Debut release from this duo, featuring Adam Wiltzie of aQ-beloved dronescapers Stars Of The Lid. He's teamed up with composer Dustin O'Halloran, for a suite of songs that doesn't veer to far from recent Stars Of The Lid releases, but focus on the piano as the main instrument, with the duo seeking out large spaces and grand pianos, with which to fully realize their sonic vision.
The opening track, far too humbly titled "We Played Some Open Chords", lets chords on the piano ring out, the natural reverb carrying the notes off and letting them gradually fade. The piano underpinned by some sweetly sorrowful strings, and some mournful horns, a strangely melancholy bit of modern chamber music, all laid atop Wiltzie's masterful and subtle guitar drone shimmer. The two part "Requiem For The Static King" is lush and lovely and sounds like a soundtrack, all soaring strings, dramatic melodies, the second half veering into slightly darker territory, the piano resurfacing, the strings dialed back, the guitar drones allowed to swell and shimmer, while "Minuet For A Cheap Piano" sounds to be just that, the sound slightly muted, subtly distorted, and again, wreathed in what sounds like strings but could very well be the swirl of droned out guitars, hushed and delicate and dreamlike. "Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears" is another bit of chamber music, the strings softly swelling, the arrangement strangely rhythmic, as of the instruments were breathing, the song laced with a delicate piano melody, the mood swoonsome and melancholy.
"A Symphony Pathetique" the longest track at nearly 13 minutes, seems to be the record's centerpiece, that piano suspended in a field of gauzy dronemusic, the track is epic and gorgeous, a sprawling stretch of hushed minimal beauty, the background sounds in constant motion, shimmering and undulating, overtones loosed to drift dreamily, all the while the piano plucks out painterly melodies, and like all the best songs, we would have been happy to have this stretch out and fill up the entire rest of the disc. Instead, the song fades gradually into the ether, from which drifts "All Farewells Are Sudden", a very UN-sudden sonic farewell, all slow swirling swells, hazy ambience, and most surprising, female vocals, creating a lush lovely droney harmony with the strings, and what in lesser hands could sound maudlin, ends up sounding simply beautiful, especially with the strange addition of what seems to be field recordings, only to have the whole song gradually unfurl into a darkly moody soft focus piano coda. So gorgeous. Fans of recent Stars Of The Lid will be in heaven, and anyone into dreamy mysterious ambience, minimal melodic drones and avant chamber music will definitely find much to love here.
Debut full length from this French black metal horde, and by now you should know how we feel about French black metal, hell you should probably FEEL how we feel. Needless to say, we love it. And these guys waste no time, no tinkly intro or haunting drone music to start things off, they just lurch straight into it, a blackened avalanche of suffocating sound, churning riffage, wild mathy drum damage, hellish vox, a blurred black tangled, that as the first track progress seems to open up into something much more epic and grand, culminating in a strange clean guitar crooned vocal interlude only to collapse into an even more frenzied blast of blackness, with a seriously fucked up production, so the whole thing sounds muddy and murky and washed out but still massive and heavy.
The tracks here are epic, and thus, have loads of parts, the sound leaning towards a progged out blackness, the guitars slipping into droned out buzz and then right back into tangled grinding fury, the sound following suit. The second track opens up with a weird bit of programmed drum machine, and what sounds dangerously like rapping, but it couldn't be, could it? It's all wreathed in a locust like muted buzz, only to splinter into another bit of blackened buzz, but the vibe remains strangely funky, in keeping with that opening drum beat, and while troo black metallers have probably stopped reading and looked away horrified, the rest of us, into twisted black whatthefuck, can revel in this weird Deathspell meets Ministry weirdness.
The third track offers up more of the same, seeming to take off from "Jesus Built My Hot Rod" era Ministry and fashioning it into something much meaner and way more black but never fully shedding that industrial groove. And yeah, we were taken aback at first, but we're actually digging this a lot. We're reminded of obscure Italian Industrialists La Muerte, but again, way more black and buzzy. The final track seems to return to a sound much more purely black, churning and buzzing and brutal, but again, as the song progresses, that industrial bent creeps to the fore, with stuttery stop start riffage, and pounding tribal drumming. Definitely a weird mix of sounds here, but then that's why we love French black metal, cuz they're so willing to be fucking bizarre and risk alienating the true grim hordes, and we're definitely digging it, but you have been warned...
Hey, blackened doom dudes and dudettes, we know you're busy spinning your new Yob album 24-7, but if you don't want to wear Atma out, here's something else you might like, from the folks (Seventh Rule) who last brought us Batillus.
Atriarch are an outfit from up in Portland, Oregon, and deal with the depression of living there (all the rain!) by making this bummer music, downer stuff for sure. And HEAVY. Though this is their debut, Atriarch aren't exactly newcomers to the underground sludge scene, their singer is from Trees, and also the bassist was in Graves At Sea. So they know what they're doing, and what they're doing is making some atmospherically arty, anguished ultra-doom!!!
There's four songs, adding up to 36 minutes (this is obviously intended for two sides of vinyl, which Seventh Rule has released in quite handsome form, though we also have cds in different, handmade packaging, self-released by the band). It's kinda like one looooong song though, and we mean that in a good way... a depressive, occasionally violent journey into the realms of grim gothic darkness, Atriarch employing harsh vokills (and some use of mournful "clean" vocals too), droning synth, somber slow-mo drum pummel, soft-loud dynamics, sad melodies, and of course crushing distorted guitars, to convey their dire emotional message of the foreverness of the end. Should appeal to anyone who might dig a bleaker, blacker metal version of Cough, Atavist, the aforementioned Yob, etc.
The first installment in a new series on Beta-Lactam Ring called the Drone Compendium series, curated by none other than Mr. Aidan Baker, he of mighty dronedoomdirge duo Nadja, and as is befitting his status as curator, the first installment is in fact a Baker record, entitled Pure Drone, and the record delivers precisely what the title promises. Recorded live in 2010, the A side, while pure drone, is definitely more than a single tone, or a simple bit of minimal hum. Instead, the sound is lush and layered, a sprawling, smoldering expanse of dreamlike drift, a soft focus slow build, rife with subtle melodies that gradually reveal themselves, beneath subtly shifting textures, laced with streaks of high end and pulsing almost-rhythms and shimmering overtones. The B side is a bit more subdued, a little more minimal, but still lush and lovely, the tonal colorations surfacing in the second half, after a long dark droney bit of hypnotic thrum, the sounds seeming to blossom, the light up, it sounds like watching a star appear from behind a planet as the orbits shift, that sort of fundamental, monumental sonic power, the melodies glimmering and glittering in the alien starlight, so gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES, packaged in super swank heavy jackets!
Pretty much every one at aQ loved that first Balam Acab ep, especially the track "See Birds", a song and sound that managed to at once define the already maligned genre 'witch house' and move beyond any sort of genre specific strictures, a dark dolorous drift, a slowed down RnB pop that managed to mesmerize and transport, that vocal line so distinctive, the strangely stuttery rhythm, it was pure magic for sure. And while there's maybe nothing quite approaching the mainstream-baiting hookiness of "See Birds", Wander/Wonder does have much to offer, and on repeated listens, many of the tracks most definitely approach the electronic pop mastery of "See Birds".
Take opener "Welcome", which begins with a stretch of burbling underwater sounds, a theme that seems to define much of Balam Acab's sound, a sense of submergence, but this opening track just drifts and shimmers, that burbling underpinned by a barely there sonic pulse, and then BAM, the beat bursts in, and it's not at all what you might have expected, a strange reverbed fragment, and with it comes a haunting bit of operatic vocalizing, the sound so haunting and mysterious and otherworldly, and the track just creeps along ominously, the vibe very cinematic, the sound super spare and abstract, and the perfect launching point for a record of what is essentially radical modern minimal electronica, the following track starts out again with a hushed bit of shimmer, before blossoming into a woozy bit of slo-mo soul, sped up vox somehow slowed down and melded to some blurred shuffle and skitter. "Motion" turns Pop Ambient shimmer into a hazy stretch of melting radio pop, while, "Expect" adds low end synth buzz, to shimmering strings, angelic vox, and more water sounds, for something dreamlike and ethereal. "Await" is a barely there underwater lullaby, with more sped up vocals, wistful piano melodies, and still more water sounds, and finally, "Fragile Hope" transforms dripping water and whispered breaths into the rhythm for a smoldering bass heavy ballad, that sounds like a slightly tweaked version of something that you could hear on the radio, some sweetly soulful slow motion soul. So good. And while not quite as dark and witch house-y as the See Birds ep, for folks into the new breed of warped RnB and slowsoul, as well as fans of How To Dress Well, Hype Williams, Soft Metals, D'eon and the like, this could be your new favorite record...
Seems like only yesterday Barn Owl had a new record on Thrill Jockey, and in fact this, Lost In The Glare, is their third for TJ in about a year, coming hot on the heels of their Shadowland 12" which ranks up there as one of our favorites. Lost In The Glare doesn't radically reinvent their sound, just further stretches it out, and refines it, the opening track as fierce as anything we've heard from them, lush tangles of guitar, over swirling droned out shimmer, culminating in a wild squall of jagged psychedelic feedback. And that jagged psychedelia definitely seeps into the rest of the record, with the duo seeming to crank up their guitars for the first time in a while.
Past records have been all about the dusty deserty twang, the slow burn, the smoldering ambience, and while all of that is still present, the band seem supercharged. "Turiya" finds the duo stomping on the fuzz box and unfurling peals of thick distorted guitar that almost sounds like Neil Young at times, gorgeous streaks of melody suspended over an Earth like dirge, it's a potent combo and definitely has the band sounding aggressive and HEAVY. "Devotion 1" brings it all back down, letting slow smokey melodies drift over vast expanses of space, eventually joined by a thick insectoid buzz, the sound transformed into a blissed out celestial raga. The longest track here, is also the heaviest, "The Darkest Night Since 1683" opens with a crackly haze of amp buzz and slow build chordal thrum, before erupting into some seriously blown out, downtuned blackened doomdronedirge guitar, a slow motion riff, all tarpit ooze as it buzzes and crumbles, eventually leaving a stretch of hazy twangy, psychedelic shimmer.
