And the 'Road goes ever on... You gotta hand it to Mark "The Shark" Shelton, 50-something-year old guitarist/vocalist/mastermind behind long-running underground American metal institution Manilla Road. His band, founded in 1977, has never really been popular, except maybe in Greece, but they're up to their 15th studio album now, and are the definition of "cult fave", getting namechecked nowadays all the time, whenever anything true, epic, and eccentric is under discussion in the realm of metal. Well, there's also the likes of Cirth Ungol and obscure Italians Dark Quarterer to reference, sure, but those bands aren't still around and cranking 'em out like the 'Road.
So, here's their latest, an album that surely exists for the love of all that's metal, heavy, epick, and weird, and for no other reason. We probably don't even need to really review it, 'cause a) we wouldn't expect anyone to START their Manilla Road collection/obsession with this album and b) the folks who would want to buy this really only need to know that it's out, and we've got it in stock!
But, still, some details... Once again, Shelton's distinctive, wavery nasal vocals are supplemented on some songs by the voice of 2nd singer Bryan "Hellroadie" Patrick. If you're a fan of Shelton's singing (and you kinda have to be, to like his band) then you'll be rooting for him throughout to really belt it out, "Hellroadie" step aside! Shelton's signature guitar shred, however, needs no assist. There's plenty of fine fretwork from him here, and lots of melody (Shelton seems to be going for a bit more of a catchy pop thing than you might expect, amidst all the doom and damnation, somehow). In fact, there's moments when we begin to think it would be cool if Shelton would sometime do an all-acoustic solo album, just him and his guitar and his worse-for-wear, weary voice. But that wouldn't be metal, which this most definitely is.
Also, unlike some other recent 'Road efforts, this isn't a concept album, and there's no multi-part epics, though it's still EPIC anyway, of course. The songs' themes vary, inspired by ancient history and horror; there's one called "Grindhouse", inspired by that style of low-budget exploitation flick. Speaking of low-budget, this disc a bit rickety sounding production-wise, particularly the drums, which sound tinny and clickety-clackety-clattery, whilst the mix in general could do with a little less muddy muffle. But MR fans won't mind much, being used to such things. Still, what had its charms on vintage '80s albums like Crystal Logic isn't necessarily a selling point here...
What is a selling point, for fans at any rate, is that the "modern" (not really!) Manilla Road still sounds nothing much like any other band, and always like themselves, whatever strange turns they may take. So, chalk yet another quirky old school album up to Wichita's weirdest!
We still really have no idea who this Dan Melchior guy is. We first discovered him via a split with SF jangle poppers the Fresh & Onlys, his side of the split a huge surprise, knocking us for a loop, and turning the previously unknown to us Melchior into a serious aQ fave. His recent lp for Siltbreeze Assemblage Blues only helped seal the deal, but where that record seemed custom made for Siltbreeze, seeming to tap into the twisted psychedelic side of Melchior's sound, and focusing on the noisier tripper more fucked up songs, this new one definitely sounds more in line with the tracks from that split single, a woozy, super melodic, shuffling, acoustic guitar flecked garage pop, hints of that classic sixties sound, plenty of weird distortion and lots of reverb, but here used sparingly, and in the interest of crafting an incredible collection of quirky lo-fi pop.
Opener "Summer In Siberia" is fuzzy and jangly, with a perfect main melody, and a killer soaring sixties style chorus, the guitars warmly distorted and crumbly, Melchior's vocals delivered in a heavily accented British brogue, the production weirdly blown out and in-the-red, while the following track is a moody minor key chunk of quirky lo-fi outsider pop, super catchy, but strangely haunting and minor key. "Squalor On Sunday" is a pounding blast of psychedelic garage rock, with some super weird vocals, wheezing organs, crunchy guitars, all wound into a noisy blurred stretch of fuzzy washed out jangle. "Catbird" is a dour atonal dirge, the guitars careening from speaker to speaker, the vocals sung/spoken, the vibe reminds us of Purling Hiss, the same sort of classic rock beholden hookiness, but here, but as beholden to the most twisted of the nineties NZ pop, and actually, much of the record sounds like it could be some long lost Xpressway or Flying Nun record from the nineties, total perfect pop, but all twisted up and turned inside out, creating a fuzzy dreamy din, all psychedelic and warped but without losing any of the poppiness or hookiness. Somehow this new full length manages to be the perfect mix of that poppy split single and the way weirder Siltbreeze record, resulting in a gloriously skewed, cacophonous fuzzy psychedelic garage pop masterpiece that we can't seem to stop listening to.
Latest release from Campbell Kneale's Don't Fuck With Magic Label, this one from the mysterious Ming, which when you realize that Ming is in fact Kneale himself, doesn't seem so mysterious after all. Kneale, who previously performed as Birchville Cat Motel, still performs as Our Love Will Destroy The World, used to run the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, and who also plays in Black Boned Angel, seems to have returned to his Ming moniker to create something a bit more minimal and dark. Far removed from the collaged and looped heaviness of OLWDTW, the doomy blackened crush of BBA and the blissed out cacophony of Birchville, Ming here occupies a space much more abstract, and when we said minimal and dark, we meant WAY minimal and WAY dark.
The record starts out so hushed we had to crank the volume to be sue anything was going on, but once we did, we were quickly enveloped in a dark swirling low end fog, a rumbling whirring creep, that almost sounds like an even more abstract minimal Bohren. Around this amorphous bassy drift, float random sounds, breaths, footsteps, all manner of ambient noise, but be prepared at about 8 minutes, if you have the volume cranked, you're gonna want to dial it back quick, before your speakers blow and the vibrations send everything crashing to the floor. A thick swath of rib cage rattling bass, warm and thick and loud, but loud in the way only extreme low end can be, felt more than heard, and so it goes, all manner of tones and drones, layered and intertwined, unleashing more low end overtones. It's at about 21 minutes in, when all that low end is joined by a strange soft cacophony of chiming tones and mysterious textural scrapes, those sounds too are soon blurred and smeared into another layer of deep dark shimmer, the final 8 or 9 minutes find the low end receding, leaving a strange collage of percussion and fragmented melody, skitters and scrapes, creaks and chimes, all slowing down and slowly fading out.
Wow. not at all what we expected, but we like it, A LOT. Reminds us of Thomas Koner or Organum, in fact this Ming seems to fall right in between the two, a mix of bowed metal and clatter and clang, and deep subterranean resonance. Super dark and gorgeous and hauntingly hypnotic and...
EXTREMELY LIMITED. We got about half of the extremely small pressing, and if past Don't Fuck With Magic releases are any indicator, these will no doubt disappear quick, and it's unclear whether we'll be able to get any more or not...
Since Emeralds released their impeccable album Does It Look Like I'm Here in 2010, the trio has set a very high bar for themselves, not only for the next Emeralds record (whenever that may surface) but also for all of the individual members' various side projects. For the most part, everything John Elliott, Mark McGuire, and Steve Hauschildt have produced by themselves has not strayed far from the Emeralds aesthetic of luminous, analogue electronics that harkens back to the progressive sounds of Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, and early Tangerine Dream, and there have been some completely sublime moments that came close to Does It Look Like I'm Here. The Imaginary Softwoods double lp set was one such album, as was the McGuire solo lp Off In The Distance, and now we have this Mist 2lp, released through John Elliott's Mego-manufactured imprint Spectrum Spools. Mist finds synth-wrangler Elliott working with fellow Cleveland native Sam Goldberg; the two had previously released a couple of lps of sparkling electronics on Arbor and Am. While those records were quite good, House is fucking great.
Out of a tightly interlocking set of synthetic percolations, the opening track "Twin Lanes" launches upward into satellite orbit with an effervescent burst of shimmering noises and one of Elliott's impeccable bass-melodies (think back to "Candyshop" on the aforementioned Emeralds album Does It Look Like I'm Here). "Mist House" is a radiant track of tonefloat purity and church organ hallowedness that eschews the early tracks' step sequencing and arpeggios, while keeping the same sparkling atmosphere. The transition from the fuzzy static laden percolations from "Dead Occasions" to the Kraftwerkian sequences of the mechanical track "Ovary Stunts" is particularly dramatic, especially given the polygon layers of sci-fi melodic wander on the latter track that gives Mist a very Oneohtrix Point Never feel. The album's finale "P.M." fills up all of side D, with prolonged passages of hypnotic arpeggiations coated with interstellar space dust and girded with a sublime motorik churning of step sequenced bass synths. House is easily the best Mist lp to date, and ranks up there amongst the many Emeralds related projects.
