My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Slowdive's Soulvaki, Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See - there are just some records that stand especially tall in the pantheon of shoegaze's finest moments. Ride's album Nowhere belongs right there too, as one of our all time favorites, a truly perfect album from start to finish, that has most definitely stood the test of time. While Ride made some other cool records, they never were able to duplicate the genius of Nowhere. A record that soars and floats with such emotional honesty as well as that dazed 'n glazed vibe that has made it one of those records we've turned at so many different times in our lives. It came out in 1990 and really served as a perfect extension of what folks in the '80s like The Jesus & Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, The Durutti Column, Loop, and The Cure were doing, infusing that sound with an even deeper emotional quality as well as lots of psychedelic undertones, creating music that soared and floated with dreamy ease and driving force.
No matter how hyperbolic we get, we simply can't even get close to describing how much this record means to so many of us. We've turned to it in moments of despair, we've cranked it with windows down on endless drives with crushes and close friends, we've shacked up alone in our bedrooms with this playing during intense moments of loneliness, we've lain in beds with the ones we love lingering in ecstasy as it plays. It's a record that has and will continue to be such a constant source of pleasure for our ears and minds, hearts and souls.
Long out of print, we are SO stoked that Rhino has stepped up to reissue this classic on vinyl now! YOU NEED THIS! (There's also supposedly a special deluxe double cd edition on Rhino that includes a whole mess of bonus tracks, we haven't been able to get our hands on that yet, however.)
We can't deny we've been quite smitten with so many bands in the last couple years who have blasted onto the scene playing inspired, raw, wild and blown out garage rock. But it may take going back to Peru to the years 1964-1966 to find the most riveting and TRUE origins of garage proto-punk, done to perfection. The first time we ever heard Los Saicos we couldn't believe our ears, this was the kind of garage sound we had always imagined in our mind. Gritty, spirited, and filled with charm and soul. And some pretty gnarly vocals for the time. It's not overstating the case to say they make other '60s dirty garage peddlers like The Sonics or The Monks seem kind of tame. This is the kind of blood, guts and charisma that helped create bands latter on like The Cramps, The Mono Men, The Coachwhips, and Davilla 666. With a primitive surf undertone, and an undeniable tough and cool sensibility they really do have a sound so many bands in the decades to follow tried (and continue to try) to emulate. Los Saicos are like the Peruvian version of a gang of bad kids from a Luis Bunuel film, forming a band and creating electric energy together amongst the harsh realities of the streets they roam.
We're so so so thankful Munster has given Los Saicos the proper reissue and long overdue respect they so deserve. If you like rock n roll in any form, you NEED THIS!
Originally released on Record Store Day, this little Aussie power pop / post punk gem is now available again, in a non Record Store Day version, it's a repress of the original debut 7" from legendary Australian punks The Scientists, originally released in 1979, this still sounds as great as ever, and more shockingly, it really shines a light on the current crop of retro poppers and how beholden they really are to what came before, and how what came before is SO MUCH BETTER. These two jams KILL, the A side is a timeless chunk of swaggery punky pop, snarly vox, big crashing guitars, surprisingly buys drums and some drop dead hooks, the B side too, a little bit glammier, but still snarly and swaggery and totally untouchable.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Debut from this Seattle trio, and damn if this maybe doesn't sound like it should have come out on Slumberland. In fact, it almost sounds like it could have come out on Slumberland way back in the day. Or maybe Spinart. A dreamy collection of jangly, stripped down classic twee pop, that most definitely references Black Tambourine, Tiger Trap, The Softies, Velocity Girl, Aislers Set, and the rest, and sounds right at home amongst the new wave of sonically similar popkids: Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Best Coast, Brave Irene, Dum Dum Girls, Gold-Bears, Kids On A Crime Spree, Girls Names, Summer Cats and all the rest. Hazy reverby female vocals, sweet major key melodies, a little bit surfy, the rhythms simple and softly propulsive, total sixties girl group worship via K-records twee-pop, opener "Dreaming" is pretty irresistible, a perfect chunk of summery feel good dream pop, the rest of the record not far behind, washed out and hazy, shimmery and jangly, the vocals hushed and angelic, the guitars warm and crystalline, all wound up into some seriously soft focus, reverb soaked, summer sun, dream pop bliss.
We had been hearing about these guys for a while, super hyped underground hip hop from Seattle, the first hip hop release on Sub Pop, word was Shabazz palaces' sound was seriously fractured and fucked up, hip hop deconstructed into all new shapes, and when we finally got a listen, that proved to be actually pretty true, warped loops, shuffling abstract beats, bizarre production, thick and polished one second. murky and muddy the next, swirling effects, horns, soulful vox, sci-fi synths, all blurred into tangled smears of avant hip hop abstraction.
And the main rapper's flow was definitely recognizable, a voice we had heard before for sure, but it took someone else telling us to make the connection - it's the guy from Digable Planets! Never would have guessed, on first listen, SP couldn't be further removed from the jazz-hop of Digable Planets, but the more you get into Black Up, he more subtle jazziness reveals itself, but that jazziness is set amidst all manner of lurching lumbering, jagged stutter and abstract skitter, the sound futuristic and psychedelic, but rooted in classic hip hop, we hear hints of Sensational, Company Flow, Antipop Consortium, Cannibal Ox, this record would definitely sound right at home on Def Jux or WordSound, but for as weird as this is, there are definitely some serious hooks, and might even have the potential (however slim) to actually crossover, but for now, kick back, and let these woozy warped sounds wash over you, and luxuriate in what is probably the best hip hop record of the year...
The cd version comes in a super swank gold flecked black velvet sleeve, while the lp is in a cool black on black jacket and includes digital downloads of all the tracks.
Hey. Never listed this classic, and now we've got some vinyl in, so here's a review!! Steve Albini may be most well known for being a producer / engineer, having probably recorded a million of your favorite records, or for being a hilariously outspoken and opinionated loudmouth, and yeah, he's both of those, but more importantly, he was the architect /guitarist / mouthpiece for legendary industrial tinged drum machine driven noise rockers Big Black, not to mention the way less well known, but even better (as far as we're concerned) Rapeman, and then there's Shellac, Albini's minimalist rock trio with Bob Weston (Volcano Suns) and Todd Trainer (Rifle Sport, Brick Layer Cake), a band that bucks convention in pretty much every way possible, playing only occasionally, and more for fun, than promotion, recording and releasing records even more occasionally, running their band much like Albini runs his recording studio, never asking for outrageous amounts of money, offering to play first in order to get folks out early to see the other bands, their live performances a sort of spectacle, besides being insanely tight, there's lots of hilarious stage banter, not to mention some strange choreographed movements that would seem to be at odds with such a 'serious band'. Which is really the key to what makes Shellac so good, they ARE funny guys, and they DO have a great sense of humor, and that humor does worm its way into their sound, no matter how subtly. And that sound! It's like someone went into a laboratory and concocted our perfect band. Sinewy, angular chiming guitars, thick buzzing bass, and incredible, ridiculously mathy and super powerful drumming, all wound around gorgeously skeletal songs, that manage to be wickedly catchy, while remaining extremely difficult and abstract, so much so that their popularity does sometimes seem baffling, cuz this shit is fucking far out. A woozy fuzzy groove will suddenly splinter into a baffling stop start stretch of seemingly 'free' post / noise rock drift, a sprawling stretch of high end guitar / splattery crash and boom drum duel will stretch out for minutes, before suddenly locking into a proper, almost poppy sounding song, the record constantly veering from dense mathy indie rock to total experimental noise rock minimalism, often those two elements bleeding like crazy into one another. And Albini's pissed off snarly vox are the perfect fit, there aren't a lot of vocals, but when they do come in, it adds an awesome bit of menace to the proceedings. If you haven't heard At Action Park, man are you in for a surprise, heavy and mathy and abstract and noisy and brutal and catchy and still one of the best records from that era.
Now if they'd just reissue those first three 7"s, long out of print and never reissued in any form, but pretty much a perfect trifecta of stripped down angular minimal math rock...
It's been a while since we last heard from this fine gent! We actually used to see Mr. Singer on a daily basis when he'd keep us not only musically satiated with his (sadly now defunct) indie label Tell-All Records, but also deliciously caffeinated across the street (fyi, he's a maestro at mocha making!). He moved eastward to Brooklyn a few years ago, and the last release from him was his second album, 2006's Our Secret Lies Beneath The Creek. Well, about a year or so ago we caught wind that he had a new album in the works, and it was destined to be released on the Australian indie label Hidden Shoal no less, home to a couple of other faves of ours, SF's Wes Willenbring and Germany's Sankt Otten. We were positively giddy about this good news. Needless to say, we've been eagerly awaiting its arrival, and we are happy to report that it certainly doesn't disappoint.
Carrying on from and expanding upon his richly poetic sophomore beauty, Dislocatia features gorgeous piano and string performances, and full choral arrangements. Indeed, this is quite the elaborate vocal affair, once again he counterbalances his own downy dreamy vocals with feathery soaring female ones courtesy of Wendy Allan of Boxharp. While it certainly makes for a distinct element and a defining characteristic to his music, we'll be honest, we occasionally found the high operatics to be somewhat distracting as we were sinking into each song, but please don't let that dissuade you from checking it out though because this truly is lovely. Might be exactly your cup of tea! It's an elegant coming together of contemporary classical chamber music and folk pop, both flowing and nimble, which will easily charm fans of artists such as Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens or The Dodos who might be seeking something perhaps a little more challenging. Really, if Singer were to be creating music in just one of the two styles, we'd be plenty impressed and delighted, but his effortless integration of the two seals the deal! Particular standout tracks include the gorgeous wistful "The Brief Encounter" and "Bellingham, WA And The Four Green Doors Beyond" as well as the comparatively fervent "Morton Feldman Holding Notes For Eternity" which definitely gives a witty nod to 20th century avant garde composers, but also brings to mind the tongue-in-cheek eccentric camp of no holds barred pop extravaganza-ists such as Sparks. Recommended.