The rest of the record takes Barn Owl's ever shifting sound and runs with it, exploring Appalachian raga folk, all steel string buzz and lush soaring psychedelic swirl, murky moody late night crawl, rife with streaks of whirling melodies driven by a muted pulse and some washed out twang, gauzy Sunroof!-like ur-drone, all upper register skree wreathed in lush swells of bassy hum, and finally a closer that finds the band revisiting their dusty twang, but again, giving it some extra crunch, the guitars super distorted, the drums a blown out pound, all woven into a swoonsome mournful desert doom creep.
Here stands the monumental anthology, culled from the numerous cassettes and cd-rs that Chris Madak has released over the past decade or so, under the moniker Bee Mask. Like Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never, Madak is single-minded in his retrogarde aesthetic for synthesized compositions based on a vintage 1970s' cosmology. But where many of the '70s synth revivalists have coyingly adopted a full-fledged new age aesthetic through effervescent prettiness and soft-focus ambient swirl, Bee Mask offers up his own dysptopic take on psychedelic electronics through a crucible of cracked circuits, tape splutter, infernal field recordings, and a hell of a lot of sustained synth drones oscillating into crescendos of dissonant thumming. The zoner tracks on Elegy For Beach Friday (and there are a number of them) never sit in the background seeking a sublimated hypnosis, rather Madak zooms in on the placid pools of sound to unveil intense percolations and swarming vibrations. There's a scientific rigor to his pieces that finds Bee Mask orbiting around the dense, alienating electronics from Matt Shoemaker, Rick Reed, and Bernard Parmigiani. But, Madak is also one to tease with the subtle swelling melodies that harken to the more emotive works from Omit and Emeralds. If his work shares anything with the retro electronic tapestries that are the forgotten soundtracks for a summer sunset, Madak would rather blind the audience with the intensity of the sun, complete with blisters on the skin and technological mishaps from sunspots. Brilliant!
The bloodletting goth-punk of LA's Bestial Mouths is likely to find black-clad company with contemporaries like Zola Jesus and Chelsea Wolfe, but this outfit harnesses a creative dualism between voice and drums that's a unique take on what Siouxsie and Budgie had done so brilliantly for so many years in the Banshees and Creatures. Vocalist Lynette Cerezo shrieks, barks, and howls between the operatic vibrato that reaches for the atavistic bellowing that's something of a cross between Diamanda Galas and Rozz Williams of Christian Death. Ebrahim Saleh's percussion is hardly the death-disco that's so often heard from goth drummers, but more of a splattercore punk likened to a No Wave version of Crass regressing at times to caveman pummelling. Christopher Myrick's synths fill in the blanks, and often do get upstaged by the spiralling dynamism between Cerezo and Saleh with all of their car-crash stops and thunderous stomps. Where many of the songs on Hissing Veil are short sharp blasts of feral energy, Bestial Mouths settles into an effectively infernal dirge that's equivalent to Lydia Lunch ripping apart The Cure's Pornography and leaving the parts ugly and abused in some forgotten alleyway. A great addition to the Dais catalogue of recordings!
With an impending full length on dream pop label Slumberland, and a new, surprisingly poppier, and less warped and warbly sound, our first impulse might have been to write off Big Troubles completely, and lament the loss of another quirky fucked up outsider pop combo, but the thing is, these two new songs might be the best things BT have ever recorded. Sure some of the twisted woozy weirdo effects are gone, but they're hardly missed, cuz these songs are pretty much PERFECT. We always knew they had it in them, even on past jams, no amount of effects and fractured production could disguise the pure pop that lurked underneath. That pop lurks no more. Instead it shines brightly, the A side here sounds like a classic slab of nineties Britpop, all bit soaring shimmering guitars, hazy dreamy vocals, shimmery, glimmering and hooky as all get out, a huge hit in a perfect world, but since this is not, it will remain an underground perfect pop gem. Or hopefully maybe not! The flipside takes another stab at classic nineties British pop, this time channeling Swervedriver, the sound heavier and grungier, shoegazey with a melody infused fuzz, some seriously crunchy buzzy guitars, and pounding rhythms all beneath the same soaring dreamy vox as the A side, resulting in a blissed out chunk of heavy dreamy shoegazy fuzzpop that is tough to beat.
This might just be our new favorite single, and definitely has us dying to hear the new full length.
This is the first we've heard from Swedish new wave garage rock,synth punk trio Black Bug since their mind blowing full length on tUMULt from a while back. Which itself was a furious collection of, as we described it then: "equal parts cold wave gloom, riot grrl yowl, in-the-red punk rock, and ultra raw blown out garage pop - from howling pounding furious crunch, to warped woozy synthy drone, to dour pulsing minimal cold wave, to super anthemic almost emo garage rock, and every variation in between. The recording raw and lo-fi, the drums, the synths, the bass, the vocals, in various stages of blown out distorted crumble, the drums clipped and weirdly processed, pushed as loud as they can go, the synth too, fuzzy, buzzy, wreathed in a sort of decaying haze, the vocals wild and unhinged and super emotional, sometimes a playful yelp, sometimes a cold croon, other times a full on hysterical shriek." Indeed.
And even then we were wondering why the hell BB weren't HUGE. And this brand new three song 7" has us again wondering how long it's gonna take before the rest of the world finally catch on. Cuz this stuff is so good, heavy, fuzzy, poppy, groovy, synthy, noisy and catchy like crazy. The sound on this new 7" finds the band dialing back a bit on the blown out crunch, but only a bit, the opener sounds like some seventies cop show theme fused to the chase scene music from a long lost futuristic thriller, a sort of pulsing kraut synth crunch, the bass thick and fuzzy, the vocals a softly distorted howl over the top, all wreathed in surprisingly swoonsome melodies, the result weirdly dramatic and cinematic. The second track is more like old school BB, and definitely sounds like an outtake from the full length, skittery machine like rhythms, lo-fi synth buzz and echoey vox, a definite Riot Grrl / DHR / synthwave hybrid, a retro futuristic chunk of garage-y synthpunk laced with creepy Gobliny melodies, and infused with hooks galore.
The B side / title track is a killer, all dirgey and ominous, another sprawl of futuristic sinister synthwave, and another jam that could be some sort of soundtrack, only this time it's some seventies zombie sci-fi thriller, the creeping, moody cinematic synths all tangled up into impossibly poppy hooks, the sort of hooks that you'll find yourself humming days later, the track continues to shift back and forth from hooky synthy fuzz pop to creepy seventies psychedelic soundtracky synth buzz and back again. SO GREAT!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We all kinda flipped when we discovered Blackwolfgoat, and proceeded to gush about BWG's Dragonwizardsleeve record back on list #369, an album that definitely threw us for a loop, cuz with a name like Blackwolfgoat, and on a mostly stoner rock label, we were expecting some sort of crust metal or retro thrash or stoner doom, but instead, BWG, aka guitarist Darryl Shepard, offered up a gorgeous droned out, heavily layered solo guitar record, definitely heavy, at least in places, but more mesmerizing and cyclical, droney and psychedelic, slipping from SUNNO))) like dronesludge to almost krautrocky hypnodrift.
So we were super excited to discover there was a new album - only to discover it was a cd-r, and had been limited to just 100 copies, waah. We basically gave up on ever getting copies for the store, when lo and behold, Mr. Blackwolfgoat himself got in touch and offered us his last copies! So of course we said hell yeah, and now submit to you, Dronolith, another disc of churning repetition, and cosmic looped mesmer that should most definitely appeal to all you aQ headz into drone/metal/psych/kraut, but be warned, we have about 10 copies and then that's it!
The first track starts things off with a gorgeously murky stoner rock riff, that instead of launching into a song proper, just repeats, trancelike, while Shepard layers spidery melodies, and psychedelic streaks over the top, the track drifting closer and closer to heart of the sun spacerock. The next track is all clean guitar, and sounds a little like a sketch for a Circle song, but gradually blossoms into a hazy sprawl of sun dappled psychedelia. There are some moments of extreme distortion, and creeping slo-mo riff sludge, but those moments are brief, with Shepard instead focusing on motorik krautdrone, woozy, gauzy cosmic buzz, and dreamy druggy atmospheric drift. Even the title track which had is imagining Sleep in their prime, begins all shimmery and swirly, but does fulfill the promise of the title by exploding into full on amp melting supersludge, oozing tarpit riffage that splinters into a full on blacknoise blowout.
Fucking AWESOME. Such a shame that it's so limited (ONLY 100 COPIES!). But it is, so grab one quick. They come in nice printed full color jackets, and each copy is hand numbered.
Devonte Hynes has been a man behind the musical scenes for several years now, producing and writing tracks for the likes of Basement Jaxx, Florence & The Machines and Solange Knowles. But we are super glad he's finally taking center stage with his own project, as he is one of the best and most evocative voices we've heard in a long time. Listening to Coastal Grooves really feels like a sleek and steamy night out on the town. Wandering from one dark seedy nightclub to another, and blasting through city streets in a fast car with the windows down. The songs range from slow burning sensual ravers to more indie rocking driving anthems. Imagine some awesome combination of Hercules & Love Affair, Grizzly Bear, Twin Shadow, and Bloc Party, and you begin to get a picture of the sorts of sounds Blood Orange create.
Their imagery and overall aura have a strong queer sensibility evoking the drama of drag queens and the underworld of after-hours cruising bars. For sure there is also a huge '80s influence ranging from Culture Club to Tears For Fears to Bow Wow Wow. But unlike many others mining from that era there is no wink or nod or irony in Blood Orange's sound, as these are heartfelt songs that move and sizzle.
If you know who Corky Carroll is, it's 'cause chances are, you're into surfing. But besides being one of the top champion pro surfers of his era ('60s/early '70s), and in fact considered possibly the first ever professional surfer, he was also way into music. In 1971, at age 23, he released this album, his first of many, on a private label called Rural that he ran with Dennis Dragon (of the Dragons and later of the Surf Punks, and brother to Darryl, aka Captain of the Captain and Tennille). Corky and Dennis brought mobile recording gear with them to visit fellow surfers/musicians all along the California coast, that's where the "& Friends" comes in, as this, in addition to Corky's own guitar strum, features contributions from a variety of fine musicians, including some exquisite Hawaiian slack-key guitar picking by island-born board-crafter Raymond Patterson. Also appearing: Denny Aarberg (lead guitarist from the Santa Barbara hippy-surf band Farm, also later co-writer of the John Milius surf film Big Wednesday), David Lyons, Al Oakie, Kathy Dragon, and the members of the band Hana. All of these people were serious surfers like Corky, though the music they made doesn't sound like your typical "surf music" (though it is warm and beach-ily idyllic).