All right! It's about time this legendary slice of South American psych got a not-inordinately-expensive cd reissue we could stock. We've been into this band/album ever since a REALLY expensive but beautiful (and now long-gone) vinyl reissue came out on Shadoks some years ago. Now World In Sound makes it available on cd in a fancy thick triple-fold sleeve that preserves the great psychedelic gatefold art from the original LP -- art that Acid Mothers Temple would die for! There's a 14-page booklet with notes and photos as well. This is definitely one for all you '70s heavy psych freaks! Super fuzz wah guitar and organ jamming stoner psych-prog from Brazil, circa 1970. Nine tracks packed with sinewy jams, trippy fx, weighty grooves... definitely appealing to the same head-space as contemporaries like Iron Butterfly, Dug Dug's, Captain Beyond, Speed Glue & Shinki, Hendrix, Flower Travellin' Band, etc. And we're pretty certain that current South American stoner rock faves Los Natas must be into this album too... Also, you may in fact have heard one track from this before, on the ever-recommended Love, Peace & Poetry: Latin American Psychedelic Music comp also on Shadoks, but that track only hints at how cool this album is. (They also have a track on the LP&P Brazilian volume too.)
Here's a quote from one of the band members, the organist, that ought to give some flavor of what they were all about: "The music of Modulo 1000 had its own appeal to an audience that wanted a heavy, raw, experimental, psychedelic sound. Our kind of music did not make it to the radio stations. It was too wild. The distribution of the record was done in a very limited way. The record label directors, which probably didn't understand or even didn't like our music, did zero promotion for the LP." Thus, one darn heavy, weird, and utterly rare record!
This reish also includes seven bonus tracks (from where/when is left unexplained) some of which are freaky enough to fit with the actual record itelf, but just aren't as heavy -- more Latin groovy.
The original masters of the loud/quiet/loud, slow build post rock epic, return with a new 4 song ep on Sub Pop, their home for the last few records, and again, the band continue to explore, and push boundaries, having shed the sound they helped define with their seminal classic Young Team, one they found hard to outgrow until recently. But outgrow it they have, and Earth Division might be their most varied, and most UN-Mogwai release yet.
The record opens with the gorgeous piano/string lament "Get To France" (the band haven't lost their knack for inappropriate song titles!), a gorgeous, lush cinematic chunk of chamber music that should have directors worldwide after them to score films, a darkly delicate, haunting bit of loveliness, with a slightly sinister vibe. So perfect. "Hound Of Winter" is up next and is even less Mogwai-y, a n acoustic guitar / harmonica country folk ballad, all minor key and melancholy, with softly crooned vox, the only nod to the loud/soft/loud days of old, is a burst of super dramatic strings, that fades out as quickly as they swooped in, only to return near the song's end, creating yet another fantastic bit of soundtracky string laden dream folk, which most bands would kill for, but we can't help but get the feeling these guys are just dabbling, and somehow dabbling brilliantly.
Our favorite track here though would have to be "Drunk And Crazy", which is a tripped out stretch of noisy, distorted shoegaze soft noise bliss out, buried electronic beats, murky churning riffage, all wreathed in a patina of crumbling buzz and swirling shimmer, only to suddenly dissipate into another gorgeous bit of strings and piano chamber music, only to have the beat and the buzz swoop right back in, this time melded to the chamber music, creating a gorgeous gloriously fuzzy melodic chamber buzz, or something. Whatever it is, it's a shame it only lasts for 5 minutes. The record finishes off with another pretty one, a lovely little melodic guitar figure, drifts beneath lush strings, and over a plaintive piano melody, the only nod to any sort of rock band roots, is when the bass comes in, and add some low end heft, its melody all tangled up with the guitar's, another brief bit of soundtracky prettiness, that again has us thinking these guys are capable of so much more than just writing rock songs. Directors, the line starts here.
Long overdue archival release from this '70s Texas punk rock combo, and like many seventies punk rock bands, their sound is a lot more pop than much of the punk rock that would follow in the eighties. The band made a name for themselves in the mid seventies, releasing a handful of eps, even opening for the Sex Pistols in 1978 (one of the only bands EVER to have opened for the Pistols), this here was meant to be their debut album, and was recorded in 1980 but never released until now - about time!! They start things off with a killer cover of Morricone's "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly", before launching into their 'hit', "My Girlfriend Is A Rock", with its crunchy fuzzy power pop riffage and absurdist lyrics, and from there on out it's all swaggery, buzzy, caffeinated, punked out power pop, a little bit psychedelic, heavy on the hooks, and while "My Girlfriend Is A Rock" was an actual hit, it's hard to believe most of the tracks here didn't follow suit. Totally hooky punk pop that should most definitely appeal equally to punk rockers and power poppers. We've been listening to this like crazy!
If sometimes we get a bit overwhelmed, by how much music there is out there, or how many reviews we have to write, all it takes is one record, hell, even one song, to remind us of how lucky we are, and how much we still love music like crazy. Thankfully, those records are not as few and far between as you might think. And this time around, it just might be this one, the first we've heard from either of these bands, both specializing in a sort of retro pop that we love. Still Corners are apparently super hyped, having just signed a deal with Sub Pop, and as much as we dig their track here, it's the New Lines whose song has us freaking out, and wondering why Sub Pop didn't just sign them too while they were at it.
Their track starts off all fuzzy analog synths, and swoonsome organs, and big booming Beach Boys percussion, everything wreathed in a warm layer of fuzzy reverb, a sound that to our ears sounds so genuinely vintage it's uncanny, the sound, the instrumentation, and we would have been just as happy if this intro stretched out and made up the whole song, but then the song proper does kick in, the bass thick and warm and and liquid, the drums propulsive and powerful, a sort of sixties Stereolab, darkly psychedelic, and then when the vocals come in, it's total Zombies classic pop heaven, definitely exploring similar territory as the High Llamas and aQ faves the Rollo Treadway, a hazy sixties psychedelic pop that manages to be catchy and a little trippy, but also super melodic and in its own way true to the era that inspired it, while taking that sound and subtly updating it for the now. We can't tell you how many times we've listened to this track, but many times every day would not be an exaggeration. And The New Lines' side of this split will be well worn out by the time we finally get our hands on their full length. We can hardly wait.
But let's not sell the Still Corners short, their side of the split is pretty dang awesome too. A dreamy reverby waltz, ethereal female vox draped over spidery guitar melodies, and a simple shuffling rhythm, the sound is glimmering, glistening, chiming, the hushed verses giving way to a gorgeous, warm expansive chorus, all slippery slide guitar wrapped around an almost orchestral bombast, everything anchored by a warm wandering bassline. The song grows ever more lush, as pizzicato strings pluck out the melody, only to be replaced by soaring synths, the sound dense and layered and impossibly gossamer, it's easy to see why Sub Pop snatched them up, their full length is bound to be fantastic.
A pretty perfect split for sure, the rare sort of split that not only has you listening to both sides over and over, but has you hankering like crazy for more from both groups. Probably pretty limited, so grab one before they're gone.
On the same label that brought us the recent lp from SF blackmetal/blacknoize merchants Sutekh Hexen, comes this crusty, blackened slab of raw, primitive, feral heaviness. And, as the title suggests, there are in fact six songs, but they all sorta bleed and ooze into each other, blown out and in the red, each track a skull shearing slab of blackened crust punk crunch, D-beat pound wedded to grisly grinding riffage, the drums distorted and weirdly industrial at times, sounding more like metal on metal (maybe Pussy Galore style) than a proper kit, and the vocals, holy shit, total throat shredding hellish howls, all wound up into relentless onslaught of grinding, blasting, buzzing brutality. And somehow, the band still manage to cram some melody into their constant blackened barrage, the result turning this sick black slab into something strangely catchy.
