they slip right back into a killer stretch of mathy melody that we wish would go on forever, and does in fact play out to the very end of the record.
Fans of Woe, Wolves In The Throne Room, Deafheaven, Fell Voices, and other modern experimental / progressive black metal outfits would definitely do well to check these guys out...
Super limited cassette of "retro futuristic dunestep" from aQ pal JD Short, aka Bassdblr, who made these tapes exclusive for aQuarius, limited to just 100 copies, and if you're not a sucker for experimental dubstep, and/or a sucker for DUNE themed electronica, there must be something really wrong with you. A bass player by trade, Short infuses his particular brand of dubbed out beat heavy stutter with REAL bass, so the sound is thick, and buzzy, a little proggy, and in its own way sort of heavy. The sound looped and hypnotic, cyclical and a bit tranced out. But then it's hard to pin down cuz the sound is all over the place.
Opener "Atrocity Arms The Future" is some seriously bass heavy dubstep electro prog ambience, sounding like a dubbed out soundtrack to some creepy eighties sci-fi epic, all looped beats, woozy distorted bass, and electronic pulses that give the sound a teensy bit of a Carpenter vibe. And that live bass also give it a sort of post rock feel too, but the beat is most definitely dubsteppy. "IX" is almost like Pinback crossed with Squarepusher scoring some zombie flick, all dark and tense and low slung and ominous, warm fluid basslines wrapped around a pulsing electronic rhythm, while "Long Live The Fighters" sounds like it could have come out on Not Not Fun, a fuzzy, percolating bit of retro electronica that is like a more progged out caffeinated version of the current crop of Goblin/Carpenter worship. "The Scattering" takes thick sludgey bass and wreathes it in fluttery flute like melodies, and crunchy electronic glitch for something swirly and almost psychedelic sounding, Bassdblr's dirgey basslines lending it some un-electronica sounding heft.
And so it goes, from stripped down, loping-bass-lined cinematic creep, to gristly, super distorted electro-buzz, from blissed out skittery / prismatic kosmische electronica, to old school VHS synth-funk, to grinding glitchy dirge dub stutter, to super melodic lilting electronic buzzpop, and from proggy, glitchy retro-futuristic electro ambience, to finally, a a last blast, a more distorted take on the opening dubsteppy jam, all anchored by Short's heavy cyclical dark-prog Dune-driven bass. Super rad stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Available only at aQ, includes a download coupon as well!!
We hadn't heard anything from these New Jersey retro poppers other than a brief 4 song 7", but that's all it took to convince us that these guys were more than capable of pushing all our musical buttons, fuzzed out drum machine driven new wave flecked shoe gaze garage pop of the highest order, a modern take on iconic John Hughes soundtrack indie rock, Simple Minds filtered through M83, jangle pop bliss all ramshackle and fuzz drenched and oozing hooks and melody. The 7" reminded us of Unrest, Guided By Voices, Sebadoh, the Pastels, as well as more modern practitioners of the same sort of sound, Woods, Best Coast, Blank Dogs, but Big Troubles definitely have their own masterful take on the whole C86 pop sound, meshing rudimentary stumble pop, with massive speaker melting squalls of shoegaze shimmer, and crunchy DIY lo-fi pop, into a stunningly varied selection of songs, from dense and driving to skeletal and simple, from hazy and haunting to lush and summery, the thread holding them all together is a weird pop vibe that seems to instantly evoke memories of young love and misspent youth, of wandering aimlessly before the shackles of adulthood and responsibility had truly taken hold, transporting the listener to an age of youth, that vibe and emotion rendered in fuzz guitar, propulsive rhythms, cascading sheets of blurred distorted guitars, buried vocals, perfect melodies, every song major mixtape material, which is about the highest praise we can imagine.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We all kinda flipped when we discovered Blackwolfgoat, and proceeded to gush about BWG's Dragonwizardsleeve record back on list #369, an album that definitely threw us for a loop, cuz with a name like Blackwolfgoat, and on a mostly stoner rock label, we were expecting some sort of crust metal or retro thrash or stoner doom, but instead, BWG, aka guitarist Darryl Shepard, offered up a gorgeous droned out, heavily layered solo guitar record, definitely heavy, at least in places, but more mesmerizing and cyclical, droney and psychedelic, slipping from SUNNO))) like dronesludge to almost krautrocky hypnodrift.
So we were super excited to discover there was a new album - only to discover it was a cd-r, and had been limited to just 100 copies, waah. We basically gave up on ever getting copies for the store, when lo and behold, Mr. Blackwolfgoat himself got in touch and offered us his last copies! So of course we said hell yeah, and now submit to you, Dronolith, another disc of churning repetition, and cosmic looped mesmer that should most definitely appeal to all you aQ headz into drone/metal/psych/kraut, but be warned, we have about 10 copies and then that's it!
The first track starts things off with a gorgeously murky stoner rock riff, that instead of launching into a song proper, just repeats, trancelike, while Shepard layers spidery melodies, and psychedelic streaks over the top, the track drifting closer and closer to heart of the sun spacerock. The next track is all clean guitar, and sounds a little like a sketch for a Circle song, but gradually blossoms into a hazy sprawl of sun dappled psychedelia. There are some moments of extreme distortion, and creeping slo-mo riff sludge, but those moments are brief, with Shepard instead focusing on motorik krautdrone, woozy, gauzy cosmic buzz, and dreamy druggy atmospheric drift. Even the title track which had is imagining Sleep in their prime, begins all shimmery and swirly, but does fulfill the promise of the title by exploding into full on amp melting supersludge, oozing tarpit riffage that splinters into a full on blacknoise blowout.
Fucking AWESOME. Such a shame that it's so limited (ONLY 100 COPIES!). But it is, so grab one quick. They come in nice printed full color jackets, and each copy is hand numbered.
A while back we reviewed an amazing record by a band called Tides. What was equally amazing was the circuitous route it took to get to Aquarius. In a nutshell, it was sent to a certain publication who deemed it too punk to review, a friend at said publication grabbed it from the reject box thinking we'd like it. We did. And well you can read that review on the AQ site. And that record ended up being a huge hit around here. The thing is, that record wasn't alone on its perilous journey. No, another record was right there along side the Tides cd making its way to AQ. That record, was this record. The Body. But The Body had a bit farther to go, before making it to the list you have right here in your hands. First, many emails with the label, then much waiting. Then finally a box of cds arrived, but somehow they had all become unglued and ruined in the mail. More emails followed, and still more waiting. FInally we had pretty much just given up. Then just a few days ago, a couple of big bearded guys with tattoos were sort of lurking around the store. You guessed it, they were The Body. Phew. So was it worth it? Hell yeah it was. That is if you like massive, pummeling, downtuned slow motion sludge metal with little bits of ultra doom and lots of post rock in there. And you know we do.
So yeah, The Body. This will definitely hit the spot for all you folks into Conifer, Pelican, Isis, The Ocean, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides and all that metallic post rock doom stuff. The first track is a crusher, a plodding doom riff spread out over eight minutes, with freaky garbled vocal samples and the whole thing building in intensity and slowly becoming more and more blown out until it's a fuzzy slab of white noise doom drone. Woah. The rest of the record trudges alternately between slow motion chugging and poundiing, moody mathy rhythmic workouts, and some truly dense tangles of chaotic riff rhythm mashup. All strung together with some seriously harrowing shrieked black metal style vocals buried WAY down in the mix. The final track is a fifteen minute long, relentless midtempo pipe to the skull, with a main riff that is repeated over and over, almost looped sounding, completely mesmerizing, before it all breaks down into a spacious plodding doom coda. So awesome.
Packaged in hand glued cardstock digipaks. This came out a while ago and was limited to 1000 copies so we can't be entirely sure how long we'll have these.
When we first heard the details behind Kate Bush's new record, Director's Cut, some of us (those not prone to be insanely excited about ANYTHING Kate Bush) asked, "Why a record of songs that have already been recorded? Why not something new?" The original impetus behind the idea for Director's Cut was that 20 years ago, Kate had asked the James Joyce estate for permission to use sections from the "Penelope" section of Ulysses for her song "The Sensual World", and was denied; this time around, they said "Mmmmmmmmm, yes" (Kate Bush fans will get that joke). So she retitled the song "The Flower of the Mountain" and re-recorded the vocals, then re-recorded the drums, then at some point decided that maybe some of her other songs from that time period needed another looking at. The fact is that Kate Bush is a perfectionist, a major reason why she has toured only once in her career, and she says she was never happy with the overtly digital sound of The Red Shoes. All of the songs on Director's Cut are taken from The Sensual World or The Red Shoes, the vocals and drums re-recorded, with most of the rest of the instrumentation left intact. The effect is a very warm record, one with a lot of space within the tracks that serves to bring the listener closer, especially in the iconic "This Woman's Work". "Deeper Understanding" is the only track where the original is immediately superior, the Director's Cut version pushing the Bulgarian choir to the background and adding an auto-tuned vocal track (done by Kate's son Bertie). The song's theme of digital alienation is still prescient and apt, however, to our ever more computer reliant society. Fans who have absorbed The Red Shoes and The Sensual World's songs into their psyches might have an immediate reaction against hearing songs they love messed with in any way, even by K8 herself. But, truly, seriously, sit with this record and listen to it twice though. Once you're not expecting the original versions, Director's Cut is an outstanding record by an incomparable artist.
