LP number two from Sam Goldberg, aka Radio People, who traffics in the same sort of spaced out psychedelic synthscapes as other aQ faves like Mist, Emeralds, Le Revelateur, Bitchin Bajas, Gatekeeper, Stellar Om Source and the rest, weaving expansive landscapes of lush chordal swells, and shimmery melodic drift, wreathed in a gauzy thrum that gives the sound a distinctly retro feel, as if this really could be some long lost krautdrone artifact unearthed and reissued. Besides the cosmic synthscapery, the sound also borrows from seventies Italo soundtracks, and krautrocky new age ambience, the sort of thing modern groups like the Alps and Expo 70 have also explored.
Radio People does what he does very well, whether it's weaving warm swirls of synth ambience, kicking out the John Carpenter like jams or conjuring up gorgeous melancholy soundscapes that sound like they were plucked from old lost 45, or crafting creepy faux cold wave soundtracks,but what he does that no one else does, is SING. We really weren't expecting it, but on the last track, when the vocals came in, it really changed everything, warm and softly crooned, subtly processed and wreathed in effects, they add a wistful pop element to the proceedings that definitely makes this something special. The vocals adding a bit of emotion and pathos that can sometimes seem missing with all this retro electronic synth stuff. A pretty great record all around, and fans of the above mentioned bands will most likely flip for this, but that last track left us hankering for more tracks with singing. Here's hoping for a future record of creepy krauty synth pop from Radio People. But until then, this'll do just fine.
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES! Each one hand numbered. Includes a download coupon.
Ras G is a member of the LA based Flying Lotus crew, having contributed jams to FL's records, as well as releasing a ton of limited releases on his own label. So we were interested to hear this...
Trafficking in a J Dilla instrumental hip hop style, Ras G has crafted what is essentially his own Donuts, an instrumental beats and breaks record, most of the tracks hovering at about the one or two minute mark, and while the obvious hip hop headz probably already dig this stuff, or soon will, it seems to us like everyone who's been going nuts for stuff like Clams Casino, How To Dress Well, Balam Acab, Shlohmo and that sort of post-witch house slo-mo-soul might dig this too. Although it's definitely a bit more ADD than the usual WH blissed out atmospheric sprawl. But within these brief blasts, there's so much shit going on, video game sounds, clipped and looped vocal samples, dubbed out rhythms, so many cool unlikely samples, funky horns, lots of record crackle and warped and warbly melodies, he also seems to be strangely obsessed with that horn, the one that you always hear at sporting events (and was recently featured in a Drake / Eminem radio hit), all arranged meticulously into micro soul classics, bumpin' hip hop could have been hits, and throughout, there are some seriously sick beats, the vibe sorta groovy and laid back, like some old dusty record, discovered while crate digging in some alternate universe, and played back on some strange contraption that spins lps in your chopped and lowered ride. So rad!
Longtime readers of the aQ list and fans of Andee's tUMULt label are no doubt familiar with the late great Bellingham Washington band Reeks And The Wrecks, their Knife Hits record on tUMULt still amazes and confounds, but will forever be tainted by a tinge of sadness, as Reeks guitarist Orion Satushek was killed by a drunk driver right before the record was released. Knife Hits stands as an amazing tribute to the man and his talent, and few bands have managed since to create something as wholly original.
Recently PRND were in town, which just so happens to feature another former Reeks member, and in addition to their amazing cd-r (which we have reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), he had copies of the 'lost' first Reeks lp, so we took a whole bunch cuz odds are most folks even big fans have not heard this, and it's a doozy, chronicling the band at a very early stage when they were equal parts dark stumbling funereal folk blues and wild chaotic math rock, a strange combination, that sounds as good now as it ever did.
Our description of Knife Hits pretty much applies to these recordings too: "An old drum kit. Homemade amps. A dented old trombone. A bucket and a handful of firecrackers. The Reeks make a sound that is otherworldly. Dark and stumbling, folk-flecked basement blues. A mix of woozy slide guitar, swampy trombone, sparse and erratic percussion, tape hiss, amp buzz, shortwave interference and dark doomy brilliance. Like a ghostly, indie rock New Orleans funeral jazz band or Roland S. Howard fronting the Dead C. Haunting, mesmerizing, gorgeously raucous, dreamily creepy and absolutely unlike anything you have ever heard." Hard to resist, huh? Well, don't. You won't be sorry. The sound is gorgeous and chaotic and mournful and weirdly full of life and energy. And those sounds are balanced on this lp by the other side of the band that seemed to fade as the band moved forward, loose chaotic post/math rock blow outs, angular crunchy guitars, wild octopoidal drumming, the moody funereal side definitely dominated, but when the band exploded into those heavier parts, it only made them sound that much heavier.
Also, the pressing of this lp is a weird old one, the records themselves are a bit weird, so it's SUPER noisy, not sure how much of it is the pressing, and how much is the awesomely ramshackle lo-fi recording, but whatever it is, it suits them, with the sound erupting into weird squalls of surface noise, lots of hiss and buzz, the band were total DIY, they even had a song that included setting off firecrackers in a bucket, which means, embrace the noise and the low fidelity, and uptight vinyl nerds KEEP AWAY.
One of the greatest bands EVER!!! And this record RULES.
R.I.P. Orion.
Comes in a super swank silkscreened red ink on brown cardstock sleeve.
We talk a lot about how weird Finland is, so before we go any further, let us apologize to the majority of Finland who to be fair are probably not weird at all. Now that we've got that out of the way, HOLY SHIT! Is there no end to the amazing and damaged and demented music coming out of Finland. We're beginning to think not.
The latest evidence comes in the form of the brand new full length from Ride For Revenge, who we first heard a while back on a split with fellow countrymen Torturium, their half of the split a downtuned black trudge, like Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT but with that impossible to describe Finnish something that transforms everything into some special sort of what-the-fuck. Creepy synths, plodding drums, grinding guitar and harsh vocals, not exactly black metal, not in the traditional sense at least, but most definitely metal.