The vibe is definitely more blackened punk, then punky black metal, the difference is really maybe too minor to quibble over. Needless to say if you like your sounds raw and heavy, primitive and in-the-red, punked out and black as fuck, then this stuff should definitely hit the spot. Fans of Ancestors, Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Malveillance, Acephalix, Harassor, Endless Humiliation, Dishammer, Trap Them and the like should definitely check these guys out.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!!
Though we spend a lot of time toiling over our carefully worded, expertly-informed, well-thought out (ahem) reviews, we realize that a lot of folks probably just scan 'em looking for a few keywords that might jump out, and to see whether we are giving something the thumbs up or not (and furthermore, if we seem particularly enthusiastic in doing so, by like, using all-caps or something). So... here's some keywords for you: CELESTIIAL, FOLK-METAL, AWESOME. Working those terms into sentences, results in the following: this blackened but not necessarily black metal (they say "melodic dark metal") band from Minnesota, who started back in the '90s as a demo-only band under the moniker Autumnal Winds, is a duo featuring guitarist/vocalist Blondel de Nesle, aka Tanner Reed Anderson of fellow Bindrune recording artists Celestiial. Suspended In The Brume Of Eros is Obsequiae's debut full-length, and while we don't know what Obsequiae means (help, Heavy Latin blog!) nor are we sure what a "brume" is, let alone just who or what "Eos" might be, we do know we like this. A lot. And we didn't even know they were related to AQ frosty, forest-y funeral doom faves Celestiial when we first heard this and dug it, though we did know it was on Bindrune, almost always a sign of quality pagan metal with a weird or avant garde bent.
We said Obsequiae play folk-metal, that's right, it's real medieval /madrigal sounding for sure, but with the emphasis on METAL, despite an assortment of minstrel-like acoustic interludes. So the melodic, intertwined twin guitars are heavy with fuzz, and their harmonies more twisted than twee. Likewise, the vocals are harsh, and rhythmically the band gallops like true metal ought to, propelled by the other half of the Obsequiae duo, drummer/bassist/guitarist "Neidhardt von Reuental".
In other words, it's something that even those of us a bit burned out on "another grim black metal band" found quite compelling. Lots of (autumnal) atmosphere, lots of actual music, Obsequiae doing justice to both halves of the folk-metal equation, mixing acoustic guitars in with weird, killer riffage and soloing for an album that's epic and interesting and, as we said, AWESOME.
There, 'nuff said?
Huzzah! The former guitarist for '90s underground noiseniks Harry Pussy is back with a 2nd full length solo lp, his guitar strings once again all in a tangle - maybe six of 'em, but probably less, last we checked he had dispensed with the A and D strings, 'cause he plays a (repaired) broken-necked vintage acoustic that couldn't take the strain. Of course, the way he plays it, we'd think it wouldn't be safe with even one string...
2009's critically acclaimed A New Way To Pay Old Debts was crazy popular, a proverbial hotcake of a seller here, and fans of that record won't be disappointed with this equally emotive follow-up. Wild Bill brings the urgent, alien Appalachia, this album a noisy-as-acoustic-can-be "blues" freakout that's, as we've said before, both frantic -and- focused. Chaotic, tumbling, yet trance-inducing in its intricate intensity. There's also some calmer respites from his sturm-und-drang (strum-and-dang?), like the stark, hushed "Heaven Is Closed To Me Now".
Orcutt throws in some wordless vocalizations here and there, getting properly glossolalic at times, which only adds to the "outsidery-ness" of the proceedings - and also conveys even more authentic feeling. This is one dramatic, raw, real record; while this might be what we like to call "fuckery", he's not fucking around. Fans of such folks as Japan's Kan Mikami and Tetuzi Akiyama, Jandek, and of course spiritual "American Primitive" mentor John Fahey (imagine John Fahey meets Derek Bailey!) should find this speaks to them in a language that can't be faked. And non-fans, or not-yet-fans? Well at first blanch you might find this tough going, but stick with it and see if it doesn't stir something in your soul.
Currently gatefold vinyl-only, compact disc version to follow in a few weeks. And by the way, nice Stevie Ray Vaughan pick collection on the cover! Rolling in his grave, no doubt...
Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find two other releases on Campbell Kneale's Don't Fuck With Magic label (born of the late great and aQ beloved Celebrate Psi Phenomenon), an incredible archival release from the defunct Kneale one man project Birchville Cat Motel, as well as a crushingly noisy new Kneale project, called Tmpls. Then there's this one, which finds Kneale, in his new guise as Our Love Will Destroy The World, teaming up with weirdo Finnish noisemakers Tomutonttu, the one man band of Jan Anderzen, a member of aQ Finnish faves Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat among others.
This collaboration is a fantastically hazy bit of tripped out kosmische drift, all long droning tones, strange electronics that sound like alien field recordings, effects simulating a burbling brook (unless that is indeed an actual brook burbling), a lush layered dronescape, druggy and dreamy and hypnotic, but that's only the first few minutes. The track that splinters into something much more distinctly Tomutonttu, a jagged bit of buzz drenched tribalism, processed vox, tangled buzzy melodies, distorted percussion, very ritualistic and dreamily damaged, all wreathed in pulsing feedback and confuisonal clouds of swirling sonic squiggles. The hazy backdrop gradually moves to the foreground, burying the rhythm beneath a wash of groaning melodic buzz, the percussion transformed into a muted industrial crunch, all fading out to a bizarre bit of percolating electronic bloopage, haunting lopped melodies fractured into a dizzying array of swoon and sway, the bloops and bleeps sounding almost like some alien language, all underpinned by constantly shifting whirs and shimmers, only to finally ditch the skree and bloop and transform into a thick droned out drift, all pulsing partial riffage, woozy synths, barely there rhythmic skitter, washed out high end and weird buried sonic mystery, a murky and muddy final movement, gorgeously tranquil and strangely meditative...
EXTREMELY LIMITED. We're the only US source for these, and we took fully HALF the pressing, of which we sold HALF before even reviewing/listing, which means we have a bunch of these left, but they will undoubtedly be gone before you know it, which means grab one while you can.
There doesn't seem to be any useful information about The Oval Language to be found. What we can say is that this German duo has been making a peculiar brand of dada noise and aktionist concrete since the '80s and they have a really shitty website which indicates that they occasionally play some German noise festivals. But nothing is at all indicative of how fucked up The Oval Language is. Much of this would have fit alongside any number of thoroughly damaged cassette compilations circa 1987 on Broken Flag or Bain Total alongside Controlled Bleeding, Etant Donnes, Le Syndicat, and Merzbow. Their din is distinctly lo-fi with swarms of accumulated tape noise and overdriven distortion running throughout the recordings. The first 8 tracks on this disc were rescued from old tapes, which may or may not have been released back in the day (like we said, there's no information about this project anywhere), with the first tracks taking after Neubauten in thrashing some unfortunate pieces of metal and wood in a big warehouse. Then comes a rather sickening piece of garbled microphone digestion that may or may not have been influenced by the likes of Otto Muhler or Sudden Infant with gross-out lurches and heaves of ipecac-induced vocalizations amidst tape machinations of metal on metal squalor. Full-throttle noise explosions come afterwards, all shrouded in the obliterated tape-deck miasma that was a signature of many industrial-noise musicians from the '80s. Very well done we might add!
The last 8 tracks are remixes by the underground German noise musician Guido Hubner (aka Das Synthetische Mishgewebe), and while of the wooden plonks and metallic crashes seem similar to those on The Oval Languages original recordings, there's no information as to whether these remixes are from those tracks or from other tapes that were so murky and fucked up that they needed somebody to completely rework the material. As such Hubner does a commendable job in keeping to the spirit of those earlier tracks, with lots of tapedeck start and stop jitteriness and mumbling bumps in the night. The main difference Hubner adds to these noises is found in his abrasive use of crashing loop techniques. Even though Monochrome Vision did include some liner notes in Russian and English about the group, little of it is of interest and none of it offers context as to where The Oval Language operated or why they did what they did. It's a mystery... granted a very fucked-up and noisy mystery. Limited stock.