Mellow, folky, mostly acoustic, largely instrumental, a little bit bluesy in spots, of course this would get reissued by Japan's wonderful EM Records, who have previously brought us a bunch of "psychedelic surf" albums in the past, in their "EM Under Water Series", like the Farm's soundtrack to The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun.
Certainly this is aptly titled, Laid Back, being so sunshiney and stoned, what what some folks here, who (ahem) know what they're talking about, would consider a perfect "wake 'n' bake" album, that you could file with David Crosby's If I Can Only Remember My Name ferinstance.
Anyone who liked the These Trails album Drag City recently reissued and wants another trip to the islands in their imagination, should check this out!
Packaged in the usual EM cardboard gatefold sleeve, the insert bearing interesting liner notes from Corky himself. Pricier vinyl version also available, fyi.
Record number two from this mysterious blackened witchy doomdirge combo, an offshoot of similarly droney and doomy aQ faves OS. But we're beginning to think we might dig Charnel House more than OS. And it has a lot to do with the vocals, which we described in another review as "demonic priestess vocals", which definitely sums it up pretty perfectly. If that whole new wave of female fronted heavy rock bands (Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth, Christian Mistress) is just to polished for you, then maybe Charnel House is what you're after, way more raw and lo-fi, bleak and blackened, primitive and noisy, the sound slipping easily from doomy abstract dirge, to churning blackened blast, the sound minimal, and cyclical, repetitive and trancelike, and then when the vocals come in, the sound is utterly transformed, into some sort of black forest ritual, some wild witchy incantation, hovering ethereal and angelic over the churn and chug and blast and buzz below. "Erosive" is the perfect example of CH's strange sound, the band locked into a tranced out repetitive blast, over which a second guitar chugs out a droney looped chord, lurching and lumbering, totally at odds with the manic blast below, the sound all on its own totally mesmerizing, but then every once in a while the vox drift in, and the sound becomes more blissed out, more abstract, the heaviness tempered by the spectral quality of the vocals. The music sounds like Ride For Revenge or some other strangely minimal black metal outfit, the vocals just take it somewhere else, this raw abstract black metal becomes some sort of otherworldly heaviness.
Elsewhere the record grows even more dramatic, with the band spitting out explosive gouts of wild chaotic heaviness, only to stop on a dime, leaving just the vocals and a simple rhythmic pulse (and a little hazy shimmer), to drift dreamily, before the band explodes back in. While elsewhere the band go slooooooow, transforming into a way more melodic Monarch, a dour slo-mo creep, again offset by those creepy, dreamy, haunting vocals. The production is a huge part of it too, sometimes murky and muddy, all the sounds muted and blurred into a near drone, while other times the sound is sharp and corrosive, changing the entire vibe of the song and the record. The more we listen to this, the more it reveals subtle details, headphones even more so, a dense, dark layered landscape of looped black buzz and haunted witchy mystery...
Housed in a cool, hand stamped, cardstock sleeve, with a huge printed full color poster / lyric sheet inside, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!
These filthy French freaks are back!! A while ago we listed their self-released 4 song demo cdep, and it kinda became a minor sensation among AQ customers into, well, doom, but doom of the most psychedelically fucked, primitive rock 'n' roll variety. In that review, we mentioned "magical dirtbag psychedelic metal anarchy... wasted heaviness, psychomaniacal alcoholic sludge". And yeah, that, um, description would apply to this their debut full-length as well!! So queue up and get ready to guzzle CoD's high octane, wah wah crazed, Vitus-worshipping, greasy hippie biker brew.
Doom, Be Doomed, Or Fuck Off consists of six new songs, filling 42 minutes with this trio's unique, over the top onslaught of hypnotically crude riffage, distortion, widdly guitar, and wailing vox (not quite so strange as on the demo, but still...not normal). And these songs are fairly hooky, too. Drugged out and doomy, but rockin'. Also, they show some signs of musical progress since the demo (not that we were hoping for any!!), getting just a bit more sophisticated sounding in their playing and compositions. Maybe. One sign of this: according to the credits, somewhere, supposedly, there's even some saxophone on this disc!! Ah, must be in the final track, the album's longest, a 12 minute excursion into tripsville, called "...Mia's Desert...", Children Of Doom sounding more like Children Of Krautrock here, all cosmically synthed and sinister, though there is guitar fury unleashed around the halfway point... oh, and then, there it is, some melancholy saxophone over krauty drum beats, how 'bout that? An interesting and unexpected ending to this eccentric album, nice.
Also nice is the cover and other artwork here. We said before that CoD reminded us a bit of Julian Cope's Brain Donor band, and definitely JC would approve of the artwork on the lyric sheet/poster in the cd, a drawing with all sorts of psychedelic biker shit growing up out of an upsidedown helmet, one of those German WWII bucket style ones that outlaw bikers like to wear (if they're gonna wear helmets at all). And you'll be happy there's a lyric sheet, they're quite amusing, once again, a lot of talk about who they are ("we are evil, old school, and brutal") and plenty of swearing in the process. You gotta suspect it's all a bit tongue in cheek, but we're not gonna say that to their faces, you never know...
Oh, and the one song here sung in French, "1916", is not in fact a Motorhead cover, despite the title - though these guys are in their own way, a Motorhead for psychedelic doom lovers. And like Motorhead, they love their umlauts too (our website, having apparently been programmed by posers, won't support umlauts easily, so we left 'em off, but there's supposed to be one over the "o" in "or", of all words, in the album's title...).
Record number three from Ms. Haley Fohr, aka Circuit Des Yeux, who crafts witchy, shadowy psychedelic folk music, that sounds a bit like a more rural version of Zola Jesus, of maybe a little like a female Jandek via Grouper, her voice deep and commanding, slipping easily into a near operatic wail, but most of the vocals delivered in a dark throaty croon, over wheezing organs, simple strummed guitars, mournful piano with occasional squalls of wild psychedelia.
The songs seem to take two routes, one a simple sort of classic folk music, pop music rendered in acoustic guitar and moody atmosphere, the other a sort of vocal driven raga, with Fohr crooning over haunting chordal drones. Those two sides of her sonic personality, perfectly exemplified by the opening tracks on Portrait. "Falling Out" is all hazy warbly drone, a thick whir, over simple monochromatic strumming, peppered with lush blossoms of Technicolor psychedelia, the organ drones growing more and more lush, Fohr's vocals powerful and intense, especially when she slips into a near falsetto, trilling and swooping, but the music adds an intense gravitas to the already dark moodiness of the haunting vocals. But we find ourselves most moved by songs like "3311", which sounds like some classic torch song or some old country song, all acoustic guitar and reverbed piano, Fohr's voice doing all the work, mostly unadorned, deep and sultry, the lyrics mournful and melancholy, the vocals occasionally piling up into glorious harmonies, only to slip right back into the dark brood and strum.
The rest of the record deftly balances the folk and the drone, the classic songcraft and experimental, "Crying Chair" is a twisted almost Nurse With Wound like electronic warble-scape, Fohr's vocals processed and twisted into strange ships, the result druggy and divine, while "Twenty And Dry" sounds like a girl and her guitar, simple finger picked acoustic, and a second, more fierce and distorted offering melodic counterpoint, and again, the vocals, so moving and emotional, doing most of the heavy lifting. Gorgeous stuff. And WAY recommended for fans of Grouper, Zola Jesus, U.S. Girls, and other purveyors of dark ritualistic femme folk.
Before the release of Rainforest, the first proper solo effort from New Jersey producer / beatmaker Mike Volpe, aka Clams Casino, he was primarily known for making tracks for hop hop icons like Lil' B, Soulja Boy and others, and here those tracks are presented sans vocals, revealing them to be pretty much fully formed as they are, and making it perfectly clear why hip hoppers were freaking out over these jams. The witch house vibe still looms large, as does that whole slo-mo RnB thing, obviously fans of How To Dress Well, not to mention the whole Tri Angle catalog will flip for these tracks, gorgeous, and low slung, creepy and haunting and pretty, deeply rhythmic, softly psychedelic, blissed out and a bit druggy, in some ways these tracks couldn't sound less hip hop, but again, that's precisely what made them stand out.
It's hard to imagine Soulja Boy rapping over "All I Need", with its hazy, woozy Portishead creep, slowed down vocal croon, and strange crunchy percussive skitter. Everything wrapped in an ethereal gauze, peppered with skittery high hats, hand claps, a spare simple drumline, it's all ballady and blissfully blurry. It's equally hard to imagine Lil'B rapping on "Real Shit From A Real Nigga", and it's just as difficult to imagine a track this pretty and washed out with that title, and the sound, all warm swirling synths, distant choral vocals, clouds of shimmering glistening melodies, and a low slung shuffling beat drifting amidst all manner of glistening flutter and smeared sparkle. And so it goes. The tracks here are incredible, and definitely have us wondering why more big names haven't tapped this guy for backing tracks, this stuff is totally next level, way more advanced than any of the stuff we hear on the radio, but as we mentioned before, these songs already sound essentially finished, totally fleshed out, expansive and lush and melodic, and in some ways, adding anything else would only take way from their power. And as much as we loved Rainforest, and we did, BIG TIME, we might be digging this one even more!!
Another release from the newly launched KV&GR/Recs label, run by weirdo black metal one man band Cloak Of Displacement. All of the releases so far (Mavra, Edasi) criminally limited, and this one is no different. LIMITED TO JUST 20 COPIES, of which, we got ALL twenty. But judging from the last batch, these will likely be gone in a flash, so don't dawdle.
Cloak Of Displacement, a long time aQ outsider black metal fave, offers up another set of twisted low fidelity blackened what the fuck, murky warbly riffs, primitive recording, stumbling damaged drumming, and some of THEE weirdest vocals ever, slipping from goofy grunt to croaking quack, the sound itself stumbling from abstract drift, to pounding dirge and back again. Occasionally within these three tracks, the sound does explode into a sort of blast, but it's a lurching lumbering blast, on the verge of total collapse, a chaotic careening black weirdness that sort of rule. Elsewhere the sound shifts to something more abstract, a sort of spaced out doom, a demented detuned creep, all warbly chords and rehearsal space drum splatter, and those creepy alien vox. Folks who loved past CoD releases will NOT be disappointed.