You can probably tell we've been doing some spring (summer?) cleaning, as we've been digging up some killer blackened artifacts that somehow managed to slip through the cracks and remain hidden for far too long. One of those artifacts is this, Origin Of Apparition, one of two albums from 2007 by Southern black metal horde Chaos Moon (which sort of sounds like the name of Sailor Moon's arch enemy), and it's a glorious slab of blown out buzz drenched USBM, a one man band who whips up thick walls of crumbling distortion assembled from anguished tortured wails, angular riffing, minor key melodies, and some blown out frenzied drum programming, the sound often slipping into some woozy depressive doominess, rife with swirling synths, all very haunting and dramatic, eerie and esoteric, the slow parts will definitely have you thinking of Xasthur, while other moments offer nods to the maniacal blackness of Silencer and the blissed out buzz of Velvet Cacoon. Really good stuff, fans of grim bedroom blackness and darkly depressive black buzz will dig big time. LAST COPIES!!!
Our favorite predictably unpredictable, hypnotically rockin' Finnish band, Circle, have made so many amazing albums (dozens of 'em!) that they're essentially an institution now, an integral part of our lives, an eternal manifestation of the creative energy of the universe. In other words, we can count on 'em to come up with something wonderful on a regular basis. They're kinda like Christmas, or your birthday, or something, except sometimes Circle gift us with more than one album per year. Sure, some Circle albums (like some Christmases) are better than others, of course, but we've yet to be disappointed. Though their last one, 2008's Hollywood, was a bit of an odd duck, what with featuring special guest Bruce "Jesters Of Destiny" Duff on vocals... This new one, however, we can recommend without any warnings about unexpected vocalists, though you do have to be into Mika's trademark faux-operatic excesses, which Circle fans should certainly be used to by now. And in fact, while he croons in his usual over-the-top manner some of the time, there are also songs here where the singing is much more "normal", making for some of Circle's most conventionally melodic pop moments ever, relatively speaking. Well, make that prog-pop. Rautatie is an EPIC effort from Circle indeed. Or maybe "effort" isn't the right word. 'Cause they make it seem effortless. So natural, the unique Circle sound just surging through 'em as soon as they enter the studio. In any case, it's epic, especially grand finale "Kaasukello", 8 minutes 18 seconds long, which builds from a sheen of shimmering rhythmic patterning in the style of Circle's possibly prettiest album, Miljard, into soaring waves of massive majestic choral prog triumph, causing all within earshot to raise their fists in the air, and look to the skies with a shared sense of exaltation. Wow. We kept putting that one on repeat, but the whole album is compelling, worthy of, like, infinite spins too.
And it's a varied experience, lots to grok... the opening, title track starts off with some heavy "NWOFHM" riffage, immediately making us think this is gonna be one of Circle's "metal-ly" efforts, perhaps like Katapult or Sunrise. But then that song suddenly switches to a repetitive (natch) '70s prog sounding section, adorned with weird wordless vocal outbursts from a (seizure-suffering?) Mika, before the guitars get kinda punk, and then return to the metal majesty with which it began... all that in under 5 minutes. And it's catchy, too. As is a lot of this, such as the rousing "Vaellus", sure to be a hit, that is if they'd play a 7:58 song on the radio, with lyrics in Finnish (or is it their own language "Meronian"?), some of 'em sung in a chipmunk-metal shriek. The synths are laid on thick on that one, and elsewhere, ferinstance on the equally epic "Kohtalon Sormi", from which we're getting a nice Ennio Morricone-ish vibe. Propulsive rhythms, incongruously placid piano parts, atmospheric interludes, and distorted guitar wailings are also all part of the proceedings on Rautatie. Especially those propulsive rhythms, of course.
It's definitely a proggy album, in more of an overt classic '70s prog style than some Circle albums have been, though of course they're ALL quite proggy and krautrocky. Plus those metal moments crop up more than once too, so those into Circle's heavier, leather and spikes side will get their fix as well. (However tongue in cheek that "NWOFHM" aspect of Circle is, it cannot be argued that they don't rock hard, and we know 'em to be true metal fans for sure.) And, as we said, it's practically pop at points too. And experimental. And... well, lots of things, as only Circle can do.
Furthermore, with a week's exposure to Rautatie so far, we feel it's been getting better and better with every listen, always the sign of a great album. Yay, go Circle! Heck, hyperbolically speaking, if they ever stop, it'll be like the end of the world...
Another killer chunk of outsider electronic music from Triangle, who has also given us amazing records by witch house outfits oOoOO and Balam Acab, and while Clams Casino, a twenty something hip hop producer from New Jersey who's done production for Lil B and Soulja Boy, is not technically witch house, it's easy to see why he ended up on triangle, cuz to our ears, many of the elements are the same, the sound woozy and warped, muddy and murky, washed out and ethereal, stuttering loops, disembodied voices wreathed in effects and layered into their own sort of rhythms, the sound a gorgeous creepy crawl, some seriously dreamy drag, everything blurry and indistinct, field recordings hover beneath smeared synths, and muted pulses, downtempo beats wrapped around sci-fi shimmer. Crumbling distortion envelops slooooowed down crooning, a sort of slo-mo soul laced with clanky percussion, and tinkling late night pianos, a little bit crunk, a little bit witch house, a swirling swoonsome sizurp vibe, that oozes into everything, the perfect wasted late night drift off zone out melting dancefloor alien chill out soundtrack for sure.
Definitely for fans of dark electronica, chopped and screwed hip hop, witch housers Salem, oOoOO, Balam Acab, and all the various strains of slo-mo soul and doped-up drag...
An absolutely killer blast of gloomy post punk from these new comers on Mexican Summer, with an A side that might just be our new favorite jam! Buzzy, noisy, jangly, a little murky, dour low slung noise pop with deep vox, reminding us a LOT of Crystal Stilts, and sounding a bit like a more jangly Interpol. Warm jangly guitars wrapped around jagged riffage, thick Joy Division basslines, and then part way through some surprise female vocals, which changes the vibe completely, as the two vocalists do a little call and response before joining in some seriously divine boy/girl harmonies, and let's not forget the super hooky effects drenched guitar refrain, that seems to function as the chorus. So catchy, and so goddamn good. We listened to the A side about 20 times before we could bring ourselves to flip the record. But guess what? The B side kills too, like a more dirgey version of the flipside, even more gloomy, reminding us of the Wipers, Crystal Stilts again, Naked On The Vague, and all those old Aussie post punk bands we love so much (Scientists, Celibate Rifles, etc.) So good, can't wait for the full length!
Originally released as a crazy limited cassette, this twisted slab of retro electro synth pop psychedelia is now available on vinyl, on the same label that brought us the vinyl reissue of Mater Suspiria Vision's Crack Witch, and while Crypt Thing are less witchy, they're definitely no less twisted.
The work of a British teenager, Crypt Thing start things off with a blast of warped, witchy, house-y (and yeah a little witch house-y), stuttering, druggy electro weirdness, that definitely sets things up for something dark and damaged, but it doesn't take long for the sound to shift to something much more old school eighties electo, or classic MTV synth pop, or even slowed down soul, but all filtered through CT's seriously warped sonic sensibilities. The pitch seems to constantly warble, the vibe is psychedelic for sure, but a sort of cheesy retro pop style psychedelia, as if some future civilization was trying to reconstruct eighties pop music from garbled fragments transmitted across light years, the result like a twisted tangle of Prince, Simple Minds, Rick Astley, Naked Eyes, Kajagoogoo and Heaven 17, but the a futuristic alien interpretation, all woozy and warbly, occasionally peppered with echo drenched falsetto vox, but more often than not left to pulse and buzz, jangle and thump, the soundtrack to some lost interplanetary prom, a collection of dreamily divine, desolate dancefloor, roller rink couples skate, drugpsych electro retro pop bliss out jams, that should most definitely appeal to Hype Williams, Ariel Pink, Greatest Hits, Craft Spells, D'Eon, Games, Outer Limits Recordings, Gary War, Gatekeeper, Blank Dogs, Pink Skull, Soft Metals, How To Dress Well, Laurel Halo and all the rest...
The return of this minimal bleep-glitch super group, or maybe super duo would be more accurate. Cyclo is Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto), and for their second record, they've upped the ante conceptually, as the project was already focused on the visualization of sound, on Id, this is taken to its logical extreme, where the duo focused on the actual images of the sound, using stereo image monitoring equipment, and these pieces are the results of creating sounds, by manipulating their visual components, there is a forthcoming book of the images, but THIS is what those images SOUND LIKE. It's pretty awesome. We're fascinated by wave forms as well and had actually often wondered about reverse engineering sound, but these two have done it, and the results are pretty amazing. And as always, not that far removed from the Raster-Noton aesthetic, extreme lows, impossible highs, sine wave tones, rumbles so low you can almost feel them more than hear them, skittery glitches, and abstract squelches, rhythmic, but not seemingly purposefully so, just a result of crafting particular sonic shapes. Headphones are definitely required, but be careful, even at low volume, some of these sounds seem to bore right into your skull, especially the low tones, the opening few seconds is a field of static and barely there dog whistle tones, but when the bass comes in, it rattles your brain, and might hurt your ears if you have it cranked. We couldn't help but imagine blasting this in a lowrider with a massive booming system, it would probably level everything for blocks.
