Full length number two from this mysterious cinematic lo-fi synthscaper from the Pacific Northwest, whose first record was a surprise hit around these parts. A surprise in part because of the strange band name, that didn't and doesn't even begin to hint at the creepy synthy bliss that lurks inside. And if anything, this new one takes everything we loved about the first tape, and shapes it into something less lo-fi summer-synth party jam, and more haunting John Carpenter style cinematic 8 bit mood music. And holy shit is this stuff good. All the bands out there peddling their particular brand of retro futuristic synthesized sound, would do well to keep an eye on this guy, cuz if this stuff gets the attention it truly deserves, the rest of the synth wranglers out there are really gonna have to up their game.
Needless to say, if you're a fan of folks like Gatekeeper, Bitchin Bajas, Xander Harris, Nightsatan, Stellar Om Source, Umberto, Majeure, Roll The Dice, Solar Bears and all the rest, then odds are you're gonna love this. But Oxykitten definitely has his own take on that sound, adding flurries of old school 8 bit bleepage and bloopage, or some darkly propulsive krautrock groove, often in the same song. Robotic space funk turns into alien eighties soundtrack turns into droned out analog kosmische drift and back again, "Nar Nar Dargarstar" might be our favorite, a buzzy creep, with dense swaths of thick low end buzz, warped minor key melodies, and cool little high end trills, like the soundtrack for the NES version of Deep Red Or Suspiria. AWESOME.
Includes a download code as well.
Parade Ground are a Belgian duo, born in the new wave / post-punk explosion in the early '80s finding a sympathetic ear and an ongoing relationship with Patrick Coydens and Daniel B of Front 242. Despite the members of 242 encouraging, producing, and collaborating with Parade Ground, these Belgian lads didn't really fit within the EBM crowd that began to flourish in the mid-to-late '80s in their country. Their synth-pop melodicism drew more from the Brits, especially Wire and OMD. This collection, curated and released by Dark Entries, maps out Parade Ground's development from spiky post-punk into darkly tinged synth pop. Their 1987 anthem "Gold Rush" is featured here, as are the two collaborative tracks Parade Ground did with Colin Newman of Wire.
Latest blast of twisted druggy slo-mo heaviness from this Oakland outsider doomlord, whose sound seems to have reached some sort of bizarre apex with Confessions, the first song alone tells the tale, plonked funeral piano, all manner of sampled voices, the vocals a demonic shriek, the riffs blackened and buzzy, what sounds like crickets, beneath spidery minor key melodies, it's haunting and harrowing, almost like a more 'musical' Gnaw Their Tongues, the same sort of sprawling cinematic vibe, the sound weirdly industrial too, an ominous creep, that in places reminds us of Wolf Eyes.
And the whole record pretty much follow suit, like some twisted soundtrack, the sound a bleak, miserable drift through various horrifying tableaus, the voices croon, weep, howl, the piano seems to underpin it all, some mysterious bit of miserable melodicism, underpinning the grinding, buzzing blackness above, the sounds coalescing into riffs here and there, laced with spidery acoustic guitars, occasionally splintering into metallic shards, clattery and cacophony, blown out and blackened, all the while, strangely melodic, utterly haunting, definitely noisy, but muted and muddy, as if these sonic horrors were being viewed through a dirty blood smeared window, in a dilapidated old house, or through a crack in the wall of an old musty cellar. And it's almost as if all of these sounds, and all of this music, was fighting some unseen black force, an invisible hand reaching from the beyond, the music in a constant state of struggle, of anguish, the sound of a tortured soul, a sonic glimpse into the blackness that lurks beneath the everyday, a sound desperately clawing its way heavenward, while some grim force forever drags it right back down into the depths�
WAY recommended for fans of Gnaw Their Tongues, Bunkur, Celestiial, HQO, Loss, Monument Of Urns and other purveyors of bizarre bleak blackness.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
Dominick Fernow who runs Hospital Productions, a record store AND label, has had to keep his main, mostly noise project, that would be Prurient, on the back burner for a while now, as he is now also a full fledged member of electro cold wave pop troupe Cold Cave, and what with touring and recording, it's seems like it's been quite a while since we've heard anything new. In the past, Prurient records could go one of two ways, blistering noise and caustic crunch, or dark thick brooding blackened dronemusic, often some mix of the two. But after all this Cold Caving, we weren't sure what to expect, but it definitely wasn't this. We did expect some of the CC sound to rub off on him, how could it not, but orthodox noise freeks will be very confused and disappointed, cuz this is essential a blackened synth heavy coldwave noise rock blowout, and it actually kind of rules! The liner notes instruct the listener to "Listen on headphones at night while driving through tunnels in Europe", and that is sort of what it sounds like, a few of the tracks like supercharged noise drenched versions of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", while others like meaner more brutal takes on Cold Cave. Fear not, there's still plenty of noise, and howling hateful vox, but those elements are doled out judiciously this time around, and its the juxtaposition between those harsher elements, and the more synthy/krautrocky/propulsive bits that make this so goddamn good.
Opener "Many Jewels Surround The Crown" begins with a wild distorted shriek, and a wall of distorted crumbling blackness, but then in swoop synths, swirling strings, it almost sounds like it could be the soundtrack for some Tron like film, all sleek and reflective, but a bit decayed and decrepit, a futuristic post apocalyptic soundscape, a voice intones beneath pulsing kosmische synths, barraged by blasts of distorted crunch, and thick swaths of blackened bass. This is quickly followed by some pounding electro-punk, the vocals a gruff bellow, over thick driving synths and blasting programmed drums, all laced with warm whirling melodies, total new wave for sure, but sounding like Majeure or Zombi remixed by Alec Empire.
The rest of the record plays out like some beautiful and bizarre soundtrack, slipping easily from sprawls of crunchy droned out noise, to lush, swirling string laden shimmer, to lumbering bass heavy synthbuzz thrum, to total Depeche Mode-is electro pop, but again, that pop flecked with shrieked almost black metal vocals, which totally changes the tenor, while other tracks drift along blissfully, layering distant muted throbs beneath ethereal streaks of washed out synth and sweetly melancholy melodies, and finally finishing off with the epic "Sugar Can Chapel", a sort of noise drenched M83 slow build shoegaze psychedelic synth blowout, that manages to be darkly atmospheric and blackly blissed out.
Easily the most accessible Prurient record yet, and anyone who wishes that new wave of retro synth stuff had a lot more blackened bit to it, well, this might just be what you were looking for.
NB we got this on vinyl too, but not as many as we'd hoped, we might still have just a couple so ask if you're interested...