The flipside is taken up by another one man band, the mysterious and oddly monikered Blood Escutcheon, whose sound is more of an ambient blacknoize, riffs stretched out into layered drones, warm and whirling one second, caustic and buzzy the next. The side opens up with some dreamlike ambient drift, that slowly builds to a blowout of Merzbowian noise, infused with fragmented riffage an strange disembodied heavily effected vocals, which leads directly into a super creepy stretch of processed vocal dronemusic, a sea of hiss and static, underneath which a super processed voice drift creepily, before the sound blossoms into some blurred blown out almost Skullflowery noise, which with headphones strapped on, reveals all manner of sonic weirdness lurking below the surface, the side ending with some cool, softly distorted industrial crunch, blurred out and smeared into something much more soft focus and ambient.
And again, we only have 20 COPIES of these, and there are in fact ONLY 20 copies, so act fast.
Includes killer cover art from Blood Escutcheon mastermind Thaniel Lee. Each copy hand numbered.
Ever since we caught these guys opening for M.I.A. several years ago we knew there was something special about them. Let's be honest, the state of modern hip-hop leaves a lot to be desired, but damn The Cool Kids do it so right! Infusing the influence of '80s hip-hop glory, into more modern productions, yet never sounding like a tired throwback group, these kids make beats that hit and songs that stick.
When Fish Rides Bicycles finds them upping the intensity from their great debut, The Bake Sale. The album opens with such a banger and from that moment on the record keeps its energy and its focus sharp and charged. While some noncommercial hip-hop artists tend to shy away from big sick beats we love how The Cool Kids embrace those very same elements, yet it's how they incorporate them and the overall vibe of their tracks that makes them stand so far ahead of the pack. Of course the root of thier sound is the golden era of hip-hop, and we can hear awesome moments that remind us of Eric B & Rakim, Kool Moe Dee, KRS-1, and EPMD.
The Cool Kids also have a great understanding of the economy of sounds. They don't clutter their tracks and they also keep things so tight, with no silly interludes or throwaway tracks. Cool guest appearances too by folks like Mayer Hawthorne, Ghostface, and Bun B only add to the potent mix. An absolute contender for hip-hop album of the year!
It's sad but true. After 17 years, the final record from Japanese doom/sludge legends Corrupted. Or at least the last record by the original Corrupted. It seems that this is the very last recording to feature the core Corrupted members: Chew on drums, Hevi on vocals, and Talbot on guitars. Chew will go on with a whole new band, to forge a new chapter in the ongoing sonic saga of Corrupted, but Garten Der Unbewusstheit is a pretty incredible swansong for sure, and a sonically surprising one at that. Recorded back in 2009, the first thing you might notice is the title. One of the strange things about Corrupted on past records, was that all of their lyrics were in Spanish. So of course we were wondering if this time around, they would be in German. But it's hard to tell. The lyrics in the booklet are in Japanese and English, and listening to the record itself is not much help in discerning the language either, not surprisingly.
Released on Chew's newly launched label Nostalgia Blackrain, Garten Der Unbewusstheit is, at least according to the band themselves, is their most melodic, and far removed from their punk/doom/sludge roots, and "totally transcends our usual sense of time. Like feeling a minute & a second like infinity, and feeling 60 minutes & 360 seconds like moment...... this transcending sense can be described as the sense of liberation from material and life through music." Which is interesting, as we thought all Corrupted records transcended time, these sprawling epics that were so easy to get lost in, but this one in particular, is a brooding slow builder, almost more post rock that doom/sludge, the opening track, "Garten" just shy of a half hour long, drifts along spacily for nearly 8 minutes, all spidery melodies, and barely there super spare drumming, the vocals finally come in, a deep growled croon, the drums an occasional pound, but the song itself, still a shimmery drift, and then when the track does finally explode into something more heavy, it's not the lumbering dirge or downtuned doom we're used to, it's way more melodic, soaring and epic and majestic, like a doom Godspeed, the thick metallic riffs underpinned by clean guitar melodies, and slow smoldering leads, the vibe woozy and dreamlike, almost spacey and psychedelic more than dirgey and heavy, although it most definitely is heavy, just a washed out dreamier heaviness than we're used to. The band slip back into that opening chime and shimmer, and while they do offer up another couple stretches of grinding post-doom lumber, they eventually return to that dreamy drift.
The buzz of the opening track spills over into "Against The Darkest Days" before fading out and leaving just acoustic guitar, the piece revealing itself as an interlude of sorts, a lush gorgeous bit of steel string shimmer, haunting and hushed, which leads directly into the 30+ minute final track, "Gekkou No Daichi", a slow smoldering acoustic intro, a continuation of the interlude, unfurls leaving lots of space, the notes drifting in the ether, before being joined by a second more distorted guitar, the guitars tangled into a spidery woozy harmony, and then song blossoms into a massive soaring squall of blissed out heaviness, again the doomy dirge of the past seemingly replaced by something much more melodic, a slow motion creep that seems to hover and drift and soar more than pummel and pound, the track settles into a gorgeously blown out low end dirge, rife with warm melodies, the vocals a demonic bellow over the top, the drums pounding rhythmically one second, offering up abstract percussion the next, as the track progresses and nears its end, the guitars get more frenzied, the sounds more chaotic, a definite sloe build to something spacey and psychedelic and epically heavy, finally finishing off in a dense squall of black noise, but still shot through with the minor key melodies that seem to run through all of Garten Der Unbewusstheit. The noise eventually fades, and the track finishes with a stretch of hushed acoustic guitar, drifting on a sea of cymbal shimmer and fading hum. Wow.
What a way to go. A perfect finish to a nearly perfect run. The prettiest thing we've heard from Corrupted, and a heartbreakingly emotional sonic finale. We're sad to see the end of a group we've been obsessed with for nearly 20 years, but we're excited to hear the new Corrupted, and are most definitely curious about what comes next.
This one's for all you weirdo found sound and field recording obsessives out there. Not sure where this one would get filed, somewhere between the Conet Project's mysterious numbers stations, rutting red deer, the sounds of drag racing cars, the beeping of a life support system and the collections of voices of the dead via EVP recordings (all things we've stocked!), The MMs Bar Recordings captures something much more mundane, but somehow, just capturing these sounds on tape transforms those original sounds, here removed from their original context, into something strangely fascinating.
In a nutshell, these are undoctored recordings of announcements on a particular train line in the UK, recorded between 2006 and 2007, when the artist Sandra Cross was taking said train line weekly, and working on a project called "What Did You Eat Today". Funnily enough, on every train ride, the bar on the train, which served various foods and drinks would announce exactly what it was they were serving, always a slightly different announcement, always a different voice, and always at random times. So Cross became obsessed and recorded them, and Trunk Records on hearing these recordings became equally obsessed, and now it's our turn.
And it's not just the actual announcements, the sounds that surround them are equally mesmerizing, the muted rumble of the train, the murmur of voices, the static of the overhead speakers, but it is the MMs Bar announcements that are the core of this collection of recordings, and they are presented here unaltered, as they were captured, so the edits are rough, and there are long stretches with no announcements, just rumbles and whirs, and there are stretches that are a jumble of voices and announcements one after the other, the whole thing IS surprisingly mesmerizing, conjuring up memories of traveling, as well and just sonically interesting. Fans of our found sounds section will no doubt be as obsessed with this as we've become. It's like a Conet Project that makes you hungry, for Anglophiles. Needless to say, way recommended!
Brand new single from this East coast, neo-folk post industrial outfit, whose first record, released on Sacred Bones earlier this year, was a big hit around here, channeling the spirit of industrial legends Death In June through the more modern vibe of their SB labelmates. And the A side here doesn't change up the formula all that much, urgently strummed guitars, deep dramatic crooned vocals, minimal martial percussion, reminding us as much of New Model Army actually as Death In June, mournful horns drifting over a surprisingly wistful melancholic folk, with that minimal percussion building over the course of the song, surrounded by swirls of tinkling melody, finally exploding into some seriously epic industrial folk majesty.
The B side is the big surprise here, a sound well removed from the strum and croon of the flipside, which made more sense once we discovered it was a cover of another aQ fave, Martial Canterel, that band's synthy cold wave reimagined sans synth, the resulting sound a strummy eighties style jangle pop / new wave hybrid, it translates surprisingly well, and it's easy to imagine CoY playing that sort of stuff all the time, but CoY's dour industrialisms definitely seep into the sound, which leads to the kick ass final stretch, a seriously heavy epic coda.
Comes with a download coupon as well.
Record number three from this Italian noise rock / stoner doom power trio, and weirdly enough the first one of their records to get reviewed on the aQ list. Weird because these guys are amazing and are right up our (and presumably your) alley, a killer twisted hybrid of classic Sabbathy metal and more modern noise rock, downtuned Neurosis-y sludge and spaced out psychedelic dronemetal, a la countrymen Ufomammut. Opener "Bardo Thodol" starts out with a riff that's a dead ringer for Sleep, of course these guys add some chanted monk-like vocals, the vibe droned out and psychedelic, and when the rest of the band finally kick in, the sound is EPIC, massive, and heavy as fuck, a crushing mathy doom sludge dirge, the vocals alternating between a monstrous bellow and a wild feral shriek, the churning riffage and damaged drum pound laced with a surprising amount of melody, and all sorts of strange sounds in the background, that sound like bells and singing and other mysterious field recordings, which are apparently actual recordings of Italian funeral marches, super dramatic, especially when the band cuts out completely, leaving just the mournful wail of distant horns, draped over a strange hushed soundscape of backwards drones and muted muddied effects, the band slowly building back up again, and launching anew into another onslaught of pound and pummel, of soaring metallic heaviness.
The rest of the record unwinds in a similar fashion, the lumbering doomic heaviness tempered with long stretches of vocal drones, of spidery psychedelia, bursts of spazzed out math metal, of grinding noise rock frenzies, finishing off with the epic 16 minute two part closer, the first part of which is a gorgeous stretch of ambient minimalism, all tinkling melodies, barely there rhythms, distant swells, soft squalls of psychedelic guitar, swirling drones, and a deep rumbling buzz, that slowly builds into the second part, a feedback drenched, stop start noise rock blow out, soaring synths over crushing crashing chords, delirious drum pound and wild howled vox, a weirdly tripped out abstract psychedelic finale.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Mastodon is on the cover, talking up their new opus The Hunter. Also this ish: Dimmu Borgir, Yob, Today Is The Day, The Gates Of Slumber, Origin, Testament, 40 Watt Sun, Anthrax, a special report on "Neofolk", and plenty more. This month's Hall Of Fame album induction: Operation Mindcrime by Queensryche!!! And the usual ton of reviews, including (why didn't we think of this) one where they review Barn Owl, Weird Owl, and Weird Al Yankovic all together at once! Good stuff.