Minimal, austere, haunting, clinical, weirdly lovely, some of the tracks crafted into actual grooves, but strangely alien robotic hyperminimal clean-room click-buzz grooves, some of the sounds super thick and buzzy, these guys could definitely give Justice and Daft Punk some pointers, in fact, a few of these tracks are ready to be sampled, and transformed into dancefloor destroyers.
As always fantastic stuff, and simultaneously the most groovy, and most sonically extreme sounds we've heard from these two, and we're digging it like crazy.
If you follow aQuarius on Facebook and Twitter, then you may have gotten a little taste of what is quickly becoming our new favorite label, Auris Apothercary. The first releases we got from them, was a tiny glass vial, with a single tape loop within, old Norwegian recordings of oceanographic instruments, the second was a series of NEC tapes, each with the original music from classic Nintendo games, with the packaging perfectly emulating the original designs. The vials sold out in a flash, we might have a couple of the tapes left (just ask), but we will henceforth endeavor to review anything and everything we can get from AA. A quick look at their other releases reveals an impossibly meticulous approach to packaging, everything in limited numbers, mostly because they are all hand designed and assembled, in fact, just take a look at this, a tape from someone (or something) called Dante Augustus Scarlatti, whose tape comes housed in a printed, clear plastic slipcover, with the tapecase itself also silkscreened, not to mention ANOTHER transparent insert, cool line drawings of mountains, and old maps, the two tape spools behind silver inked globes (the tapes cleverly not rewound, so each spool is a perfect planetoid sphere, the various layers perfectly blended into one elaborate almost 3 dimensional image, each one also numbered, limited to just 99 copies. With things like this, it almost doesn't even matter what it sounds like, it's a piece of art, that would look just as nice sitting on your shelf as it would jammed in your Walkman. But don't let its artiness keep you from enjoying the mysterious sounds inside, nearly two hours of rumbling drones and swirling atmospheric mystery, blurred industrial landscapes of dreamlike crumble, buried barely there rhythms, constantly shifting textures, guitars and oscillators woven into heaving swells of washed out decay and feedback wreathed glacial drift, each side a single slow burning expanse of tectonic creep and gauzy greyed out ambience, totally hypnotic and mesmerizing minimal dronemusic that should most definitely appeal to all the aQ shoppin' dronelords out there.
Again, LIMITED TO 99 COPIES, we got a handful, not sure we'll be able to get more when we run out...
Yet another warehouse find, discovered a tiny handful of this, the last full length from one from Bulgarian blackened doom metallers Darkflight, whose sound is a killer mix of dirgey doom, soaring symphonic majesty, and haunting melodic ambience, the songs super dense and extremely heavy, but even at their heaviest, they ooze melancholy, the guitars unfurling melancholic melodies, and tangling up in minor key harmonies, while the riffs churn and the drums pound, all wreathed in soaring strings and swirling shimmer, with occasional acoustic guitar and brief stretches of hushed thrum. But for the most part, these tracks, trudge and lumber, super emotional and darkly moving doom-ed heaviness, that reminds us of Shape Of Despair or Skepticism, but often ends up sounding more like a doom metal Alcest or a more metal Nadja. Only have 3 or 4 copies of this left, not sure if we can get more once they're gone...
Decimus is the new solo project of Pat Murano, he of the No Neck Blues Band, Malkuth and K-Salvatore among other NY outsider outfits, and this is part one in the 12 part Decimus series, a vinyl lp sonic exploration into the medieval zodiac of Decimus Magus Ausonius, a Latin poet and rhetorician, we've listed part 5, and part 2, and this is part 1. They're being released on different labels, and not necessarily in the proper order. But it hardly matters, each record definitely functions just fine on its own.
Part one, were it the first you heard, definitely sets the scene quite nicely. The A side is a cacophonous chaotic barrage of fractured sound, a seriously percussive psychedelic trip out, that really could actually be a No Neck record, at least initially. Warped melting melodies wrap around strange childlike vocals, lots of clattery percussion, over heaving swells of crumbling sound, laced with sheets of high end skree, and bursts of wild rhythmic skitter. The sound seems to unravel, or perhaps blossom into wild tangles of strangely rhythmic distorted streaks only to disappear into thick swirled stretches of corrosive buzz, all flecked with glitch and squelch, very tranced out and abstract.
The B side though might be our favorite Decimus jam yet, a side long super cinematic epic, hushed late evening shimmer, what sounds like field recordings, all draped over a blurred loopscape, and all wrapped around a thick woozy, fuzzy pulse, a sort of murky kosmische, a smoldering ominous thrum, eventually joined by psychedelic spaced out synths, transforming the song into the soundtrack for some seriously fucked up alternate universe giallo, before finishing off in a glitched out glittery tangle at the end.
Awesome stuff, further convincing us that we're definitely gonna have to collect all 12!
LIMTED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand stenciled and spray painted.
Basically, these guys just dropped the "L" at the end to come up with their name. Using the same method, they could have also called themselves "Bruta", but "Disma" fits better with this sort of slow, sick, sludgey death metal, done in the ancient way by those who know it well, as New Jersey's dirgey, downtuned Disma includes in their (rank) ranks none other than Craig Pillard, former throat for '90s doomdeath legends Incantation! Seeing as how Incantation has been getting a lot of love in the death metal underground lately, we expect lots of peeps to freak out over Disma, we know we were chuffed. And yeah, folks who like fellow Profound Lore low-end miasmic metallers Vasaeleth, or recent releases by such bands as Encoffination and Vastum, should definitely bow down to the insalubrious onslaught that is Disma. Their chugging crunching crushing metal of death (often in slow motion) also brings the weird with it, song structures that nail your coffin shut with sudden herks and jerks of their spiraling buzzing guitars, then pave over the gravesite with oozing ambient fuzz... the funeral eulogy delivered via Pillard's guttural vokills, intoning lyrics evocative of crypts and chasms, abyssal deeps and ancient aeons. Hellishly hypnotic stuff, well worthy of Incantation's legacy. Disma also features members of Funebrarum, another current cult DM band keeping the old school sounds alive (or should we say, undead!).
We've mentioned it before, but we love it when people we know make amazing records, and we're then available to share them with all of you. Such is the case with this, the oddly monikered Elfmilk, the project of aQ customer/pal Eddie, who hails from Mexico, and who is solely responsible for the gorgeous sounds to be found on Extragalactic Distance, a collection of abstract ambience, deep drones, and experimental rhythmic minimalism.
Beginning with the brief minute long intro "Spiral", a smoldering bit of crumbling distorted piano, and shimmering overtone rich drift, Elfmilk reveals itself as something more raw and immediate than much of the ambient/drone/electronic music we hear. It's super well crafted, and lush and lovely, but it's still raw, and rough around the edges, which makes the sounds more warm, the vibe more human and organic, instead of sounds, these feel like songs, long tones shimmer and undulate, melodies seem to slowly evaporate into a haze of high end whir, scattered throughout are fragmented rhythms, dubby and abstract, disembodied pulses and ghostly beats, a sort of electrokrautrock that seems to be gradually coming apart, like some old space station left in orbit, the various pieces drifting off into the ether, some into the heart of the sun, some into the cold black void, here liquid squelches demarcate loose swirling melodic tangles, and thick swells of feedback wreathed buzz, acoustic guitars let loose spare notes, that flutter like leaves falling from trees, or mysterious detritus floating through space.
In a few places, the sounds go haywire, explosive bursts of almost jungle like rhythms, or exploding firecrackers woven into frantic beats, but even then the sounds surrounding these blasts are warm and whirling and sweetly soothing, while elsewhere, the sounds slip into dubby Portishead like low slung downtempo grooves, culminating in the 14+ minute epic "Obsidian", a constantly shifting soundscape that plays out like a soundtrack to some mysterious art film, swirling electronics, lush textures, fractured effects, pulsing synths, the sound seeming to shift ever minute or two, finishing off with a stretch of grinding downtuned lo-fi dirgery, which leads directly into the closing number, a fantastically blissed out sprawl of super distorted melodies, all hazy and spacey and dreamlike, but wrapped in crunchy buzz and hissy static, which eventually slips away, leaving lush lustrous sonic swells, lovely hushed computer vox and what sounds like field recording, all woven into a softly undulating bit of dreamlike drift.
Fantastic stuff. Highly recommended.
Recorded live in 2010 at South By Southwest, in Austin Texas, in a large empty TV studio and then broadcast on the radio, this psychedelic summit matched up long time pals Sun Araw (aka Cameron Stallones) and Eternal Tapestry for a single improvised performance, 45 minutes of dreamy psychedelic drift, spaced out krautrock, and full on freaked out heaviness! Presented here as played, without overdubs, the only edits being those that separate the jam into 4 tracks. The ET&SA band quickly settle into a lysergic drift, a whirling shimmery haze, laced with fluttery flute, cymbal shimmer, and spidery guitars, a slow build to some seriously explosive spacerock swirl, a chaotic cacophonous crescendo, before settling back down into another stretch of hushed drift, this time heavy on the whirring organ, and still laced with plenty of flute, a little bit jazzy, a lot free and drifty, leading directly into the second movement.