While the debut Ramones album, gets much of the punk rock history glory, (as it should, cuz it really one of the greatest albums of all time!) we could still make a strong argument for Road To Ruin being our favorite Ramones album. Their fourth album, released in 1978, Road To Ruin is pretty much as good as pop music gets! Filled with classic Ramones blitzkrieg fast punk pop, as well as showing another side of themselves on their awesome cover of the Sonny & Cher classic "Needles & Pins". All we really have to say is that this is the album that inspired the Bad Brains to become a band, as they got their moniker from the song "Bad Brain". We love this record so much because besides the well known Ramones songs on here like "I Wanna Be Sedated", "I Wanted Everything", and "I Just Wanna Have Something To Do" there are so many awesome songs that somehow never end up on any of the many different Ramones best-of collections. While they really are a band who have been immortalized on so many of those collections, all their records deserve individual attention. They really just didn't slip up that much, or ever actually. Not one throwaway song on Road To Ruin, it all rules!
With the first track on this anthology being a recording of wind from a 1935 sound effects record, AQ beloved sound artist Steve Roden makes a very literal introduction to I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces. Released by Dust-To-Digital, this beautifully constructed hardback book filled with images both from and ephemeral to Roden's collection of 78s, as well as two discs worth of sounds from that antique vinyl. Yeah, the idea is pretty much the same as what the Climax Golden Twins presented via Dust-To-Digital on their also-awesome Victrola Favorites anthology a few years back; but Roden's collection trends more to the mid-part of the 20th Century and is focused on Americana (including a couple of Hawaiian tracks made before the islands were granted statehood). Following that crackled recording of the wailing wind from that sound effects record, is the unmistakable voice of John Jacob Niles, the 'mountain tenor' whose spooky falsetto and maudlin melodic wanderings predated Devendra Banhart by a good 60 years... Afterwards, there's plenty of bluesmen, blueswomen, gospel belters, Appalachian balladeers, and barbershop crooners, many of which seem quite world-weary in singing their tales of lust, money, and liquor (or the lack thereof). Some of the names are familiar to us (e.g. Clara Smith, Roy Smeck, Sol Hoopii), but there are plenty of anonymous recordings from home-cut discs as well. The arrangements for many of the songs tend to be very sparse, just voice and guitar is pretty much all you get on every track; and the album is dotted with tracks from antique sound effects records of birds, ice, and even "night noises!" For those of you aware of Roden's own compositions of understated field recordings, quiet ruminations on found objects, and soft looping techniques, this shouldn't be a big surprise.
The vintage photos inside this 184 page book are completely lovely, with all of their rumpled edges, ruddy patinas, and cracked surfaces, with some far more poignant - such as the shot of a bunch of violas suspended outside in the sun perhaps to allow a coat of shellac to dry. There's the silhouette of G.J. Jessup decked out in his one-man drum and bugle corps regalia, and the glum looking fellow with the unkempt mustache leaning against his Funnygraph contraption (sadly, there's no corresponding recording for either photograph). Pages and pages of interesting images to provoke curiosity and evoke reverie. Altogether, Roden has compiled over 150 photos and 51 tracks for this stunning document of sonic obsession from Dust-To-Digital! Hard to imagine NOT wanting this.
We have a trifecta of free jazz "twofers" this week from way deep down in the Impulse catalog. Check out the reviews elsewhere on the list for Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. While the Coltrane features two of our favorite titles from her, the Ayler and Sanders releases are from albums we're less familiar with, or at least hadn't reviewed before, but have been psyched to (re-)discover. While perhaps not the best place to be introduced to these artists, these records reward those seekers of the overlooked deep cuts without the hefty collector/import price!
Village of The Pharoahs is from 1974, and while that may be a late year for most cosmically-minded free jazz (most jazz at the time was hurtling towards fusion), this record does not disappoint. Fans of classic Sanders records like Thembi and Karma will find lots to love in the opening three part title suite. Sitars, piano, clattering percussion, and chanting vocals evoke a majestic marching groove rife with drama as soon as Sanders comes in with his elliptical eastern horn phrases, culminating later in a hypnotic three part tribal chant breakdown. Deeper spiritual vocalising permeates the short track, "Myth" as well, before building onto the long-form piano-led meditation "Mansion Worlds". The final two tracks, "Memories of Lee Morgan" and "Went Like It Came" venture more into Blute Note territory as he eulogizes the late trumpeter with a wistful pastoral piece that also includes flute and piano, then ends the album with a kind of rollicking skronky blues bop with a soulful female vocalist.
That last track would probably read as a bit out of place on the album proper, but paired up with 1972's Wisdom Through Music, that kind of hard stylistic change-up is a perfect segue into one of Sander's more diverse outings. Opening with the energetic "High Life", Sanders channels the exuberant vibe of percussive African horn music followed by the celebratory and soulful "Love Is Everywhere". The title track that follows brings us back into cosmic mode with harp trills, tampura, and majestic waves of droning reeds, followed by the lyrical string excursion of "The Golden Lamp" and the final long-form vocal incantation, "Selflessness". Quite Stunning!
The amazing Sonny Sharrock cranks out three lengthy tracks for the BYG/Actuel label, accompanied by his lovely wife Linda, bassist Bob Guerin, and drummer Jacques Thollot. "27th Day" is a seventeen minute free psych epic that begins with minimal abstraction (and Sharrock on a slide whistle!) and slowly builds into a massive freakout fireball. "Soon", written by Linda Sharrock, is
Album #2 from Allentown, PA's Sinister Realm, and if you're looking for the most metal thing on this week's list, this is it! Well, next to the other Shadow Kingdom release, their reissue of Manilla Road's The Deluge. But that's an underground '80s metal classic, while this one is brand spankin' new. And it smokes. Sinister Realm are very epic and '80s sounding indeed, in the grand tradition of such bands as Judas Priest (livin' waaaay after midnight), Mercyful Fate, Manowar, Maiden, Candlemass... The kind of rockin' heavy metal that Satan actually listens to, 'cause you know he's at least as old as your dad, right?
Yeah, Satan would love this, with its headbanging riffs and commanding vocals... Especially on the slower, Sabbathier numbers like the title track, vocalist Alex Kristof really gets his Dio on. Dude's got a classic voice, and puts it to good use here, being Sinister Realm's main draw, though the prominent bass and the dual wailing/weedly guitars vie for supremacy as well. This is trudging and triumphant ("With swords held high we ride") all the way through to the ambitious album ender "The Tower Is Burning", nearly nine majestic minutes long, with eerie choirs and orchestration giving the definite impression that they love Satan right back.
Wow. Horns up! Another top contender in the string of excellent trad metal albums to come out this year thus far: Argus, In Solitude, Portrait, Twisted Tower Dire...
Soft Metals have really upped the ante with their sophomore effort, as they have created one of the most sensual and seductive albums of the year. Female vocals that melt with an icy detachment, and Euro-synth stylings that walk the line between the dancefloor and somewhere darker and weirder. Like a lo-fi Goldfrapp adding vocals to a lost Goblin score, or Fever Ray hosting an after hours party at an alternate universe Studio 54, the album flows and comes together so perfectly, the music is just as important as the vocals and together they swirl, sway, and achieve absolute late night bliss. We've been playing this nonstop, a record that pleases so immediately, but that you want to keep around you as on repeated listens it delves and burrows even deeper into our subconscious...