Out of all the classic New Age artists, the one that gets a definite pass around here is Deuter. Though many of his later records (Nada Himalaya excluded) venture into the cheesier areas of the new age genre, his early records are great examples of German kosmiche music and are just as good as Popol Vuh, Cluster and Agitation Free. For instance, Aum, which we just got in to list for the first time (though it's not a new reissue). Aum was recorded in 1972 and released a year after his debut record, D. While D was more about tape effects and studio experiments, Aum is his first obvious venture into a more spiritually based musical practice. Sounds of storms and birds, guitars and flutes open up the disc in what could be a track by South American psych-folk groups Satwa or Congregacion (or even Citay or The Alps!). But the following tracks venture into a quiet but pensive meditation of tablas, and warbling bass, simmering sitar drones and subtle chanting. The track "Sattwa" is a sitar and piano interaction while "Surat Shabda" is a trance-y exploration using ethnic percussion instruments. But the longest and prettiest track is "Susani", an eight minute delayed electric guitar excursion around a few rhythmically repeating chords over low minor key vocal drones and far off ocean swells that burn off into a fading hum. It's definitely one of those limbo records, mining a deeper territory of minimalist composition with psychedelic effects that would eventually be marketed as New Age. But this is long before that genre got ruined, and any fan of the bands mentioned above should check this out for sure!
Another clutch of lo-fi rockabilly R&B grime jams from Dirty Beaches, a handful of tracks recorded at the same time as Badlands, his recent full length, here presented as one half of a split with previously-unknown-to-us Ela Orleans. The Dirty Beaches tracks, do in fact sound like they could have been included on Badlands, although according to Mr. DB himself they just didn't fit the flow of the album, but they work pretty well here, the opener being about the most rocking track we've heard from DB, still swirly and washed out, the vocals a snarly reverby Elvis-y croon, but more propulsive, the rest of the record more moody and murky and slithery, with woozy spidery melodies, the vibe hazy and druggy, like Badlands, a sort of experimental avant take on classic fifties rock and RnB, until the final track, which like the opener is another odd sonic duck, a cool shuffling, skittery psychedelic groove, that sounds downright krautrocky!
Not sure if Ela Orleans is a person or a group, but he/they are a pretty good match for Dirty Beaches, beginning with a brooding bit of echo drenched piano, the sound quickly shifts into a more swirly reverby exotica, a distinctly Ducktails vibe, a sort of dreamy easy listening, but a bit darker and more FX drenched, the vocals dreamy and passionate, feeling a little Animal Collective here and there. As the record progresses, the sound grows wilder and more psychedelic, the sound collaged and blurry and a bit dizzyingly tripped out, while somehow remaining surprisingly catchy.
Both sides of the split sound like lost documents of groups out of time, as if each set of songs was some skewed glance back at an alternate sonic past, the sounds here both modern and timeless. Cool stuff for sure.
Like other releases on Night People, striking one panel, two colored silkscreened jacket/insert, which along with the record is housed in a plastic outer sleeve.
So, maybe you're like us, we get curious when we learn about a reissue of some obscure metal band we'd never heard of before, especially if they're from, say, Eastern Europe, and have a cool album cover/motto like this one does ("Dragon music of Prague / Mystic metal" it says on the cover, below a painting of a bug-eyed Oriental dragon). But, even then, we don't expect it to be anything THAT great, just, well, a curiosity. But, turns out that late '80s/early '90s Czechoslovakian band Drakar are more than a mere Iron Curtain metal novelty, they're actually pretty good, this is a legit contender, on par with much better-known Western metal classics, seriously. Ask anyone (who has heard it). And yeah it's a bit weird, too!
This release is a reissue of their debut album from 1990, two versions of it actually (hence the two discs), one in Czech, the other an English-language version. Despite the year, this isn't generic thrash or speed metal, though it is often speedy - and it's certainly not death metal or black metal, either, though fans of Root and Master's Hammer might well enjoy it. Drakar have obviously got '80s (and '70s) classic, melodic heavy metal roots, sounding even a bit like Thin Lizzy at times, but also incorporate unexpected usage of sampling; collages of commercial radio broadcasts and snatches of classical music and the like are woven in here and there. Also especially of note are the whining, wailing guitars. The guitar work is awesome, though they don't let the shred get in the way of the songs, it's just one element, likewise with the chunky riffs and gruff, sneering, sometimes soaring, vocals.
Speaking of vocals, the stand out song might be the one where they seem the silliest, on "Crazy Boy", the title/chorus being in English, in both versions. Can't get the way he sings "crazeee boohoy" out of our heads. It's a bit funny, yes, of course we like it 'cause of that, and even the mostly-non-metal-inclined among us here at AQ found this interesting/amusing as well. But that song, and the rest of the record, are also worthy 'cause the melodies are strong, and the harmonies are plentiful and lovely.
Ok, probably that's enough, we've made it clear this is quite recommended, and also it's limited to 500 copies, and our suppliers are all out already... when we contacted the label in Sweden to get some to list, they were down to their last 25! We got a bunch of those from them, but this handful will be gone soon, and then it doesn't look like we'll be able to get any more, so be warned.
Lovingly packaged by I Hate Records, the thick cd booklet including lyrics, liner notes about the band, and old photos. Also the cd contains a video clip for one of the songs, that you can watch on your komputoor.
We've mentioned it before, but we love it when people we know make amazing records, and we're then available to share them with all of you. Such is the case with this, the oddly monikered Elfmilk, the project of aQ customer/pal Eddie, who hails from Mexico, and who is solely responsible for the gorgeous sounds to be found on Extragalactic Distance, a collection of abstract ambience, deep drones, and experimental rhythmic minimalism.
Beginning with the brief minute long intro "Spiral", a smoldering bit of crumbling distorted piano, and shimmering overtone rich drift, Elfmilk reveals itself as something more raw and immediate than much of the ambient/drone/electronic music we hear. It's super well crafted, and lush and lovely, but it's still raw, and rough around the edges, which makes the sounds more warm, the vibe more human and organic, instead of sounds, these feel like songs, long tones shimmer and undulate, melodies seem to slowly evaporate into a haze of high end whir, scattered throughout are fragmented rhythms, dubby and abstract, disembodied pulses and ghostly beats, a sort of electrokrautrock that seems to be gradually coming apart, like some old space station left in orbit, the various pieces drifting off into the ether, some into the heart of the sun, some into the cold black void, here liquid squelches demarcate loose swirling melodic tangles, and thick swells of feedback wreathed buzz, acoustic guitars let loose spare notes, that flutter like leaves falling from trees, or mysterious detritus floating through space.
In a few places, the sounds go haywire, explosive bursts of almost jungle like rhythms, or exploding firecrackers woven into frantic beats, but even then the sounds surrounding these blasts are warm and whirling and sweetly soothing, while elsewhere, the sounds slip into dubby Portishead like low slung downtempo grooves, culminating in the 14+ minute epic "Obsidian", a constantly shifting soundscape that plays out like a soundtrack to some mysterious art film, swirling electronics, lush textures, fractured effects, pulsing synths, the sound seeming to shift ever minute or two, finishing off with a stretch of grinding downtuned lo-fi dirgery, which leads directly into the closing number, a fantastically blissed out sprawl of super distorted melodies, all hazy and spacey and dreamlike, but wrapped in crunchy buzz and hissy static, which eventually slips away, leaving lush lustrous sonic swells, lovely hushed computer vox and what sounds like field recording, all woven into a softly undulating bit of dreamlike drift.
Fantastic stuff. Highly recommended.
First off, this is a super fucking limited cd-r, produced in the fog-laden confines of Manila, California by the one and only Brian Pyle. This dude is one of characters in the Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings, with Ensemble Economique being the moniker he's chosen for his solo work. The last couple of Ensemble Economique albums - especially the Psychical lp recorded for Not Not Fun - had been veering from a home-grown psychedelic improvisational splatter and into wonderfully off-kilter takes on cinematic melodrama. Psychical was clearly hedging towards the VHS-horror / John Carpenter vernacular, but here Pyle's jumping into dark-synth croon territory as he's molding sparse songs out of his morass of loops, witch house rhythmic skitter, and occasional arcs of luminous downer guitar tones. What's more is that Pyle SINGS throughout the album - not the reverb-soaked sustained caterwaul he would utter in the Weirdos, but more of a late-nite stoned balladeering that could have infected Pyle's brain from too many Miami Vice re-runs. One could imagine this to be Brian Pyle's ode to that show's incidental music - not the Don Johnson chase scene frenzy, but the crying tone-bent guitar excursions that would peg a scene's cinematic tragedy. Bits of dialogue splattered with delay tricks and synth nodes flash with neon intensity against Pyle's naked electronica, all of which was recorded in a marathon session on one day in the summer of 2011. It's pretty dang amazing actually, it even had folks coming up from the back room to find out what the heck was playing, which is always a good sign.
We're probably the only source for these discs... and who knows if more can be procured!
Latest full length (#3) from this US black metal band, who hail from deep in the woods of Maine, and whose lyrical focus seems to be nature, and man's eternal struggle to find his place in it. In fact, according to Encyclopedia Metallium, the band describe their music as "North Appalachian Heathen Black Folk Metal" and firmly believe in "returning the world to a pre-Christian time", and they include a quote in the liner notes from Henry David Thoureau from his The Maine Woods. And sonically, it's probably just what you might imagine, epic and sprawling and melodic, the songs majestic and multi-parted, the guitars buzzy and blackened, but just as likely to unfurl glorious spiraling melodies, to soar and shimmer, the band building their expansive folk metalscapes gradually, the slow build adding a post rock element to the sound that only makes it that much more epic. One thing they do that's super distinctive is occasionally during the folky acoustic bits, is to have the drummer play crazy beats, it's a strange, but very appealing hybrid, flurries of double kick blast beats beneath otherwise darkly contemplative folk music. But the core of their sound is epic black buzz, and these guys definitely are masters, weaving all manner of mournful melody into these gorgeous expanses of minor key black buzz, just check out "Banished" about 4 minutes in, the song shifts and becomes impossibly catchy and melodic, the harmonized leads so perfect, and most of the tracks feature some sort of lead guitar, which definitely adds a super melodic element to the otherwise often quite grim and black proceedings.