On King Of Snakes however, the band have gotten even weirder, and distinctly less metal, but no less heavy. Supposedly there are guitars, but to our ears it just sounds like just drums and lots and lots of bass. Each song a plodding doomic lurch, the drums pounding out a simple rhythm, the riff repeating over and over, most songs with just a single part, very mesmerizing and hypnotic. Like a caveman Circle or a guitarless Gore, these guys just bash out endlessly cycling looped low end and killer crushing doom drum pound. The vocals are a super affected gurgling growl, not in the death metal sense, instead, super dramatic, intoning unspeakable evils, a rumbling demonic baritone, peppered with the occasional super delay drenched goat metal grunt.
Some tracks also have cool creepy keyboards as well, that add all sort of mood and texture, and it's not cheesy metal synth either, it's all strange analog buzz, a sort of krautrocky blur draped over the endlessly pounding groove.
Ride For Revenge are another one of those black metal bands, who seem to be black metal more out of pedigree than sound, but even though this doesn't sound like metal, it is most definitely black. It sounds a bit like Godheadsilo jamming with Finnish alchemical dronelords Tiermes, with the occasional injection of Hawkwinded FX and SUNN-drenched rumble, mysterious and murky swaths of throbbing low end thrum wrapped around the drums like some evil warlock's cloak.
Imagine if Amphetamine Reptile was a black metal label... then these guys would be Halo Of Flies... Most definitely one of our new favorite 'black metal' records...
Another killer slab of tripped out dreaminess from this LA dirge / drone / avant / psychedelic trio, which of course features Not Not Fun head honcho Britt Brown, the three piece weaving lush smoldering psychscapes that drift and shimmer and remind us quite a bit of SF duo Barn Owl at times. The A side here is a 22 minute sprawl of haunting guitarbuzz ambience, that sounds a bit like a more Technicolor Barn Owl, trading some of that dark broodiness for shimmering soaring high end glimmer, and some of the twang for droned out chordal shimmer, infusing some space-y kraut-y new age into the proceedings, the result is a fairly fantastic stretch sun baked psych, but that's just the first 8 or 9 minutes. All of that buzz and swirl and soar is peeled back leaving a minimal dirgey creep, all detuned piano, murky ambience, almost surfy guitar twang, electronic buzz, like some sort of bastardized slo-mo Morricone, and then the vocals, a dizzying swirl of heavily effected crooning, the spare sound gathering momentum, the guitars swooping in again, adding buzz and rumble, building to a sort of final climax before the inevitable fade out.
The flipside starts with more psychedelic shimmer, mutated voices drifting in shimmering fields of soft noise, before blossoming into a sort of noise drenched gothic gloom pop, a lumbering minor key creep, that sounds almost witch house-y, before switching gears once again, and transforming into what sounds almost like a Robedoor take on classic rock, which is essentially a sort of warped and warble Neil Young mixed with No Neck Blues band, before finally slipping into an awesomely ominous low slung bass heavy dirge, buzzy and a little bit creepy, laced with spidery melodies, and deep bellowed, reverbed new wave vocals, soft swaths of melodic swirl, loads of effects, a sort of dirgey doom pop ballad, that again sounds fantastically twisted and warped.
LIMITED TO 600 COPIES.
Latest from this Swedish duo, whose day jobs just so happen to be producing tracks for artists like Fever Ray and the Knife, but whose musical heart seems to belong to groups like Goblin and folks like John Carpenter, their records gorgeous, dark, cinematic soundscapes of swirling synths and pulsing rhythms, and this latest disc is no different, although if anything, it's much more subtle, and carefully crafted, as well as being quite a bit darker. Where past recordings evoked the the swirl of space, conjuring up streaks of celestial kosmische-ness, or the sleek streamlined imagined future of high speeds and automation, this new record is much more grimy and menacing. Even the opening track eschews the usual RTD hallmarks, and instead locks into a relentless groove, all ominous tension, and haunting repetition, no beats, to soaring synths, just a throbbing cyclical melodic played on old analog instruments that seem to decay as the track progresses growing more and more distorted. One might imagine the record might let up, but the following track is another looped bit of synth-y tension, a blooping minor key melody, over dark minor key swells, but laced with some gorgeous elegiac piano, which adds a serious gravitas to the proceeding, but in no way lightens the mood. This is fantastic stuff, the soundtrack to some dark dystopian future otherworld, as imagined and rendered in analog sound.
The sounds range from hushed piano drive ambient swirls, to creepy lumbering dirges, from gristly expanses of electro-drone thrum to blurred ominous synth buzz blur, and from blurred almost symphonic drift to washed out almost Eurodisco sounding grooves, but all held together by those dark dolorous piano melodies, and that melancholic mood that seems to infuse all the sounds here. Dark and mysterious, a grim and gorgeous glimpse of a dark kosmische underworld.
Oakland's more metal than thou (but still sorta punk) Saviours are back to the attack with this new album, their fourth, another wicked rager like 2009's Accelerated Living, once more produced by Trans Am's Phil Manley, and again on the Kemado label. Hesher, hipster, whatever, this is METAL and your soon to be bangin' head will be proof of that. So, poseur patrol, but down your pitchforks (and Pitchfork readers, time to switch to stronger stuff than PBR).
This time 'round, rather than ripping right into it, Saviours actually start things off slow and low, in something of a stoner/sludge mode, with the lumbering, 7+ minute "The Eye Obscene". Electric Wizard fans might want to break out their bongs for this one. But, while the album surely stays sludgey, the sonics thick, pretty soon Saviours are chuggin' along more aggro, metallic, thrashed out avenues, eventually channelling the classic likes of Judas Priest and Motorhead with the souped up rocka rolla of "Crete'n" and "God's End" ferinstance.
Once again it's the glorious, galloping guitars that rule the record (though that drummer of theirs deserves a hand too), the quasi-melodic vocals however hopelessly hollerin' away without nearly as much effort put in, it would seem. But the guitars, damn they're whipping out the shredding solos and sweet harmonies aplenty. If you dug Accelerated Living as much as we did, you'll be into Death's Procession too, it's cut from the same (denim) cloth but with extra doom-trudge heaviosity added in. Fans of High On Fire, The Sword, Early Man, and Bible Of The Devil, this is for you (though, as much as we like Saviours, we don't understand why Bible Of The Devil aren't at least as popular!).