This is the debut full length from Atlanta sludge pop crust punks Sons Of Tonatiuh, who unfurl the sort of hook filled heaviness we can't ever seem to get enough of. The label compare these guys to Sourvein, Iron Monkey, Eyehategod and Weedeater, and yeah, that definitely fits these guys, the lurching downtuned sludge, the chugging churning riffage, the throat shredding vox, but what these guys also have is a serious knack for infusing their rib cage rattling stoner sludge with some serious pop, it's not always obvious, in fact it rarely is, but the band will flit from lumbering doom-ic creep, to relentless crust metal pound without blinking an eye, and then suddenly unfurl THEE catchiest riff you've ever heard, before pulverizing it a second later with an avalanche of crumbling, distorted crush. And that's really what makes this stuff so good, the 'poppy bits' are black hole heavy, to the point of disguising said poppiness from the casual listener, and the heavy parts are subtly poppy, but not so much as to distract from, the pounding and riffing, cuz, c'mon, this is first and foremost some seriously and supremely heavy doom/dirge/sludge, it's just that there's more going on than bash and crash, the thick tarpit riffage and caveman pound hiding plenty of melody and twisted songcraft, which is pretty rare in a band like this.
Recommended for fans of the above mentioned sludge outfits of course, but if you dig stuff like Torche, Floor, Capsule, and Tweak Bird, and are down for something a wee bit sludgier, this just might hit the spot...
Sun soaked tropical dreamy '70s psych-pop from a Latin American musical legend. Pippo Spero grew up in Uruguay where he studied classical guitar at the National Conservatory of Uruguay. As the military dictatorship of Uruguay grew more excessive, that school was shut down and life for artists and musicians became impossible. Spero didn't let that take him away from his love and gift for making such beautiful sounds and he started concentrating on songwriting, and crafted A Buen Puerto, a gorgeous album of breezy, warm and lilting perfection.
Brimming with songs that make you melt and take you out of the rigid and cold structure of everyday life. It's so interesting to see how so many folks under the harshest political climate were able to make such beautiful music. Not turning to anger, but instead showing that no matter what, no one could take away their ability to create beauty and experience love. Yet there is still a bittersweet sadness and melancholy that floats through all of A Buen Puerto. There is also a kinship in spirit and sound with Caetano Veloso, which we hear all over this gorgeous album.
In fact, after completing this album in 1976, Spero fled from Uruguay and moved to Brazil where he formed close relationships with many like minded musicians and songwriters there like Geraldo Azevedo, Alceu Valenca, and Milton Nascimento. Fans of any of the aforementioned artists, and folks like Lo Borges, Congregacion, and Eduardo Mateo will find a new favorite record in A Buen Puerto.
While these guys started out as a Circle side project (and not such a serious one, at that, judging by their name), by now they've definitely become their own entity indeed, with their own following. Whether they're "serious" or not remains an open question, but with our Finnish friends, such things are almost impossible to determine anyway. They're all pretty crazy up there in Finland. What IS possible to determine is, that Steel Mammoth rules. This is their fourth full-length (vinyl-only this time, sorry cd folks) and it's another unique slab of Steel Mammoth's "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" stylings... which, of course, isn't always all that heavy metal, actually. Well, ok, it LOOKS metal, in the most awesomely cartoonish way possible. And metal is part of their sound, sure. But so is some sort of weird alt pop. Well you know that already 'cause if you're an AQ customer, you're probably already a Steel Mammoth fan.
However, this new album, Radiation Funeral, might just be Steel Mammoth's most metal attack yet. PUNKmetal at any rate. Two sides, nine songs, 1/2 hour, utter "nuck-leeyr" mayhem, a record filled with "unglued screaming, harrowing guitars, violent drumfire and apocalyptic bass pollution" as they say. And yeah, it IS pretty thrashy and trashy, Steel Mammoth finally letting their helmeted skullface mascot rage with the likes of Motorhead's Snaggletooth. The vocals are shouty, mean, gargled. The songs rumble with heavy riffing, the guitars dirty and distorted, drums bashing away with abandon. You could probably play this for your most 'truest' metal buds, the ones with band backpatches on their faded denim jackets, and convince 'em it's something dragged from the depths of the European underground circa '86, some sub-Sodom speed metal German budget band or something. Maybe. Anyway it's cool to hear Steel Mammoth (aka Circle, mostly) really, really indulge their most metallic urges here. It's a headbanger, all right. Fans of the likes of Speedwolf, and heck maybe even Kvelertak, should really dig this.
And we give 'em props for one of their best more metal-than-thou song titles yet, "Deck Of Wild Cards". Another good one is "Endless Wolf". We figure they get drunk and try to come up with ridiculous/awesome metal titles like those, then write the songs. Who knows? It works. Check out their disturbing/amusing video for the catchy/chaotic "Torture" here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmhIa-AcFdo&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
We've long been fans of Canadian 'supergroup' Superconductor, long before Superconductor member Carl Newman went on to front Zumpano and then New Pornographers, but don't be expecting any sort of pop here, although those pop sensibilities do seep into SC's twisted experimental noise rock. Infamous for their seven (7!) guitarist lineup, these guys kicked out some seriously kick ass jams, heavy, rhythmic, dynamic, walls of guitars, pounding octopoidal drums, howled vox, but somehow, catchy as hell too. We reviewed their classic Bastardsong a while back, their last, and poppiest record, but we just discovered that our distributor still had copies of this, SC's 1991 debut ep, which still kills, and sounds heavier and hookier than most of the bands today, and includes one very aQ jam that knocked us for a loop.
It had been a while since we heard this, but got one in and threw it on, and wait a second, we recognized one of the songs, riffy and heavy, and then the vocals, a super distinctive wail, and it dawned on us, it was a cover of Japanese '70s hard psych gods Flower Travellin' Band's "Satori", and it was awesome, not that far removed from the original, the vocals spot on, just a bit buzzier and heavier. And we were struck again by what amazing music nerds these guys were. The cover of Bastardsong was a parody of Iasos' new age classic Inter-Dimensional Music which we just listed a while back, and here they were covering Flower Travellin' Band WAY before any of us had heard them. And it's that music nerdery that informed the music of Superconductor and elevated their sound WAY beyond bash and crash noise rock. So yeah, the FTB cover here is worth the price of admission. But the rest of the songs rule too, "Bushpilot" is ridiculously hooky and catchy for being a weirdly mathy chunk of noise drenched indie rock, a should have been nineties underground hit if there ever was one. "Ride The Big Penis", besides having an amazing title, also boasts some serious churning riffage, and some skull caving drum pummel, which leads directly into "Clamhammer" (these guys had a way with titles), another melody infused slab of noiserock, that sounds a bit like Sonic Youth mixed with Unsane mixed with Polvo, angular and buzzy and sludgey and blown out. Finally, the group finishes off with "Riffmania", which is as advertised, chugging, buzzing riffage wrapped around some BIG drums, with the multiple guitarists adding all sorts of psychedelic squiggle and layered buzz, not to mention some seriously distorted in-the-red vocal howls (about as far removed from the New Pornographers as can be), the song gradually splintering into crumbling slabs of disembodied riffage, swirls of feedback and wildly loosening drum damage.
Oh did we mention the amazing confusional cover art, how about the names of the band members: Dream Whip, It's On You, Thighmaster, He Who Is Named, Flying Fist, Noise Annoys, El Impacto, Sweet Bitch, Delicious Warm, and weirdest of all... Alan Smithee (the pseudonym movie directors use when they don't want their own name on a film!).
We love these guys, and this might be their finest moment, heavy and hooky in equal measure, tongue lodged firmly in cheek, but seriously ruling!
Ghedalia Tazartes' Diasporas might be most famous at this point for being included on the infamous Nurse With Wound list, a list of artists that was included with NWW's 1979 classic album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, and was basically a list of musicians and groups that NWW head honcho Steven Stapleton was influenced by. Looking at it now, it almost reads like an aQ list: Agitation Free, Algarnas Tradgard, Zweistein, Iannis Xenakis, Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, Igor Wakhevitch, Ya Ho Wha 13, Taj Mahal Travellers, Supersister, Der Plan, Sperm, Achim Reichel, Moolah, Magical Power Mako, Basil Kirchin, Jan Dukes De Grey, Exmagma, Cromagnon, Crass, Il Balletto Di Bronzo and so many more.
And Ghedalia Tazartes fits perfectly amidst such esteemed and such gloriously twisted company, a French ethno-experimentalist and composer, whose sound is a dizzying concoction of mysterious vocal chants, traditional gypsy folk music, bizarre sonic rituals, sound collages and tangled tape loops, his records playing out like alien field recordings, often layering multiple sound sources into twisted psychedelic freakouts. Diasporas, originally released in 1979 (recorded in 1977), is the perfect example of Tazartes' idiosyncratic sound, a thick layered stretch of multiple voices starts things off, his gypsy croon wailing over a lopped snippets of opera, as well as looped growls and, sampled strings, the sound building to a deafening crescendo, before settling into a strange bit of hypnodrone, with the operatic vocals relegated to a clipped pulse, the sampled strings creating a hauntingly repetitive melody, over which he mumbles and growls, the sound building and building until somehow it's just piano, and strangely processed voices stretched out into a swirling undulating drone.