For a folk metal band, FoR do seem to keep their metal and folk separate for the most part, leaving the acoustic guitars and folky flutter, for intros and interludes, they do occasionally deftly weave some of that folkiness into their black buzz, but unlike lots of cheesy folk metal bands, FoR make that hybrid just add more power and energy and emotion to the sound, nothing cheesy about it at all. There are definitely shades of Seidr, Drudkh, Agalloch, Wolves In The Throne Room, Wodensthrone and other nature minded black metal hordes, but FoR definitely make this sound their own, an epic powerful melodic sonic majesty that few bands could hope to match. WAY recommended.
First we've heard from this American black metal outfit, and it's a doozy, two 12+ minute tracks of epic, progged out, subtly symphonic, synth laden black buzz, that melds classic old school Scandinavian style BM with more modern post black metalisms, fans of groups like Ash Borer, Fell Voices and even Wolves In The Throne Room will find much to dig here. The first side, "Sleepmaker", is a tangled furious relentless sprawl of black metal, liberally infused with distinctly un-black metal like melodies, giving some of the parts a post rock vibe, but the buzz and blast really never lets up, keeping even the post rockier bits plenty blackened, the sound soaring and epic, slipping easily from gnarled churn to frantic majestic blast and back again. There are LOTS of parts, weird psychedelic mathy workouts, woozy tripped out almost folky interludes, there even seems to be some piano in there (in addition to the swirling synths that seem to subtly underpin the whole record), and some grinding blackened noise rock, but all woven into something definitely black metal, which we would imagine where the band name comes in, beating true grim black metalheads to the punch by already declaring themselves False. But this stuff is anything but...
The second track/side starts out more waltzy, but quickly slips back into a similarly gnarled black expanse, the vibe somehow even more epic than the A side, the haunting descending melodies, the weirdly epic arrangements, all very trance like and mesmerizing, there's also some chugging dirgey doom / sludge (which makes sense as this was released on the label run by Louisiana heavies Thou), but those creeping tarpit crawls quickly splinter into frenzied mathed out black metal tangles, and then sometimes soaring swirling atmospheric post black metal blowouts. Another group to add to the ever expanding pantheon of elite USBM bands pushing the boundaries of the sound, while remaining true to the music's heritage.
180 gram lp, in super thick, super striking jackets, with a cool printed insert with lyrics.
The wonderful flood of Japanese '70s psych rock reissues continues, something those folks who have yet to hear these previously hard-to-find gems (many "popularized" by megafan Julian Cope in his Japrocksampler book) can be quite glad of. The item under consideration here, a compact disc reissue of the final, 1977 release by hippie space travellers Far East Family Band, is another nifty one, though we'd probably recommend the other, earlier FEFB albums before this if you don't have those already. Fans looking to complete their collections, though, won't be disappointed - even though by this point keyboardist Kitaro had left the family / band (for eventual New Age stardom), on Tenkujin FEFB were still quite potent at making tripped out, synth-laden, New Age friendly psych. In other words still the kind of band where the same guy credited with operating a pile of synthesizers (Teisco 100F, Hillwood SY 1800, Combo, Basky, Rockyboard, Korg 700S, Mellotron, Yamaha, Solina String Ensemble) also plays the bamboo flute. And then there's all the guitars and other things as well that are part of their big wash of psychedelic sound.
The title track, with a driving, almost disco beat, and echoey, dubby FX, would fit in with a lot of late '70s kosmic krautrock, the Ashra, Michael Rother sort of stuff, heck it sound a bit like some bands today too, we're thinking Jonas Reinhardt and Maserati. Lots of burbling electronics and shimmering synth over propulsive percussion. FEFB's usual Pink Floydisms certainly come to the fore too, on the blissful, balladic likes of "Timeless Phase" and elsewhere... Make that blissful AND bombastic, the latter especially on the album-ending instrumental "Ascension".
Numbered, limited edition reissue in the usual Phoenix wallet sleeve.
Damn, the Numero Group does it again! At this point we don't need to go on about what an amazing and trusted label NG is. As their Eccentric Soul, Cult Cargo, and Wayfaring Stranger series continue to offer up so much amazing music that might otherwise have gone unheard.
Gathering dust in some garage for the last three decades due to the worst side of the music industry, this deep hitting, politically charged soul record finally gets to see the light of day. Father's Children were from the nations capitol, and took the influence of groups like the Stylistics, the Delfonics and the Dramatics and doused those sounds with fiery social consciousness and a slow burning psychedelic undertone. Like early Earth Wind & Fire, crossed with Curtis Mayfield's less funk and more full on deep soul moments. It's a record that really encompasses the most lasting and satisfying sides of '70s soul. The kind of record you can imagine inspiring folks like Erykah Badu, The Roots, Common, and Lauryn Hill.
As always packed with endless love and care featuring amazing photos and the story of the group's history.
Perhaps you're familiar with Zeitkratzer, the classically trained mavericks from Germany who have taken it upon themselves to produce orchestral arrangements of notorious pieces from scabrous noise musicians, notably Whitehouse, John Duncan, Keiji Haino, Zbigniew Karkowski, and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. The ensemble has also ventured into arrangements of austere electronica (e.g. Carsten Nicolai and Terre Thaemlitz) and revisiting the classic avant-garde pieces from Alvin Lucier, John Cage, and Xenakis. Zeitkratzer's mastermind is the pianist Reinhold Friedl, who embraces the prepared model for the piano that Cage and company presented more than a half-century ago. In the liner notes here, Friedl offers plenty of examples of techniques developed to produce sound from various objects manipulating the strings inside the piano - e-bows, fishing line, violin bows, rubber balls, and small motors. Through his own exploration of the prepared piano, he really attempts to create a vast orchestra of sounds which can be automated and / or perpepuated through extended passages. Side A is a very dynamic piece with all sorts of sonic activity erupting from within Friedl's piano, described by the man himself as his "full orchestra" with "low vibrations, bottleneck techniques, piping backgrounds, and scratching." It is an intense exploration of dissonant crashes, razor slashed glissandos, and agitated acoustic noise. Side two begins with a rasping acoustic drone slowly building and mutating through multiple strings driven by e-bows and springs. The unholy racket that follows is a variation on the first side with scraped metal and bellowing more in keeping with a Z'ev action of junkyard gamelan follows the drone stasis. All of these demonic howls and squeals answer a whole lot of questions as to how Zeitkratzer was able to render their orchestrations of Metal Machine Music and the Whitehouse pieces in particular! Oh yeah, the album was cut at 45rpm, so you know we played this at 33, where it sounds all the blacker. Thanks, Hronir!
FYI we can also get this on cd, not in stock at the moment though.
Record number two from these Texas teens, whose debut was a big favorite with some aQ-ers (even though it never made it onto the aQ list), and this record starts up right where the last one left off. A dizzying collection of nineties beholden psychedelic pop, that while having much in common with the current crop of garage poppers, definitely has it's own thing going on, owing as much to the early years of Slumberland and classic C86 pop bands as it does to the usual suspects.
The guitars jangle and crunch, slither and buzz, and occasionally twang, the bass is thick and distorted and has a definite Joy Division vibe, the drums pound and crash, the sound is raw and brash fuzzy and frenetic, the vocals laid back and buried in the mix. Everything is echo drenched and softly reverbed, the band pounding away, simple two and three chord jams that are totally hooky and hypnotic, dreamy and a little bit druggy. Folks into all things fuzzy and jangly and garage-y with lots of oooh's and aaah's will go nuts, especially if you have a soft spot for classic nineties indie pop, which this stuff tends towards way more than modern retro garage whatever, sounding like it could be some weird K Records cassette, or Slumberland demo that had been sitting in a drawer for decades. Awesome.
Now reissued on vinyl, John "James Bond" Barry's score to this ill-fated Bruce Lee Kung Fu flick. You know, the one were he takes on Chuck Norris. Probably best known as the movie that was shelved when Bruce Lee died. Finally released in 1978 with someone else filling in for Lee, they kept a handful of the original scenes with Lee as a selling point for what would otherwise have been a commercially unsucessful movie. And the soundtrack also helps! The music is classic Barry, alternately soaring and triumphant, tense and suspenseful. Also features an awesome six minute track called "Stick Fight" which is just that, six minutes of fight sounds complete with Lee's legendary vocalisations! Good stuff, up there with Lalo Schifrin's soundtrack to Enter The Dragon.
"...defunctionalized, demagnetized, damaged, decayed, modified, looped, wet, washed, dried, baked, scratched, perforated, painted, cut, and digitized..." So, reads the aptly miniminalist liner notes for Richard Garet's haunted piece of white noise hypnosis. Whether these actions map out the process that Garet used in accumulating the ghostly residues from old tapes or if these are fictionalized descriptions of some other method of composing, it really doesn't matter as Garet's long form work amplifies the hiss from all of Basinski's work, flattens all of the tactile static from Phillip Jeck, and rarifies Chop Shop's seering noise into an ethereal chorale. A very taut line of static buzzes throughout this 51 minute piece with bursts of electromagnetic glitches and radiowave ephemera rupturing from that stream of what reads simultaneously as nervous electricity, seismic data collection, and neural brain plugs. Where the beginning half of the album flickers with eeirily beautiful washes of drones that could be the compacted blur of a female voice, something far more ominous grows from a distant rumble to an industrial roar towards the second half of the record, all the while that stream of a vibrating electrons flutters steadily onward. Very much on par with anything from Joe Colley and Jason Kahn, as an excellent piece of electro-acoustic droning and soft-noise blossoming. Limited to a mere 300 copies.