We had been complaining a lot lately about the dearth of amazing pop music, then out of nowhere, comes not one, but two contenders for pop record of the year. Elsewhere you can read about the lush Beach Boys / Zombies retro pop of the Rollo Treadway, a record that has been in a constant battle with this one right here for top spot. And it's one of those cases that whichever one we're listening to is at that moment, THE ONE. Until, that is, we throw on the other. What's a pop fanatic to do? Thankfully, there's more than enough space for multiple best pop records ever, in our brains, in our ears, in our collections, on our year end lists and in our hearts!
Pretty & Nice are an East Coast trio, who take the classic pop sounds of groups like XTC, Devo, Gang Of Four and folks like Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello, supercharge it, then mash it all up with more modern pop masters like the Cardiacs, the New Pornographers, Maximo Park. Angular propulsive, kinetic, rambunctious, wild, energetic, SO SO SO SO catchy, with killer falsetto vocals, jagged guitars, wild frenetic drumming, and hooks galore, and the whole thing shot through with nods to classic pop of the past.
"Tora Tora Tora" has been on constant repeat play, with its weird synthy breakdown, new wave synths, wrapped around a killer power pop hook, with an amazing stuttery start stop bridge, where the vocals slip into a falsetto, before the song shifts gear into some almost metallic crunch. Hot on the heels of that one is "Pixies", that instead of aping the soft/loud/soft dynamic of the song's namesake, is a strange mathy angular new wave groove, and a chorus the Cardiacs would kill for, with soft strummed guitars, dreamy sweet vocal harmonies. And then there's "Peekaboo", that sounds so much like a lost New Pornographers jam it's uncanny, but P&N manage to take what in a Pornographers song might just be a single part, and stretch it out into something dreamlike and ethereal, moving and slightly melancholy, another possible pop song of the year! We're also pretty partial to "Nuts & Bolts", which sounds like it could be the latest dancefloor destroying post new wave jam from some UK band. But Maximo Park, the Killers, Arctic Monkeys, etc. ain't got nothing on these guys, especially here, with a weird electronic skitter woven into the crunch and bounce, the guitars heavy, the vocals swooping wildly from croon to hushed falsetto and back, and again, a hook most bands could base their whole career on.
Needless to say, the rest of the tracks stack up just as well, we literally have been blasting this over and over every day, with no end in site. There's just something so amazing about pop music like this, the sounds and the songs, the hooks and the vibe, the energy, it's pretty rare for all of those things to just fall perfectly into place, but when they do, it's total fucking magic.
Pop record of the year. One of 'em at least!
Another blast of Stooges-via-AmRep noise rock snarl and swagger from these Ohio heavies, and like their Siltbreeze full length, they kick up a seriously dense noisepop din, the vox slathered in distortion, the riffs blown the fuck out, the drums a buried barely there pound, tons of effects, lo-fi, but still in the red and LOUD, the A side has a killer dubbed out / tripped out chorus, that sends the vocals careening through clouds of buzz and crunch, and there are even some wildly skronk horns in the mix.
The flipside takes the same sound, and slows it down, turning it into a serious slab of noisy sludgey pummel, chugging and churning, a blurred, buzzy, druggy dirge that hides a pretty kick ass hook, which leads right into the brief instrumental closer, a short sharp chunk of fuzzy garage punk jangle, all wrapped up in squiggly psychedelic leads, atonal and angular, noisy and chaotic, but still jangly and poppy and weirdly catchy. Super rad!
Brand new record from this Singaporean (!) black metal horde, who make a music they refer to as "vedic metal", and whose whole career has been spent honoring Hindu philosophies and teachings. Brahmavidya: Immortal I is the third and final part of a trilogy, but fear not, we missed out on the first two parts, and it in no way hinders the listener's enjoyment of part three. Rudra's sound is equal parts classic melodic metal and buzzing blasting blackness, but they also infuse classic Eastern melodies into their sound, which gives the music a seriously spiritual vibe. Not to mention the occasional chanted clean vocals as well as traditional instruments, bells and horns, etc. They also have plenty of wild shredding leads, a rarity in black metal, but here, they're as memorable and melodic as any other element. The sound is lush and heavy and epic, tight and technical, mathy and a little progressive, it seems like these guys should be way more popular, apparently they play festivals in other parts of the world, but most metalheads in the US have never heard of em, which is strange, it's a sound that seems like it would go over really well here, super technical, ultra heavy, high concept, fans of groups like Nile, Absu, and other ancient religion obsessed metal outfits should flip for these guys, and anyone into a blackened metal that's not so grim and raw, and is instead epic and expansive and a little experimental and super melodic might get a little obsessed. As it is, we're thinking we better track down the first two parts of the trilogy, cuz this one has been getting played to death. So yeah, if you're after some catchy blackened heaviness, you probably couldn't do much better than this.
Lion Productions once again dig deep into super obscure international psychedelia of the '60s and '70s to bring us this amazing gem. Sandhy & Mandhy were an Argentinian duo who hit the scene almost as fast as they disappeared. Recording only one album in 1967, and doing it in just three hours. With no grand hopes of fame and fortune, their label pressed a mere 110 copies for the group to have at gigs they played. Years later those copies would fetch crazy amounts of money. Which is not surprising once you hear the music, cuz it's so damn good.
Mixing both the dreamy and rocking elements of psychedelic pop, their sound was in a very similar vein and spirit to their contemporaries in nearby Brazil where the Tropicalia movement was just beginning. From moments of fuzz guitar to melt-worthy vocals, this is a record that covers a lot of ground, and does it so well. It really does sound like some awesome mix of Caetano Veloso and Os Mutantes.
Finally we all get to hear the magic of this album made over forty years ago. There are also five bonus tracks, that for some of us are reason enough to grab this, as their awesome lo-fi covers of The Doors and Marianne Faithfull/The Rolling Stones are pretty damn irresistible. We're totally digging this!
We were so saddened by the recent passing of krautrock legend Conrad Schnitzler, a one-time member of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster, who then went on to create one of THEE most incredible bodies of solo work of perhaps any of the krautrockers. This record is not so much a proper Schnitzler record, as it is a strange sort of collaboration. It seems that Schnitzler was forever recording sounds from his many electronic synthesizers, creating an expansive music library, from which all of these sounds were taken. Borngraber and Struver, who run the M=Minimal label, were afforded the opportunity to go through Schnitzler's library, and create a series of new compositions, and Con-Struct is the result.
It's difficult to suss out how much of this is pure Schnitzler, and how much of it is Borngraber & Struver, but really it hardly matters, much of this definitely sounds like a Schnitzler record, the krautrock vibe is big, but there's also definitely a sort of minimal techno vibe, the record opens with a gorgeous stretch of deep buzzing pulses and percolating rhythms, the mood haunting and slightly sinister, all laced with swirls of electronics and thick swells of rumbling whir, before giving way to the following track, which has more of a Kompakt vibe to it. But even here, that minimal techno rhythm is wreathed in swirls of dark layered thrum, and mournful minor key melodies, the sound trancelike and cyclical, which is how most of the record plays out, each track essentially a simple looped arrangement, the core sound and rhythm repeated for the length of the track, while the various elements shift gradually, and all around it various sounds swirl and shimmer. Our only complaint really is that all of the tracks could have been stretched WAY out, and turned into epics even more trancey and hypnotic.
But overall, the mood is surprisingly dark and haunting, the occasional almost house-y rhythm or skittery groove, does little to take away from the record's darkly cast sonic shadows, the swirling low end, the rumbling drones, the thick bassy buzz, the melancholy melodies, it's pretty much the perfect slab of dark minimal rhythmic krautdrone mesmer.
Another big thick issue (146 pages) of this Mojo-meets-Ugly Things music mag from England, devoted to cool music of '60s / '70s vintage, or stuff that sounds like it. This ish, baroque popsters The Left Banke (you saw our reviews of their recently reissued records) grace the cover. Also: Annette Peacock, Buffalo Springfield, the High Llamas, Roy Harper, and Los Dug Dug's, amongst others! There's a Munster label feature, an article about the "Paisley Underground" scene, and a Hawkwind album art feature that threw us into confusion: is the album called "In Search Of Space", as we always had thought, or actually "X In Search Of Space", which seems to be the case?