It's been a while since we've heard from Tasmanian one man black metal band Striborg. There was a time, that nary a list would go by without a new release, featuring that distinctive Striborg sound, plodding, miserable blackness doused in sheets of distortion and buzz that were so thick and hissy, they almost sounded like field recordings of rain on steel rooftops.
Ostensibly this is a split, between Striborg, and a band called Veil Of Darkness, who we had never heard before, but who in fact, just so happens to be Sin-Nanna as well, Mr. Striborg himself. Strange. Both Halves of this split were recorded a while ago, 1997-2000, and in fact the Striborg stuff predates the VoD stuff, so not sure what was going on. What we do know, is that everything we love about Striborg is in full effect here, maybe even moreso, the opening track is super distorted, the sound crumbling and blackened, the buzz so thick and blown out, that the riffs are barely discernible, after a brief bit of doomic plod, the sound lurches into a dense frenzied blast, all blurred and murky, the drums a machinelike pound, the vokills a sinister croak, and minus the vocals, the music is locked and looped into a trancelike blur that doesn't let up for the rest of the song. And so it goes, from brittle blasting blackness, to murky ambient drift, the sound super lo-fi, raw and grim, but infused with a seriously sinister vibe, especially on the droned out ambient tracks, with Sin-Nanna growling over thick churning drones, and weird bits of random electronics, hiss and static, before finishing off with a brief blast of start and stop black buzz, with maybe the weirdest production of the bunch, the vocals heavily reverbed, almost dubby, and the drums, the snare sounds like a video game bleep, and the cymbals sound like old tin buckets, but those weird sounds are woven into some blurry murky blasts and a closing blast of atonal organ buzz. Weird and so cool.
So how does Striborg's Veil Of Darkness alter ego stack up? Pretty well in fact, although now we have an idea why Sin-Nanna required a different musical vehicle, as VoD is all ambient, laced with stretches of power electronics, and black buzz. Creepy and otherwordly, darkly droney, disembodied voices, swirling effects, tinkling melodies, sheets of static and thick swirls of buzz, wheezing keyboards, chanted monklike vox, and finally on the closer "Pure Black Energy", some seriously intense pure black sonic energy, an ultra distorted buzzscape constructed from what sounds like super processed drum machines, all chopped up and doused in effects and cranked WAY into the red, for a strange crunchy, crumbling bit of rhythmic weirdness, that sounds almost like it should be on a Will Over Matter record. Killer stuff, from both 'bands'.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
Originally released for a Japanese tour with Grouper and Ben Vida, Tapes is a collection of, yep, you guessed it, tapes, from this drone duo, whose last two records were big hits around here, SC's sound a super minimal blend of hushed layered dronemusic and cosmic ragas, often creating epic pieces from single sound sources, like the gong piece on the Lessness lp, which might be one of our favorite Sun Circle tracks ever, a sprawl of deep sonorous shimmering metallic thrum.
Tapes, as we mentioned, collects a handful of previously released, and now out of print, cassette releases, and offers them on cd for the first time, along with two previously unreleased tracks, none of the songs here titled, instead, presented with a description of where they came from, how they were created and sometimes how limited the original release was.
Six tracks, the longest 22:24, the shortest 13:05, all gorgeously minimal, and each displaying a different side of Sun Circle's sound. The opener is from a 2007 split tape limited to just 50 copies, and is a 21+ minute synthscape/rage, beginning with pulsing analog synths, very tranced out and hypnotic, before a metallic buzz begins to form, and slowly builds, eventually blossoming into a thick layered drone, rich and lustrous, there also seems to be voices, all these sounds woven into thins softly undulating streak of warm effulgent sound, which continues on even as that initial synth fades out, finishing with a hazy bit of metallic shimmer and buzz. the second track is from another split tape, this one from 2008 and limited to 100 copies, and begins as a slow burn bit of abstract drone/drift, smoldering and humid, that initial drone laced with streaks of complimentary sound, longform tones, swirling overtones, the whole thing almost sounding like a symphony in slow motion. Hazy and shimmery and dreamy. The final track on the first cd is a collage of ALL of the live sets from a 2007 tour, just voice and organ, but 11 different performances layered on top of each other, resulting in a sweet slab of thick warm blur and buzz, super mesmerizing, culminating in an explosive noisy final movement.
The second disc begins with a live track, taken from a 2009 tour tape, limited to 100 copies, and begins as a delicate drift, which is soon joined by some bagpipe like buzz (harmonium?), wheezing chords over that warm minimal shimmer, very ritualistic sounding, just drifting and drifting, until the second half where the sound seems to become more muted, the edges worn to a dull glow, the sound a bleary blurred expanse of soft metallic shimmer, driven by a simple rhythmic beating drum. The second track is taken from the same tour tape, and was recorded in 2009 right here in SF at the Swedish American Hall, and is the most rhythmic of the bunch, starting out with some tribal drumming, all over a distant low end thrum, it's not until about 3 minutes in, that a buzz begins to surface, quickly burying the drums beneath its unwavering, slow shifting whir, some serious soft noise mesmer, that goes on and on and on, completely sucking the listener in, before fading out about 12 minutes later, leaving just those drums to finish things off.
Finally, the last track is previously unreleased improvisation, overtone singing performed in a acoustical echo chamber, and then layered over recordings of gongs from an earlier tour, and if there's anything we can think of that could sound better than that, we sure don't know what. The voices and gongs wreathed in reverb and natural echo and delay, the notes stretching way out, all manner of harmonies and overtones, totally heavenly minimal dronemusic, and barring a brief squall of crunchy distorted noise, the whole track is hushed and delicate, drifty and dreamlike. So good.
Nice packaging too, two color silkscreened origami style folded cardstock sleeves, with a printed insert, featuring all the liner notes.
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Ultra limited tape from this Russian black metal horde, whose sound is anything but traditionally black metal, whether this is by design, or by chance, the sound of Sunchariot is a thick, washed out, blurred bit of murky buzz, that minus the bellowed vox, could very well be mistaken for a weirdly rocking bit of Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, the riffs smeared into warm gristly swells, the machinelike pound of the drums, buried under the heaving blackened swells of crumbling melody, and weirdly swoonsome synths, that only reveal themselves when the blast and buzz recedes. The vocals two, transform into a sort of raspy croon during those brief moments, only to revert to a gruff bellow. All the while, a second guitar unwinds a twisted bit of melody that sounds strangely processed, pulsing over the top, a sort of of twisted, atonal lead, that seems to be melting into the roiling blackness beneath it.