And it continues on in a similar fashion, each track beginning like some field recording, simple percussion, strange vocals, like some abstract alien world music, those voices underpinned by drones and murky loops, which seem to become more pronounced as the tracks progress.
A few of the tracks to play out almost like straight folk music, but even then, there's something slightly off kilter, whether it's the production, the arrangement, or some subtle sonics lurking below the surface but it's never long before the sound returns to something much more twisted, be it some growled almost throat singing, blurred into a weird almost scat singing dronescape, or thick squalls of rumbling growls over which, samples are draped, and Tazartes' feral wail, or machine like loops and mechanical skitter wound around super passionate howls and looped baby talk.
It's definitely WAY out there, but there's a reason even back in 1979 Stapleton had this on his list, cuz it's one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful and fantastically disturbing listens EVER.
Ah, Teenage Panzerkorps. This confounding, transcontinental quartet has quite a punk / avant-rock pedigree. Edmund Xavier was born Glenn Donaldson, whose work within the forest-dwelling psychedelic collective Jewelled Antler spawned such projects as Thuja and the Blithe Sons, not to mention the paisley-pop project the Skygreen Leopards and Art Museums; and Boy True is the pseudonym for Jason Honea, who joined the leftist-punk band Social Unrest in the late '80s and Ten Bright Spikes in the '90s, before accompanying Donaldson and company on some of the more outre projects of Jewelled Antler. From the perspective of Jewelled Antler, the iconography of Teenage Panzerkorps makes a lot more sense, as a re-imagining of the childhood games playing with toy soldiers, where political and moral implications are lost within the wonder of play, all the while these childish ideals are smashed into the epiphany of hearing punk for the first time, with all of the social and political ramifications very much on the line. The Teutonic bark of vocalist Bunker Wolf and all of the militant iconography might give the impression of these guys being Nazi sympathizers, but this is hardly the case, as Der TPK's folding of symbols and metaphors is far more nuanced in its appropriation, pastiche, and parody.
German Reggae is album number four for Der TPK, and it exhibits some variation beyond the drone-punk propulsion which dominated their Games For Slaves and Nations Are Insane albums. Honea's basslines look back to the first couple of PiL records and Jah Wobble's thick punk-dub, and Bunker Wolf's delivery is a bit more understated, to which some have compared now to a Germanic Mark E. Smith. Even with these differences, Der TPK puts their collective head down for these propulsive, grimy post-punk numbers with plenty of references to the pre-Joy Division Warsaw recordings, Savage Republic, and Wire, not to mention contemporaries like The Soft Moon and Cult Of Youth.
Another amazing release from Spectrum Spools, the Editions Mego sublabel, who over the last few months has given us records from Mist, Bee Mask, Fabric and Forma, all of them fantastic, and this one is no different. A killer collection of hypnokraut synth psych, that purports to be vintage recordings from back in the day, but we're guessing is more likely the work of a modern music maker raised on a steady diet of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.
The record slips back and forth between propulsive almost chaotic krautrock grooves, and more blissed out percolating kosmische synthscapes. Warped loops and swirling effects wrap around a motorik pulse, glistening electro grooves throb hypnotically amidst swirling streaks of blooping and bleeping effects, soft billowing swirls of arpeggiated synths blur into gauzy soundtacky stretches, sometimes splintering into dirgey IDM skitter, or still more noisy electronic pulses. Much of this actually sounds like Astral Social Club at their most electronic.
Every song here is a warm glowing chunk of kosmische bliss out, whether it be a murky sprawl of synth burble and skeletal skitter wreathed in squiggles and chirps, or percolating melodies doused in bleary eared shimmer, all like the work of some sonic mad scientist, whose cauldron is a burbling concoction of classic krautrock, abstract electronica, and dreamy ambient minimalism. So good!
Been trying to list this for AGES, but our distributors were constantly out of stock, it's been out for a while, but we only just now actually got enough to review and list. Tokimonsta is a female beatmaker from Los Angeles, who was the first female to join Flying Lotus' crew, and whose sound is a warm and scratchy, sorta laid back, sweet and soulful electronica, she mixes old records, live instruments, plenty of effects and loops, and weaves them into swoonsome grooves that shift freely from pop ambient shimmer, to murky late night funk, to big beat crunch, often all together in different measures.
And while we tend to lean toward the dark and the ominous, there's something about Midnight Menu that's totally captivating, sure she occasionally dips into wicked dubstep, making it obvious that if she was so inclined she could rule the dubstep scene, all spiralling minor key synths over burbling synth buzz and a killer stuttery beat, or unfurls woozy washes of muted slo-mo soul that's moody and mysterious, but for the most part, her sound is sun dappled Sunday afternoons, and warm washed out expanses of hazy crackle drenched records spinning slowly over stripped down rhythms, there are a couple tracks with vocals, and sound like hip-hop/pop radio jams, but a little bit warped and twisted, eventually settling back into Tokimonsta's abstract dreamlike electronic sound world. We've all been digging this like crazy, and are psyched to finally get it listed.
Fans of Flying Lotus, Blue Daisy, Zomby, Mount Kimbie, J Dilla and others of a similar sonic stripe will dig this lots...
This disc collects two very hard to find pieces of vinyl from this aQ beloved duo, with the 2005 LP Nahtscato first issued by the German imprint Paranoise in an edition of 300 copies and Autopoiesis being a 2004 picture disc from Small Voices. As nice as it is to hear Troum material on vinyl, sinking into 75 minutes of Troum's vast, darkened dronescaping pocked with cinematic, intense loopings and dramatic melodies is a very good way to experience their work. We've carried both of these pieces of vinyl way back when and neither of them are currently available. On both of these records (it's hard to tell where one album ends and the other begins) the billowing dark clouds of ominous guitar drones that have been the trademark of Troum (and their earlier incarnation Maeror Tri) continue unabated in a thick morass of chorus, delay, and reverb effects boxes with occasional accompaniments of pounding tribal rhythms. Troum navigate through cavernous, subterranean spaces where thrumming low end engulfs everything in a blackened pit of emptiness, then dramatically lifts off through their cyclical drone-riffs that build towards impressive crescendos of icy noise and luminous drones. There's also two bonus tracks not found on the original pieces of vinyl. If you missed the opportunity to pick up the vinyl back then, this cd isn't going to be around for terribly long either as the bulk of Troum's catalogue tends to get snatched up in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Latest in the ongoing series of super limited 3" cd-r's, paying musical tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. Past installments have come courtesy of UK avant black metaller Caina, Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist, black noise occultists LVTHN, Kentucky one man USBM outfit Sapthuran, blackened French metal combo Smohalla, legendary Italian dark metallers Frostmoon Eclipse, aQ faves, Texan black metal Lovecraft worshipper Brown Jenkins, Frostmoon Eclipse side project Stroszek, and now, Italy's The True Endless, whose split with Angmar was a big favorite around here (we still have a few copies, just ask), and whose sound we described as buzzing black Mayhem worship, and very little has changed, the guitars buzz maniacally, the drums pound relentlessly, the songs are epic and majestic, blazing and frenzied, but often slowing down into churning chugging stretches of lumbering doom, before exploding back into another burst of frenetic Norwegian style classic blackness.
The True Endless here sound a bit like some weird hybrid of Khold and newer Funeral Mist, with midtempo almost-grooves, killer stuttery start stop arrangements, some super intense and epically anguished guttural vokills, woozy melodic guitar melodies, all wrapped in a gauzy blurred black buzz production, and surrounded on all sides by furious bouts of blown out blasting blackness. Awesome.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, we got 20, and can't get more, so grab one quick, cuz these always disappear right quick. Packaged in a slim jewel case, with a 4 panel booklet and a thick card insert with a photo of Lovecraft on one side and an essay on the other. And it's always worth mentioning, that TTE bassplayer Soulfucker, is still quite possibly the foxiest babe in black metal...
Local label Voltaire does it again. First it was the Publicist Keep It Off The Record 12", a killer slab of propulsive robotic cyber funk grooviness from the alter ego of one of the guys in Trans Am, now it's Affairs Online, a new compilation, and a fantastic collection of retro psychedelic disco-prog Euro-synth electro, and introduces us to five new artists (one of which is in fact Steve Moore of Zombi in disguise), hailing from all over the globe, Sweden, Japan and the US, but what they all have in common is their slavish worship of vintage Eurodisco and old school electro and synthwave, and whereas lots of other artists dabbling in the same sort of sounds twist them all up, add some modern twist, the sounds here are perfect replications of songs that could have been, soundtracks to some obscure eighties softporn VHS, or the score to some rare Argento giallo, the sounds here are all swirling synths, groovy beats, vintage analog buzz, and that hazy eighties production.
Lovelock, aka Steve Moore, offers up a track that sounds like the soundtrack to the Loveboat or Hart To Hart or some other classic TV show, a little disco-y, a lot funky, with warm synths, and soaring faux strings, tense and dramatic and melodic, evoking the lazy after school TV watching afternoons of our childhood as much as some futuristic Eurodisco. Loose Shus gets all Logan's Run with his track, creepy pulsing synths, and percolating sci-fi melodies, before the song kicks in with some discofunk bass and lots of handclaps. Narctrax is a little ethereal, but that swirling groovy haze is wrapped around some pulsing rhythms, more handclaps and a big fuzzy bassline that would have Daft Punk in a tizzy. Le Pimp is total eighties Eddie Murphy movie soundtrack, slap bass, synth stabs, a woozy electrofunk that would work in a dance-off as well as a chase scene, and finally, Erik Artur offers up a brief bit of washed out squiggly swirly electro synth melancholia rife with swoops and bloops and swirls and bleeps.