FYI, the vinyl version came and went, hopefully we'll get more soon...
The Servants were an eighties UK guitar pop band, whose sound was fantastically jangly and polished, super melodic and well produced, bucking the trend at the time to produce lo-fi ramshackle pop (although the group did appear on the C86 comp that pretty much defined that ramshackle pop movement), they even counted members of the Housemartins and the Auteurs among their ranks at one point, and their music was beloved by Belle And Sebastien frontman Stuart Murdoch, who before B&S had tried to form a band with Servants frontman David Westlake. This should all give you an idea of the sound, a little twee, a little precious, earnest and heartfelt, the sort of sound that would most definitely appeal to fans of B&S and the classic sound of groups like The Smiths and nineties NZ pop (The Clean, the Chills, etc.). Cherry Red Records released a compilation called Reserved, which went out of print, and now goes for CRAZY money on eBay, but thankfully, Captured Tracks cherry picked some of the past tracks to put together their own vinyl only collection called Youth Club Disco, and it's a perfect introduction to this band that really didn't get the love or attention they deserved. ALl the tracks here are lilting and melancholy, pure classic indie pop, jangly and dreamy and definitely not for anyone after buzz and crunch, but for folks who like smart, heartfelt pop music, this stuff is pure pop gold.
Two new singles from SF's own Sic Alps, aka Mike Donovan and company, and both sound kind like they could have come from the same session, even the artwork makes them seem like two parts of some sort of maxi double single. Hard to imagine most folks not wanting both, as they're both pretty great.
"Battery Townsley" starts off with the A side title track all urgently strummed acoustic guitar, cardboard box percussion, and thick reverby vocals, a seriously hooky melody, the sort Sic Alps seem to have a lock on, which leads right into the oddly titled "Cambridge Vagina", a kick ass distorted blast of fuzz drenched psychedelic jangle, that should have fans of The Oh Sees who haven't already discovered the joys of Sic Alps making up for lost time.
The "Breadhead" single offers up the title track, which is another primo slab of fuzzy, jammy jangle, plenty distorted and reverby, with that subtly folky undercurrent that all the Sic Alps seem to have, like some lost Dylan track cranked and super charged, which gives way to two short blasts of experimental psych, one a big guitar-ed heavily panned acoustic groover with whispered vox the other a super lo-fi wild rhythmic practice space jam, before finishing off with "Can't You See", a Wailers cover, that sounds like some lost classic sixties psych pop a la The Who or the Kinks, which makes sense as it features Matthew Melton from the Bare Wires playing bass, as well as Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees playing guitar and Ty Segall playing drums, a veritable SF garage rock supergroup. Needless to say, you should probably just buy both...
Two new singles from SF's own Sic Alps, aka Mike Donovan and company, and both sound kind like they could have come from the same session, even the artwork makes them seem like two parts of some sort of maxi double single. Hard to imagine most folks not wanting both, as they're both pretty great.
"Battery Townsley" starts off with the A side title track all urgently strummed acoustic guitar, cardboard box percussion, and thick reverby vocals, a seriously hooky melody, the sort Sic Alps seem to have a lock on, which leads right into the oddly titled "Cambridge Vagina", a kick ass distorted blast of fuzz drenched psychedelic jangle, that should have fans of The Oh Sees who haven't already discovered the joys of Sic Alps making up for lost time.
The "Breadhead" single offers up the title track, which is another primo slab of fuzzy, jammy jangle, plenty distorted and reverby, with that subtly folky undercurrent that all the Sic Alps seem to have, like some lost Dylan track cranked and super charged, which gives way to two short blasts of experimental psych, one a big guitar-ed heavily panned acoustic groover with whispered vox the other a super lo-fi wild rhythmic practice space jam, before finishing off with "Can't You See", a Wailers cover, that sounds like some lost classic sixties psych pop a la The Who or the Kinks, which makes sense as it features Matthew Melton from the Bare Wires playing bass, as well as Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees playing guitar and Ty Segall playing drums, a veritable SF garage rock supergroup. Needless to say, you should probably just buy both...
Brand new ep of gloomy cold wave weirdo electro pop from this NYC trio, and we thought their sound was weird and warped before, they just keep getting weirder and weirder, the music sounding just slightly off, giving it a sort of John Maus / Ariel Pink / James Ferraro vibe, everything woozy and off kilter, and actually, the music sounds a bit like it was played on an old Optigan, if the Optigan came with a 'gloom pop' disc. Warbly and dizzying, almost like the sounds are melting, slowing down and speeding up, as if the whole thing was slightly un-calibrated, or better yet, like the calibration is constantly shifting. The vocals too keep up with the weirdness, a deep Ian Curtis like croon, but very dramatic and over the top, a sort of twisted off key cabaret vibe, at first it's all very disconcerting, but it begins to grow on you, and you find yourself humming along with these tracks stuck in your head like crazy. "Brush Fires" is this year's cold wave gloom pop anti-hit for sure. But the rest of the songs here are just as good/weird, adding some squiggly video game like electronics, some swirling synths, some soaring dramatic faux strings, some bloopy sci-fi melodies, all held together by those crazy vox.
The download includes an extra track, an Arp remix of "Brush Fires" which strips away the vocals, adds some piano, dials back the warped-ness, and turns it into a weirdly propulsive bit of epic pretty krautsynth bliss.
First we've heard from this Indiana crew, but the name definitely had us intrigued, and the fact that it was released on Auris Apothecary, one of our favorite labels going right now, whose packaging is consistently mind blowing, this one's no different. Each one comes wrapped in a sunflower leaf, and tied with twine, inside is a packet of "magical sunflower seeds" and a sunshine yellow tape housed in an eco-friendly brown paper sleeve, all housed in a stickered NON eco-friendly ziplock plastic bag. Sonically, this might be one of our favorites in the AA catalog, sitar and acoustic guitar, which means plenty of mesmerizing steel string buzz. The A side is an awesome psychedelic version of "The Rites Of Spring", that immediately recognizable melody stretched out into a gorgeous and languorous sprawl of hypnotic buzz. The flipside is a much darker proposition, whipping that guitar and sitar buzz into a brooding psychedelic squall, thick pulsing swells, ominous and haunting, distorted and darkly threatening. Both sides are amazing, and WAY too short. definitely excited to hear more from these guys.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES!!