Definitely fierce and heavy and intense and most definitely black metal, it's also twisted and off kilter enough, that the sound here almost transcends black metal, and is transformed into some sort of buzz drenched apocalyptic folk, or some soft noise industrial dronemusic, the songs and melodies almost sounding like some mysterious traditionals all twisted up. And when the vocals also slip into the fuzz and buzz, it becomes even more blearily bizarre and darkly dreamy.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
Super limited tape from this local one man band, who traffics in a sort of folk flecked lo-fi acoustic blackened ambience, all darkly strummed acoustic guitars, shimmering synths, spidery melodies, disembodied voices, whirling atmospheres, the sounds wreathed in reverb, everything just a bit warped and woozy, reminds us a bit of an acoustic ambient version of German black metal weirdos Varghkoghargasmal, a stumbling bit of windswept kosmische drift, that slips easily from hushed mesmer to urgent tension, the sounds unfurling dramatically and cinematically, occasionally slipping into long expanses of spare and sparse, almost chamber music sounding minimalism, but just as often a sprawling bit of chiming strum that sounds like a black metal interlude that blossomed into a full song, lots of soft focus haze and warm tendrils of tape hiss, while the guitars emit soft melodic tangles and blurred gauzy ambience.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
In the past we've taken every opportunity to rave like crazy about this band of British noise/space/psych/drone rockers, and with the current lust for all sounds psychedelic and spaced out, and the popularity of a new wave of psychedelic space rockers: The Heads, White Hills, Carlton Melton, Spyrals, Wooden Shjips, etc, it seems like the perfect time for folks who somehow missed out on the Telescopes to figure out just what it is they've been missing. And what better way than with this, a reissue of their very first full length, originally released way back in 1989, a year after their debut 7", a split with aQ beloved dronerockers Loop, and just the fact that they shared a split with Loop should tell you most of what you need to know. With a sound that veers from hushed, droney, druggy drift, to full on heavy, noisy, distorted dronepsychspace crunch, the Telescopes were like a super charged version of Spacemen 3, injecting some swaggery Stooges-y stomp into their hazy psychedelic mesmer. Think the classics, Hawkwind, Loop of course, Monster Magnet, Spacemen 3, F/i, but then mix in some My Bloody Valentine, and some Jesus And Mary Chain, a little Swervedriver, and the aforementioned Stooges, and what you're left with is a big beautiful noisy chunk of blissed out hypno-heaviness.
The record opens up with the very Spacemen 3 beholden "And Let Me Drift Away", with it's chiming melodies and simple acoustic strum, all hushed croon and sun dappled glimmer, laced with elegiac piano, violin and even French horn, a definite Velvets vibe happening too, but before you lay back and prepare for a warm whirling druggy drift off as the title implies, DO strap yourself in for the next track, "I Fall, She Screams", a pounding noise rock freak out, wild raspy vocals howled over wild squalls of tangled psych guitar, pounding drums and tons of FX, occasionally locking into some droned out repetition, but then veering right back into wah wah drenched sonic chaos. But then the sound shifts gears again, "Oil Seed Rape" wraps gauzy clouds of distortion around a strummy acoustic lament, all woozy and washed out, but of course peppered with brief blasts of full on noise rock crunch.
And so it goes, the record deftly juggling those two disparate sides of the Telescopes' schizophrenic personality, managing to fuse the two into something simultaneously heavy and heady, dense and dreamy, noisy and hypnotic, offering up some of THEE best droned out psych rock ever: the very Spacemen 3-like "The Perfect Needle" (a nod to Spacemen 3's "The Perfect Prescription?) alongside some of the hookiest heaviness of the era: "Please, Before You Go" which seems to foreshadow the punked out pop of Nirvana or the sludge pop of Torche, alongside full on extended amp destroying psychedelic space rock workouts that rival the masters: the 8 minute chaotic freak out "Suicide".
This reissues trades in the live tracks that were included as bonus material on the last reissue of Taste for the three tracks from The Perfect Needle ep, the band's 1989 ep, and it's a doozy, and is essentially cut from the same sonic cloth, "Sadness Pale" is a brief blast of slipper slide guitar laced Stoogesy stomp, while "S.H.C. Burn" opens with a wild blast of psychnoise before settling into something a bit more droney and hypnotic, but really never getting any less noisy, and finally, "You Can Not Be Sure" a twisted soundscape of wildly sawed violin over a woozy slithery bassline, wrapped in a haze of washed out shimmer, and pelted by a barrage of strange noises and shards of grind and crunch. Awesome.
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!
If you love metal, you really ought to be reading the two metal mags we carry regularly, Decibel and the UK's Terrorizer. Years from now, you'll wish you had a copy of this issue so you can nostalgically look back on 2011 and remember cover star... Tom G. Warrior!! Hey the former Celtic Frost / current Triptykon front man is a good interview. Weird dude. Also this issue: Premonition 13, Toxic Holocaust, Opeth, Runhild Gammelsaeter of Thorr's Hammer, Decapitated, Iwrestledabearonce, Book Of Black Earth, and plenty more including short bits on Disma, Volture, and others. The occasional Decibel/Terrorizer overlap happens with a Skeletonwitch studio report (really?). And there's the usual big batch o' reviews etc. Oh, and a free cd sampler stuck to the cover, with everyone from Twisted Tower Dire to Orthodox on it...
Wonders never cease. About four or five years ago, the Secretly Canadian label did a big favor to obscure music lovers everywhere and brought out deluxe, at long last legit reissues of the two rare private press albums that obscure DIY psych pop genius Bobb Trimble released in the early '80s. We love those two so much, we made both reissues Records Of The Week. Trimble's Iron Curtain Innocence (1980) and Harvest Of Dreams (1982) are timeless, cult artifacts, of which we said: "...you have just been handed the key to a secret realm, an alternate rock n' roll universe of dark despair, fragile hope, and gossamer beauty, a haunting personal soundworld that will always stay with you, within you...", and favorably compared to everyone from Lennon/McCartney to Pink Floyd to Roy Harper to Marc Bolan to Richard Youngs to Ariel Pink.
Well, we had no idea that those two albums weren't the entirely of Trimble's discography. But now, happily we learn that there was a THIRD even rarer Trimble lp, and it's just been reissued as well!!! And it too is a doozy.
Turns out that a year or two after Harvest Of Dreams was released into an uncaring world, the 20-something Trimble teamed up with a local Worcester, Massachusetts gang of teenagers (some of whom we think had been in the even younger group, The Kidds, who are heard on some songs on a song or two on Harvest Of Dreams) called The Crippled Dog Band, named after the three-legged dog seen on the cover of this album, presumably. Who doesn't love a three-legged dog? Together, they played shows - and, better yet, for us today - made an album, this one, in '84, which captures the outsider psych-pop brilliance of Trimble's songwriting in exuberant collision/collusion with youthful rock n' roll energy.
Yeah, compared to Trimble's two "solo" albums, this could be considered to be more rockin', more "punk", more band-like. And more '80s as well, if only 'cause of the sci-fi video arcade game sounds that appear here on the intro and outro tracks! The songs, while typically Trimble-poppy (and graced with his delicate, high and whispy vox) are also often loud and raucous and awash in feedback and FX. At times we're kinda reminded of The Dickies.