So awesome. And obviously anyone into the current crop of retro futurist synth wave Goblin/Carpenter revivalists will dig this BIG time.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered! And check out these amazing videos that were created to accompany some of the songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evEG1j1kvV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqc2hZFsoTc
With more to come!!
Originally released for Record Store Day earlier this year, this killer comp is finally more widely available, and thankfully less limited. And there were definitely lots of Record Store Day releases to be excited about, but we were especially psyched on this one, a sprawling double lp collection of lost sixties psychedelic jams, collected from the Vanguard vaults, this collection marking the first time those vaults have been explored for lost records and 45's, gathered with the intention of an elaborate and extensive digital reissue project, but 18 of the best were gathered up and compiled here for Record Store Day. And holy crap. Some of you may recognize some of these bands, and maybe some of these songs, but for the most part, this was mostly all new stuff to us.
The Third Power's "Getting Together" which sounds, as impossible as it may seem, like the bastard child of Jimi Hendrix and Kiss. Or Erik's "You Said / But I've Got My Way", with its weirdly distorted guitar buzz, and brooding minimal lowslung stripped down sound. Listening offer up "Stoned Is", with a music example of just what stoned is, with whirring organs, warm washed out guitars, wild psychedelic leads, skittery drums, and weary druggy vox. The 31st Of February deliver the oddly named "A Nickel's Worth Of Benny's Help" a fuzzy, distorted garage-y groove, with some awesome weirdly effected percussion, and Elizabeth's (a band not a person) "You Should Be More Careful" is a jangle drenched rapid fire lyrical warning, while Jeff Monn's "I Can Understand Your Problem" is a brooding, slithery, organ drenched Doorsy jam, all murky and moody�
We could pretty much go on and on, track by track, but you get the drift, there's not a weak one in the bunch. Tripped out, psychedelic, groovy, fuzzy, heavy, jangly, garagey, surfy, and pretty much every and any stop in between, every one of these most definitely a lost gem, making this one of our favorite psych reissue comps in ages!
Incredible packaging too. Pressed on ultra heavy vinyl, with the original Vanguard inner sleeves, all housed in a super thick full color gatefold sleeve, with extensive liner notes, as well as descriptions of each band, and eye popping psychedelic graphics.
Killer compilation from this long running label, a triple cd overflowing with some seriously aQ beloved bands:
The Body, Thurston Moore, The North Sea, Dead Machines, Anla Courtis, Antony Milton, Taurpis Tula, Pumice, Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra, Astral Social Club), Mike Shiflet, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Crawlspace, Justice Yeldman, Carlos Giffoni just to name a few, and there are tons more, FIFTY artists total. A whole bunch of folks we had never heard before: Aaron Rosenblum, Craig Colorusso, Caustic Solution, Carpentry, Taiwan Death, Rainbeaux, Tinnitusstimulus, Hikka as well as Crush The Junta, who some of us here have dug for a while but who have yet to get reviewed on the list.
The sound is all over the place too, but in a good way, warm metallic buzz, woozy steel string outsider Appalachia, hushed hazy droned out drift, there are occasional blast of noise, but they tend toward the more textural, Carlos Giffoni offers up some blurred synthy squelch, Cock E.S.P. deliver a minute long burst of caustic crunch, which is rife with weird voices, and surprisingly even a bit of melody, there's even some full on garage rocking (Crawlspace), some tripped out exotica (Irene Moon), downtuned lumbering doom (The Body), jangly country (Hinkley), twisted, wrangled guitar abuse (Thurston Moore), but for all of the varied sounds, the overall vibe does lean pretty consistently toward the dark and droney, the layered and atmospheric, much of this sprawling comp has the feel of an album proper, the songs linked sonically, creating these subtly thematic movements, a pretty amazing feat for a 3 disc compilation with 50 sonically disparate bands. This is definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to the aQ-ers into sounds murky and mysterious, haunting and hazy, and fans of all things that buzz and rumble and whir, and we should mention Crush The Junta, whose track here is a fantastically murky chunk of stumbling fuzz drenched dirgery, starting out all chaotic and almost free, before locking into a grimy, crusty churn, that manages to be both heavy and atmospheric, rhythmic and psychedelic.
Definitely recommended. Sweet packaging too, the three discs (real cds, not cd-r's) housed in a dvd case, with a full color cover, and full color printed insert, the whole thing snug in a silk screened and hand sewn cloth bag, and yeah, probably crazy limited too...
It's hard to believe that Important Records have been around for ten years. Even harder to believe that in those ten years, they've released THREE HUNDRED records, thirty a year. No wonder we can barely keep up with them. But it's sure fun to try. This super limited lp celebrates this big anniversary with exclusive live tracks from a handful of Important bands, a list that reads like an aQ dream team: Mugstar offer up some seriously fuzzy psychedelic stomp, a Stooges / Hawkwind hybrid equal parts heavy and spacey, Cave are at their most krautrocky here, blissed out and rhythmic, the sound thick layered and epic, Grails get almost funky, doing their best impression of classic Can, thick basslines, groovy rhythms and a sound that's super distorted and blown out, Bardo Pond deliver their usual blast of swirling druggy psych, all warbly vox and swirling chaotic psychguitar bliss, Master Musicians Of Bukkake get all ritualistic, with gamelan like percussion, bleating horns and demonic gurgling vox, Chord get seriously mellow, unfurling a hazy bit of dreamy drift, hushed and surprisingly ambient, aQ fave Bass Communion teams up with someone called Pig for a thick dense sprawl of blackened guitar buzz and swirling atmospheres, a slow burning track that gradually gets noisier and noisier, and then finally, someone called NHK yx finishes things off with a super minimal chunk of lo-fi skittery insectoid buzz and squelch electronica.
All killer stuff, vinyl only, and most likely limited...
Hey Messthetics fans! Here's the latest volume in this very worthwhile series of comps of way underground UK music from the late '70s/early '80s. This one is specifically devoted to "South Coast 'D.I.Y.' and (very) indie postpunk '77-81" though we find that their geographic organization of these discs means very little to us. Each one is always awesome, full of gems we're glad to get to hear (and probably never would have otherwise). If you're into Messthetics, this one's another quality comp, featuring 24 songs (plus even more mp3-only bonus tracks and one bonus video), from almost as many bands, here's the lineup, for what it's worth ('cause you probably HAVEN'T heard of any of 'em, that's the idea after all): Chimes, Chiefs, Bloated Toads, Again Again, Objeks, Greeting No. 4, Poison Girls, Lillettes, Renaldo & The Loaf (ok, there's one we'd heard of!), Thought Police, April & The Fools, Vitamins, Pink Flamingos, Joe Dash, Relatives, Legendary Tenfoots, Attic, Indifferent Dance Centre, Almost Cruelty, Mike Malignant & The Parasites, Right Profile, 3D, Forward Edge, Intestines, The Passengers, Venus In Furs, and Butcher, who run the gamut from distorted punk stomp to stark drum machine mope. If the usual run of Messthetics bands are obscure, these are even more so 'cause according to the always-expert liner notes the South Coast scene was generally ignored by the London labels & press. And speaking of liner notes, the thick cd booklet is practically a little 'zine all by itself, each band's super detailed write-up often including a mini-interview! And lots of vintage photos and graphics. As always, a true labor of love.
For those just tuning in, H2D and their Messthetics series is like the Sublime Frequencies of reissue labels. Rather than backpack the world looking for far out field recordings, H2D delves into the past, excavating long lost cassettes and rare vinyl 7"s from the post punk weirdos found in such out of the way corners of Great Britain, such as what's documented here, bands from Bournemouth, Brighton, Southhampton, Portsmouth. The text on the tray card of this cd says "Between 1977 and '83, hundreds of bands in the UK put out their own records and cassettes..." The Messthetics series, now on its umpteenth installment has not only proved that assertion many times over, but also demonstrated that many of those bands were pretty great besides! Check 'em out.
[Adopts Victorian street urchin voice]: "Hot shit warehouse find for sale here! Getch yer hot shit warehouse find!"
That's right girls and boys, we stumbled upon a few - as in, literally, like, THREE - of these rad 2007 comps from Canadian metal slangers Sepulchral Productions, who have thrown together a tasty smorgasbord of blackened bile spewing hate that goes down all harsh and spiny-like. The bands come to us from the the wilds of Europe and the great Canadian north and include heavyweights like Antaeus, Negura Bunget, and Horna in addition to lesser known bad asses like Lord Belial, Nostra Drama, Veneficium, and Azaghal. Nay, not a Yankee to be found. As these bands, even the more famous ones, dwell within the deepest depths of the underground, you can bet this shit is evil and rifftastic in all the ways you so greedily lust for. Intended as a tribute to the early age of Black Metal whose legacy has been shamelessly and successfully prostituted to consumers like you and me all across the globe, these guys are keeping the flame burning ALL.NIGHT.LONG.FOREVER - if you're looking to find cute and fashionable Black Metal, the liners politely suggest that you bear this in mind.
LAST COPIES!!!