Movement two finds the band immediately locking into some krautpsych hypnorock, some saxophone audible for the first time, the multiple guitars all tangled up in constantly shifting harmonies, the sound mesmerizing and hypnotic, simultaneously ramping up, but also blissing out, vocals swoop in, wreathed in echo and delay, eventually everything fading out but the whirring synths, the shuffling drums, the sax, and some wailing vocals buried in the mix. The third movement is the shortest of the four, and is another slow build, but this time as the sound blossoms it also gradually grows more minimal, the arrangement more spacious and spare, the guitars and sax drifting in an expanse of shimmery thrum and muted horns, washed out and dreamlike.
Finally, the band unfurl the 14+ minute final movement, a swirling shimmering expanse of warm layered keyboards, subtle guitar shadings, and even more subtle sax, the bass offering up deep pulses, everything hazy and crystalline, the drums finally kick in and the band launch into a woozy lumbering space-drone groove, the guitars getting more crunchy, the effects thicker, never truly exploding, instead just cranked up a notch, letting the guitars howl and wail, a druggy dirgey chunk of psychedelic kraut-drone blooz. Nice.
Vinyl version includes a download coupon, fyi.
Normally we would spread out multiple releases by the same band over several lists and several weeks, but since these are so limited and folks are always so excited about new Expo 70 stuff, we figured fuck it, let's just do it, THREE new Expo 70 releases, all different formats, and surprisingly different sound.
This tape is limited to 70 copies. We got exactly HALF, it's already sold out at the label, so these are THE last copies anywhere. And it's awesome. Less heavy than some of the other Expo's, Awakening, features some super stripped down drumming (or drum machine, hard to tell), locked into an endless groove, pulsing over a swirling spacescape of smeared riffs and fragmented melodies, it sounds a bit like Goblin, very soundtracky and otherworldly, space-y and mysterious, and not at all cheesy, more sort of classic new age / krautrock, think Klaus Schultze, scoring some super abstract French sci-fi flick from the sixties, and you'll sort of get the vibe.
Like all Expo 70 stuff, dark and dreamy, warm and warbly, drone-y and hypnotic, but the addition of drums really adds a new dimension, and the soundscapes swirling around the groove seem to be endlessly shifting and transforming. Awesome stuff as always. Total blissed out new age spacey krautiness, as only Expo 70 can do it. WAY recommended. And it's also recommended that if you want one of these you don't dawdle, as we mentioned before, this is LIMITED TO ONLY 70 COPIES! AND WE GOT HALF!! Already sold out and out of print, so you get one shot at these. Nicely packaged in a hand colored psychedelic fold out sleeve.
Originally released as a super limited cd-r back in 2009, James Ferraro (formerly of drone-noise duo The Skaters, and now rechristened 'JIM' if the cover art is to be believed), unveils his twisted alien radio pop masterpiece in vinyl. And while we were perhaps a bit confused by the all out what-the-fuck-ness of Night Dolls With Hairspray, we were prepared for On Air, which if anything is even weirder.
Sure the first two tracks are misleadingly dreamy, all synthed out shimmer, and futuristic sci-fi ambience, warm and whirring and washed out, like it was dubbed from some old VHS tape, but then BAM, the title track drops, and we're hurled into some alternate eighties commercial pop MTV universe where Ferraro is a purveyor of radio pop jingles, which sound like Ariel Pink doing a commercial for Applebee's, recorded on a boombox with dying batteries, the sound warped and warbly, but even beyond the sound quality, there's honky tonk piano, female background vocals, pretty sure we said this about Night Dolls With Hairspray, but we're kind of confounded how Ferraro makes this music. It really sounds like he's just singing over purloined music from old TV broadcasts, but apparently this is all original, and if anything, that WTF has been cranked even further, and we have to say, once we were prepared, we're kind of getting WAY into this stuff.
It's like Ariel Pink and Gary War and all those guys but taken too far, so far that this stops being ironic retro lysergic pop and becomes downright avant garde, and beyond that, these warped pop songs, and yeah, they're about as warped as can be, are catchy as fuck, warped confusional pop songs surrounded on all sides by strange malfunctioning effects, the vocals sped up chipmunk fast one second slowed down to a rumbly crawl the next, there are heavy distorted guitars all over the place, more John Parr than actual metal, but in keeping with that Eighties radio vibe for sure, there are all manner of synths, and strange programmed rhythms, the sound is so all over the map and twisted tweaked and utterly demented that it's nearly impossible to describe.
Ferraro's sound is about as far removed from the Skaters as is possible, and while his old bandmate continues to create sonically similar murky lysegry via Monopoly Child Star Searcher, Ferraro is happy as can be in his glammy alien outsider radio pop universe, and we kind of are too.
We know you've been waiting for this: the sequel to the Early Fifth Column cd, which was a collection issued back in 2001 on the Alchemy label (run by former Fifth Columnist Jojo Hiroshige) documenting the career of this extremely underground Japanese avant-garde collective circa 1976 to 1980. Now, The Middle Fifth Column is here to deal with the years 1981-1990, and anyone familiar with the intriguing weirdness found on the previous disc will find this to be just as weird and interesting if not more so! Fifteen tracks of noisy experiments, freaked out jazz improv, synth boppiness, disturbing tape loops, bizarre vocals, drum machines and electronics... it's eclectic strange DIY madness that takes a definite inspiration from Faust (note the "It's A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl" quote in track two) and assuredly also other NWW-list worthy outfits. This comes with extensive, English-language (as well as Japanese) liner notes that give details on each track, from interviews with the band members (there was a core group that formed various "bands" who released tapes -- about 50 of them -- in the Fifth Column cassette series). About "It's A Rainy Day" they say: "There are times in life that, whatever you play, it turns into that song, and this was one such occasion."
Very cool. Whatever the weirdest stuff you have in your record collection is, this disc will no doubt make friends with it!!
[sorry, this disc didn't agree with our sound sample making software, so no clips to click...]
Flower Travellin' Band mania has gripped Byram and Allan and others of us here at AQ. After the success of our review of the reissues of their masterpiece Satori and their debut Anywhere, we feel we ought to keep going through the catalog of this stellar '70s Japanese heavy psych rock outfit. Those who couldn't get enough of FTB's Satori will be pleased to know that their follow-up, third release Made In Japan is nearly every bit as good. Singer Joe's voice still rings in the creepy falsetto style like Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls singing balls out heavy metal vocals. As with their previous album, "Made In Japan" continued to fuse the heavy rock of early (contemporary, to them) Sabbath with Eastern melodies. I guess they decided after their perfect rendition of "Black Sabbath" on their first record, that such was their calling. Then again, "Heaven And Hell", the penultimate track here, is as pure a channeling of Jimi Hendrix as anything. The mellow closing track "That's All", with its koto glissandi, parallels "Part V" on Satori and like that track, it's perhaps the most overtly Eastern in tone. But it's Joe's vocal line that really kicks ass. At the end of the chorus he adds a little cadenza to his howl, extending the vocal line just beyond where one's intuitively expecting a cadence. It works so fucking well, makes me stop whatever I'm doing to listen, that I wonder why more song writers don't pull that shit more often.
As we mention in our review of the Dante Augustus Scarlatti cassette (reviewed elsewhere on this list), Auris Apothecary is quickly becoming out fav new label, with a limited catalog, of exquisitely crafted releases, that are as much art as they are music, tape loops in vials, NES Nintendo soundtrack cassettes, tapes wrapped in warped 7"s, everything hand screened and assembled, drawn, painted, glued, whatever, every single release super unique. If you follow us on Facebook and/or Twitter (which you should, cuz we announce lots of things that may not make it to the list!), you probably saw the tape loop vial and the NES tapes, which both disappeared in a flash (although we might have one or two Castlevania tapes left, just ask), and for sure check out the Scarlatti tape, and then there's this, a double album from Hail Architeuthis, with the awesomely wordy title: Herald The Harbinger Of Impending Acoustics, The Horseman Who Revived Organic Institutions. And while we were expecting some sort of dark dronemusic or experimental ambience, instead what we got was some serious intense, mathy metal, or sort of math metal / noise rock hybrid, whatever you call it, it's a wildly chaotic, super dynamic blow out of churning riffs, pounding drumming, lots of droned out interludes and soaring layered riffing, head spinning progged out arrangements, the vocals howled and way down in the mix, these guys sounding sometimes like a more metal Lightning Bolt, other times like a wilder looser Don Cab, the sound raw and in the red, the cd version containing the band performing live, recorded live to analog tape, the songs sprawling and spic, slipping from hushed tense minor key shimmer, to post rock slow build to full on metallic noise math crunch. So ruling. The accompanying cassette is a whole different program, low fidelity and cinematic, a soundtrack of sorts to accompany the printed scroll that accompanies the cd/tape. Scroll? Well we did mention the AA packaging was over the top, and this is indeed pretty elaborate. We were gonna describe it, a cardboard box with a cd and a spray painted tape and a ribbon tied scroll affixed to the PRINTED inside of the box, but hell, let's give you the label description of the package:
"Five inch white reel to reel box with 3 color black/white/silver silk-screened wrap on light-grey or ice blue cardstock. Professionally replicated & glass-mastered CD's with full color offset printing on the disc face. Brushed metallic nickel spray-painted cassette tapes with rubber-stamped artwork in white ink. Scroll inkjet-printed on silver vellum in 2 colors. 2-color inserts in base of each side of reel box printed on clear vellum. Vellum obi-wrap around box with blue or black inkjet printing; serial number stamped in silver silkscreen ink or black ink and sealed with a silver wax seal."