Most are in the 2-3 minute range, though they do a version of one of our favorite Trimble songs, "Armour Of The Shroud", that stretches out for over six minutes, as per the epic original that appeared on Harvest Of Dreams. They also do "Galilean Boy", a demo of which appeared as a bonus track on SC's reissue of HoD. The other "cover" here is a reinterpretation of The Beatles' "All Together Now", which Trimble and The Crippled Dog Band really make their own, converting it into a theme song of sorts, near the beginning of the album: "Singin' the Crippled Dog anthem / ruff ruff / ruff ruff!"
There's something so wonderfully charming about that, eh? And the teenage spark of Trimble's cohorts here is infectious, the band tearing it up, gritty garagey psych stomp style across much of this disc. Ferinstance, there's the distortodelic Eastern vibe of "Camel Song", and "Angel Eyes" is another that offers up some pretty heavy-duty, driving psych gunk for your earholes. And those are only a few of the punked up Pepperisms to be found on this delightful disc. Some songs are darker ("Undercovers Man"), others, pure fun ("Poker Game Of Life").
Apparently, the story goes, The Crippled Dog Band came to an end shortly after this was recorded, for whatever reason, and with no hope of selling 'em, almost all of original pressing of 500 lps was unceremoniously disposed of by Bobb in a dumpster! Good grief. Thankfully, the actual recordings weren't lost, and this reissue has finally arrived to allow The Crippled Dog Band to be heard again - it's certainly getting a lot of play here at AQ! Recommended, ruff ruff!!
These guys kicked out asses recently with the distortion drenched blown out garage rock jangle pop of their debut Sea Things, positioning them firmly alongside sonic brethren like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Sic Alps, Waaves, Surfer Blood, Soft Pack, and all the rest. This new tape offers up a handful of new songs, paired with a selection of tracks from Sea Things, so for those who somehow missed out on that gem, or who were waiting for the cassette version (?), well here's what we had to say about Sea Things (the rest of you can skip this part):
Jangly, super hooky, slightly surfy, psychedelic garage rock. And while there may be a glut of folks going for that sound, these guys do it way better than most, and totally make it their own. Self described as 'trash pop', that's pretty much what this sounds like, trashy and poppy, and loose and super rocking, the guitars are crunchy and jangly, the vocals a melodic yelp, the drums propulsive, reverb all over the place, and the songs are hooky as hell. More garagey and raw, than purely poppy, but that raw garage is infused with plenty of poppiness, reminding us a bit of a slightly more song oriented Coachwhips, you can definitely tell that live these guys probably have the crowd bouncing and sweaty and losing their shit. And it's easy to hear why.
The new tracks here, are as you might have guessed, more of the same, cut from the same sonic cloth, with maybe a bit more production polish here and there, some cool backwards effects, a slightly less lo-fi sound, but then the sound is as much of this music as the songs are, so the sound stays appropriately fuzzy and washed out and reverby, and in places gets even more noisy and crunchy than before, the 4 jams here offering up another heaping helping of gloriously buzzy Sixties influenced surf rocky fuzz pop that could have (and probably did) come straight from the same sessions that produced Sea Things, but hell, we're not complaining, more TRMRS is what we were hankering for anyway, so here it is. And the new songs do kill, hooky and rocking, sweat drenched and distorted, and catchy as all get out. And like we mentioned before, we're surprised these guys haven't yet landed on some big label (Mexican Summer? In The Red?) yet, but we're guessing it's only a matter of time.
Comes with two stickers, one of which has a download code for a digital version of the whole tape! Sweet occultic skull artwork too!
This is a preorder, for what might be the most extravagantly packaged 7" we've ever seen, and quite possibly the most expensive. Which is precisely why this is a preorder, as it's incredibly pricey, so we can only afford to get as many copies as we get orders for, and it's extremely limited (only 179 copies!!), and even with the crazy price tag, they're going fast, so if you want one, now is the time to order one, cuz again, we'll only be getting enough copies for the people who actually order them. What's the hubbub you ask? Well have a look at the picture, the record is a gorgeous picture disc 7", pressed on super thick vinyl, and housed in a transparent waterproof plastic die cut sleeve, filled with blue gel and shimmery glitter, which when combined with the picture disc, creates psychedelic underwater effects, it's really quite breathtaking, and considering the packaging, and how few they made, well, that's exactly why they are so crazy expensive.
But it is a record after all, not just an object d'art, and as always, it's another fantastic collection of "guitar drone-muzak" from this German duo, the A side a lush and luxurious, almost symphonic soundscape, all chiming melodies, hazy loops, lush orchestral swells, warm swirling chordal shimmer, very epic and cinematic, sprawling and majestic, laced with strange effects and glimmering electronics. The B side is darker and more minimal, but still hauntingly cinematic, woven from softly undulating drones, dreamy and melodic and a little dirgelike, a slow dramatic build that begins hushed and abstract, but soon blossoms into another miniature soundtracky epic.
As with pretty much all Troum releases, sonically totally recommended, and as for the packaging, well, we've maybe never seen such a deluxe and over the top 7".
Again, this is a PRE-ORDER, which means if you want one, order one now, you will be charged for the price of the record, but it won't ship until later, at which point it can either ship with your current order, or we can calculate the postage when the records arrive, and charge you the shipping then.
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!
It's really getting to where we barely have to describe these at all. And not just because of the Mississippi obsessives. The collections are so lovingly curated, every step of the process, from the actual recording of the music, to the booklets and the jackets, and most importantly the amazing sounds inside, any one with even the slightest bit of interest in world musics, would be foolish to pass any of these up. Including this, volume two in this series of field recordings from Madagascar, the first volume so limited we were never able to get any copies at all. The sounds here were gathered by Canadian field recordist Charlie Brooks, and most were recorded on a trip there in 2002, focusing mostly on violin players and throat singers, although the sounds here are quite varied. There is so much info in the liner notes about the region, and the history, and that alone makes this a worthwhile purchase, but the music, it's fantastic, haunting, and lovely and beautiful, incredible vocal harmonies, the violins emit sweet melodies one second, intense buzzing the next, there are wheezing accordions, some of the tracks sound almost Hawaiian, the strings reminding us of ukeleles, throughout the songs are laced with street sounds, birds chirping, cars driving by, children laughing, conversations, all just adding to the vibe, and the energy, with a few of the tracks droned our and mesmerizing, sounding a bit like some mysterious variation of American Appalachia. Incredible!
Housed in a super heavy old school tip-on style jacket, and includes a massive booklet filled with liner notes on the music, the region, the performers, as well as lots of photos.