Brand new single from these Seattle goth poppers and it's a pretty fantastic slab of blown out minor key dour pop bliss. The A side is all dirgey and fuzzy, the sound super distorted and in-the-red, sounding like some sort of Cure / Jesus And Mary Chain hybrid, hazy dreamy vocals drifting over wistful minor key guitar melodies, and a murky distorted rhythm, there's a killer hook hidden in there too. But it's the B side we're a bit obsessed with, a dubby, druggy, tripped out, gothy doomy ballad, all super reverbed plink plonk piano, the vocals dramatic and crooning, the whole vibe dark and hazy and brooding, the sound remaining weirdly raw and lo-fi and blown out, which makes the record SOUND like those old faded photographs LOOK, washed out and dreamily blurry, at times it almost sounds like Interpol slowed way down and dirtied way up.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
What may unfortunately be a one-off project, The Greys are (were?) a trio featuring Jed Bindeman, Barbara Kinzle, and Birch Cooper. Bindeman is a man-about-town in Portland, Oregon, having his avant-rock fingers in Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Operative, and Jackie-O Motherfucker; while Kinzle and Cooper had been recording as the heavy-dream-pop duo The Slaves. Unfortunately, Kinzle and Cooper broke off their romantic relationship, leading to the likelihood that their creative relationship may have also terminated. Meaning that The Greys (and The Slaves for that matter) may be just a brilliant flash of dissonant beauty which will offer the world this one and only recording. In The Greys, Kinzle and Cooper build off what they had done in The Slaves with those oceanic, engulfing song-drifts and crank that through a fucking huge wall of noise. On the first side of this tape, if Bindeman is supposed to be behind the drumkit, he's clearly been knocked on the floor by the heavy-as-fuck guitar churn that is somewhere between the industrial sludge of early Skullflower or Terminal Cheesecake and the accelerant buzz of Cascadian black metal. We suspect that Bindeman is actually adding to the frenzy of guitars. Kinzle's voice does flicker through the overblown mix, but it's hardly the ethereal beauty one hears from The Slaves. Here, she's uttering more of a shrieking caterwaul to complement the torrent of discordant noise. Side two opens with something closer to an unhinged Nadja with a slow-crawling riff that blisters with noise, distortion, and multiple lines of feedback squalor rising from below. Here, Bindeman is definitely heard bashing away at his kit, but even so, he's way buried in the mix, which has been recorded Les Rallizes Denudes style, with just a mic in a room, all oversaturated and overdriven. Seriously, SOMEBODY has got to convince this band to continue recording and making more of this awesome soft-doom-noise-blur-rock. Yup, this tape is pretty limited, too.
Just as ghostly and mystical as her music is, so is the availability of Grouper's records. One moment they're here, but before you can even blink they're out of print. Lately Liz Harris (Grouper) has been releasing her own recordings, but not pressing that many of them when she does. We know she doesn't do so out of a desire to keep things 'limited' but instead it's her humble nature which tends to keep her scope small, even when the truth is there are thousands of people across the globe who have become huge fans of her dreamlike sounds.
The first pressing of these two new Grouper lp's "A I A: Alien Observer" and "A I A: Dream Loss" went out of print so quickly we weren't even able to review them. The thing about these small pressings that bother us is that the only folks really winning, are the eBay speculators selling copies for ridiculous amounts, none of that money ends up in Grouper's hands. So we do hope that in the future she (and the labels she works with) will start pressing more copies as she is the one who deserves to reap the reward of her beautiful creation.
OK, now that our rant is out of the way, we should let you know that although this is a repressing we're not sure how many, if any, more of these we're going to be able to get. What we got, So before we start going on and on about the music you probably should just add this to your cart asap to better your chances of actually ending up with these.
Now on to what really matters - the music on these records. We've gushed and gushed about Grouper so much in the past, and we're going to do it once again because these lp's are utterly gorgeous! While Dragging A Dead Dear, found her starting to really embrace the idea of songs, we love how these lp's blur that focus once again. They're much more about mood, soft focus, hazy dreams, and ethereal exploration. Her voice swirling in and out, and every sound and tone she uses and manipulates with such a mastered ease. We've been listening to these records late at night and early in the morning and whenever we need to come down from the craziness of the world around us. Somehow whenever we play these lp's, everything else just fades away and for a little while all that matters is the soft narcotic rush we feel as the records spin. We can't imagine only getting one of these, as they really do work as companion pieces. Totally beautiful! And sadly, AGAIN, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!!
Just as ghostly and mystical as her music is, so is the availability of Grouper's records. One moment they're here, but before you can even blink they're out of print. Lately Liz Harris (Grouper) has been releasing her own recordings, but not pressing that many of them when she does. We know she doesn't do so out of a desire to keep things 'limited' but instead it's her humble nature which tends to keep her scope small, even when the truth is there are thousands of people across the globe who have become huge fans of her dreamlike sounds.
The first pressing of these two new Grouper lp's "A I A: Alien Observer" and "A I A: Dream Loss" went out of print so quickly we weren't even able to review them. The thing about these small pressings that bother us is that the only folks really winning, are the eBay speculators selling copies for ridiculous amounts, none of that money ends up in Grouper's hands. So we do hope that in the future she (and the labels she works with) will start pressing more copies as she is the one who deserves to reap the reward of her beautiful creation.
OK, now that our rant is out of the way, we should let you know that although this is a repressing we're not sure how many, if any, more of these we're going to be able to get. What we got, So before we start going on and on about the music you probably should just add this to your cart asap to better your chances of actually ending up with these.
Now on to what really matters - the music on these records. We've gushed and gushed about Grouper so much in the past, and we're going to do it once again because these lp's are utterly gorgeous! While Dragging A Dead Dear, found her starting to really embrace the idea of songs, we love how these lp's blur that focus once again. They're much more about mood, soft focus, hazy dreams, and ethereal exploration. Her voice swirling in and out, and every sound and tone she uses and manipulates with such a mastered ease. We've been listening to these records late at night and early in the morning and whenever we need to come down from the craziness of the world around us. Somehow whenever we play these lp's, everything else just fades away and for a little while all that matters is the soft narcotic rush we feel as the records spin. We can't imagine only getting one of these, as they really do work as companion pieces. Totally beautiful! And sadly, AGAIN, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!!
The debut by Hercules & Love Affair back in 2008 was an absolute game changer. Not since Daft Punk's Discovery had a dance record moved so many people into pure ecstasy. It helped usher in a new generation's appreciation of the magic that disco and house are capable of conjuring up. But most of all it transcended any genre, and became one of those records that just about any fan of good music would end up blasting nonstop.
So how do you follow up a debut as amazing as that? You take your time! No doubt Andrew Butler, the mastermind behind Hercules & Love Affair understood the kind of pressure riding on his sophomore outing, and he was smart not to rush it but instead take his time in crafting a new batch of songs. That's one of the things that often gets overlooked with Hercules & Love Affair, is that Andy Butler is an excellent songwriter. Sure he has immaculate and obscure taste in vintage disco, house, and techno but under all of that you can tell he is a student of good songs. The tracks on Blue Songs all carry an emotional weight, and it's the music that leads those emotions to moments of ecstatic release, and energizing empowerment.
A lot of the attention of the first Hercules album was due to the vocals that Antony contributed to several tracks, but he doesn't make an appearance on this outing. And in a way we're actually happy about that, not that we don't love those tracks with Antony, they were amazing, but it's nice for the world to see that Hercules can stand on their own feet and no matter who they collaborate with they are able to reach amazing heights together. This time out Kele Okereke, of Bloc Party fame lends his voice on a few of these tracks with awesome results. In recent years Kele has publicly embraced his sexuality and this seems like such the perfect vehicle to allow him to sing on dance minded tracks with a pride and freedom he's been yearning for. On other tracks Hercules members Kim Ann Foxman and Nomi take the mic with dynamic flare, and Mr. Butler sings some as well.
Blue Songs is a grower, and with each listen we get more and more into its grooves. No sophomore slump here, this is another great album!
We're happy we waited for this domestic release as it includes three bonus tracks as well as an entire extra disc of remixes of a couple songs from the album (cd version only).
It's a bleak world for HTRK, as tragedy and death has surrounded this outfit which has only been around for a couple of years. In 2010, the band's bassist Sean Stewart committed suicide and the producer of their haunted album Marry Me Tonight, Rowland S. Howard died of cancer a year earlier. All of these elements make a connection to The Birthday Party almost inevitable, especially given their historical mirroring in relocation from Melbourne to Berlin and the manifestation of the id through a very raw sound. But where The Birthday Party was an expression of violence, HTRK are in constant search of desire, occasionally finding it only to have it frustratingly fizzle out before anything ecstatic can be achieved. As a result, HTRK's sensual bleariness is in an emotional feedback loop that never can spiral beyond the longing for sex, love, a relationship, etc, without anything ever attained. HTRK's existential portraits of being trapped by one's own desires are in direct opposition to the hedonism found in most electronica. Here on Work (Work, Work), the band parallels some of the horror-affected reverberation of the flash-in-the-pan Witch House crowd; but instead of drawing on unremembered memories of the forgotten '80s, HTRK has profound pain to draw upon... and they want their audience to feel that too.
The band had been shifting their sound even before Stewart's death, with a greater reliance on electronics and subharmonic tones girding the spindly guitar work from Nigel Yang and the self-composed breathiness of Jonnine Standish. They were moving away from the rock trio and towards a miasma of voice, guitar, bass, and electronics with boundaries between these sounds far more permeable. The closest references to HTRK's sound would be Ike Yard and Dome, although HTRK are much more interested in building tension with their teasing melodicism through their droning electronics. The first track on the album features a weird collage that Stewart had made of late nite TV sex ads in Berlin amidst slow-motion sighs caught in a half-melodic drone and crawling drum machine pulse. "Eat Yr Heart" ramps a quarter-speed Giorgio Moroder sequence above heroin paced rhythm with Jonnine crooning a sultry melody counterpointed by breathy exhalations. Sexually charged yes, but more of a downward spiral into dejection rather than release. "Poison" is more in keeping with the bass and guitar structures found on Marry Me Tonight, with Sean Stewart's bass clearly present next to the twilight flickering drone-riffs from Yang. "Body Double" overhauls Suicide's classic sound of metallic synth / drum interplay with undulating melodies that stretch into a magnificent coda of cascading melancholy for what amounts to a masterful album. Highly recommended.
Dan Burke has presented a considerable number of facades for Illusion Of Safety over the past 25 years, with sublimated horror, brain-melting minimalism, crushed noise, and disjointed rhythms filtering through a post-industrial wasteland of sound. So, it's no surprise that his performance at the 2008 No Fun Fest touched on some of the many landmarks that Illusion Of Safety has carved out in its distinguished history, while making plenty of other detours at the same time. The tape opens with a quintessential Illusion Of Safety collage of scattershot media samples punctured by short extracts of blast beats and frenzied riffage that fragments and distorts into empty passages marked by tactile creaks, wooden sighs, and strange squishing sounds. Dense low-end throbbings and noxious rumbles quickly accelerate through these suspended concrete elements, snapping to a halt with a razor sharp crescendo, offering forth another set of field recordings and electronic squiggling. Burke continues along a similar strategy, revealing a wide array of peculiar sonic juxtapositions for one of his most decentered compositions. Side two moves from a horror soundtrack vernacular of wind-up toy twinklings smeared out of existence through grey flecks of shortwave crackle and plenty of Derbyshire-ish sci-fi gloop. Later on, an ominous drone from a lurking bass tone flashes a radiant glow and overlapping guitar sourced forms - growing rhizomatically in all sorts of complex directions and digitalized abstractions. Perhaps the closest that Burke has taken his work to the surreal horror collage of Nurse With Wound, irr. app. (ext.), and HNAS. Limited to 100 copies.