Who are the Skull Snaps, you say? Well, if you have been paying attention to hip-hop of the last eighteen years, you will instantly recognize the opening drum break of "It's A New Day" sampled by The Pharcyde, Gang Starr, Lords of The Underground as well as dozens of others who have sampled that riff and tons of others from this obscure New York soul group. Recorded in 1973, The Skull Snaps, a trio of guitar, bass and drums with killer vocal harmonies, had a more popular following overseas in the Northern Soul scene for such tracks, as "I'm Your Pimp" and "My Hang-up Is You" than they did in the US. Chock full of hooks and breaks, The Skull Snaps lone album is an amazing lost soul document that is finally getting its due. Plus it gets points for being one of the best album covers ever! Hip-hop legacy aside, this is a soul record right up there with Baby Huey, Curtis Mayfield and The Chi-Lites. Features 2 bonus tracks not on the original album. So Cool!
If anyone ever needed a reminder why mp3's will never compare to actual physical releases, they really need look no further than the handful of small labels who more than putting out records, are essentially creating art objects, releases where the extravagant and luxurious packaging are as much a part of the release as the music itself, a gorgeous fusion of art and sound, see elsewhere on this week's list for a handful of new tape releases from the Auris Apothecary, who blow our minds with every new batch of releases, as does Time Released Sound, a local label whose pricey creations are worth every penny, and could just as easily sit in a gallery as on your record shelf at home. Just feast your eyes and ears on this, the latest from Time Released Sound, another fantastically hand assembled release, this one from the oddly named Sonmi451, whose crystalline celestial shimmer is perfectly represented by the star/space themed artwork, but more on that in a moment.
Sonmi451 is Bernard Zwijzen, a Belgian soundscaper who blends field recordings, electronics and acoustic instruments into a dreamy glitchy starscape of sound, pulsing skittery rhythms beneath dreamlike shimmers and tinkling bell like tones, mournful strings wrapped around sprawls of softly percolating electronics, looped and collaged, blurred and smeared into soft focus stretches of ethereal / ephemeral ambience, the sounds definitely evoking the starry sky, it's so easy to drift away and find yourself laying in thick grass, away from the lights of the city, watching the start twinkle glimmer, the black blanket of the nightsky painted blue by the glow of millions of stars, utterly gorgeous, hushed, delicate and dreamlike, the songs here seem to be made for sonic stargazers, for those lost late nights and lazy early mornings, transmissions from beyond the stars, sent from mysterious blinking beacons, drifting weightless in the cosmos, emitting these sweetly subtle sonic missives, sounds both muted and minimal, transformative and transcendental. So nice!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Each one hand numbered, we only have 15 OF THOSE COPIES, and that's all we'll ever be able to get. And as mentioned above, the packaging is sublime, the cds are thermal printed with a full color image of the night sky, the discs housed in a folded sleeve made from an antique star chart, all housed inside a vellum sleeve, printed and stamped and this time adorned with tiny glow in the dark stars, that hover above the deep blue night sky star field visible through the vellum. Also inside are a 5" star finder wheel, as well as various inserts, printed on antique book pages, so incredible!
Some years ago, we were all freaking out about a compilation called Chains And Black Exhaust, a killer mix consisting of obscure, '70s heavy funk music, all from ultra hard to find singles and such, none of which was even identified, though curious folks have since figured out the tracklist... One of those mystery tracks, "You Know", turns out to have been by this outfit, Ohio's Stone Coal White. It's from one of their two rare 45's, circa 1972, and a's and b's of which are compiled together on this archival release, along with "four previously unissued tracks, found in the basement of a now-condemned motorcycle gang hideout in Dayton, Ohio." Which is a good story we'll happily choose to believe! It sure SOUNDS like music from a black motorcycle gang's basement, super raw stoned blaxploitation grooves full of wah wah chicka chicka guitar, with almost dubby sounding lo-fi production, lots of distortion and psychedelic echoey effects. They do a couple badass covers, both Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" and Curtis Mayfield's "Hell Below" (with their singer doing a spot-on Curtis impersonation on that one!), and their own jams have some of the early drugged-out Funkadelic feel. Yeah, good stuff! Fans of another C&BE alumnus, Black Merda, ought to love Stone Coal White. You can thank uber-digger Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis for doing the archeology on this one, and releasing it via his Cali-Tex imprint.
Oh, and we can't resist mentioning something we noticed, if you look up Stone Coal White on YouTube, this is the top rated comment under one of the tracks that's been posted: " I 'v e j u s t m a d e l o v e t o m y w i f e w i t h t h i s p l a y i n g . W h a t a g r e a t a r t i f a c t o f b l a c k r o c k . "
Kauf Nicht Von TPK is a collection of oddities from the Deutsche-Americanische punk outfit Teenage Panzerkorps. Spearheaded by San Franciscan out-rocker Glenn Donaldson, Der TPK sports a German giant of a vocalist in Bunker Wolf, plus grizzled American punks Jason Honea and Catholic Pat Toves. Their sound is one of a forgotten bleak punk as if belted from some shitty squat in the shadows of the Berlin Wall circa 1981. Not the Neue Deutsche Welle sound of synth-based crooners nor of the Geniale Dilletanten crowd of Neubauten, Sprung Aus Den Wolken, etc; but the very dirty and very pissed-off punk sound of a group that wouldn't ever consider recording on anything with higher quality than a second hand 4-track. Even knowing this about Der TPK, we were caught offguard by the trainwreck pace of the first few tracks, which crash through 4/4 rhythms as the jangling guitars and throbbing basslines struggle to keep pace. Even Bunker Wolf sounds like he's pitched up his baritone barking just a bit. These couple of numbers sound as if the turntable was set to 45 rpm when the record's supposed to spin at 33. The tracks tend to return to a more manageable pace throughout the rest of the album which is still quite brisk mind you, with cuts rarely exceeding the three minute mark. These dark-gritty punk numbers drone through guitar, bass, and drums with Bunker Wolf chanting his way through each of the tracks, rounded out by the aptly named "Degenerate Disco." A few of the tracks are different versions of tracks found on the Harmful Emotions lp and the Nations Are Insane cd-r, both of which are way out of print, with plenty of unreleased tracks to boot. Limited to 300 copies, Italian import.