Third thrilling blast of disco/house greatness curated and mixed by the Horse Meat Disco crew out of the UK. These boys know their vintage disco and house, so we always look forward to their compilations to get turned on to so much obscure vintage gay discotheque glory, as well as getting to hear some of our favorites in a mix of dance floor bliss.
This time out the the Horse Meat crew tag team a mix on each of discs / records here. What makes this edition of this series unique is how they really span many generations of dance music with seamless ease. From Sylvester to Dimitri From Paris, Two Tons O' Fun to Todd Terje edits. And it's on this collection that the Horse Meat crew really show the transition from disco into the beginnings of house. These are the sounds blasting at the best San Francisco steamy, sketchy and sassy gay discos. Claudja Barry blasting at Tubesteak Connection at Aunt Charlies in the Tenderloin, Tambi moving all kinds of hot messes at a Honey Soundsystem party. As fun as those parties are, we still wish we could get to the UK sometime to experience one of the Horse Meat Disco parties in the flesh. We know their taste and brilliant mixing makes for an epic night of dancefloor bliss. It really is the kind of dance music that makes you throw out any negative or stale energy you might have, and allow yourself to get moved into a sweaty blissed out euphoria.
Maybe this will make up for all the Satanic Norwegian church-burning music we sell! A compilation of, as the subtitle puts it, "A Selection Of Norwegian Christian Jazz, Psych, Funk & Folk 1970-1980". And it's quite fantastic. Quasi-kitschy Xtian funky and folky fun, with an acid-rock edge, really good stuff indeed, and 'cause the lyrics are all in Norwegian, those of us with an aversion to God-talk can comfortably listen to this without feeling like we're being preached to! Well you can tell when they sing "Hallelujah" and "Jesus" but the accent makes it cool. Apparently, there was quite a burgeoning youth-oriented Christian music scene and attendant recording industry in Norway in the '70s, kickstarted in the late '60s by something called the Ten-Sing or Teenage Singing movement, a kind of Norwegian version of Up With People!, further powered by the whole Jesus Freak thing that came along when hippies everywhere started to find God. So, this music, while Christian, isn't exactly square. It's full of fuzz guitars and fuzzy analog synth, gorgeous female vocals and bombastic brass, and is moving not just in spiritual way, but also movin' in more of a GROOVY kind of way. And is very delightfully very seventies sounding, from jazzy disco fusion to rock opera to delicate singer-songwriter stuff. There's 20 tracks in all on this import cd (13 on the vinyl version), sunshiney testifyin' from the following artists: Joyful Singers, Good News, That's Why, Arnold Borud, Keryx, The Crossing, Angelos, Sky Sing, The Heralds, Jan Simonsens, Kari Hansa & Gregers Hes, Grete Salomensen, Soli Deo, Reflex, and Presens. The digipak cd comes with a 36 page booklet, and the lp too has a printed insert, featuring extensive liner notes and vintage photos.
Hip '70s Norwegian groovy gospel music, who knew? Hallelujah! Highly recommended.
This is another one of those compilations that seems custom made for aQuarius. And one that needs very little in the way of a description except for a list of the bands who contribute exclusive material to this sprawling quadruple lp celebration of Three Lobed's tenth anniversary. The packaging is out of this world, totally over the top, but before we get to that, let's give you that list, and odds are, some of you can stop there and add this gem to your cart and be done with it:
SUN CITY GIRLS
SONIC YOUTH
BARDO POND
COMETS ON FIRE
ETERNAL TAPESTRY
STEVE GUNN
MOUTHUS
D.CHARLES SPEER / WOODEN WAND
Not too shabby for sure!
Each band gets a whole side, and here's some more details on the contributions. The Sun City Girls tracks are live recordings from Emo's in Austin Texas from their final US show EVER. The Sonic Youth tracks were recorded over the space of 10 years, one in 2010, the other in 2000. The Comets On Fire side is a collage of various recordings made between 2006 and 2010. The Bardo Pond side is a 20 minute long exclusive track recorded in 2010. The Eternal Tapestry side is a reworking of an old track, slowed down, with lots of added organ! The Mouthus side features two new exclusive tracks recorded in 2010. The Steve Gunn side features a new recording, made earlier this year of a live staple, and finally, D. Charles Speer & The Helix and Wooden Wand share a side, the Speer tracks feature Dave Nuss from No Neck Blues Band. Phew. And that's just the music. This box is also a serious chunk of musical art.
The vinyl is all pressed on super thick 140 gram vinyl, and each lp is housed in a full color printed inner sleeve. There's a big folded insert with liner notes from Wire / Pitchfork scribe Marc Masters, there is also a download card for mp3s of all the music, and the whole thing is stashed in a gorgeous, heavy Stoughton lp box. It's definitely incredible, and well worth the price. It is HEAVY though, so if you order this, it will NOT count as a single item, whatever your shipping, whether it's just this box, or this box along with other stuff, it will ship by weight.
And besides all that, this thing is CRAZY limited. We got a whole bunch, but we're not sure how many are left, or how many we will be able to get (if any) once we run out, so best to grab one quick before they are gone for good.
Out of all of Motown's small subsidiary labels, Mowest may have been the most stylistically diverse. Created as an outlet for Motown's West Coast based artists, its brief existence between 1971-1973 before Motown set up shop in Los Angeles full time, covered a fertile period of music-making that was freed from pre-defined genre constraints. Where else could the soulful exuberance of the Commodores, the slow proto-disco groove of Odyssey and The Sisters Love, the late-period vocal pop of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and the stoner hippie vibes of Lodi commingle together? As usual, Light In The Attic does a stellar job of highlighting the amazing aspects of this brief label, re-introducing to the world some of its lesser known artists such as The Nu Page, Suzee Ikeda, and G.C. Cameron, while showing the early career promise of Syreeta and Thelma Houston. This is a side of Motown at its most adventurous yet relaxed, letting the sunny soulful vibes wash over us like warm ocean waves. Super Recommended!
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!
One of two new Mississippi releases we're listing this week, both incredible additions to the already impossibly impressive Mississippi catalog, and as we often mention, there are plenty of people who buy every single Mississippi release, regardless, and most aQ-ers definitely fall into that category, but really, any one at all interested in world music, and we're not talking the Starbucks / Paul Simon variety, we're talking real world music, the sounds you here on the streets and in the homes played by real people in real places all over the world, if that stuff holds any interest for you, then pretty much every single Mississippi release is essential, and without fail, each one will open up a whole new world of sound, and reveal all manner of musical magic to jaded Western ears.