And yeah, it's just as cool as that description makes it sound. And it's limited to, only 150 copies, and we're all a little late to the party, so not sure if we can get more once these are gone...
We're always up for some twisted black metal. The more twisted the better. The more fucked up and damaged the better. So on first listen this disc from Hamsoken pretty much hit the spot, beginning with some crumbling sci-fi synths, some growled demonic vox, weird throbbing Goblin like bass, all sprawling bleak industrial blackened synthscape, before lurching into some full on filthy raw blackened pound, all buzzy guitars, and buried vokills, twisted melodic leads, atonal and angular, but then a track later, the fidelity is cranked up a notch, and the band erupt in a frenzy of blasting tremolo guitared black buzz, gnarled and furious and blurry and washed out and so goddamn good.
We were so lost in Hamsoken's buzzy blasting blur that it took us a while before we even realized Hamsoken was in fact Nick Forte, who some of you might remember from hardcore legends Rorschach!! (Who reunited for a few East Coast tours recently, and if all goes well, just might make it out West!).
Even on repeated listens, we don't necessarily hear any Rorschach in the sound of Hamsoken, but like much of our favorite black metal, the fact that Forte is approaching BM from a whole different background, brings so much new to the table, the synths all over the place, the tracks that seem to crumble into slow crawls, the lurching almost SST vibe of some of the guitar parts, the vocals, going from murky garble to super distorted hissy howl, even at its blackest, the sound is weirdly melodic and hypnotic, doomy dirges give way to blazing blasts which in turn dissipate into slow blackened drifts. Unlike most black metal, the bass is huge, and melodic, way up in the mix, sometimes carrying the whole song, and those synths, makes everything sound all creepy and soundtracky and Goblin-y, the best moments are when the metal component is ditched completely in favor of some synth heavy crawl, all processed drum machine, moody moaning guitar melody, and those incredibly harsh vox, moody and melancholy and industrial and heavy, even when it's not heavy in the traditional sense. Those synth heavy tracks play out like some blackened coldwave band, a sound we had sort of been fantasizing about actually, a sort of black metal Cold Cave maybe, in fact, very little of the record is anywhere close to traditionally blasting black metal, those moments do exist, but tend to separate drastically different sonic environments, be they fuzzy and droney and spacey or murky and blown out and abstract, or punky and thrashing and pounding (like a couple tracks, the only real nods to Forte's punk past).
Definitely for folks into the strains of black metal that tend toward the avant, the drone-y, the gloomy, the fucked up, and especially the weird and melodic and new wave-y... wait, is there a strain like that? New wave-y and melodic and fucked up and industrial? Yeah, there is now.
The much hyped debut from these Danish teenagers finally gets a proper domestic release, and as we've mentioned in lots of reviews, we often find ourselves fighting that knee jerk reaction of hating stuff that just seems way to universally praised, hipster beloved bands gushed over by blogs, Pitchfork, reviewers, and all the rest, but as you've probably already surmised, the main reason for pointing out the above, is that, somehow, DESPITE all the hype, these guys are pretty ruling, a broody buzzy collection of darkly gothicky post punk that is equal parts frenetic crunch and low slung swagger, of murky moody jangle and tense tribal pound, the vocals buried in the mix and doused in echo, the guitars swinging from reverbed chime to gnarled atonal riffage, the drums wild and loose, the songs often veering from lumbering dirge to chaotic blast and back again, loads of strange sounds, twisted production, a sound that's garagey and low fidelity, but still thick and dense, and the songs, slow blossoming gems, that seem to get catchier with every listen. Heavily beholden to Joy Division no doubt, but perhaps equally (and maybe unknowingly, considering their ages) beholden to the darker side of Homestead Records and and the moodier more melodic noise rock side of back-in-the-day Touch And Go.
Three remixes of this track from Interpol's most recent record, reworked by Ikonika, Banjo Or Freakout and Salem. Yep, Salem! Odds are while all three mixes are pretty cool, that's the one that will most likely seal the deal.
Ikonika takes Paul Banks' original vox and drapes them over some swirling strings, and some skittery dubstep big beats, lacing the track with squiggly effects and bloopy synth melodies. Banjo Or Freakout leave some of the original track intact, but bookend those bits with some heady psychedelic swirl and dreamy looped mesmer.
Salem basically obliterate any trace of the original track, barring some chopped and screwed snippets of Banks' vox and a tiny bit of guitar right at the end, leaving just a fantastically twisted wreckage of classic cough syrupy Salem trip out, the sounds all woozy and warped, total dreamy drag, the primitive drum programming, over thick crunchy swells of symphonic synth, effects swirling all over the places. Hell, if you didn't know it was a remix, you could easily believe this was yanked right off their King Night full length. Worth it for the Salem mix alone for sure, but even more worth it for all three!!
Two new releases this week from kick ass country reissue label Omni, the other one a strange country fried soul funk (?!) record from Larry Jon Wilson, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, this one, another from the mighty Stonewall Jackson, who we first heard on Omni's Troubled Troubadours compilation, and whose last Omni collection, Life Of A Poor Boy, was a big hit 'round here.
The Lonesome In Me was Jackson's forgotten masterpiece, originally released in 1970, on the tail end of a long slump from this one time country hitmaker. But to our ears, The Lonesome In Me, while not as rife with 'hits', is not that far removed from the tracks on Life Of A Poor Boy, the sound is lush, and classically country, but peppered with more poppy harmony vocals, and more mainstream arrangements, but the lyrics remain dark and bitter, it is country music after all, so there are tales of broken hearts, drinking too much, broken homes, cold hearted women, all set to some twangy, shuffly honky tonk country pop, swoonsome lap steel over stand up bass, skittery drums, a little banjo here and there, lots of piano, and of course Jackson's deep distinctive voice, his delivery slipping from dramatic sing/talking to powerful and emotional croon, the sound definitely a little bit darker, more melancholy and contemplative, but those pop elements balance the shift in mood. This record actually was another disappointment saleswise at the time and continued Jackson's slump, which wasn't broken until the next year, with an album that contained an unlikely Poco cover that cracked the top 10. That record is included here too, and ditches some of the poppiness of the preceding album, and shifts more toward classic honky tonk, the slide guitar playing a much bigger part, and the lyrical focus less overtly miserable. Omni also tacked on a bunch of singles tracks, almost all of these songs appearing on cd for the first time. And while it is a sort of hodgepodge of different albums and singles, it does somehow play as one fantastic sprawling classic country record. And really, anyone who has been digging all of these Omni reissues, specifically that Troubled Troubadours comp, will no doubt dig this too. And if you loved Life Of A Poor Boy as much as we did, well, obviously you're probably gonna need this too.
Like all Omni releases, includes a big booklet with extensive liner notes and tons of rare photos.
Over the last few years there has been no shortage of '80s inspired bands, creating electronic infused pop with an indie sensibility. But well before this retro explosion of bands boldly proclaiming their love for the '80s, Junior Boys hit the scene at a time when indie pop was in such desperate need of something more sensual danceable, an indie pop sound that did more than just flirt with the dance floor. What's given the group lasting power is that they aren't just about tapping into an era, or sound, or giving you ironic winks about the keyboards they are playing or the outfits they are wearing. While many continue to nail the strictly aesthetic side of '80s electro-pop, Junior Boys are one of the only groups who truly capture the romantic and emotional side of this often cheapened landscape. There is so much soul and substance in the songs they create, and Jeremy Greenspan has one of the smoothest and most seductive voices of any singer around.
It's All True continues their streak of great albums, filled with steaming movers, and sizzling slow burners. Imagine Aphex Twin getting a hold of George Michael and Boy George and helping them create their most understated and sexiest recordings ever. Or New Order reworking Japan's Gentleman Take Polaroids. As refreshing as Junior Boys were when they originally hit the scene, their continued earnestness and ability to craft songs that have an emotional weight to them is equally as refreshing in this moment in time when it all seems to be about irony and capturing just the surface of another moment in time. Highly recommended.
We had never heard of La Big Vic before, but from what we had read, it was an unlikely supergroup of sorts, with a frontman that once fronted a Japanese J-Pop band and produced hip hop records and commercials before moving to the US. There's also some sort of Pink Floyd connection, and the label described La Big Vic as a sort of RnB hip hop thing, which we were imagining was more of that current strain of weirdo sonic explorers who take elements of those genres and twist them all up into something new, which is actually a bit closer to the truth.
Opener "LYNY" is more a sort of washed out psychedelic dream pop, garbled samples, swirling effects, warm woozy melodies, hazy ethereal vox, with some softly cacophonous crescendos that soar and shimmer majestically, and that sound definitely informs much of the record, the second track "Heyo (Silver Morning)", takes the hazy psychedelic shimmer of the opening track and adds some skittery rhythms, some strange clanking percussion, spidery guitars, again all burred and smeared into something dreamy and blissed out. There's some sax that surfaces near the end, and begins showing up more as the record progresses. Which depending on your feelings toward the sax, may affect your feelings towards La Big Vic.