This is the second lp from UK psychedelic instrumental space rockers Teeth Of The Sea, their third record over all, and another twisted batch of heavy twisted psych, it makes sense that it would be on Rocket, home to other aQ fave space rock heavies like The Heads and Gnod, and these guys traffic in a similar sound, but one that is most definitely all their own, just check out opener "The Ambassador", one of THEE heaviest, trippiest slabs of space psych we've ever heard, thick low slung bassline, weird burbling electronics, tripped out processed vox, all hazy and buzzy and gristly, it sounds like a spaced out dirge rock Butthole Surfers almost, the guitars thick and distorted, the song a lugubrious crawl, until a second guitar swoops in, playing a slithery stoner riff, and the horns, the HORNS, bleating out a dark funereal drone, those freaky voices making everything way more druggy and demented, the drums come pounding in, it's not until about halfway through, that the guitars unwind wild peals of psychedelic leads, the drums grow more tribal, and yet, it never full explodes into conventional space rock, this is something else entirely, the song blisses out part way through, weird sci-fi squelches and more horns drifting in an expanse of distant guitar shimmer, and muted rhythms, everything gradually fading out leaving just tabla like drumming, subtle organs and swirls of electronic bloops and bleeps, and hell if that's not the way to start a record...
And the rest of the record, defies convention still by never quite settling down into anything even resembling proper space rock or psych rock, even compared to their last record we reviewed, this is as about far out as it gets. The next track is all drum machine, weird industrial electronics, processed voices, swirling synths, almost like some heavier take on Goblin / Carpenter soundtrack stuff. The title is all horn flecked slow burn drift, a gradual build to a more post rock crunch, building to a sort of Godspeed climax, but one that's all super high end guitar tangles draped over the otherwise seemingly sedate sonic background, dramatic and tense and surprisingly cinematic. The rest of the record continues to take the concept of psychedelic space rock and twist it all up, from pulsing kosmische synths, to almost cheesy, eighties sounding soundtrack music, like a more metal Beverly Hills Cop or Miami Vice (!), to murky hazy washed out ambience, all muted processed guitars and blurred gauzy melodies, to a weird final track that's a hazy shoegazey soundscape of minimal drumming, chiming guitars, and lots and lots of horns, again very haunting and cinematic, and really quite gorgeous.
Weird these guys seems to still lurk so beneath the radar, might be cuz they're just to far out and freaky for the psych/space rock crowd, which is a shame really, cuz this is some of the coolest stuff we've heard in ages.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Found two (2) of these hidden in a box in the back of the store, haven't listed 'em since 2003, great album, grab one if you can, first come first served, sale price...
AQ pal Drucifer (and the guy who runs Dielectric Records, who released those amazing 12" a while back: Sote, Karen Stackpole, etc...) had been threatening to play this record for us for a while, and he's got pretty darn good taste so we were looking forward to finally checking it out. We always just sort of assumed from the title and from talking to Drucifer that it was going to be some sort of jazz, but boy were we surprised when we threw this on. The quartet in question is actually a trio, and while the music these three play does have certain qualities one might find in jazz, this is GRINDMETAL through and through. Five tracks of furious, chaotic, brutal and pummeling hyper complex metallic grind a la Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destoyer, Discordance Axis and the like. But unlike most grinders, TGWMQ stretch their songs way out (none of the songs is shorter than 3 minutes, most significantly more), allowing them to explore and develop and stretch out a bit. The final track is nine minutes long ferchrissakes, with lots of splattery free noise, rumbling ambient passages, found sounds and ethereal female vocals, almost-groovy riff rock parts, and buzzing droning weirdness. But don't be frightened off by all that, 'cause the core of this record is dense and grinding, ultra complicated, dizzyingly agile, and crushingly savage heaviness. So good. All you folks who freak out over Agoraphobic Nosebleed and their similarly sonic minded ilk definitely need this!
A while back we discovered this Dutch dirge / drone outfit thanks to our pals in Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, and you know when a band like that is raving about something being dark and heavy and bleak and AWESOME, then you best listen, and we did, and we went a little crazy for TC, and were super excited to discover that TC had a new release coming out on one of our favorite labels, Auris Apothecary, who have FOUR different new releases on this week's list (Unholy Triforce, Sitar Outreach Ministry, (((o))) and this one!), and once again, they've pulled out all the stops packaging wise with all of them.
Torture Corpse's Ooru Naito Rongu comes packaged in either grey or green scouring pads held together with metal wire, wrapped in a printed transparent Japanese style obi, sealed with a black wax seal, and inside there are printed inserts. It's pretty dang striking, and the rough scouring pads are a hint at the rough and raw sounds that lurk inside, as this is a way noisier proposition than the other TC we reviewed, starting out with a weird bit of super distorted and totally garbled noise rock, which then transforms into a sort of blackened industrial dirge, before finally slipping into a more black and droney drift, but that drift is caustic and chaotic and noisy for sure, a thick corrosive black sonic smear. And so it goes, the sound a blown out, in the red, speaker melting series of jams, dirgey rhythmic krautrock one second, doomy creep the next, stumbling noise rock heaviness one second, and blissed out crumbling Sunroof! style ur-drone the next, everything here slathered in blacknoise, streaks of hiss and whir and shards of keening feedback, all except the nearly nine minute closer, which is a surprising bit of dreamy droney drift, complete with some strange haunting vocals just below the surface.