The tracks here were recorded in Indonesia in the late seventies by a field recordist named Jack Brody, and this sampling offers up lots of the different flavors of street musicians at the time, displaying the various influences from Indian Bollywood music, American rock and roll as well as traditional Javanese folk musics, all wound into these unique and personal sonic expressions. The sound seems to be mostly vocal driven, with the majority of the vocalists female, the voices high and clear and soaring, lots of call and response and unique harmonies, strings buzz over simple hand drums and minimal percussion, many of the tracks here are simple and spare, but others are impossibly lush. And as these are all recorded on the streets, the music is peppered with the sounds of life, cars and buses, kids playing, adults talking, babies crying, horns honking. There are a couple of tracks featuring male vocalists, one in particular stands out, the vocalist singing in a super raspy Popeye/Tom Waits voice, over just intricate drumming, his vocal delivery rapid fire and super dexterous, the result dizzying and exhilarating. We could go track by track, but every song here is a gem, and like most Mississippi releases, we find ourselves spinning this over and over and over and getting totally lost in these incredible sounds.
Housed in a super heavy old school tip-on style jacket, and includes a massive booklet filled with liner notes on the music, the region, the performers, including lyrics and actual musical notation, as well as lots of photos and a bonus 7"!
Watch your back Numero Group, as Now Again has also been releasing some amazing soul reissues over the last few years. With this compilation they put their soul discovery focus on the True Soul label from Arkansas during the 1960s and 1970s. Much like the US punk/hardcore scene that would arise in the early '80s, the underground soul scene embodied a similarly DIY spirit, and thus shared many parallels, regional labels, record stores being magnets for the scene, sharing practice spaces and recording time, playing in unusual venues, and doing it all for the love of the music, even if fame and fortune never came, no matter how much these fellas sound like James Brown! Billed as 'Deep Sounds From The Left Of Stax', this really is deep hitting, nitty gritty soul and funk that isn't about flash and appearance as much as it is really getting to the heart of things. We blast this in the store, imagining being in some musty, smoke filled lounge in Arkansas as folks like Thomas East, Albert Smith, Ren Smith, and The Leaders play sweat dripping sets. Don't worry if none of the above mentioned names don't ring a bell for you, they didn't for us either. But this collection further proves how much amazing soul was created during this special era that never got the wide attention it so totally deserved. Super swank packaging, in a thick hardback book with tons of text, color photos, and record graphics, definitely giving these musicians their due! Plus there's a whole dvd disc featuring local TV performances by a bunch of these artists, 1973's True Soul Review, wow, amazing they dug this up too, way cool to see.
We got our first real taste of Mauritanian music via the Hadrami Ould Medeh single that we reviewed on the last list, which we described like this: "fluttering flutes, muted wah wah guitars, shuffling drums, and the vocals, emotional and oh so lovely", which it most definitely was, but it definitely did not prepare us for this a collection of, as the title suggests: Wezin, Jakwar and GUITAR BOOGIE From The Islamic Republic Of Mauritania. Guitar boogie? Sure some of those Sublime Frequencies comp featured some guitar playing that loosely resembled boogie, a little bit of buzz and distortion, Group Bombino let loose once in a while, but we sort of assumed that the above title was a bit of a creative exaggeration, that is until we pushed play. And immediately, some heavy, fuzzy, circular riffing, all wound around a muted rhythmic pulse, the sound slipping from low end riffy chug to wild psychedelic tangle. This is most definitely psychedelic boogie, it just so happens it's being played in some backyard or living room on the other side of the world.
The history of Mauritanian music is pretty fascinating, as is the provenance of this music, and the booklet/liner notes go into great detail, but for now, all you need to know, is originally, music in Mauritania was played either on the tidinitt, an hourglass shaped lute with 4 or 5 strings, which is played exclusively by men, and has since been replaced by an electric tidinitt, which became popular as a faster form of dance music developed. Then there was the ardin, a type of many stringed harp, played only by women. But as this comp, and the liner notes make clear, the electric guitar has become the instrument of choice, originally the amplification made it easier to play for bigger crowds, but soon, a style of playing was adapted to this new music, and the classic Mauritanian music was transformed into something totally new. This heavily distorted, strangely flanged groovy boogie flecked African folk. The songs here may drift and shimmer, but they inevitably explode into some super droned out cyclical buzz drenched riffage, the drums following along, sometimes the sound growing so intense and frantic, one can almost imagine the sort of energy this evokes in a crowd. And that's the other interesting thing about Mauritanian music, there is no music industry, no record labels, no real recording studios, yet music is happening all the time, in homes, and weddings, parties, every night, in town squares, and when someone hosts a function and has musicians perform, they record the performance, as a sort of keepsake, which is often thrown into a drawer, or an old box. So Matthew Lavoie, who compiled this collection, over the course of years and many visits, gathered up as many recordings as he could and sifted through boxes and boxes of tapes, as many of them were unusable, recorded on broken boomboxes, or with a microphone in the back of a room capturing more conversation than music, but the selections here, hand picked, are indeed divine, and so powerful, the music trancelike, raga-like, melding certain Western musical tropes with traditional African sounds, and the traditional sounds that over the years have grown less and less traditional, or in fact have simply created new musical traditions.
Just listen to the samples, this stuff is so hard to describe, to do it justice, this is the ultimate instance of 'you just gotta hear it', the sounds are cyclical, repetitive, looped sounding, mesmerizing, hypnotic, heavy, and buzzy, and distorted, the melodies so completely enthralling, the rhythms as propulsive as the guitar playing, the recordings too, raw, in-the-red, intimate and urgent and emotional, so passionate, unfettered by any concerns removed from the actual joy of music making, and the interaction between performer and audience is evident in the vocal response to these jams, the crowd singing along, hooting and hollering, the vibe wild and loose and alive, the music magical and incredible. Easily some of THEE most amazing sounds we've ever heard. And definitely our new favorite world music comp.
Housed in a nice 6 panel full color digipak, with a massive booklet, jammed with liner notes as well as tons of photos, and lots of info on the musicians, the various songs, a history of Mauritanian guitar playing and more!
Sure, this is the solo album on which Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio picks up the guitar, but the sounds that he wrangles from that instrument are not all that dissimilar from those he crafted on the final Pan Sonic album Gravitoni, and especially on the first half of their 4cd opus Kesto. There's long been a swagger to the low-slung electronic rhythm and noise that brought Pan Sonic closer to an electro-punk rockabilly sound by simulating a snarling guitar with accelerating riffs of synthesized distortion that had more in common with the growl of a motorcycle than the squelch of an 808. So, when Vainio switches out his tone generators for a guitar, he's still got all the tools to distort, corrode, and disintegrate the sounds of six strings with considerable aplomb. The drum machines, the spatialized approach to editing, the white hot shards of electricity, the swarming noise, and Vainio's ability to control all of his cacophonic sounds are all present on Life (...It Eats You Up). "Mining" is an exemplary track displaying Vainio's ability to work a brutalist noise-guitar riff into his jittery industrial groove, sounding something like a downtuned Big Black or loosened-up Godflesh. Many will comment on Vainio's cover of The Stooges "Open Up And Bleed" which strikes a glam rock strut with drum track and smolderingly dissonant guitar riffs. It must be said that Vainio's cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" on Oleva was a better choice; but this one is pretty damn good too. The rock-n-roll mimesis of these tracks disintegrates over the remainder of the album, where splinters of guitar noise pop through walls of electrified drone, ominous hums, and demolished doom-laden ambience which aren't too far from the realms of KTL or Black Boned Angel. Pretty fucking great.