And so it goes, there are moments that do seem to dabble into a sound more RnB rooted, but only just barely, the vibe is way more lysergic and warped, that sax, actually begins to make more sense as the record progresses, there's some cool angelic female vox too, and at least one track that downright rocks, all super shoegazey and sounding like an alternate soundtrack for the Breakfast Club, finally finishing off with a nearly 11 minute closer, a stripped down skittery ballad, wreathed in warm whirring synths, and swirling soft focus effects, the most hypnotic song on the record for sure, channeling a little space/dirge/drone rock into their synth drift, finishing with some wild tangled psych guitar and Carpenter like pulsing synths.
Tripped out psychedelic abstract RnB synth weirdness, that should most definitely appeal to fans of the usual subjects: James Ferraro, Gary War, Ariel Pink, How To Dress Well, D'Eon and all the rest...
It's kind of amazing how the venerable Tokyo psych label PSF can almost entirely concentrate on releasing just that: Tokyo psych! Well it's a big city and apparently there's no shortage of long haired musicians in shades there coaxing dark drones and distorted atmospheres from their instruments, in psychedelic altered states rapture...
So here, imported via PSF we have the latest vibrations from Tokyo, in the form of the the lovely and mysterious Le Son De L'Os, whom we heard for the first time last year on the 7th installment of PSF's Tokyo Flashback compilation series, on which they had the longest track, a "delicate and haunting organic drone" in our words. And this, the debut full-length from the group, is also an abstract, all-acoustic improvised affair, five tracks that are hushed and tenuous, fragile and atmospheric, definitely a late-night listen. Calm, quiet, yet compelling, this is music that draws you in - and certainly drowns nothing out, so although they we're told that Le Son De L'Os enjoy performing outdoors, they would have to do so far from the hustle and bustle of urban Tokyo, we'd imagine... and deep in the woods or up on a mountainside, where are they going to find a piano?
That's right, there's some (prepared?) piano on here, Le Son De L'Os being a trio consisting of Masahiro Deguchi (guitar, flute, piano, bell), Yuko Hasegawa (guitar, voice), and Shizuo Uchida (bass, "one-string"). Shizuo is half of the Hasegawa-Shizuo duo (with another Hasegawa, not Yuko), who've released albums on PSF, Tiliqua, and Utech that we've stocked before, and was also in Keiji Haino's ambient Nijiumu project, as well as being a member of art noise punk crazies Kito Mizukumi Rouber. Masahiro Deguchi was in PSF's Gendai Sokkyo. Yuko Hasegawa, for her part, was in the Tokyo Flashback vol. 4 band Onna-Kodomo together with Shizuo back in the '90s as well. So, plenty of Tokyo psych cred with this bunch! Though one listen is all you'd need to realize that. And you'll keep listening, if you have an affinity for this subtle style of drifting dreamy almost Jewelled Antler-y improv, that's both out-there and barely-there, but blissful.
Comes in nice gatefold mini-lp style sleeve, with obi.
What is it about the flexidisc? We were shocked by the resurgence of interest in cassettes, but we could NEVER have predicted that the flexidisc would be next. But hell, we actually love those things, and for what they lack in fidelity and sound quality, they make up for in cool quirkiness. Take this flexidisc right here, a sort of picture flexidisc, a square record adorned with a naked woman's torso, housed in a printed plastic sleeve covering up the sexy bits, includes a postcard with liner notes and a download code, this is in fact the debut release from Les Demoniaques, a duo made up of gothy songstress Tamaryn and Dee Dee from The Dum Dum Girls, and sounds pretty much exactly how you might imagine, a gloomy gothic ballad / sixties girl group fuzz pop hybrid, all woozy and warm, reverby and shimmery, the vocals softly echoed, the music repetitive and trancelike, no drums that we could hear, hazy and drifty and jangly, a super short and sweet bit of dreamy gloom pop, peppered with some synthy swirl, and some divine "oooh's" and "aaah's", oh yeah, and it's a Jesus And Mary Chain cover! Definitely has us hankering for more and has us wondering if they can whip up some originals that can live up to this psychedelic shoegaze classic, here's hoping...
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
Here's the latest (but the first disc we've reviewed) from a band that's been baking in the Texas sun for a while now, Liquid Sound Company. While Texas sure has a tradition of drugged out underground psychedelia (we're thinking 13th Floor Elevators, Red Krayola, among others back in the '60s and '70s, plus many more recent examples), this modern-day hippie psych rock outfit seems to drawn most of their inspiration from the krautrock scene, and thus comes off like a Texas-sized answer to Japan's Acid Mothers Temple. Seriously, any fan of Makoto Kawabata and AMT ought to check out LSC... more like LSD! Acid Music For Acid People, yessssss: total spaced out, Eastern-inflected, freeformguitardrone explorations, with electronic effects and repetitive rhythms, totally hypnotic maaaaaaan. For those into the krauty likes of Ash Ra Temple, Guru Guru, and Agitation Free (in fact, one of the six songs here is entitled "Agitation Free", or perhaps "Free Of Agitation", it's listed both ways, and in any case is definitely meant in tribute that trippy Berlin band). Plus if you dig Expo '70, Lumerians, Carlton Melton, etc. this should be up yr alley too.
LSC has a subtle heaviness, not to mention guitar-wrangling chops, that might just stem from the fact that one of the folks involved here is none other than Brainticket head honcho John Perez, best known as the guitarist of long-running epic doom metal act Solitude Aeturnus... but it's in Liquid Sound Company that he lets his freak flag fly! While there's moments that maybe sound a bit sinister, really this is music meant to make you smile. Especially, the mellow "Morning Sun", an exquisite guitar solo from Perez, a demo track indeed recorded one morning as the sun arose. Lovely. That's the shortest piece here, at just about 3 minutes. Most are much looooonger, and were recorded as live jams, the band members all successfully tuning into the same cosmic vibration together...
The last 2 cuts are from a bootleg recording made at a live show out in the boonies someplace, the band doesn't remember much about it, except that there were supposed to be a coven of witches in attendance, and they couldn't see what they were doing 'cause the fog machine was filling the room to extreme opacity. Some years later, a tape turned up, and now while they still can't really remember that night, they can HEAR what happened... and so can you, and get utterly tranced out too...
We've are so psyched on this comp, a 'greatest hits' collection of sorts from the late Jay Reatard's pre-solo, post Reatards, garage-rock synth-punk group, Lost Sounds, a band legendary for their insane live shows, whose sound was a supercharged mix of power pop jangle, garage rock crunch and post punk synthbuzz, the songs frantic and frenzied, sweat soaked, bruised and bloodied, even recorded, these songs exude the sort of energy that few bands can muster, even live. Dueling boy/girl vocals over wild chaotic drumming, with some seriously killer songs, which definitely foreshadow Reatard's eventual shift to full on pop, but that pop element here is wreathed in ominous buzz and crusty garage rock creep, the sound is alternatingly wild and loose, brooding and tense, often both at the same time, and while they were definitely loved back in the day, had this band been around today, they would rule the scene for sure, this is the sort of supercharged garage rock synth pretty much every band is shooting for these days, but even the best of them can barely touch the magical mystery of these blown out blasts wild and wooly garage punk bliss. Imagine Blasted Canyons meets Black Bug meets the Fuzztones, and you're getting close, sorta the perfect mix of Reatard's early feral punk rock leanings, and his later power pop proclivities, but the synth really changes everything, transforming already super catchy kick ass garage rock into something almost next level.
We were secretly hoping this would in fact be some sort of complete collection, with everything these guys (and gal) every recorded, but it's still pretty bad ass, a compilation of Lost Sounds' finest moments as chosen by the surviving members of the band. Should definitely inspire you to track down the rest of their records. Pretty much every thing they've released RULES. And anyone who dug Blasted Canyons (last list's Record Of The Week), should definitely check this out.
Debut lp of hauntological drift and cinematic electronic ambience from this mysterious outfit. A single epic exploration, split up over two sides, the sonic equivalent of exploring some strange old house blindfolded, according the the label, but to us it sound more like some sort of subterranean cavern, a seriously abject slice of Cold Meat ambient creep, a hazy hushed drift, lots of low end thrum and whirring shimmer, everything muted and washed out, strange reverbed drips, buried barely audible looped melodies, distant squalls of feedback, the occasional heavily effected pulse, buried rhythms, soft focus melodic swells, what sounds like a passing train off in the distance, this is definite headphone listening. Murky, sinister, blurry, muddy, haunting and disorienting. At one point a childlike music box melody drifts to the surface, but is quickly swallowed up by the final movement, a fantastic sprawl of gorgeous blurred Caretaker-esque crumble. So divinely creepy and harrowingly cinematic.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, with paste on covers and a nice printed insert on heavy cardstock.
Mellowhype is the latest subversive sonic missive from the uber hyped Odd Future hip hop crew, which finally shines the spotlight on some of the other members after Tyler The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt getting most of the love up until now. But Mellowhype, aka Hodgy Beats and Left Brain, were in fact responsible for much of the production on those records, but unlike the spare sketelal horrorcore creep of Tyler's Goblin, and the stripped down minimal thump of Earl's jams, the sound of Mellowhype is much more lush, but no less twisted, what on the surface sounds like radio ready hip hop, seems to melt before your ears, sounds changing pitch, beats slowing down and speeding up, vocals constantly shifting, the sound peppered with glitches and tape dropouts, the melodies warped and woozy, it's the kind of shit that SHOULD be all over the radio, it's got all the elements required, but fortunately for us, that stuff is filtered through Odd Future's cracked perception of hip hop, and comes out the other end all mangled and fantastically fucked up.