This definitely benefits from headphone listening, but either way, like the other Torture Corpse (and the other AA stuff), totally recommended.
LIMITED TO 95 COPIES!!!
Release number three from local label Voltaire Records, and it's another good one. After the debut from Publicist (aka Sebastian Thomson from Trans Am) and the Affairs Online compilation, which included the debut of Lovelock (aka Steve Moore of Zombi), comes this killer split, featuring Publicist once again, this time teamed up with aQ faves Tussle, with each band offering up one original, and then remixing a song by the other.
Tussle start things off with a groovy chunk of bouncy bass driven electro, wreathed in strings, and underpinned by what sounds like blurred pianos, it's a dizzying mix of dancefloor slink, and low slung electro-pop, the production lush and softly psychedelic, the rhythms a bit dubbed out, definitely digging the new sound, and we're excited to hear more. They also take on Publicist's "Hand To Mouth" from the Voltaire 12" and make it their own, pulsing synths, garbled processed vox, even bigger beats, some robotic funk swirled in, what sounds almost like some talk box, seriously propulsive and groovy.
Publicist offers up some minimal synthscapery, a stuttery rhythmic bit of clipped synth pulse, over a krautdisco groove, and some thick funky basslines, everything softly distorted and seriously buzzy, the song blossoming into a sort of sci-fi Moroder-ish disco funk groove, with some swirly psychedelic synths and some kick ass robo-vox. And then Tussle's track gets Publicized into something a bit darker and groovier, thick dubbed out bass pulses, wild percussion, all over a churning low end groove and lush swells of cosmic synth, not to mention some weird breathy vocalizations, the whole thing sounding like the music from the credit sequence in some eighties sci-fi fantasy epic. Awesome!
For fans of Janis Joplin and/or Flower Travellin' Band... a reissue of the 1968 album from this Japanese Sixties psychedelic act, who later morphed into Seventies hard rockers and massive AQ faves Flower Travellin Band. This early incarnation of the FTB had a mostly different lineup, including female vocalist Remi Aso who does her best Janis (and Grace Slick), singing in either a delicate waver or a screeching wail, wow. And The Flowers back her up like Big Brother, total pros. There's also a male singer, Chiba Hiroshi, who belts it out on such songs as "Hey Joe". Yup there's lots of then-contemporary covers on here, including stuff by Hendrix, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin. So you've gotta be into the classic rock - with a Japanese twist. Apparently Uchida had just returned from a trip to England, hanging out there with John Lennon, and this record was his first attempt to take the Japanese "Group Sounds" scene into a new, more psychedelic acid rock direction to emulate the hipness happenin' in London and San Francisco at the time. The band got attention for that - and for their naked album cover photo, the band loitering about in an idyllic meadow someplace, in the buff, though any band members (ahem) who happen to be facing toward the camera also happen to be reading newspapers or magazines for some reason... Of course, Uchida pulled this stunt again with the first FTB album that came out a few years later, with the naked band on the cover riding choppers down the highway.
Besides the cover, the first thing anyone would notice about this album is the charming intro skit, at the beginning of track one, wherein a guy tells a giggling girl about this great new band from Tokyo, "these six guys and this chick", who "do some really fantastic Big Brother And The Holding Company stuff". And he's not kidding, as the rest of the record proceeds to prove. And let's face it, these are great songs, you might not want to hear the versions played on your local classic rock radio station ever again but the Summer Of Love seems a lot cooler when we're tuning in via Tokyo.
Numbered, limited cd edition in the usual Phoenix manner.
A while back we got a strange 'release' from this 'band' which consisted of a tape loop, in a tiny glass bottle, the music on the loop a snippet of old Norwegian oceanographic recordings, the bottle held shut with a small cork, and branded with Unholy Triforce's triangle logo. We never even got a chance to properly list and review it, as we mentioned it online and we sold out of all of the copies in a matter of hours (follow us on Twitter, people!). In keeping with Auris Aopthecary's M.O., that bottled tape loop was as much a musical are object as it was a proper release, and in that case specifically, probably more so. Which brings us to this, the latest high concept audio missive from this mysterious band, this one called Crucifiction, featuring a very brief audio accompaniment, which you can sample below, recorded onto a clear cassette tape, with the Unholy Triforce logo, housed in a clear tape case, each one hand etched with an upside down cross, and each one held shut with four NAILS, driven not just through the case, but through the tape itself. We're not sure how easy it would be to remove the nails to listen to the tape, but needless to say, that little detail might just be what makes this more art than music. Either way, it looks amazing, and we can't imagine a tape nerd who wouldn't treasure one of these, and give it a spot of honor on their tape shelf, it's intense and ominous and dangerous looking (and sounding actually), and thus, will require some extra packaging if you order if with other stuff, to keep that other stuff from also getting crucified.
LIMITED TO 87 COPIES!!
Here's the 4th volume of the wonderful Secret Museum series to make the transition to vinyl, 'twas originally released on cd by Yazoo years ago. A compilation of rare ethnographic recordings, taken from old 78s, from the region of Central Asia: Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere. Like the rest of the series, quite recommended. In fact, this is one of our favorites. These new vinyl versions are limited editions of 1000, and packaged in gatefold Stoughton tip-on sleeves. Outernational should do as well with these as Mississippi has with similar archival vinyl releases, we think.
Lost Tapes, then Found Tapes, and now Hidden Tapes. As good as many of the reissues that Minimal Wave has released, it's their compilations that really shine. Here, those obscurant new wave / post punk obsessives offer a great collection of urgent synth blorp from all over the world and all dating from the early '80s. Very few of these tracks had much in the way of distribution or fanfare whatsoever, and that makes the discovery all the better. There's only a couple of the acts that we had any familiarity with, and we're probably not alone in that assessment. The opening number by SS-Say is one of the tracks we had heard, being featured on the cd reissue of the Pesteg Dreg album, as both bands were led by the Danish synth-mastermind Martin Hall. "Care" is a megawatt anthem of oversaturated synth lines and Euro-pop danceability that lusts after the New Order production of Blue Monday with more cocaine and dark theatricality tossed in for good measure. Every thing else on the compilation is considerably more understated in terms of production quality (and following the branding of 'minimal wave' all the more), with high caliber tracks offered on the Normal / Human League anxious bleep from the Yugoslavian project Oskarova Fobija and the insistent synth-chanting of Danton's Voice. The British duo Robert Lawrence and Mark Phillips take up a friendlier version of early SPK / Nocturnal Emissions monophunk sequencing with transistor radio vocals and speed-simulating circuitry. Things turn toward the ultra-minimal side with the bittersweet melodicism of The Fast Set and Reserve's proto-Italo disco number, sporting an icy vocal detachment that would make Johnny Jewel jealous. The cd features two bonus tracks not on the vinyl including Gary Allen's weird science sequencing and goofy lyricism that looks to Devo and Oingo Boingo. Another tip of the hat goes to Minimal Wave for this one!