We've long been advocates of the importance and reward of spending time with Nina Simone's proper albums. We're really glad there have been so many reissues of her records from the '60s and '70s, but truth be told she was one of those rare incredible artists who stayed true to her vision and made powerful music in all five decades that she shared her magical voice and musical wisdom with the world.
Recorded in Paris in 1982, Fodder On My Wings was an album not many of us were familiar with so we were thrilled Sunnyside brought it to our attention, as it's one smoking and satisfying record, with Nina on piano, harpsichord shaker, and tambourine backed by an awesome band with instrumentation that included congas, woodblock, timpani, etc. Unlike many of her earlier albums, Nina wrote and composed all but one track on this record. Singing in both French and English, her songs range from bittersweet, to empowering, to effervescent. Filled with rich grooves, entrancing piano, and that unmistakably wise and magical voice. A must have for any Nina Simone fan!
It's been a long and interesting road for Mike Simonetti since his days as a hardcore/punk fixture in the '80s and '90s New York scene. Booking shows at places like Mars and running one of the more diverse and cool labels to emerge out of the hardcore scene, Troubleman Unlimited. With that label he put out amazing records by everyone from Erase Errata to The Rye Coalition to Shotmaker to Wolf Eyes to Tussle. Then as he started to DJ and widen his appreciation of post-punk and dance music, he launched Italians Do It Better, the label that helped put the space disco revival on the map with folks like Glass Candy and The Chromatics.
There's no doubt Simonetti is an amazing taste maker with awesome and varied taste (he even orders lots of black metal from us!) but we weren't really sure what to expect from his new solo outing. With Capricorn Rising he's created a record that wonderfully splits its time between dance floor ecstasy and darker prog like meditations. Imagine M83, Junior Boys and Zombi all jamming together. Aside from Glass Candy and Chromatics, most of what Italians Do It Better has released tends to be more focused on singles and not so much a thought out album. We love how Simonetti has taken this opportunity to create an suite of songs that has a running theme and irresistible aura and makes for an engaging listen from start to finish.
From the same folks who brought us the amazing Charnel House cd-r elsewhere on this week's list, comes this mysterious slab of wax, with very little in the way of liner notes, other than a cryptic list of "Implements", which include Metasonix S-1000, Drone Commander (!), Sherman Filters, Eventide Delay, Dave Smith Instruments, Keeley Electronics and Music From Outer Space (!). They had us at "Drone Commander", but sealed the deal with "Music From Outer Space"! But what exactly do you get when you mix those outer space sounds with a drone commander and all the rest? Well, some sort of abstract, fuzzy, droney cosmic weirdness that somehow melds tripped out minimal psychedelia to blackened drones and abstract experimental riffage. The record opens with a long stretch of murky guitar churn, rife with gnarled melodies, that sounds a bit like some weird hybrid of Amps For Christ and Blackwolfgoat, but from there on out, the sound gets decidedly more minimal, slipping into a sort of super abstract FX drenched kosmische drift, thick swells of low end rumble, beneath layered swirls of blurred buzz and muted high end shimmer, those deep tones surfacing throughout the tracks on side one.
The flipside starts off with a hazy metallic ur-drone, a little bit Sunroof!-y, but a bit more blissed out, hypnotic and heady, before slipping into a pulsing minimal sprawl of rib cage rattling bass creep, which soon blossoms into more of a warm whir, hushed and soft focus, gauzy and fuzzy and dreamlike, but infused with a subtly ominous sonic vibe, before finally, the record finishes off with another bit of Amps For Christ-ish pulsating electronics and what sound like processed synth, a twisted spaced out psychedelic krautwave coda, that wraps things up in a big buzzy new age psych kraut bow. Awesome!
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered, housed in a coll black and dark red fold over sleeve, with a printed clear plastic insert.
We're not sure how a live Omar Souleyman record differs from any of his other records, which were all essentially recorded live, but these shows are distinctive for one reason in particular, they all took place in the West, in front of audiences outside of the Middle East, who most likely had never seen anything like it. And we were lucky enough to see Souleyman perform here in San Francisco, and we were blown away. The sound was incredible, that tangled Eastern psychedelic sound that is already so propulsive and rhythmic and mesmerizing, but cranked through a MASSIVE sound system, and suddenly, it was as if that was how it was supposed to sound all along. And to see a whole sweaty throng of SF hipsters, from punks to metalheads, losing their shit, and dancing wildly to these weird and wonderful sounds, it was pretty inspiring. We couldn't help but wonder how Souleyman felt, performing in these big dance clubs, maybe it just seemed strange to us, cuz really we can't imagine any crowd, no matter how big or small resisting these incredible grooves. So here are a handful of live performances, from America, Australia, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the UK and Denmark, all of the tracks here finding Souleyman in fine form, the music lively and wildly chaotic, psychedelic and groovy.
One thing this live record does gives us the chance to focus on is Souleyman's keyboardist / percussionist, Rizan Sa'id, who when we saw Souleyman, almost stole the show. Sure Souleyman was the master of ceremonies, pacing the stage, clapping and singing, hyping the crowd, but then off to the side was Sa'id, going totally nuts on the keyboard, providing ALL of the music, a veritable one man band, playing wild melodies, looping rhythms, triggering big rib cage rattling beats, but the best part was his keyboard had little drum pads, and all of those flurries of Middle Eastern percussion, those are actually being played live, his hands a blur over the keyboard, unfurling wild rhythmic tangles. We literally could not take our eyes off him. On these tracks, those two are joined by an electric saz player, who adds another glorious layer of psychedelic buzz, and as you might imagine, this is incredible, and fantastic and totally and utterly transcendent. Fans will want this for sure, and it's definitely a perfect introduction to Souleyman's spiritual sonic magic, and by all means, if you get the chance to see this stuff live, you won't be sorry!!
With all the Starving Weirdos records around here over the last year or so, it's hard to believe this is only their 2nd proper actual cd release. A handful of cd-r's (not counting the 20 or so unreleased full lengths) and lp and a split, every one of em spectacular, these guys are one of the few bands we almost wish would be more prolific. Not that we don't love Acid Mothers Temple, but we'd sure as heck trade a few of the last 20 or so new AMT records for a couple extra slabs of Weirdos wonder. Nonetheless, Shrine Of The Post-Hypnotic find the Weirdos continuing in their sonic quest, this time around incorporating more guitar it seems, more feedback, the overall sound somewhat heavier, from the dirgey slow motion buzz of the opener "Crewell", to the buzzing clattery Dead C worship of "Droned And Poned", it's a sound that most definitely suits them. It's like the No Neck Blues Band teamed up with some serious amplified firepower. A buzz drenched rambling percussive meander. Murky keening soundscapes, huge distant arcs of grinding feedback, thick swells of crumbling fuzz, heavily reverbed percussive clatter, streaks of glistening guitar, simple angular strumming, hushed minimal shimmer, bells and chimes wreathed in black whirs, massive cavernous room sound wrapped around muted melodies, moaning groaning drones drifting in thick swirls of high end glimmer and rumbling crunch, haunting industrial rhythms sinking slowly in dense fields of dreamy doom, wispy clouds of FX wrapped around creaking ambience, processed vocals transformed into undulating layers of viscous sound. It's all of that and so much more. We can describe the various sounds and sonic events, but it's so difficult to explain just why they sound so fantastic, and what sort of musical magic makes them all fit together so well. But they just do and who knows and who really cares, you should just stop reading right now and dive right in. You won't be sorry.
Packaged in a gorgeous fold over card stock sleeve, screen printed with an amazingly trippy hand drawn landscape.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!
It seems like now we start every Superchunk review with some variation of "What more can we say about Superchunk that hasn't already been said?" But what can you do? It's true. Chapel Hill, North Carolina's finest indie rock sons (and daughter), by now an absolute indie rock institution, pretty much every record a perfect blueprint for how it should be done, but rarely is, and every record containing at least one or two songs that would be a greatest hit, if Superchunk were the sort of band to go in for greatest hits.