We're always saying we just can't get enough of that vintage Middle Eastern psych music, hence a sequel to last year's great Turkish Freakout comp is quite freaking welcome! Here 'tis, 17 more tracks from rare Turkish records (mostly 7" singles) of the seventies, by some artists we'd heard of, and plenty of others we hadn't. As with volume one, there's definitely lots of great tunes here we hadn't come across before! The lineup includes: Baris Manco, Edip Akbayram, Cem Karaca + Mogollar, Afet Serenay, Kerem Guney, Gokben, Gulcan Opel, Sevil and Ayla, Kamuran Akkor, Ozel Turkbas, Perihan, Sakir Oner Gunham, Sirin, and Kenan. Lush and lively stuff all of it, like belly dancing music taken to psychedelic extremes.
Amongst these tracks, you'll hear lots of lovely female singers, moody men too, and the rhythms of stately folk dances infused with FUZZ, with orchestral strings, electric saz, synth, indeed wild Moog madness, flutes and whistling, wah wah guitar and funky drum breaks, stuff that's groovy and spacey and exotically poppy. The usual in other words.
There's a thick 36 page booklet stuffed inside this digipack, one reason it's so thick is they devote a whole page to a full color reproduction of the single sleeve or lp jacket from which each of these tracks is taken. On the facing page, some commentary from the anonymous compiler.
If you look through the booklet, you'll no doubt notice Afet Serenay. She has two cuts on here, both from her 1978 full-length lp Bir Of Ceksem. So that album cover is reproduced twice, and that's cool 'cause she's worth a second look for her fashion sense alone, posing on the cover of her record wearing a colorful rainbow striped wool sweater/dress and matching legwarmers. Wow. Also, one of Serenay's tracks, "Maden Dagi", you might recognize from the beloved Selda's somewhat different version of the same tune (they're folk songs after all) on her album Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi (aka Vol. 2). Likewise, the Edip Akbayram track here, "Mehmet Emmi" was also done by Selda.
Just like the first installment, worth freaking out over if you love Turkish psych - or any such international sounds - like we do. FYI, the gatefold double lp vinyl version we have now comes with a limited, bonus 7".
Found one copy of this stashed in the closet, figured someone would probably want it, first order gets it...
The premiere issue in this amazing sound art magazine box series. Each issue comes in beautiful printed box, and contains a cd and a series of full color cards printed on thick card stock. Very nice. Published twice a year by a team of artists and journalists in France, Vibro is, as it says on the box, "A cross between an art piece and a specialized magazine. A sonic object, a chronicle of electroacoustic and lo-fi experiments." Indeed! Includes music from David Toop, Mika Vainio, Chris Watson and more.
Just dug up THREE copies of this cool art box / audio mag, once these are gone, they're gone for good...
Latest issue in this amazing sound art magazine box series. Each issue comes in beautiful printed box, and contains a cd and a series of full color cards printed on thick card stock. Very nice. Published twice a year by a team of artists and journalists in France, Vibro is, as it says on the box, "A cross between an art piece and a specialized magazine. A sonic object, a chronicle of electroacoustic and lo-fi experiments." Indeed! This issue contains pieces by Stephen Vitiello, Kinglet, Joan Schuman, Mark Vernon, Eva Sjuve, Christian Zanesi, Zoe Irvine, Aland Dunn & Jeff Young, Tonic Train, Pete Stollery, SI_COM and Tereza Neuma and features a full color card for each artist, with a full color reproduction of the artist's original artwork on one side, and on the other a description of the artist, a description of the piece, and assorted other information about the artist and their work. The tracks on this issue's cd are really amazing, beautifully haunting music concrete crafted from the sounds of waterfalls, snatches of conversations, brief snatches of music, warm rich drones, strange chopped up soundscapes, haunting intercepted phone calls, creaking machinery, buzzing insects, chimes, crickets, short wave radio, mutated speech, footsteps, passing cars, piano, sine waves and tone generators, synthesizers, radio broadcasts and all manner of found sound.
How could we NOT make this a Record Of The Week?! We've already sold nearly 30 of them since we got 'em in last week, and we're only putting it up on the site now. Which makes sense when you consider this is a freaking flexidisc BOOK. And when you look at the lineup: Thee Oh Sees, Bare Wires, The Fresh & Onlys, Blasted Canyons, Ty Segall And Mikal Cronin. Almost entirely unreleased and exclusive tracks. And did we mention the flexidisc book?
Yeah, a big book, it sort of feels like one of those baby books kids can take in the bath, thick heavy pages, still softcover, but hefty, and the design is incredible, full color, super retro, all the band pages some old product reimagined using the name of the band, presented on thick glossy pages, over which lays the band's flexidisc, printed in cool metallic inks, and see through, so you can see the picture in the book through the record. And just an aside for folks who don't actually know what a flexidisc is, it's a sheet of plastic, into which record grooves are cut, and back in the day, that's how magazines gave away songs, by including flexidiscs (Mad Magazine used to include flexidiscs all the time!), but anyway, 5 flexidiscs, all housed in this cool spiral wire bound book, with an extra secret track cut right into the inside of the back cover of the book itself! And if this wasn't already worth it as just a cool musical object, this musical object just so happens to have ten tracks from five of our favorite bands!
Thee Oh Sees get all abstract and post punky on "Burning Spear", channeling Wire through their reverby garage crunch, before slipping into the shimmy shake of "What You Need (The Porch Boogie Thing)" complete with falsetto vox. The Fresh & Onlys offer up two short sharp tracks of vintage retro jangle pop, all reverby and echoey and hooky as hell, laced with girl group backup vox and warm whirring organ. Bare Wires kick out the jams on two total retro classics, sounding more and more like they were actually transported here from the sixties, total Who worshipping jangley mod-pop radness. Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin try their hand at some Bowie covers, transforming "Fame" into an echo drenched dirge, and "Suffragette City" into a supercharged garagepunk blowout. Recent Record Of The Week-ers Blasted Canyons contribute two songs from their Record Of The Week (this was actually meant to come out first), but if you needed a teaser / taster, these two songs should convince you, fuzzy blown out, synth heavy garage pop space punk bliss, dueling boy/girl vocals, thick buzzing synths, wild crashing drums, big riffs, sixties girl group shimmy via modern garage rock crunch, and of course hooks galore. And finally, the special hidden surprise track, on the inside of the book's back cover, a strange chunk of lo-fi Casio-core primitive weirdness from a 'group' called Here Comes The Here Comes, apparently the work of the daughter of one of the Castleface head honchos, goofy lyrics, boy / girl vox, a woozy electro creep that finishes off in a squall of processed vocals and weird electronic squiggles.
So cool! And crazy limited. ONLY 1000 COPIES, but as we mentioned above, they seem to be going fast, and there are rumors of a possible second pressing, but it will definitely be stripped down, and might even be missing some of the music, so grab one of these before they're gone. Comes with a download coupon as well!
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PLAYING YOUR GROUP FLEX: Do not tear out the flexidiscs, just fold the book back, with the record you want to play on top, then set the whole book on your turntable, when it's time to play the next record, simply turn the page, and put the book right back on the turntable. And repeat.
NOW ON VINYL!!
The first proper full length from this Midwestern black metal trio. We missed seeing them live unfortunately when they were here recently, but they did drop off their new record, and it's pretty great.�
Just like the demo we listed way back, these guys traffic in a classic black metal sound, old Emperor, old Ulver, Darkthrone, they're obviously channeling the Norwegian elite, but their take on it is definitely their own. Where before there seemed to be a lot of eighties style riffing mixed in, here the vibe seems to be much doomier, and there's still a definite Opeth vibe with all the more tranquil clean guitar stretches. But they also do some weird, distinctly not very black metal shit. One prime example is the end of the second track (all the songs are 12+ minutes), after a majestic / epic coda, the song devolves into a gloriously abstract drum heavy jam, the guitar ringing out, a single chord, static and droney and hypnotic, while the drums get all chaotic. We sort of wished that it would on like that for another 5 or 6 minutes. Maybe live. And the band definitely get into a sort of trancey thing, which is not that uncommon for black metal, but they manage to make it sound all murky and mysterious instead of just buzzy.
But beyond the various weird bits here and there, those almost-folky interludes, and various textural experiments, the band offer up a pretty solid take on classic raw old school black metal, lacing it heavily with doom, and, perhaps inadvertently, some serious math/post rock, the arrangements, and the riffs betray some Slint or something similar in their past, or it could just be that Slint's guitarists were closet metalheads. Either way, it keeps their sound unique, and has definitely helped keep this record on constant repeat around here.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
Originally released as a super limited tour only ep, sold on their most recent US tour, we convinced the band to make another batch, exclusively for aQ, which they agreed to do, so we have the final copies of this, a dozen to be exact, not sure if we're able to get more, but probably safe to assume this could be the last we see of these. I Have Seen The Substance Of Your Earth... It Is Gray And Dying is a single epic 22 minute track, that displays all that we dig about this Midwestern horde, slow build doomy ambience, post rockish atmospheres, clean guitars spread out over an expanse of abstract shimmer, the drums massive, a haunting deathmarch plod for nearly 3 minutes before the song proper begins to coalesce, in a squall of wild drumming and swirling blackened guitars, the song transformed into a slightly more propuslive dirge, the vibe haunting and melancholy, the sound eventually building to a churning midtempo crush, all howled vox, murky blown out riffage, the song never quite exploding into full on blast, but then blasting is not what these guys are about, it's more about mood and atmosphere, tension and release, with the brooding slow builds playing out like a black metal Godspeed, and the heavy parts more Neurosis-y really than strictly black metal, but these guys have always drifted more in that direction anyway. This track is epic, slipping constantly from moody churn, to dreamy drift and back again, injecting plenty of melody to go with the mood, with the last eight minutes or so left for some seriously gorgeous abstract drift, all layered feedback, and slowly decaying buzz, mysterious tones and streaks of feedback, a serious slab of experimental guitarscapery finishing off with a brief folky acoustic guitar coda.