After a handful of killer singles comes the debut from this UK indie pop four piece, and it's just as good as those singles promised. In fact, the A side from the most recent single is included here, described by us in a past review as "total old school urgent post punk jangle pop, sassy female vox, backed up by deep boy background vocals, cool tendrils of psychedelic guitar melody, fuzzy summery pop for sure, rife with all that sixties reverb and echo, but with just a bit of an ominous edge, and a KILLER chorus." And we pretty much assumed that like in most cases, said single would be the best track on the album, but somehow EVERY track here is competing for best track bragging rights. The sound very beholden to pop minimalists that came before, Beat Happening, Velvet Underground, all raw and stripped down, urgent and emotional, but still lush and layered, a little bit dark and depressive, and still shot through with sonic warmth and a hopeful melodicism that will definitely find fans of the current group of sixties girl group and post punk influenced indie poppers like Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Grass Widow as well as fuzzy garage rockers like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and the rest.
Opener "Found Love In A Graveyard" would have to be a contender for pop jam of the year, with its brooding haunting main riff, sweet vocal oooh's and boy/girl vocal interplay, a gloomy bit of pop that blossoms into something super melodic, crazy catchy, jangly and crunchy and so great, with some of THEE most perfect vox ever. So now we're convinced that THIS must be THEE jam here, but then "Right Side Of My Brain" starts up, another killer chunk of crunchy jangle, and yet another bit of dark and moody classic style indie pop with yet another killer chorus, and it's right about then that we decide, "fuck it", why bother trying to pick our favorite track, might make more sense to just proclaim this our new favorite pop record and be done with it. And by be done with it, we mean play over and over and over like crazy!!
We've long been fans of minimal techno maven Ricardo Villalobos, his records spare and skeletal, rhythmic and repetitive, the sort of electronic music we find utterly mesmerizing and totally irresistible. In addition to that, Villalobos does not shy away from strange sonic experiments, and is thus no stranger to odd samples, considering he made a whole record out of sounds borrowed from French prog legends Magma, so this new record really shouldn't have been that much of a surprise, nor should we have been surprised by just HOW great it turned out, but it was, and we were, which should speak to just how incredible this strange sonic experiment truly is. Villalobos teamed up with Max Loderbauer and created this sprawling double disc which is essentially a minimal techno mash up of modern classical and European jazz, with all the sounds culled from various releases on the legendary ECM label, which include, most excitingly for us, Arvo Part, but also loads of ECM stalwarts like Bennie Maupin, Paul Giger, John Abercrombie, Christian Wallumrod, Alexander Knaifel, Miroslav Vitous, Louis Sclavis, Wolfert Brederode, Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani and Paul Motian. Never heard of any/most of those, it hardly matters, as the duo of Villalobos and Loderbauer stretch out the sounds of the originals into spare rhythmic minimalism, looping and layering, adding subtle bits of rumble and crunch, deep pulses and abstract shimmer, fields of glitch and muted crunch, but to our ears, it sounds like very little was added to the mix, and much of the magic came from deftly manipulating the originals. The techno element is really negligible here, the sound is much more abstract avant jazz, or hushed minimal drift, in fact, the sound is so unique it's quite difficult to really describe simply. The sound actually reminds us quite a bit of Aussie free jazz minimalists The Necks, the same sort of subtle shifting sonic palette and the gradual evolution of sound. Opener "Reblop" is a hushed super spare bit of solo piano, wreathed in clouds of occasional cymbal shimmer, and some melodic harp, the notes on the piano wreathed in reverb, the cymbal shimmer strangely distorted, the wide open spaces peppered with soft synthy streaks and bloopy squelches, which often mirror the melody, it's really strangely pretty, but also subtly alien. "Recat" is about as close as things here get to techno, which is not that close, but the original brushed snare rhythm is looped into a clipped minimal electronic flecked skitter, that rhythm delicately processed and gradually transformed while all around it pianos and strings unfurl melodies that become gnarled and softly distorted into new shapes, the result a sort of warped lo-fi kraut-jazz. "Resvete" is super spare and spaced out, cymbal shimmer and angelic female vocals, Villalobos and Loderbauer's contributions so subtle, that barring a few glitchy bits, it's difficult to tell how different this version is than the original, quite we're guessing, but it's so deftly transformed, that it's not hard to imagine this as just some strange slab of experimental European jazz. And the tracks that sample Arvo Part, manage to make magical music even moreso, taking Part's lush liturgical drift and making it even more washed out and ethereal, mysterious and dreamlike.
One of our favorite tracks is "Reannounce", which is very tribal, almost African sounding, hypnotic rhythms, and processed chant like vocals, underpinned by some throat singing like buzz, and some wild almost free sounding percussion, "Recurrence" too with its lazy drumming, and slo-mo late night smokey slowed down jazz feel, the whir of the trumpet buzz turned into a muted drone, the sound almost like the music is melting. "Rebird" finds the duo building what sounds like an imagined field recording, underscored by delicate, slightly warped piano, and a barely there rhythm, while "Retikhiy" sounds like some sort of alien world music, or some reimagined forest folk transformed into looped electronic minimalism. We could really go track by track, every song here is mysterious and magical, the rare sort of record that transcends it's genre, it's hard imagine anyone into adventurous music not loving this. It's jazz, it's classical, it's electronic, it's plunderphonics, but it's also none of those, the sound truly more than its constituent parts. The extensive liner notes go into great detail about the creation of this collection of songs, explaining that the duo did not have access to the original tracks, so had to use the records themselves, and thus chose tracks where rhythms and instruments were isolated in the composition, in addition, gaps and pauses and record noise, as well as the natural room sound were also sound sources, with much of this improvised live, with the intention of "combining the functionality of reduced electronic structures with the living textures of ECM productions", with the most important thing being "to harmonize these two worlds, without them aspiring to mutually deactivate each other, to keep both - the organic and the electronic - in balance." So great, definite contender for record of the year, jazz, electronic, classical or otherwise!