Foolish was record number four, originally released in 1994, and is the latest in the ongoing comprehensive Superchunk back catalog reissue campaign, and while we're tempted to proclaim Foolish as one of our favorites, that would be, ahem, FOOLISH, since, they're pretty much all our favorites. Any indie rocker worth their salt who says otherwise needs to have their indie cred card revoked. "Like A Fool" which starts things off, might be one of the the prettiest Superchunk jams ever, that opening melody so perfect, and so forever stuck in our heads. And when the song kicks in proper, it doesn't explode and rock out, instead it's a dark brooder, jangly and heartfelt, the sort of song that must have made it onto a million mixtapes. The 'hit' here was "Driveway To Driveway", with another one of THOSE riffs/melodies, the sort that the second the band starts playing it live, the crowd goes nuts (the same thing happened when the band played an acoustic instore here recently), and the chorus, so good, moving and sweetly melancholy. And we could go through the record track by track, but just know that there's not a bummer in the bunch. And some of the other tracks here most definitely rank up there with the group's best.
Needless to say, absolutely essential indie rock, and with Superchunk you can start anywhere, so if somehow you've yet to check them out, this is as good a place to start as anyplace. One of our favorite record, and groups, EVER.
Another month, another installment of the UK's long-running metal-must read, Terrorizer. On the cover, looking like he just was in some sort of accident (or battle?), Nergal of Behemoth fame. Inside, stuff pertaining to such fine bands as Yob, Watain, Candlemass, Cerebral Ballzy, Evile, Gojira, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Anthrax, Obituary, Today Is The Day, and more! Comes with not one, but two, cd samplers.
Tinariwen have proven to be one of the most dependable and consistently awesome bands on the planet. Each of their records are filled with such soulful desert blues. it was just a matter of time before their sounds began to reach a wider audience, without the group compromising one ounce of their musical integrity. On their debut outing for Anti, they continue to do what they do best. Meditative guitar playing, sweeping rhythms, hypnotic vocals, moments of chant and response, and an overall vibe that that keeps us under its spell from start to finish.
While this album marks the first time big name Western artists have joined them in collaboration, do not fear, if there wasn't a big sticker on the cover telling us this features members of TV On The Radio and The Dirty Brass Band, along with AQ fave guitarist Nels Cline (of Wilco), we really would have never known. That speaks so highly to the amount of respect Tinariwen has received from so many of today's musical finest, as these folks know and respect Tinariwen's sound and vision so much that they just add subtle touches that flow with their sound, instead of trying to inject their own ideas into the sound.
There is more of an acoustic , sparse and dusty feel to Tassili + 10:1 than their earlier records. Yet it keeps intact all the great elements that made us fall in love with them from the beginning. Another awesome outing from an incredible band!
After two totally kick ass 7"s, these Aussie electro-punks return with a full length that manages to trump them both. Thee Oh Sees head honcho John Dwyer warned us how good this was, and boy was he was right, a killer collision of dark, brooding retro garage punk and vintage electronic new wave, melded into something totally tripped out and irresistible, weirdly krautrocky, spacey and psychedelic. Opener "See More Glass" could go up against Moon Duo for pure blissed out psychedelic hypno-drift, the monotone intoned vox over the pulsing electronic throb and swirling layered buzz, all wreathed in streaks of muted feedback, the sound slipping from crunchy and caustic to muddy and murky, the electronics glitchy and distorted, all draped over a warm, whirling bit of kraut infused abstract psychedelia, like a fractured new wave take on Spacemen 3, peppered with dreamy little synth squiggles, adding a touch of kosmische to the proceedings. Follow up "Retiree" is a bit more straight ahead rock, but even the, the riffing is locked into these droned out arrangements, and the vocals again hauntingly monotone, making even punkier jams sounds tripped out and spacey.
And so it goes, the sound slipping from loose garagey jangle, to super catchy new wave pop, from weird low slung gloomy synth heavy drum machined electropop to old school power pop, from fuzzy hooky downer pop to creepy primitive abstract electronics, from doomy slow core balladry to tripped out psychedelia, all somehow strung together into something cool and cohesive. The pop songs definitely tapping into the classic Aussie post punk of the past a la the Scientists, Hoodoo Gurus, Celibate Rifles, as well as similarly minded outfits like the Wipers, but the magic is in when those two sides mix, the garagey punk jams laced with electronics, and the crunchy synth electronic workouts that seem to be fashioned into something more rock and roll, and even when those bits remain separate, there's something cool about a wild rambunctious jam devolving into a spaced out bit of celestial shimmer before slipping right back into some gloomy jangle. This is most definitely a new favorite!
Labels like Minimal Wave and Dark Entries had been chomping at the bit trying to reissue this long sought after slab of weird 'n' wonderful minimal synth pop circa 1981. But it's the German label, Anna Logue who get the prize, putting out Transparent Illusion's album at a time when its sounds are more relevant then ever.
A one man band, Roy Young used his synths and off kilter voice to create music that reminds us of a slightly drunk Gary Numan joining forces with R.L. Crutchfield during the early years of Dark Day. We also hear the blueprints of the sound that would make Mute one of the most successful labels of the '80s. But what makes Transparent Illusion so fucking cool is just how DIY it sounds and feels. This definitely also foreshadows the current wave of weirdo pop peddlers like John Maus, Genevieve Jacuzzi, and Gary War. Dark primitive synths injected with infectious melody and a sinister disposition that feels totally punk in spirit. Weird and fucking cool!
The first time we heard Scott Tuma play guitar, was with skeletal slowcore country legends Souled American. His washed out dreamlike atmospheric guitar parts helped define their sound, but more importantly, introduced Tuma as a truly idiosyncratic guitar player, with a haunting and mysteriously unique sound. Tuma's music was like an acoustic version of Tim Hecker or Fennesz, but whereas those guys use electronics and computers and effects to transform their guitars into blurred dronescapes, Tuma's approach is much more organic, unfurling skeletal guitar lines, a slowed down Appalachia deftly woven into a sprawl of slow motion, washed out, sepia toned countrified ambience. Tuma's two proper solo records, Hard Again and The River 1 2 3 4, are both HUGE all time aQ favorites, so we were pretty excited to hear about a brand new release, especially since we've been waiting patiently for almost 5 years!
Not For Nobody begins quite strangely, a super spare, lo-fi recording of barely there guitar, stretched out beneath reverb drenched childlike vocals, cooing and purring, a bit like a countrified Bjork, the sibilance stretched out into glistening shimmers, the melody, mournful and dreamy, bits of tinkling chimes, and muted ambient clatter, the whole thing sun dappled and soft focus, so strange and haunting, but so lovely and sublime.
The next track finds us on much more familiar ground, a loose tangle of steel string guitar, sounding like it could have come off one of the later Souled American records, but sans vocals, the melodies lyrical and lilting, couched in a thick layered backdrop of warm whir, sprinkled with tinkling bells and chimes, laced with bits of piano, somehow sparse and skeletal, but impossibly lush. Which is sort of Tuma's specialty, turning minimalism into maximalism, but without losing any of the former's hushed urgency or whispered intimacy.
The whole record is quite varied, but each track manages to sound like it couldn't be anywhere else, every one seamlessly leading into the next, a song suite, an album of cohesive musical pieces, not just a collection of songs. The third track, "Eloper", introduces what sounds like horns, for a haunting funereal march, a woozy fanfare that seems to slowly spread out, a simple pulse like rhythm beneath hazy streaks and deliberate minor key strum. The next track begins as a jaunty upper register steel string lullaby, giving way, part way through, to a languorous late afternoon sun dappled sprawl, slightly atonal, gorgeous and bleary eared. "New Joy" buries the guitar in a haze of whirring buzz and warm swirls of lush chords and muted feedback, very liturgical sounding, a dark ambient drift through some ancient crumbling cathedral, while "Rakes" begins as a simple stripped down halfspeed Appalachian hoedown, before transforming into a sea of sawing strings, of layered buzz and extended steel string drones.
The record finishes the way it began, with that ghostly childlike voice, the bits of spare guitar, the massive clouds of delay and reverb, that voice a wraith hovering above the web of subtle minor key guitar, the floorboards creaking, motes of dust tinkling like chimes in a soft evening breeze, creepy, sorrowful, and so completely gorgeous.