Record number two from these Florida fuzz poppers, their first for Sub Pop subsidiary Hardly Art, and it's brimming with sunshiney jangle and fuzzy caffeinated glammy teenage power pop. These guys take classic sixties garage rock, and filter it through the current crop of retro garage rock, but unlike the twisted sonic lysergy and noisy reverbery of their sonic brethren, these guys keep it simple, their sound lightly psychedelic, heavily sundazed, a little bit dreamily wasted, heavy on the jangle and crunch, the big choruses, the sing alongs, lots of ooooh's and aaaaah's, the drums are simple but propulsive, and these guys definitely know their way around a hook, there's a Ramones vibe too, but it's more Ramones via the Beach Boys maybe, and there are occasional bits of sonic fuckery, a little bit of cool reverbed vocals now and again, but Jacuzzi Boys are way more concerned with whipping up some fun, sunny, beach pop bliss, and they pretty much nail it. Way recommended for fans of Ganglians, the Drums, Crocodiles, Jaill, Kids On A Crime Spree, the Soft Pack and other similarly minded pop combos.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Long time readers of the aQ list no doubt remember Tetuzi Akiyama's Don't Forget To Boogie record, ostensibly, as the title suggests, a boogie rock record, but in reality, a twisted droned out hypnotic psychedelic minimal psych record, with the boogie elements stripped down to a single riff, then drenched in distortion and repeated over and over and over, creating super mesmerizing fields of layered repetition a la Reich or Riley, it quickly became a bigtime aQ favorite.
This debut lp from one man 'boogie' outfit King Blood, approaches boogie rock in a similarly oblique fashion, taking those boogie riffs and fucking them up big time. Not quite as minimal as Akiyama's opus, Eyewash Silver adds drums, and what sounds like multiple layers of guitars, not to mention WAY more distortion, a gloriously blown out chunk of experimental abstract minimal boogienoise weirdness.
Opener "Black Money" is probably the most traditionally song-y, a loping lumbering midtempo groove, a main riff locked tight and looped over a similarly tight barely there rhythm, but then all around it, guitars howl and grind, churn and crunch, loads of distortion and tangled melodies, swirling clouds of corrosive sound wrapped around that fantastically incessant groove, gradually growing more and more explosive, before the noise guitars nearly swallow up the boogie riff completely.
"End Of A Primitive" sounds like a Stooges sample dipped in distortion and left outside to crumble and decay before being brought back in and recorded onto some 20 year old 2" tape that had been stored in a wet basement. Another groovy riff, multiple guitar lines, the song gradually shifting, but so gradually, it's easy to get totally mesmerized. "Grimhaven" and "Grimhaven (A Return)" are all twang flecked dirge, like an echo drenched Earth, via the desert rock of Scenic, but again way more minimal, a single riff, a single part, looped and locked and totally hypnotic, while much of the melody is supplied by the bassline which is fluid and woozy, drifting beneath the song's core hypnodirge.
"Poison In Jest" is the killer here, super short at 2+ minutes, but an insanely super distorted chunk of garage dirge minimalism, Stooges riff and about ten tons of crumbling super blown out distortion.
The other songs follow a similar path, taking simple riffs and stretching them way out, adding layer after layer of thrum and howl and fuzz and buzz, occasionally letting the sounds slip into full of in-the-red freakout, but just as often, keeping them just this side of total chaos, the result, a gloriously hypnotic bit of riffy mesmer.
SUPER LIMITED, ONLY 100 COPIES, we got 12 or 13, and those are all we'll ever get. Way recommended for folks into droney, dirgey, hypnotic heaviness, which should most definitely be most of you!
Not sure if you're a gore hound, horror movie obsessive or exploitation freek, but odds are, if you are, then like us, you spent a good chunk of your free time, 10 or 12 years ago trying to track down a copy of the film Nekromantik. The film itself wasn't all that great, the highlights being the female fucking a corpse with a condom covered screwdriver and the testicles in the fridge scenes. Eww. And at the time, we were so obsessed with the gross out factor and the blurred nudity that we barely even noticed the soundtrack. So here it is, over a decade later, and surprisingly enough, the soundtrack is really cool. And holds up quite well on its own. Super freaky instrumental squeals that ends with what can only be the sounds of a dead limb being hacked off, haunting almost atonal string quartet. like a slowed down, warped Balanescu Quartet, haunting Tom Waits-ish creepy clatter, with whining violing being transmitted through a crappy little transistor radio, with clanking slow motion rhythms, creepy underwater sound scapes of burbling and swooshing space sound effects, industrial buzz, with a distant mournful melody, all scratchy played over the top and even occasional full on synth heavy Goblin horrorscapes. Definitely cool stuff!
Release number two of gorgeous kosmische synth drift from this former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, whose previous release, a way too limited cassette on Root Strata, had most of the folks here flipping out. Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, also performed at last year's On Land Festival here in SF, and amidst a pretty incredible lineup, managed, at least as many of us were concerned, to steal the show.
This new album plays like a single track, separated into movements, which is appropriate considering in some ways it's a modern reimagining of the classic seventies synth work of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and all the rest, and of course, the sounds of Le Revelateur will most definitely appeal to fans of other modern synth retro-revisionists, like Mist, Emeralds, Innercity, Oneohtrix Point Never et all, but there's something about Le Revelateur's sound that manages to elevate it above its sonic brethren, Tellier-Craig so adept at unfurling sounds and gradually building these epic, dreamlike celestial synthscapes, and the thing is, it's not all static tones, and long layered shimmer, no, the synths here are surprisingly active, emitting flurries of notes, glimmering squalls of psychedelic swirl, but those are all woven into these epic expanses of spaced out dreamdrone drift, the A side, an 18 minute epic, spends its first half drifting ethereally, before a pulsing synth rhythm finally surface, adding a bit of propulsion to the track, and transforming new age shimmer into swirling buzzing pulsating krautdrone bliss, the sound getting downright noisy near the end, the edges sharper and slightly more abrasive, only to then quickly dissipate in a gorgeous blissed out high end raga like coda.
The B side starts off with a whirling starfield of softly swirling notes, a blurry tangle of psychedelic synths, layered and textural, offering up brief flurries of soaring melody, getting darkly proggy and droney about halfway through, only to finish off with an epic sprawl of Sunroof! like upper register spacekraut raga, before finishing off with the comparatively more muted final track, which begins sounding a bit like the music from some seventies planetarium show, only to blossom into a gorgeously rhythmic stretch of percolating retro synthscapery, a pulsing futuristic soundworld that also builds and builds to a near psychedelic climax, before finally finishing off in a hazy cloud of soft focus synth swirl.
Released on the Gneiss Things label, run by Emeralds' Steve Hauschildt.
Latest from these blackened doomdrone soundscapers, once again demonstrating that these guys definitely don't let any sort of genre classification define what they do, cuz what they do here is let their krautrock freak flag fly, whipping up a gorgeous chunk of hazy, rhythmic psychedelia, a reinterpretation of a classic Popol Vuh jam (from 1976), which does indeed channel the same sort of brooding, blissy mesmer, a dreamy, dark dirge, hypnotic and hazy, spidery guitar melodies over simple spare propulsive drumming, all wreathed by distant synth shimmer, the female vocals adding an ethereal angelic vibe to the proceedings. The track explodes about halfway through in a little squall of blackened psychnoise, only to slip right back into it, albeit a bit louder and heavier, some seriously mesmerizing metallic shoegaze krautrock heaviness, that had us sort of wishing these guys sounded like this all the time.
But then the B side goes ahead and reminds us why, as cool as that would be, we would most definitely miss what these guys do already. And what they do here is, lay down some frantic buzzy black metal riffing, letting the riffs unfurl into long streaks of tangled melodies and layered lush blackdronebuzz. Howled vokills come in, and the sounds drifts ever closer to pure black metal, the tension in waiting for the song to kick in, the blasting beats, the galloping crush, but instead, a sort of liquid black drone surface from below, and begins to envelop the sounds, the whole track growing darker and more dense, until finally, inexplicably, the band introduce melancholy acoustic guitar, and what sounds like piano, changing the tenor of the song completely, the buzzing riff no longer defining the sound, but instead acting as a blurred shimmery backdrop for the creeping dirgey drift that's now at the forefront, the drums minimal and spare, the sound seeming to build once again for an inevitable black metal blow out, but instead, the song shifts and fades out an soft squall of hazy shimmer and slowly dissipating psychedelia.
Maybe the best stuff we've heard from these guys, which at this point is saying a LOT.
Gorgeous packaging too, a striking black on black 4 panel sleeve, includes a sticker and a download code. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
The debut from these UK noise poppers had to be one of the biggest surprises of last year, a killer collection of grungy, fuzzy pop, equal parts indie jangle, blown out heaviness and fuzzy garage rock, loads of hooks, plenty of oooh's and aaah's, it most definitely gets loads of play STILL, and "All Things This Way", the 'hit' of that record, is definitely still on heavy rotation with most of the pop kids we know.
So we were super excited about a new record, a new batch of perfect pop, of noisy garage pop gems, and heck, whattayaknow, that's just what we got. There have been some grumbles about the group's new softer sound, and yeah, some of the rough edges have been smoothed out, the vocals too, much more crooned, sorta what you might expect from a band with their second go 'round'. And actually, we think it definitely suits them. Just give opener "Tame The Sun" a listen, and odds are you'll be smitten, sweetly melodic jangle, dreamy vocals a killer hook, some rad guitar, not to mention a super strange but weirdly subtle stuttery tempo change that pops up now and again, it's pretty goddamn great. As is the rest of the record. No huge reinventions, no dramatic shifts in songwriting, but then that's not really what we were after anyway. The sound is different enough that it's not a total rehash, but similar enough that our hankering for a Nothing Hurts part 2 is more then fulfilled, and really all we were hoping for is another great indie rock noise pop record which is precisely what this is, and like the first, the more we listen, the better it gets, and the more obsessed we get with all of these songs. A new pop fave for sure!
Like the first record, fans of the Lemonheads and Weezer and Guided By Voices will be just as psyched on this as fans of Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Royal Baths and all the rest...