All right! Another colorful issue of this great magazine devoted to pretty much anything groovy and generally of a certain vintage. On the cover, the late great Nina Simone, whose significant socio-political-cultural impact is assessed. Also this issue, rapper Shock G of Digital Underground, Brazilian bossa jazz cat Dom Salvador, synth popster Hudson Mohawke, Band of Gypsies bassist Billy Cox, roots reggae's Yabby You, and plenty more. Including, perhaps for the first time in Wax Poetics, some krautrock, with a feature on Neu! Though, they probably have at least written about Kraftwerk or Can before, we'd imagine.
Brand new ep from these SF shoegaze / jangle poppers, and it's a doozy, taking up right where their aQ beloved Sports album left off, launching right into it with the hazy, dirgey, dreamy "Sweet Sixteen", with its slow pounding beat, low slung bassline, reverbed ethereal vocals, and thick grinding swaths of guitar, which are soon joined by lush chiming melodies, the sound epic and expansive, moody and brooding, we've found ourselves playing it over and over and over. Which means it took us a while to get to "Hazel", which is a bit more propulsive, and very eighties sounding, almost like their take on this whole retro new wave thing, but holy shit is it the sort of song that would be a massive hit in a perfect world, a killer hook surrounded buy weirdly effected guitars, crunchy riffs, all wed to a killer groove, thick fuzzy bass, the sound occasionally exploding into sweetly psychedelic squalls. The rest of this 5 song ep follows suit, dipping into druggy dark shoegaze crunch on "Your Own Nothing", the sound thick and dark and fuzzy, but still rife with melodies and another wicked hook, or bouncy retro fuzz pop on "The One You Want" that sounds like it should be on the soundtrack to a modern John Hughes style teenage classic, and finally, the oddly titled "Golfers", with its thick, downtuned dirgey riff, echoey vox, tribal drumming, and melancholy guitar melody, a dreamy chunk of minimal gloom pop, that might be this ep's real gem.
Vinyl abusing composer/conceptualist Christian Marclay is on the cover, talking with David Toop inside this issue of The Wire. Also: Bill Orcutt, Scanner, Chris & Cosey (doin' the "invisible jukebox") and plenty more - including Sun Araw's Cameron Stallones recounting adventures in Jamaica recording with The Congos! Also, there's a Primer on "Militant Tuning" featuring the likes of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Harry Partch, Tony Conrad, and more... Plus The Wire's usual batch of reviews, news, etc.
The return of Cascadian black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room, introduces us to their latest epic, Celestial Lineage, with a sound that continues to move well beyond the bounds of black metal. As it was the band never shied away from augmenting their furious Weakling-beholden buzz and frantic blasts with swaths of ethereal drift and dark hushed minimalism, but here, those non black metal elements play a much bigger role, and manage to take the sound to a whole other level, positioning those non-metallic sounds less as 'interludes' and more as fully realized elements that are woven deftly into the fabric of the songs and sound. The record even opens with a hazy bit of choral drift, all tinkling chimes, shimmery synths, stately piano, and ethereal vocals, that sound more seventies British folk than black metal. Then, instead of simply exploding into some black buzz, the riffs are introduced slowly, blending into the folky drift, transforming the 'intro' into a blackened chorale, allowing the folky flutter to fade, until finally the blackness descends, the sound impossibly lush and heavy, epic and expansive, the sound thick and more lush than ever, the riffing wild and tangled, the drums mathy and intricate, and then again, the band take this grim buzz and wreath it in soaring epic almost folky melodies, some gorgeous harmonized guitars, there are even some full on psychedelic leads, the song shifting from black churn to ephemeral shimmer and back again, even dipping into some majestic doomic dirgery, but somehow the varied parts all fit together perfectly.
After a bit of chanted field recording flecked ambience, sounding like some ancient forest ritual, the band slip right back into pure transcendental blackness, with another sprawl of epic soaring blasting buzz, but again, it manages to be lush and weirdly melodic, on the surface it's a roiling churning blackness, but somehow the sound is infused with a blurred warmth, a subtle melodic core, that elevates the sound beyond simple black buzz. The sound constantly confounding, the song splintering into wide open expanses of feedback drenched, tribal drum driven abstraction, then slipping into a sort of hazy post rocky drift, before finishing off in a blaze of frantic black ferocity, but even there, the sound is wrapped in thick soaring swirls of melody.
One of our favorite tracks might be "Woodland Cathedral" which sounds exactly like the title suggests, over a bed of what sounds like forest sounds, guitars hover and shimmer and soar, the rhythm is glacial and funeral, everything is wreathed in a patina of buzz and thrum, the sound super distorted and almost shoegazey, angelic female vocals drifting over the top, tangled into strange but lovely harmonies, a doomy choral bit of blackened loveliness, which leads directly into the final movement, two 10+ minutes epics, the first, another example of Wolves' mastery of melodic blackness, grinding black heaviness wedded to delicate folky flutter, with hints of post rock, a sound that while in the past was perhaps too obviously beholden to many, now seems to belong to no other, and finally, a sprawling buzz drenched black doomdirge that sounds like Nadja and Comus and Sunroof! and WITTR all blurred into one glorious blackbuzz ur-drone doom-bliss epic. So good.
Super swank packaging too, with some of the most gorgeous artwork/photography we've seen on a black metal record for sure. Vinyl version forthcoming as well.