Tuma conjures a timeless magical mystery with his guitar. He plays the mysterious traveler, a wandering audio alchemist, turning notes and chords into gold, or rather, golden streaks of dusty memory and soft golden glimpses of some hidden and blurred otherworld. His are sounds to get lost in, to wrap around yourself like some cloak spun from gold thread, to hide under with a flashlight like a child, creating worlds of light and shadow, a sound at once mystical and enigmatic, warm and familiar, and truly truly sublime.
ATTENTION!! The first 100 copies come packaged in a gold on black, cardstock gatefold sleeve, housed in a special oversized handscreened 7" style outersleeve, black ink on metallic gold paper, each one hand numbered. We managed to get nearly 3/4 of that first 100, but the way things have been going these will probably not last long, so once we run out, you'll get the normal, slightly cheaper version (the innersleeve white on brown instead of gold and black, and without the oversized hand numbered outer sleeve).
Thrill Jockey seem to be snapping up lots of underground faves, Barn Owl, Eternal Tapestry, Wooden Shjips, Sun Araw, and now Tunnels. We have to say we were a bit surprised, as Tunnels seemed WAY underground, but it makes sense as Tunnels, aka Nicholas Bindeman, is also a member of Eternal Tapestry (as well as a sometime member of Jackie-O Motherfucker). And we were also surprised when we threw this on, cuz the sound here is nothing like the Tunnels of old. All of the various cd-r's we'd reviewed in the past from Bindeman had been super minimal dronemusic, or occasionally tripped out dritfy psychedelia, but The Blackout threw us for a loop. Not sure if there's an element of bandwagoning going on, but the NEW Tunnels sound is strangely similar to the NOW sound, a sort of retro gloomy gothy electro wave, or cold wave, or synth wave, or whatever you want to call it. Apparently Tunnels' new sound began a while back, as a sort of primitive lo-fi Suicide live experiment, but eventually evolved into this, a sound we dig for sure, and one that seems like it would have been right at home on Sacred Bones or Captured Tracks. And to be fair, for all of its similarities to other modern retrowave outfits, Tunnels influences seem to go back further, the sound more machine like, more classic industrial. The label mentions Throbbing Gristle, and we definitely hear some of that, we also hear a little Gary Numan on opener "Crystal Arms", and a little Devo on "Volt 1979", but all via some lost eighties new wave. And really once our initial shock faded (we were expecting some dreamy psychedelic dronemusic after all), this record really began to grow on us, twisted and Teutonic, gloomy and gothy, and pretty dang catchy and poppy. And poppy is the key for us. For all the industrial crunch and old school electronic bleep and bloop, the icy sung/spoken vox, it's the low slung basslines and the crazy catchy hooks that go with them that transform this from some vanity experiment into a seriously killer chunk of retro industrial electro pop!
Any pop lover knows that when it comes to suave and sassy pop perfection, you can't beat France in the '60s and early '70s. With this collection the focus is put on the Parisian pop-psych scene, and what's really refreshing about this compilation is that it's not just filled with the usual suspects. So many names we weren't familiar with giving us such irresistible gems, and enough fuzz and weird elements on lots of the tracks to keep things interesting and not just saccharine sweet. Infusing elements of West Coast pop, the mod scene, and funked out burners, these are sounds that are just pretty impossible not to get swept up by. Filled with decadence and charm from folks like Cristal, Elisa, Les Hamsters (best name ever?!), Les Rover, Pax Quartet, and tons more.
No need to stress about what to throw on the next time you have people over for a little party, as all you will have to do is blast this, and watch as feet start tapping, and drinks start spilling, and everyone starts smiling!
With compilations, no matter how much we dig 'em, and no matter how great all the tracks are, there's always one that we get totally obsessed with, and end up playing over and over and over. And this latest Total compilation, #12, as it's almost 2012, from Kompakt is no different. We were already big fans of Gui Boratto, but holy shit, his track here, "The Drill" has to be the best thing we've heard from him. A heavy bassy low slung groove, all fuzzy and distorted, with a weird woozy synth melody and some cool handclap snares, the drums wreathed in effects, a little bit of backwards whhhhoooo, and then suddenly the bass gets even more distorted sounding crumbling and fuzzy and almost metallic, and then it does it AGAIN, getting more weirdly effected and distorted, only to slip right back into the more muted groove, and so it goes, that super catchy bassline synthgroove, constantly changing tone and timbre, the sound following suit, slipping from groovy and slithery, to super blown out and crackly, distorted and in-in-the-red, and right back to that moody sorts of housey skitter. Someone needs to make us an hour long mix of just this song, cuz we'd set out cd player on repeat and listen to nothing else. So good.
The rest of the comp is great too, but nothing nearly so dark and distorted and radical. A lot of the usual names are here, Superpitcher, Michael Mayer, Wolfgang Voigt, Matias Aguayo, Gus Gus, as well as a few new-to-us groups/artists: Kolombo, WhoMadeWho, Coma, Mohn, etc. Kolombo starts things off with another dark brooder, that starts out all pulsing minimal dark house, wreathed in swirls of soft buzz, before blossoming into a weird bit of washed out soul, only to slip right back into minimal skitter, the "choruses" sounding more like M83 than something on Kompakt, and from there on out, Kompakt Total 12 unfurls as an ever shifting collection of modern electronica, from pulsing minimal house, to blissed out Pop Ambient skitter, and abstract electro to looped fuzzy field recording flecked dubby drift. As always, super great, and worth it for the Boratto track alone!
Weirdly enough, the lp version of this latest Total comp from the always awesome Kompakt label, contains only SOME of the songs that are on the cd. Leaving off all the tracks which were released recently as 12"s it seems, which also means leaving off what might be our favorite track, but that track, Gui Boratto's "The Drill" IS available on a 12" that we have in stock, so if you want that, just ask, and then you can enjoy the rest of this amazing comp without missing out on THAT TRACK. If you want to read about THAT TRACK, check the cd review, but in terms of the rest of Total 12, a lot of the usual names are here, Superpitcher, Michael Mayer, Wolfgang Voigt, Matias Aguayo, Gus Gus, as well as a few new-to-us groups/artists: Kolombo, WhoMadeWho, Coma, Mohn, etc. Kolombo starts things off with another dark brooder, that starts out all pulsing minimal dark house, wreathed in swirls of soft buzz, before blossoming into a weird bit of washed out soul, only to slip right back into minimal skitter, the "choruses" sounding more like M83 than something on Kompakt, and from there on out, Kompakt Total 12 unfurls as an ever shifting collection of modern electronica, from pulsing minimal house, to blissed out Pop Ambient skitter, and abstract electro to looped fuzzy field recording flecked dubby drift. As always, super great.
Two aQ black metal faves join forces for this killer split, Kentucky pagan anarcho vegan one man band Panopticon, and isolationist blackbuzz outfit Wheels Within Wheels (a side project of epic metal outfit Seidr), both offering up some of their best, and strangest material. Up first is Wheels Within Wheels, who unleashes two epic tracks of droned out blissy buzz, the first, "A Burial Of The Mother Of Orion", is downright shoegazey, the riffs so blurry and blown out, they seem to smear into a washed out dronescape of layered buzz, the drums buried in the mix, a murky distant throb, the guitars occasionally coalescing into a monstrous crumbling chug, but then just as quickly blissing back out into total blackbuzzdrone, before peeling back the buzz completely, leaving a long stretch of hushed skeletal guitarscapery, a haunting bit of shimmery drift over a deem ominous low end thrum, which leads directly into "A Splinter Of Hope In The Blackest Of Hearts", which is almost like a continuation of "A Burial", but more melodic, the guitars soaring majestically, but still wreathed in a haze of blurred buzz, growing gradually prettier as the track progresses, it's hard to describe, but it's a weird warm bit of blackbuzz shimmer, and when the vocals finally join in, a mournful croon, the sound is transformed again into a strange buzzy lament. Gorgeous and haunting, and a lot prettier and more washed out than the other WWW record.