After hearing this we imagine it's only a matter of time before big hip hop names start tapping these guys for remixes, or even just for beats, cuz these guys have crafted a serious slab of WTF here, a dizzying hybrid of purposefully problematic Odd Futurisms melded to surprisingly hooky hip-pop, and irresistible melodies, some killer flows, ominous loops, beats that slip from Southern crunkified skitter, to pounding black rocking crunch, resident Odd Future RnB-er Frank Ocean even drops in for a bit of crooning, and in true OF fashion his swoonsome hook is set amidst a jumble of warbly synths, hiccupping beats, and some damaged confusional lyrics. Awesome stuff. More than lives up to the hype.
Long before psych folk became the flavor of the month in the indie scene there was the Tower Recordings. A group responsible for some of our favorite drugged out psych-pop EVER, with such nice swirling textures, delivered with such a gorgeous touch. The members of Tower Recordings have forged pretty of remarkable solo careers of their own. Folks like P.G. Six, Samara Lubelski, Matt Valentine, etc.
Metal Mountains is a brand new project that reunites Tower Recordings members Samara Lubelski, Pat Gubler (P.G. Six) and Helen Rush. There is a real magic between them as this is one of the most beautiful and mournful sounding albums we have heard in ages. Delicate composition stripped away of any fat, yet stretched out so nice with haunting instrumentation and a minimalist approach to creating a songs that make you sway so softly as you float away from all that surrounds you. It's restrained and understated without being uptight. A soft tension blankets the warm, moody recordings and we are left with a stunning and sublime set of songs.
Illusionen Eines Verlorenen Lebens is the latest from ridiculously prolific Ukrainian one man black metal horde Moloch, one of THREE new full lengths in 2011, so far! Thankfully, everything we've heard from Moloch has been pretty incredible, and perhaps in this case also thankfully, of the SEVENTY ONE releases since 2004, we've only managed to get a tiny handful, so it's still exciting to get our hands on anything new from Moloch, whose sound is a dark, depressive mix of haunting dark ambience, and murky buzz drenched blackness, definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of Xasthur, I Shalt Become, Burzum, Striborg, Nortt, Velvet Cacoon, which we would imagine is probably a whole bunch of you.
And if you've yet to discover Moloch, this is as good a place to start as any. Beginning with a mournful ambient drift, all swoonsome strings, haunting piano and softly layered chordal thrum, very cinematic and quite beautiful, which leads directly into the first half of "Ein Dusterer Winter Kommt", the swirling synths carrying over from the last track, here drifting over big drums, with strange spoken vox, and a slowly intensifying black buzz, the song never truly exploding, instead, pounding along hypnotically, with the vocals becoming more and anguished. It's the second part of the song where the buzz is let loose, the song still a meandering creep, but wreathed in some seriously thick crumbling superdistorted buzz, which is the MO for the next few tracks, the songs lumbering and lurching, through clouds of corrosive buzz and strange vocals, on "Weg Von Dieser Welt Voller Traurigkeit", the riffing grows distinctly blacker, frantic picking, soaring majestic melodies, but still wrapped around Moloch's depressive doomy plod, with some of the most hysterical vocals on the record so far.
Two brief ambient interludes, all synths and strings and whirring shimmering droney drift, lead into the 22 minute closer "Abgrund Meines Wesens", which one might expect to be a crushing buzz drenched finale, but instead is something much more subtle, a sprawling synthscape in multiple movements, like some lost soundtrack for some old art film, lush chordal swells beneath streaks of muted melody, deep sonorous thrum and hushed washed out shimmer, there is a stretch, where the ambience is augmented by a thick layer of buzz, but beyond adding some heft, it doesn't blacken the sound so much as make it more intense. The sort of soundscapery that can easily whisk you off to some other world, some alternate universe. Gorgeous stuff. Definitely heavier on the atmospheric drift than on black buzz, but overall, a pretty fantastic slab of ambient blackness...
Motion Sickness Of Time Travel is the spellbinding synth and voice project of Georgia's Rachel Evans. Up until late 2010, she had released a bunch of tiny edition cassettes and cd-rs through her Hooker Vision imprint, after which her work caught the attention of Digitalis, who released the highly acclaimed album Seeping Through The Veil Of The Unconscious. So acclaimed in fact, that all of three pressings of that album went out of print before we had a chance to wax poetic about the record on our list. It's easy to hear why Motion Sickness Of Time Travel would cause such a stir, as there's something to the easy quip that Rachel Evans is a synth version of Grouper. Evans deconstructs an ethereal pop down to hypnotic looping synth structures and her own whispering voice, all the edges are blurred and softened to a heavenly, glowing gaseousness. Her synth applications typically build from glistening arpeggios and sustained church organ tones, giving many of her arrangements a levitating, Kosmische touch considerably more vaporous in her psychedelic visions than the likes of Emeralds and Oneohtrix in her Cluster fixation. Yet, tracks like the aptly named "Day Glow" eagerly appropriate tone-bent melodies and acid-squelchiness from post-rave ambient engineers (think back to Future Sound Of London), suspended amongst the reverb glide of her breathy vocals. Then there's the oceanic and mysterious drone-waltz found on the lysergically titled "The Walls Were Dripping With Stars" which flickers with backmasked vocalizations and intermittently dubbed out whisperings. Luminaries & Synastry is a real gem; and if past performance is indicative of anything, this album will not be around terribly long. The lp comes with a cd of all the material found on the vinyl, plus a couple of a extra tracks.
Released on the same label that put out the Starfuckers compilation Ordine '91-'96, one of our Records Of The Week this week, this collection of eps from Italian/British shoegaze dreampop duo My Violent Ego couldn't be more far removed from the gnarled experimental noise rock of the Starfuckers. MVE instead traffic in heavily processed, washed out effects drenched shimmer, dreamy abstract pop drift, and hushed ethereal pop ambience. 4AD loosed from its more traditional song like structures, the sounds allowed to float freely, blurred clouds of tangled melody, hushed angelic voices, looped melodic mesmer stretched into dreamy droned out drifts of ephemeral dreampop, many of the tracks here mere fragments, but even in fragmented form, so breathlessly lovely.
We knew the name My Violent Ego was familiar, but we couldn't quite remember why, but then it came to us, they were one of the bands who accused black metallers Velvet Cacoon of plagiarism! Remember those rumors of an unreleased VC demo that supposedly consisted of mostly borrowed/stolen music made by other people? The Velvet Cacoon folks copped to it too, admitting to being a total fraud, but knowing VC, it's hard to tell whether they're ever being genuine or always taking the piss, but finally hearing MVE it's easy to hear why Velvet Cacoon might be tempted, slather on a little black buzz, and this stuff would make the most divine and dreamily druggy black metal bliss, the sounds already warm and fuzzy, woozy and washed out, even a bit witch housey, the arrangements looped and circular, slipping from fully realized jangle pop drift, to blurred and smeared impressionistic shoegaze ambience, often melding the two, into some of the dreamiest dreampop we've heard.
There's definitely an old school Eighties vibe, but the band infuse their jangly drift with enough experimentalism that many of these tracks sound more like something you might hear on Touch or Kompakt than 4AD, taking single riffs, or simple loops, and treating them, dousing them in effects, and stretching them out into hushed expanses of mesmeric shimmer. So so nice. And so so totally recommended.
A very nice pairing of East Bay improvising post-industrialists NF Orchest and the abstractionist filmmaker Jerry Smith. NF Orchest's contribution is a documentation of a live action at The Lab in San Francisco, opening for irr. app. (ext.) back in 2010. The turgid atmosphere is set through a bed of gray crumbling noises, sculpted through murky electronics and shortwave radio noises. Out of this carcinogenic haze, NF Orchest scribbles slow gestures of creepy-crawling drones and nails-on-the-chalkboard screeches from viola and prepared bicycle wheel, whilst the bed of noise detonates in a cavernous hall with a Maurizio Bianchi-like pall of ash and slumped depression working throughout the metallic scrapings. Jerry Smith's video was conceived after the performance had transpired, and he manipulated found footage to match the sounds' progression. Ghostly flickerings of light emerge from static landscapes, darkened through various masks and overlays from additional footage, prismatic refractions, and residues from grainy filmstock. A slow-motion series of watery reflections of light on water is transformed into a choreography of near calligraphic marks dancing on a black backdrop. As one of those smoldering crescendos of noise builds towards the end of this 27 minute video, arcing flares of color jump-cut back and forth next to deep blue tidal waves, spiralling mandalas, and geometric elements. Limited to something like 50 copies.
Another fun outing of scrappy Jonathan Richman inspired stripped down garage pop from these local boys.