CRAZY LIMITED! As in we only have 12 copies! Housed in wax sealed black sleeves.
We're so used to Venetian Snares, aka Aaron Funk, constantly taking the piss, we assumed the title of his new ep was just that, a title, a clever turn of phrase that would go well with Funk's super frantic, slice and dice drill and bass, but lo and behold, this is actually a reggae record, but done Snares style. Not sure if this is old reggae jams redone, or if Funk whipped these up from scratch, but this is about THEE most exciting reggae record we've heard in ages. The classic sounds are all there, that up-stroke jangle guitar, the dubbed out rhythms, the melodies, the skittery snare drum, but here, it's all tangled up, and augmented with some creepy deep growled vox, the sounds careening all over the place, melodies surfacing and then pulled apart and sent careening into the ether, sounds are clipped, pulled apart, beats stutter, there's some super thick synthbass buzz too, a little bit of a dubstep vibe here and there, but somehow, with all the fucking about and sonic alchemy going on, it still sounds like reggae, and it still sounds respectful to the form, if that makes any sense. This isn't so much subverting the sound as it is glorifying it, Funk seems to be taking a classic sound and making it all his own, while remaining true to the spirit of the original.
And we have to say, while we don't dig too much modern reggae, and are WAY partial to the classics, the old Trojan records and all that, at the risk of pissing off purists, holy shit, this just might be the best modern 'reggae' record EVER!
We had never heard Vessels before, a 5 piece from the UK, this record just showed up one day in the mail, so we threw it on and BAM, were totally BLOWN AWAY. We're tempted to say they don't make music like this anymore, but then we're not really sure they ever did. Like a supercharged modernized big beat-ed post rock maybe, starting out with woozy Konono like melodies over big distorted Tortoise like drums, and when the track kicks in, the sound is impossibly dense, everything wrapped in thick buzzing synths, a propulsive, almost groovy slab of super rhythmic, post-kraut hypno rock, imagine maybe if Black Moth Super Rainbow were making records for Thrill Jockey in the nineties, this is sort of what we imagine that might have sounded like.
But in some ways it's too modern, the sound impossibly lush and polished, the arrangements too, balanced delicately between progged out and intricate, and super repetitive and hypnotic, with some of THEE most kick ass drumming we've heard in ages. All woven into some seriously heavy and epic modern post rock. Just check out opener "Monorform" which we basically just described, except for the super heavy final movement which finishes things off with a totally majestic blast of blown out Godpeed worthy heaviness.
The Tortoise vibe is big too, with the band getting post rocky and jazzy all over the place, that combination of delicate instrumentation and big booming drums, what we liked so much about the early Tortoise recordings, but again here, Vessels crank it up, and make it impossibly heavy, the sound dense and layered and gloriously and melodically cacophonous, super dynamic too, the band deftly switching gears from full on bombast to hushed intricate skitter, from churning dirge to washed out drift, often in the same song. The vocals are minimal, and when they do pop up, they work perfectly, otherwise Helioscope is mostly instrumental, and Vessels are smart enough to know that sans vocals, the music is everything, and the music here is incredible, just check out the sound sample and see if you aren't as blown away as we were. Most definitely a new favorite!
Yet another warehouse find, dug up just a few of these, pretty sure these will be the last copies we can get�
We had never paid much attention to Swiss (via Germany, or is it German via Switzerland) one man ambient black metal outfit Vinterriket. Partially because he had SO many releases, we count close to SIXTY since 2000, and the ones we did hear, were more sort of swooshy ambience, and did little to distinguish them from the throngs of black ambient groups out there. Somehow we ended up with a handful of these, and we finally gave it a listen and it's actually pretty great. There's still plenty of ambience, but it's woven into long stretches of wintery black buzz (Vinterriket is after all Swedish and Norwegian for 'the winter realm'), and heck he did share a split with aQ beloved Paysage D'Hiver!!
Fans of washed out black ambience, or maybe more accurately ambient black metal will dig this for sure. It's been growing on us too, making us think we should maybe check out some of those 59 other releases. Cuz really, who doesn't love blustery, wintery black metal buzz, although here the buzz is almost entirely overtaken by the synths, which definitely makes for a strange listen, sounding more symphonic really than anything, but when the synths are dialed back, you can finally hear the guitar although it's like a low level hum, the vocals are buried in the mix as well, almost like someone playing along to some black metal turned way down on their boombox, while blasting their synths through a cranked amp. The sound does get buzzy and black in places, but it does seem like overall Vinterriket is more about the ambience than the black buzz, and while the first few tracks do offer plenty of buzz and blast with the swoosh and swirl, the last half of the record is all ambient, even a Burzum cover, all rendered in shimmery synths, and wintery blackened ambience. Good stuff though for sure. And recommended for fans of synth heavy blackness, blackened ambiences, and black wintery grimness...
Washed Out's debut, Life Of Leisure, stands high above the crowded field of chill wave records that came flooding out over the last few years. It was a refreshing new sound that mixed a sensual dance floor sensation wrapped in a warm and yes washed out sensibility. Along with Neon Indian, Washed Out's debut has had the most lasting power of the many like-minded records from that same time.
Like any new trend or style, it's always interesting to hear what bands do on their follow up record. Was it just the cool sound they tapped into, or is there something more behind it that will make them an artist with serious staying power? Washed Out proves with Within And Without, to be the latter. There is such an intimate and infectious way in which Ernest Greene crafts his songs. The album's cover art showing a guy and girl in bed with their naked bodies wrapped around each other, really is the perfect representation of the sounds Washed Out creates. It's music made for long make out sessions, and post-sex bliss. Filled with slow burners that sizzle with such understated perfection. Next time you're alone with that special someone, you can't ask for a better soundtrack to help set the mood.
WHILE THEY LAST, buy either the cd or lp version of Within and Without, and get a free bonus 7"!
Brand new 7" from one the Blasted Canyons (that would be Heather, once a Bare Wire as well), their Castle Face debut was our Record Of The Week on last week's list, and weirdly enough, they're also on the quintuple flexidisc-book that is one of THIS week's Records Of The Week, needless to say we have mad love for Heather and all of her various projects, including now this one, Wax Idols, a solo project (although a proper band on this recording), and Wax Idols' sonic apple doesn't fall far from the Bare Wires / Blasted Canyons tree, which is just fine with us. The sound here is a little more sixties girl group though, a fuzzed out retro garage rock, but not as sunshiney and jangly as lots of those groups, more muscley, a little dark, and a little new wave-y, crunchy guitars, powerful echo drenched vox, snarly and sassy, over pounding drums and laced with glistening Cure like melodies. And hooks galore. Oh and that sixties girl group thing, we're not talking poodle skirts and sweaters, no we're talking leather jackets, ripped jeans and switchblades, in fact, it sorta sounds like the kind of band Pinky and Leather Tuscadero would start if they time travelled to the present day.
The B side gets even murkier and more new wave, the sound washed out and distorted, more plodding and dour and darkly gloomy. Really great. Definitely psyched to hear more...
Geez, has it really been 8 years since Gillian Welch last captivated us with a new album? It's hard to believe we've gone on all this time without her darkly bittersweet country-folk songs applying a soothing balm to our troubled souls. But her return to recording couldn't have had better timing as her music, so rooted in Depression-era bluegrass and early country styles, gels so well with our currently dire economic times, offering a gothic and desperate vision of heartbreak, loss and courage that is instantly relatable, yet makes us feel less vulnerable to the harsh cruelties of living that her protagonists endure.
Besides the long gap in time, not much has changed in Welch's (and her musical partner David Rawlings) sound or approach and that is just fine! Keeping the arrangements as stark as ever, there is only acoustic guitar, banjo, harmonicas and some hand and knee slaps along with the couple's peerless vocal harmonies as they waver between fatalistic folk songs, gospel-tinged bluegrass, and murder ballads. This is one of Welch's best records in a discography that has never wavered far from stunning. And speaking of stunning, the cover designed by Baroness singer, John Dyer Baizley is a beautifully unique letterpress print on thick handmade paper stock. A video of how the cover was made can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Mz_imdISk.
Of course long-time fans will want to scoop this up, but if you are new to Welch's haunting and harrowing voice and vision, The Harrow and The Harvest is a good place to start. It's definitely as good as if not better than Time (the Revelator) and Hell Among The Yearlings (our other two favorites of hers), making this absolutely essential!!
First we've heard from this trio from Portland, and if this 7" is any indication, we hope to be hearing more SOON. The Whines are led by Karianne, whose vocals come across as both so earnest, strong and sexy, imagine a young Exene Cervenka, teaming up with a ramshackle crew of garage psych players and recording in a damp and dusty attic. We really like how the Whines throw in some unexpected elements like the gritty harmonica on the B side's "Straybird." While they for sure could fit along fine on a bill with bands like Vivian Girls, Grass Widow, Dum Dum Girls, etc., there is something more emotional about these songs and the group's aesthetic in general. We can't wait to hear more!