And it's as if Panopticon decided to follow suit, opening with "The Road To Bergen", which might be the prettiest thing we've heard from him, a mournful, melancholy dirge, dreamy and washed out and super melodic, hazy and almost sun dappled sounding, it's a bit like listening to M83 at 16rpm, a gorgeous blurry, buzzy, dreamy slow build to a soaring super melodic almost Nadja like chorus. So great. And then there's the next track, "From Bergen To Jotunheim Forest" which retains the same lilting dreamy melody, but sets it amidst a much harsher landscape, all buzzing blackened riffage and blasting beats, but the melody drives everything transforming a grim black buzz into something weirdly emotional and strangely pretty, and when the guitars let loose with some wild melodic leads, and some killer harmonies, all over a background of blackbuzz and frantic beats, it's seriously mindblowing, and even 11 minutes of that is not enough. And the record finishes with another strangely pretty sonic missive, this one all clean guitar jangle, woozy chant like vocals, and glistening glimmering melodies, the sound almost liturgical, hazy and gauzy and washed out and impossibly dreamy, peppered with brief blasts of furious black buzz, bit for the most part, strangely lovely.
This just might be one of the least grim and black, black metal splits ever, but somehow it also just might be one of our favorites.
We've been beyond excited in anticipation of this one. Wild Flag is the super group of our wildest dreams. Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss from Sleater Kinney along with Mary Timony from Helium and Rebecca Cole from The Minders. A few of us got to see them live at a super small show last year at the Hemlock and we were blown away by their immediacy, passion and energy. In other words it reminded us so much of what it was like to see Sleater Kinney, one of the best live bands ever in our opinion.
Luckily the songs on this debut capture that live energy, and give us one of the most punchy, catchy and rocking albums of the year. Carrie Brownstein does seem like she's the leader of Wild Flag as her signature guitar and vocal stylings are felt on just about every song. And damn, what can't Carrie do? After Sleater Kinney called it quits she found herself the 'it' music writer, with her great thoughtful music column for NPR's website, and then she mastered television comedy, starring in Portlandia with Fred Armistead, pretty much the funniest TV show to emerge in the last several years. But there is no doubt she missed rocking out and being on stage, and with Wild Flag her and her badass bandmates have tapped into that golden sound of impassioned indie rock with punk spirit that Sleater Kinney perfected in the '90s. On songs like "Glass Tambourine", Mary Timony takes center stage, her vocals, and even more unique and recognizable guitar stylings have been a long favorite of ours. Overall the sound of Wild Flag takes from the more poppy and driving moments of Sleater Kinney albums like The Hot Rock, All Hands On The Bad One, and peppiest tracks from their swan song The Woods. Blast this one loud, and make sure to see them live if you have the chance!
It's hard to believe that it's been five whole years since Wooden Shjips effortlessly materialized into the psychedelic musical landscape. Between then and now they have become semi-hugely successful, almost right under our noses, and taken on the identity of sage-like masters of their psychedelic craft. Indeed, at the beginning, the Shjips appeared to be on the cusp of something new, not quite a "revival", but perhaps a much needed re-imagining of hazed psychedelic rock that sounded just as good in revved-up motorik excursions as it did in slow, confusional wanderings. Perhaps the one thing that bound it all together so perfectly was the band's patience and their ability to really bring out hypnotic grooves, starting with a perfect riff and just taking it all the way into the ever after. Each band member has a specific role within the group, and they know exactly what needs to be done for the song. Sure, a lot of bands will talk that game, but not many people are able to so expertly strip this music to its minimal core as the Shjips, and the formula has changed little over the years - a simple drum pound with no fills, a rumbling low end anchor of bass, wandering organ grooves, and a fuzzed out guitar that inevitably leaves the world behind to venture into clouds of acid-fried soloing. Sitting perfectly within the swirling instrumentation are the low crooned vocals that bring to mind everyone from Alan Vega to a sedate Lizard King to, hell, Elvis? The remarkable thing is how Wooden Shjips have managed to bring about so many comparisons while sounding only like Wooden Shjips.
Album #3 comes to us from the highly esteemed Thrill Jockey label, maybe the most ideal home imaginable for this band in 2011. Unlike the band's previous outings recorded in their practice space, West marks the first time Wooden Shjips have gone into an actual recording studio. How does it sound, you ask? Well, REALLY FUCKING GOOD to put it mildly. We loved the lower-fi murkiness of those other records but the clarity of the recording here brings out an expansiveness that wasn't previously there while also working itself into the record's themes of relocation and expansion to the American West. Ya know, like, San Francisco man. Freedom. Exploration. Rebirth. That kind of deal.
The record opens portentously with "Black Smoke Rise" and sets the tone for what is to come. It rides out with a cool midtempo biker riff while describing the crazy allure of the unknown. "Crossing" moves forward in a warm fuzz blanket with a tambourine clink keeping things nice and steady. Unlike what you might expect from the title, "Lazy Bones" is a hyped up jaunt with ominous little organ melodies adding to the confusion, before the slow burning "Home" brings things down a notch with an organ that has a bit of a Southern swamp vibe. "Flight" kicks in with a nice... uh, "boogie-rock" inspired riff that works really well against the devil may care rhythm and a super catchy organ line. This is probably the closest the band will ever get to making a song to strut down the street to, and it's a motherfucker. "Looking Out" is another uptempo romp with percolating organ chords and the tremeloed guitar shifting hazily in the speakers. Strange, sitar-like guitar notes that could have been beamed in from Sandy Bull, wherever he is, come and go and present a lovely array of musical notes that expertly do as they please. The closing number "Rising" brings things full circle by reversing "Black Smoke Rise" and stretching out the ambience with the rhythm provided by that awesome backwards swooping sound we all love.
Making this Record Of The Week is a no brainer. We've loved watching Wooden Shjips' journey unfold over the years, and they have yet to disappoint. They are a quintessential San Francisco band, and wherever they go, we're along for the ride.
While supplies last (which might not be long), the vinyl lp version of this comes with an exclusive limited edition bonus 7" single. Non-album track "Photograph" b/w a Peaking Lights remix of "Looking Out" from the album (re-titled "Lights Out"). In sleeve with full-color artwork. Definitely a collector's item, only available from a very few lucky stores (like us) and super limited. Sorry cd folks, no bonus with that format...
Dooming ever onward, Oregon's re-activated Yob are back with their 2nd Profound Lore release, the 6th full-length overall from this heavier-than-thou trio, and all Yob and/or doom fans (like us) should be well chuffed! After several years hiatus (during which singer/guitarist Mike Scheidt stayed doomy in his ill-fated Middian project), Yob's 2009 comeback album The Great Cessation emphasized the darker side of Yob, black metal influences to the fore, Yob still spacey and sludgey to be sure, but sounding way more EVIL and nihilistically negative than ever. They haven't brightened up much on Atma, either. There's something primal about these proceedings, Yob calling upon ancient powers with their heavy sonic rituals. It's serious business.
Scheidt still busts out his best, very metal, strangled shriek (a distorted blend of Ozzy, Geddy Lee, and the gargly Dan McCafferty of Nazareth) when he wants to soar (yay, that's what we came for!), but he also goes for a diversity of sore-throat wretched vokills as well; his melodic guitar leads likewise occasionally are heard, snaking out from the murky mire of rumbling riffage, the tarpit black hole in which Yob make their crusty cosmic home... the band's lumbering swing always buried beneath dirty piles of steel-wooly abused amp torture, Atma's production far from clean, instead filthy and cruel.
It's like some unholy combination of the Sabbathy sludge of Eyehategod, the brutal/beautiful bombast of Neurosis (whose Scott Kelly shows up as a guest on a couple of these songs), the most malevolent and monolithic of Melvins, and hint of the denim and leather of old school metal as well. The five loooooong songs here weave atmospheric gloom (the rainy forest field recordings found on the title track ferinstance), fist-in-the-air metallisms, post-rock dynamics, and angsty artiness into their sheer crushing DOOM, and do it all damn well. Make no mistake, this is hellishly heavy, including album-ender "Adrift In The Ocean", even with its semi-acoustic passages and whooshing ambience. Epic, awesome, utterly everything we expect from Yob and then some.