This came highly recommended from one of our distributors, but we were wary at first, as we've generally had bad luck with the whole spoken word / band combo. There are of course exceptions, and this is definitely one, Winter Family whipping up a gorgeous expanse of brooding, smoldering, slow building post rock ambience, heavy on the harmonium and organ, seeing as one half of the WF duo is keyboardist Xavier Klaine, who has partnered with 'vocalist' Ruth Rosenthal, for this haunting series of songscapes, that as the label suggest, do in fact harken back to groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor and A Silver Mount Zion. Mournful and melancholy, haunting and ethereal, just check out the opening track, the oddly named "Searching Donkeys", with its thick layered minor key organ, the sound rich and lustrous, Rosenthal's vocals settled down in the mix, her mysterious intonations peppered with brief bits of proper singing, lush little bits of harmonized vocalizing, the sound almost chorale, perfectly matching the ever intensifying music, the vibe strangely liturgical.
The title track unwinds a thick, slowly pulsing sprawl of crumbling buzz, warped and a little bit seasick, throbbing ominously, Rosenthal's mush mouthed lyrics delivered in a creepy deadpan, the track peppered with bits of abstract ambience, field recordings of crowds and tolling church bells, distorted voices, broadcast through what sounds like a bullhorn, always returning to that thick ominous buzz, creepy and so sonically unnerving.
The record is super varied, a few moments definitely veer dangerously close to 'spoken word' for us, but Rosenthal pulls it off, her delivery intense and moving, and quite lyrical, even slipping into actual singing now and again, the music in those moments is darkly delicate, with elegiac pianos, chirping birds, hazy and ethereal, the sound occasionally jazzy, other times more post rocky, but our favorite moments are definitely the more drone based tracks, Klaine layering sound upon sound, weaving lush, slow building, ultra tense soundscapes, cinematic and mysterious, Rosenthal's voice, drifting atop, within and beneath Klaine's lush otherworldly drones, the two conjuring up something so much more than its constituent parts, mysterious and eerie and lovely.
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.
Universal Emptiness is an apt title for this limited 10" from this stalwart, if far from prolific dark ambient project. The Yen Pox duo of Michael Hensley and Steven Hall began craf their Lovecraftian atmospheres with cavernous washes of sound, ashen drone, and a sonic death-drive to match anything emanating from early Cold Meat Industries or Brian Lustmord's laboratory for the dark arts. With protracting gaspings and bellowings, Yen Pox articulate soundtracks for nightmares where these ventilating references could be bodily, industrial, alien, chimerical, oceanic, or something profoundly unknown. On both sides of this 10", Yen Pox present a metaphysical emptiness, but this is certainly not an emptiness that is devoid of sound. Their constructed ambience has the weight and fluidity of cold plasma - as it's constantly shifting to the foreground from the blackest spots on the event horizon and churning through luminous hazes akin to the chemical afterglow of phosphorescent magnesium. As could be seen on Hensley's latest album as Blood Box, the horror laid within their sonic darkness tends to dissipate as you sit in their drones and let the heavy waters wash over you. First edition of 500 copies.
Dooming ever onward, Oregon's re-activated Yob are back with their 2nd Profound Lore release, the 6th full-length overall from this heavier-than-thou trio, and all Yob and/or doom fans (like us) should be well chuffed! After several years hiatus (during which singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt stayed doomy in his ill-fated Middian project), Yob's 2009 comeback album The Great Cessation emphasized the darker side of Yob, black metal influences to the fore, Yob still spacey and sludgey to be sure, but sounding way more EVIL and nihilistically negative than ever. They haven't brightened up much on Atma, either. There's something primal about these proceedings, Yob calling upon ancient powers with their heavy sonic rituals. It's serious business.
Scheidt still busts out his best, very metal, strangled shriek (a distorted blend of Ozzy, Geddy Lee, and the gargly Dan McCafferty of Nazareth) when he wants to soar (yay, that's what we came for!), but he also goes for a diversity of sore-throat wretched vokills as well; his melodic guitar leads likewise occasionally are heard, snaking out from the murky mire of rumbling riffage, the tarpit black hole in which Yob make their crusty cosmic home... the band's lumbering swing always buried beneath dirty piles of steel-wooly abused amp torture, Atma's production far from clean, instead filthy and cruel.
It's like some unholy combination of the Sabbathy sludge of Eyehategod, the brutal/beautiful bombast of Neurosis (whose Scott Kelly shows up as a guest on a couple of these songs), the most malevolent and monolithic of Melvins, and hint of the denim and leather of old school metal as well. The five loooooong songs here weave atmospheric gloom (the rainy forest field recordings found on the title track ferinstance), fist-in-the-air metallisms, post-rock dynamics, and angsty artiness into their sheer crushing DOOM, and do it all damn well. Make no mistake, this is hellishly heavy, including album-ender "Adrift In The Ocean", even with its semi-acoustic passages and whooshing ambience. Epic, awesome, utterly everything we expect from Yob and then some.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
An obscure late-sixties ahead-of-his-time visionary gets his due with this LP reissue. A while back, the Get Hip label released two songs by Michael Yonkers on a 7" and a compilation and that started the buzz. Yonker's stuff was like nothing anyone had heard back then (or even now, really): fucked up garage psych with dementedly genius lyrics and crazy acid-fried guitar. Now Destijl has released the whole LP, that was originally recorded in 1968 but then quickly shelved almost before it had a chance to be heard. Yonkers, a legendary Minneapolis-area figure, built his own effects pedals, cut his Fender Telecaster down to a plank, and played like no one else ever. I'm at a loss of words on how to describe this. It's sort of like a fusion of stripped down Black Sabbath, The Troggs, Pere Ubu, and The Cramps?? Or something like that. Definitely something to check out. Vinyl only.
This is some seriously blissed out cosmic exploration. No doubt named after the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, ground zero in late '60s Berlin for the burgeoning experimental art/music scene that would blossom into the sounds of Krautrock. All these years later the amazing sounds of many who emerged out of the Zodiac Free Arts Lab, like Ash Ra Temple, Popul Vuh, Cluster, and Harmonia have had such a huge influence on a new generation eager to get lost in that cosmic trance.
Zodiac Free Arts Club, who hail from Berlin themselves, nails that sound and vibe spot on. In fact every single time we've played this in the store someone has asked what Brain Records reissue we were playing. Using analog synths with warm perfection, one can close their eyes and think they're listening to wonderful outtakes from Harmonia's Deluxe sessions. Reaching the same level of excellence in capturing this sound as folks like Arp, Jonas Reinhart and Majeure, this is some authentic modern day kraut-tronica indeed. The kosmische glow is alive and well in 2011!