We have to say, when it comes to country, the idea of that country music being funky, well, some of us definitely had a sort of 'no chocolate in our peanut butter' reaction, but as everyone learned with the whole chocolate / peanut butter situation, those two things did in fact end up making a pretty good combo. The soul funk / country thing though is definitely a harder sell, and there are plenty of tracks here that had us thinking maybe we were right, those seventies signifiers that definitely have the potential to rub us the wrong way, saxophone, wakka wakka guitars, those ubiquitous female background vocals, in fact, this sounded less country and more like seventies singer-songwriter soul, which is maybe where it does actually fit better. The fact that Wilson was a Augusta/Nashville singer-songwriter, signed to the label alongside Kris Kristofferson and Tony Joe White, seems to have had more to do with his 'country' classification, that his sound, one that was definitely a country pop, but you know, the more we listen to this, the more we dig it. Dark, softly soulful, moody and contemplative, subtly soaring strings, and Wilson's voice, deep and mellifluous, sounding a bit like Kris Kristofferson crossed with Isaac Hayes. Not surprisingly, our favorites here tend to be the brooding ballads, the perfect showcase for Wilson's incredible voice, but the funky honky tonk jams have definitely grown on us, with some kick ass horns, fuzzy organs, and Wilson often slipping into some spoken word patter.
If you really want to be sold on the funky side of Wilson's sound though, check out "Sheldon Churchyard", with it's heavy psychedelic wah wah funk guitar, super stereo panned sound, the guitars swinging from speaker to speaker, the melodies dark and ominous, acoustic guitars, horns, a wicked main melody, tense and brooding and dramatic and seriously rocking, we're actually sort of surprised this hasn't made it onto more comps, cuz it's a killer. And truth be told, this collection, which gathers up Wilson's first two records, is heavy with killer jams, from soft and soulful, to dark and twangy, to downright funky and psychedelic.
And like all Omni releases, there's a big ol' booklet with liner notes and lots of rare photos.
If you read our list, you should probably also read The Wire. Just sayin'. And a lot of you do.
The latest issue of this music magazine outta the UK features the mysterious Zomby on the cover. Also inside: Forest Swords, BBC Radiophonic Workshop founder Daphne Oram, Tiawanese pipa virtuoso Luo Chao Yun, Kemialliset's Jan Anderzen, a Primer on Jim O'Rourke (that could have taken up the whole issue!), and an interesting essay by Bob Ostertag on why he now gives away his music for free online and what he's learned from that. Plus more, including all the other usual good stuff you expect in The Wire, reviews, charts, etc., AND a free cover-mounted cd sampler, Wire Tapper 26.
Adolf Wolfli (1864-1930) has long been one of our favorite artists. An incredible touchstone of what has been called Art Brut or more commonly Outsider Art, Wolfli created an epic body of work while suffering from psychosis (and resulting hallucinations) and confined in isolation at the Waldau Clinic in Bern, Switzerland for the latter half of his life. Working with loaned pencils and newsprint and other materials that he would have to scrounge from his surroundings, Wolfli developed an amazing kaleidoscopic cosmology of vast complexity featuring colorful angelic orders, dynamic structural compositions and weaving motifs of idiosyncratic musical passages. Some of these exist as free drawings, but most (1600 of them!) were illustrations for a semi-autobiographical epic that eventually expanded into 45 volumes of over 25,000 pages. The musical notes, starting out as decorative motifs at first begin to take on more significance as he developed his epic book, especially in the last two volumes where he outlines his musical theories, favoring marches, waltzes and mazurkas for their rhythmic quality, as a means (to put it very simply) of some form of spiritual self-transformation. It has remained unclear if Wolfli had musical training or if he transcribed the scores from found sources, but he often would write out the scores and play them on a paper trumpet he made.
Which brings us to the purpose of this book and cd. There already exists a history of analyses of Wolfli's musical scores to see if they actually can be performed. Recordings have been made including one by Graeme Revell with the help of Nurse With Wound in the late Eighties, but many of these were largely interpretive and subjective, adding ambient impressions largely based on the visual aspects of the artworks as well.
For this particular analysis, Belgian composer and violinist, Baudouin de Jaer, who didn't have previous exposure to Wolfli's work, sticks to a more empirical approach to the scores. Limiting himself to solo violin with mute, de Jaer attempts to decipher what he sees as cryptograms (Wolfli made the scores with six lines staves instead of the traditional 5 lines and didn't connect the notes horizontally, suggesting alternate meanings), and forms his own detailed hypotheses in the book about how Wolfli put the musical forms together (mostly believed to be copied from a book of marches for 4 handed piano). Musically, the 32 pieces are very short and spare (about a minute or less with the longest clocking in at about 3 minutes). But de Jaer does a lot with little, often using the side of the violin for percussive rumbles or rubbing the strings for bird-like chirps, the music has an off-kilter fanfare feel to it that follows logically from Wolfli's divine cosmological visions. The book is about 25 pages with full color illustrations and text in French and English and with the cd, offers a fresh new insight into this complex artist's work that will be of interest to old and new fans alike!
The latest from Sublime Frequencies is a massive cd/dvd/book set, compiled by photographer/filmmaker Olivia Wyatt on a recent trip to Ethiopia, planned to coincide with a music festival - which the government abruptly cancelled for fear of the musicians being exploited. So instead, Wyatt travelled into the bush, to compile this sonic/visual travelogue of the music and musicians, the people and places of the various tribes of Ethiopia, and it's of course breathtaking. The music, heady and hypnotic, joyous and emotional, the sounds varying dramatically from tribe to tribe, but music being ubiquitous, weddings, ceremonies, rituals, drawing water from the well, on television, in living rooms, very rhythmic, mostly vocal drive, but with lots of hand clapping, wildly bowed stringed instruments, vocals chanted, shouted, call and response, super mesmerizing, many of the tribes utilize whistles and panpipes, and the music they make is incredible, otherworldly and impossibly lush, sounding like some modern 20th century classical composition in many cases, while actual bands to rock out, and get surprisingly soulful and funky. A compilation like this must have been so impossible to compile, how on earth to whittle down what must have ben days of recordings to just an hour, but the tracks chosen are amazing, and make us want to hear so much more.
Both the cd and the dvd (more on the dvd in a second) are housed in a cd sized hard cover book, which includes extensive liner notes on Wyatt's trip to Ethiopia, but also 117 Polaroid photos Wyatt took on her trip, of people, places, musicians, villages, an incredible visual feast for the eyes. And then there's the dvd, which features a 60 minute film, which in its won way is structured like the video version of Wyatt's Polaroids, with many still shots, video portraits, as well as some incredible footage, some highlights include so many different lots of singing and dancing, sometimes in traditional tribal dress, often in western t-shirts and shorts, one of the most amazing sequences if of men and women working drawing water from a well, passing buckets from person to person, their worksongs so hypnotic and beautiful, then there's a super wild psychedelic guitar freakout with one woman doing some of the craziest, most ecstatic hair swirling / headbanging we've ever seen, there's footage of men feeding wild hyenas in the middle of the night, often right out of their own mouths, snippets from Ethiopian television with wild MTV style videos, fantastic tribal folks songs with synchronized dances and lots of whistles, dancing girls making music with just the clank and jangle of her jewelry, in fact lots of dances that involve the jangle of jewelry, men smoking in dark rooms watching television, intimate performances in living rooms and so much more.
So incredible, sonically, visually, culturally, easily one of our favorite Sublime Frequencies releases for sure.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES . The dvd is all region NTSC.
There are lots of remarkable things about this latest Xasthur disc. It was released on his own Disharmonic Variations label for one thing, instead of Hydra Head, his home for the last few records. It features the vocals of folk chanteuse Marissa Nadler quite prominently, which was definitely a bit of a surprise! Even more surprising is that according to Malefic, the man behind Xasthur, now referring to himself by his given name Scott, this is the very last Xasthur record. EVER. He's not giving up music, just black metal. Which might seem less surprising once you've heard Portal Of Sorrow. Whose sound is at once a continuation of the last few Xasthur records, but at the same time, a total departure. Right out of the gate, the title track, is all acoustic guitars, and cooing wordless vox, more some sort of ethereal depressive doomfolk than black metal. Haunting atonal chords, folky guitar strum, wheezing organs, everything warped and warbly and really quite beautiful. Some more 'metal' guitars enter into the picture but they just serve to add filigree to the folky gothic dirge. Pretty weird and fantastic for sure. And for sure to bum out legions of true grim black metallers. The second track is more black metal, but if anything it's WAY weirder than the first track, with what is either the worst, or best production yet, the guitars detuned and atonal, the drums insanely produced cardboard box thumps WAY up in the mix, Nadler's often wordless vocals again soaring and dramatic, while Malefic croaks along in the background, a gloriously stumbling bit of blackened freak folk buzz, moody and murky, with some serious chug part way through, but that chug is accompanied by PIANO, which renders it more some sort of blackened chamber music.
And so it goes, the whole record is not only strangely composed, but the sound itself is totally alien, it sounds accidental, but a sound this twisted and warped and idiosyncratic MUST be by design.
"Shrine Of Failure" begins with clean guitars and floppy bass, a constantly descending melody, the vocals singing right along, before the heavier guitars kick in, but instead of making the song heavier, they seem to float above the already in progress weirdness, adding a layer of distorted buzz, and alternately wild psychedelic squiggles of tangled lead guitar. "Stream Of Subconsciousness" is another washed out doomic dirge, driven by Nadler's angelic croon, and Malefic's warbly guitars, the swoonsome synths, leading to an ambient drift, and then more murky stumble. "Horizon Of Plastic Caskets" is all minimal drumming, swirling synths, distant vocals, a sort of black ambient post rock lope, peppered with Malefic's maniacal screams, which do nothing to take away from the track's haunting cinematic vibe.
"The Abyss Holds The Mirror" opens with some seriously lovely multitracked vocals from Nadler (she's credited with "choir, vocal flashbacks, vocal instrumentation") before the song proper kicks in, and it's a dirgey doomy deathmarch, with church organ, croaked demonic vocals, all set to a heartbreakingly melancholy melody, the whole second half is just organ and vocals, and is the last thing you'd expect to hear on a black metal record.