Originally released on cd a while back, this latest sprawling blackened missive from our favorite anarcho vegan pagan one man black metal band, Kentucky's Panopticon, is now available on vinyl, and combines the material from two splits, one with Idaho naturalist black metallers When Bitter Spring Sleeps, the other with Canadian / Cascadian horde Skagos. The tracks from the Skagos split, which we had reviewed before, display everything we love about Panopticon, crusty weirdo mathy abstruse black metal, a buzzing blasting pounding onslaught of Pagan fury, rife with samples and all manner of strange sonic filigree. Beginning with a strange sampled folk song, simple percussion, lots of cheers and group vocals, very Teutonic, the sound finally explodes in a gnarled frenzy of furious blasting blackness, dense and brutal and weirdly melodic, an epic jam shifting from mathy churning stutter to frantic lightspeed buzz to loping post rock meander, and finally to shimmery shoegazey ambience. The next track shifts to a gauzy rhythmic dronescape, washed out and hypnotic, the drums sound programmed, stuttery and shuffly, while melodies unfurl and blur, the whole thing hazy and dreamlike, until the guitars come in, instantly transforming into some churning Neurosis like heaviness, breaking down at one point, to just super fuzzed out bass, drums, and weirdly tortured and effected vokills, before finishing off in a blaze of total blackened sonic chaos, which somehow manages to still sound melodic and melancholy.
And holy shit, the final track from that split is a monster, right out of the gate, an impossibly insanely complex squall of looped buzzing riffage and frenzied drumming, so heavy and dense and intense, over the course of the track, shifting to hushed soft focus drone laced with tinkling chiming melodies, to spacious post rock drift, wreathed in echo-ey shoegaze guitars and maniacal shrieked vocals and anchored by still more incredible drumming, grinding to a halt, leaving a just a strange sample of deep chanted singing, and a mysterious German conversation, angelic choirs, and the sounds of birds and streams in the background.
We hadn't heard the tracks from the split with When Bitter Spring Sleeps, but it's more of the same twisted folk flecked super melodic and mathy blackness, mysterious samples, woozy, intricate post rocky mathiness, swirling foresty ambience, the sound hazy and washed out, the first track super melodic and dreamy, the drums busy beneath clouds of tangled melodies, before suddenly shifting into a blast of murky blown out black buzz, which seasaws back and forth between melodic post rock and double kick driven black buzz, often the two bleeding into one another, the songs also occasionally drifting into folky strum, soaring classic metal harmony, and haunting piano laced ambience. The next track is way more grim and buzzy, but even at its grimmest, Panopticon still surprise, grinding to a halt midsong and unfurling soaring streaks of metal guitar harmonies, totally majestic and moving, before slipping into something a bit mysterious and mathy, before finishing off in a final burst of black fury. And the last track eschews black metal entirely, instead offering a bit of gauzy melodic drift, minimal drumming, warm fuzzy guitars, lilting melancholy melodies, more strange samples and mysterious voices, a very epic, Godspeed like slow build finish to an already pretty epic collection of twisted melodic blackness.
The tracks have been remastered, the records gorgeously packaged in a thick full color gatefold sleeve, pressed on heavy vinyl, a double lp mastered at 45rpm, and LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!
It's "NWOFHM" in overdrive overload this week, with not one but two new albums from key exemplars of that Circle side project "scene" up there in Finland. The new vinyl-only offering from Steel Mammoth called Radiation Funeral, you'll find reviewed elsewhere this list, and then there's this, Out Of Darkness, the new cd from Pharaoh Overlord. With fists in the air (and tongues possibly not in cheek?) these two releases have really upped the ante regarding the METAL part of the NWOFHM equation.
Quick recap for those out of the loop: Finnish space prog neo-Kraut band (and massive AQ faves) Circle like to dabble in the metal realms, on their own albums and also by means of various side projects, enough of which exist to populate a self-proclaimed, quasi-parodic New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal movement, NWOFHM for short. These bands usually use metal "signifiers" for their own twisted purposes, making music that's as much experimental and pop and prog as it is metal, but done up in leather and spikes basically for fun.
Circle offshoot Pharaoh Overlord was originally more of a stoner rock take on Circle's motorik mesmerism, dark and psychedelic and heavy. But not "metal". Then they did the album entitled #4, which was NWOFHM almost to the point of being "actual" metal (though still totally repetitive and hypnotic a la Circle of course). But #4's follow up, their previous disc to this, Siluurikaudella, was, while we liked it quite a bit, a definite departure, more of a freakout/improv thing, definitely not remotely metal (or NWOFHM).
So for anyone a bit confused by Siluurikaudella, you'll be happy to hear that Out Of Darkness returns PO to headbanging territory, and then some!! Definitely a metal album, and a rockin' one. Well, it starts off with a lovely acoustic guitar intro, "Eyes Of The Pharaoh", but starts rockin' about 43 seconds later, when the title track erupts, total classic metal riffage with Danzig meets Hetfield vocals courtesy of the singer from US stoner metal band Night Horse, who also appears on the disc's killer final track "I Am The Light". He's not the only guest, as Circle's big hero Bruce "Jesters Of Destiny" Duff and his bandmate Frank Meyer from LA sleaze rockers Angus Khan have cameos too, providing some guest vocals and lead guitar on a few of the cuts here as well.
The nearly ten minute "Devastator" demonstrates that Pharaoh Overlord haven't abandoned the "Circular" style of minimalist repetition, that track devastates indeed with its seeming endlessness (which is awesome). Somewhat poppier is the next track, the chugging "Doomsday Mourning", that's got some psychedelic Uriah Heepishness to it, laden with synths, psych soloing, and dramatic vocals. And that's more the norm, this album being really pretty darn catchy throughout, Pharaoh Overlord mixing their '80s metal obsessions with some Teutonic '70s proginess, and whatthefuckever else they desire. Our heads aren't just banging, they're spinning. Turns out they weren't kidding with the song title "We Came To Rock"! Ok, it gets a bit goofy on the two Bruce Duff sung tracks (especially "No Speed Limit") but that's entertaining too, however for the most part this is a REAL metal / hard rock album, or at least sounds that way, being strange rather than silly when it's not full on metal. For fans of Circle, Queen, krautrock, Thor, La Otracina, Blue Oyster Cult, Accept, Judas Priest, Metallica, Steel Mammoth, Destruction, Anvil, Lucifer's Friend, White Boy And The Average Rat Band, uh, and everything else that's awesome.
Oh, if this wasn't cool enough already, love the outer space neon lazer tiger cover artwork!!! Purrfect for the tight ripping soundz within. The cd booklet also contains an interesting quote from R. Buckminster Fuller. Didn't know he was a metalhead.
FYI, there's another new PO album too, vinyl-only effort called Horn, that we're hoping to get soon too. Haven't heard it yet, don't know where it falls on the NWOFHM spectrum...
After a long string of now out of print 7" singles, cassettes, 12" eps, and a name change from what was Pure Ecstasy, The Austin, TX trio Pure X finally deliver their debut full length, aptly titled Pleasure. In previous reviews we recommended all the hip boutique labels such as Woodsist, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones, Mexican Summer that were signing all the real good lo-fi murk-pop bands to sign these guys quick. But true to their nature, the band stayed loyal and stuck with the local Austin labels Light Lodge and Acephale who released their previous singles as well as releases by connected bands in their circle, Silver Pines, Sleep Over and Survive. That was a smart move, because instead of feeling pressure to polish their songs with better recording equipment or add more complicated arrangements, the band was really able to stretch out their already established dreamy and hazy pop sound. Pleasure does see some of the songs from their 7"s, such as "Dream Over", "Voices", and "Easy", re-recorded, but not necessarily all that different, perhaps with a new layer of hazy feedback and slo-mo guitar fuzz, as these songs were all recorded live with no overdubs. A bold move for sure, but Pure X has long nailed their economic sound into something so wonderfully self-sufficient and unique. And besides those 7"s are so far out of print, that most folks are lucky to get any versions of these songs at all. Imagine Friends-era Beach Boys way slowed down to a molasses pace with crashing lo-fi waves of shoe-gaze guitar strums, buttery rhythms and space walking basslines with sleepy but impassioned vocals. Pleasure is a beautifully dirty dream-pop heaven! Highly Recommended! Vinyl to follow next month, fyi.
As many records as we write about, we actually don't often get a lot of chances to write about some of our favorite bands. And as much as we love so many obscure, underground, and mysterious bands and sounds, we still have some big-name all-time favorites that will always be a part of our musical lives. Queen is one of those bands for many of us here. When we saw that Queen II had just been reissued along with a bonus disc, we knew it was a great excuse and opportunity to list one of our favorite records of all time from one of THEE greatest bands of all time.
Queen II really displays the range and versatility of Queen better then any other record. From their most magical, mystical and pastoral to their balls-to-the-wall anthemic chops and undeniable pop sensibilities. Somehow prog, glam, rock, metal, and pop all at the same time. Released in 1974, it doesn't contain many of Queen's hits usually included in best of collections, but most of these songs are as good as if not even better than some of the hits, and it's a record that proves what a unique vision Queen had in their prime. It's also such a true 'album', one that really needs to be listened to from start to finish. There are so many peaks and valleys, introspection erupting into ecstatic revelations that explode into psychedelic pop enchantment. It's a record that we know has made such a huge influence on such a wide range of bands and artists spanning the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins, Dungen, Blind Guardian, The Cult, Cheap Trick, Slough Feg, Foo Fighters, Jellyfish, Redd Kross, Citay, Zolar X, Dinosaur Jr, Hedwig & The Angry Inch, The Polyphonic Spree, Titan, Turbonegro, and on and on. If you don't own this, we hope/urge that you will! And heck, while you're at it, you probably oughta buy ALL the Queen records...
The bonus disc includes two BBC session tracks, a live track, an instrumental mix and a B side.