"Released From This Earth" is all struggling drumming, atonal piano pound, and more of Nadler's heavenly crooning, in some ways, this almost plays out like a Marissa Nadler record, with Xasthur as his band, no disrespect to Malefic, in fact, that's what makes this record so good, it's less about having some token guest vocals, and more about true collaboration, which is exactly what makes this record so fucked and far out and special. Even at it's blackest, it's about as far removed from black buzz and grim blast than you could imagine. Which is what keeps us from mourning the death of Xasthur, and instead has us anxiously awaiting the future rebirth, and phoenix like ascension of whatever comes next.
Latest issue of this long running magazine, and the last actually in this particular size/format. After this issue, Yeti will be trading in the current size and accompanying cd compilation, for a more squarish layout with future issues bundled with a 7" single. This time around, issue eleven, features some gloriously eye popping optical illusion cover art courtesy of Liz "Grouper" Harris. Inside, a chat with Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt, Black Pus, etc.), a comic by Victor Kerlow, fiction by Kimberly Parko, Liz Harris interviews guitarist Roy Montgomery, a collection of photos by Megan Holmes, a 1978 interview with write/artist Joe Brainard, drawings by Marcellus Hall (frontman for the legendary Railroad Jerk), a series of Polaroids by Olivia Wyatt, who curated the Staring Into The Sun cd/dvd/book released on Sublime Frequencies we reviewed elsewhere on this list, an interview with modern minimalist and aQ beloved dronelord Phill Niblock, fiction by R. Foggo, an interview with Spencer from The Skaters, and a collection of French protest posters from the Sixties!
As always, all of the advertisements are gathered up in the back, in their own section, and there is, at least for one last time, a cd compilation, this one with a numerical concept based on this being issue eleven, so each artist was commissioned to create a song the same length as their placement on the cd (which is of course 11 tracks long), the first track being 1 minute long, the second 2 minutes and so forth. Apparently there was some confusion on the part of Phill Niblock and Oneida, who both contribute ten minute tracks here, the rest of the comp filled out by Roy Montgomery, White rainbow, The Dirashi Tribe, Golden Retriever, Snake Hole, Sloppy Heads, Johnita And Joyce Collins, Atole, Gospel Creators and Happy New Year.
As always, a great read and TRES recommended!
Ok, we figured it was about time we made YOU the Record Of The Week, after all, you've been such a loyal customer for such a long time, haven't you, so it seems like it would be a nice gesture...hahaha. No, the band is called You, and they're our latest krautrock love affair. When we got an advance copy of this disc a few weeks ago, we were immediately intrigued, just by the awesome cover art (is that a cosmic tuning fork?), brilliant basic band name, and also by the band photo (long haired guy in shades, new wavey dude in even bigger shades, stoned looking guy with 'stache) that struck us as looking so much like a hip new band from here and now (like, say, the Jonas Reinhardt fellas, with a Ripley from Wooden Shjips clone in there too) but upon closer inspection, we found it was indeed a reissue, brought to us by the excellent German label Bureau-B, known for their krautrock archaeology (Cluster/Moebius/Roedelius stuff especially) as well as for putting out newer albums from the scene, including the latest Kreidler.
Originally released in 1979, Electric Day was the first album from You (their other one, 1983's Time Code, has also been reissued, and is really just about as great, you'll find it highlighted elsewhere on this list - we came close to making 'em both Records Of The Week). On Electric Day, You consisted of synth mavens Udo Hanten and Albin Meskes along with guitarist Uli Weber and, on drums, under the alias Lhan Gopal for some reason, Harald Grosskopf (a name you might know if only 'cause his own, concurrently recorded Synthesist album was recently reissued on vinyl and highlighted here not long ago). Grosskopf had played drums with Klaus Schulze, and was in Manuel Gottsching's Ashra band at the time. Producer Conny Plank hooked him up with Hanten and Meskes, and we can hear here that they all got along famously, being "Berlin School" mates as it were.
Together on You's debut, this cosmic quartet unleashed much glorious spaced out, spooked out, futuro-zone synth shiver, with psych guitar tripping, electronic pulsations, and Grosskopf's tight percussion, no pussyfooting about it! Seriously, they really do sound quite a bit like Jonas Reinhardt (or rather, the other way around), and could also easily have been the template for a lot of other current bands we love doing the kosmic kraut/John Carpenter-y electronic rock thing, like Zombi, Majeure and Maserati, most definitely! So it's not just for completist krautrock collector types that we recommend this album, nope. And did you catch our Fripp/Eno reference? Others to cite in the "recommended if you like" realm: Heldon, Cloudland Canyon, Michael Rother, Sensations Fix, Moebius & Beerbohm, the previously mentioned Ashra, etc.
All instrumental ('cause in space no one can hear you scream), You's Electric Day begins with the title track, a busy burbling rhythm soon washed over with waves and waves of electronics, while remaining upbeat and snazzily sizzling. The 2nd track, the moodier "Magooba", gets darker and more intense, letting rip with zips and zaps and plenty of freaky guitar. Then the focus shifts back to the shuffling machine rhythms on "Son Of A True Star". That's followed by the two-part "Sequential Spectrums" which sees You setting the controls for deep dark outer space, drifting in shimmering, fizzing electronic ambience, having a bit of a Tangerine Dream, before the almost twelve minute long "Slow Go", the original album's penultimate track, kinda sums up all that came before into one epic journey, the beats tingling propulsively, waves of synth-sound building and building, in one big ecstatic celebration of "this kind of thing" for sure. But don't get too smiley and relaxed, 'cause You have a nervous-making finale in store, the jumpy, uber-distorted "Zero-Eighty-Four" being an active, sinister, suspenseful closer to the album proper...nice! And then, if you get the cd, that's followed by 4 bonus tracks (not on the vinyl, which is 180 gram however), totalling another 33 minutes of music! "E-Night" is blissful, but ultimately pretty heavy. "H.Rays Identity" features some strange sampled chanting amidst its electronic excess, while "Hallucination Engine" is sorta proto-ambient techno. And then "Yousless" sounds like it was written by/for R2D2 the Star Wars droid! All are quite worthwhile, and the whole disc is super solid stuff, making us wonder why we'd never heard about You before (that's why we love this job, the buried treasure out there seems endless, wow). This has gotta be the best unknown-to-us krautrock reissue since Riechmann's Wunderbar (also from Bureau B), at least.
There's really no other way for us to wind up this review other than saying, You rule!!
Ok, we'll assume you already just read our Record Of The Week review of You's newly reissued Electric Day album. That was this instrumental "Berlin School" of krautrock band's 1979 debut, followed up further into the Eighties by Time Code from '83. Great stuff, we like this one a lot too, you should get 'em both. And we're not just excited about these 'cause we're keen on obscure krautrock reissues (though we are). If You were a new band we'd be all over 'em too! And they really could be mistaken for a new, current band, as we alluded to in our Electric Day review. Where that one really really sounded like local fave SF synth groovers (and krautrock enthusiasts, of course) Jonas Reinhardt in their propulsive live formation, this one is even more electronic and atmospheric, some moments more like Oneothrix Point Never, Emeralds, and Arp, to cite some other modern comparisons. That's 'cause by '83, You had parted ways with guitarist Uli Weber and drummer Harald Grosskopf, and slimmed down to the founding synths and sequencers core duo of Udo Hanten and Albin Meskes. So it's even a bit more retro-futuristically Eighties computery/mechanical, with percolating robot rhythms and shimmering synths and some extra sci-fi bleepage... but, it's really not all THAT different than their earlier incarnation, Hanten and Meske's machines doing a fine job of filling in for the humans no longer in the band. There's nine tracks here (or 11 if you get the compact disc, it's got two excellent bonus cuts, about an extra 10 minutes), nicely varied, some songs more pretty and placid, others droning further into deep space than before. They can be quite melodic, for instance "Future/Past" is one of those lovely lovelies that makes us think of our favorite Cluster jams (with sequencer patterns calculated to send you into a blissed out trance, getting into proto-Aphex Twin territory). And then they also bring the John Carpenter style suspense film disco grooves on the likes of "Live Line", too. So, like Electric Day, super recommended!
You will like You, if you are at all like us.
Even ravers and bangers have to come down sometime. After releasing two of the most uptempo, neon bright and relentless electronic albums of the last few years, Zomby is ready to show off other sides of his sonic scope. If Where Were You In '92 was him swallowing the ecstasy, and One Foot Ahead Of The Other, was him peaking on the dance floor, then Dedication is the dramatic and elegant coming down.
Stepping away from manic blasts of color, Dedication finds Zomby in a much more eerie, haunting and sensual state of sound. It's a lot like a musical version of when you first meet someone who you are so in to, they're always the life of the party and so fun to be around, but then you actually get to know them and they show you some different sides of their personality and you end up loving their spirit and soul, whether they are jumping up and down or feeling reflective and melancholy.
Dedication is a record that will hopefully bring Zomby to a whole new audience, but those who loved those first two blasts of manic musical ecstasy that were those first two records, should really try to get past the shock of the slow down, and listen a few times and let the music here seep into their bones. We hear some of our favorite moments of Squarepusher, Autechre, and Aphex Twin records, doused in a sensibility that's so fluid and infectious. We're always so excited when an electronic musician we love makes it obvious that they are in it for the long haul, as their ability to craft shapes, sounds and feelings transcends any one momentary trend in the always flavor of the month electronic scene. Zomby is here to stay, and this album proves it!
