Welcome once again to the esoteric, eccentric, and extreme world of Absu! If bands can be said to conjure unique "worlds", AQ faves Absu certainly do. Insane and arcane as we have said. The veteran Texan black metal trio returned from a long hiatus with their excellent self-titled comeback in 2009, to which this new, almost-self-titled album (we love that it's called Abzu!) is the follow-up. Again, original founding member and resident drum demon Lord Proscriptor McGovern and his current chaotic cohorts have crafted a lesson in magickal thrashing, full of awe inspiring hyperspeed battery, dog whistle shrieks, rasping kokills, and headspinning shred, that puts all other bands to shame when it comes to "staying in character" and maintaining their mythos & mystique. We mean, these guys aren't just tight musically but conceptually as well, as they say in the digipack's liner notes: "NOTE: ABSU arrogantly executes mythological occult metal... still." Indeed they do, and they have reason to be arrogant.
This new Absu opus opens with the ripping "Earth Ripper" and doesn't ever let up, apart from some stop/start and sudden dives into quieter acoustic/melodic breaks, like the lovely ending to "Circles Of The Oath", or several of the sections that make up the 14+ minute long suite "Song For EA" that closes the album with epick side-long prog grandeur. Prog? Heck yeah, note that not one but two members of the three-man Absu horde are credited with playing Mellotron, that most '70s proggy of all instruments (the most '80s prog would be the Chapman Stick, but we digress). However, no one will confuse Abzu for the new Opeth, this album rages, part Slayer, part King Diamond, part Immortal circa Blizzard Beasts, part graduate thesis in ancient Sumerian occult philosophy...
Newest record from Damon McMahon, aka Amen Dunes. His first record, Dia, we made a Record Of The Week, describing it as sounding like some lost psychedelic gem from the Sixties, and the second Amen Dunes record, Murder Dull Mind, was more of the same, gloriously haunting, outsider bedroom psych, channeling the spirit of Syd Barrett and Skip Spence, a mysterious otherworldly folk-pop artifact steeped in druggy atmosphere and loosed from traditional folk music tropes, resulting in haunting sonic ritualism that seemed to exist out of time.
This latest record is a logical extension of its two predecessors, and if anything, it seems to be the poppiest of the bunch. Right from the start, "Baba Yaga" had us expecting something WAY more far out, but instead, it's a gorgeous slab of soaring folk pop, all sun dappled and dreamy, with some surprisingly powerful vocals, all wound up in blurry shimmer, and what sounds like tangled strings or heavily effected harmonicas, either way, it might be the best proper 'song' McMahon has come up with yet. And much of the record follows suit, taking the early Pink Floydisms and mixing those up with some Byrds-y twang, some Grateful Dead jamminess, all blurred into a hazy chunk of lost Sixties folk pop. We can even hear some early Bee Gees, some Zombies, some truly gleefully twisted classic pop moments mixed in (check out "Not A Slave", which sounds like it could have been some alternate universe hit), which makes Through Donkey Jaw a surprisingly catchy record. And we have to say it definitely suits them (him?). Not sure if it was a conscious decision, or a natural progression, but this record is most definitely about songs first, that said, the sounds those songs are created with, are pretty impressive, a dead ringer for records of the era, but here and there some strange synth, or some odd bit of production will give it away as something more modern that it purports to be.
And there's still plenty of experimentalism going on, it's just more subtle, either whole non-song-tracks, or subtly woven in amidst the hooks and weirdly proper verse chorus verse arrangements. The vocals are woozy and laid back, wreathed in soft effects, but still much more of a driving force than on past records, the sound shifting easily from jangle pop to gloom folk, tripped out psychedelia to jammy psych rock without batting an eye, and managing to make it all hang together like a proper record.
The final track (a bonus track) is titled "Tomorrow Never Knows". Is it a cover of THAT song? It's actually hard to tell, but what we do know is that it's one of the most gloriously far out moments on the record, a dark brooding bit of rhythmic propulsive krautrock, laced with pounding piano, swirls of distorted guitar crunch, bleating horns, shards of feedback, wild tribal freakouts, after the otherwise song oriented psychedelic folk pop of the preceding thirteen tracks, it's a pretty unexpected, fantastic, and sonically unhinged finale.
The return of this grinding extreme black metal duo, another blast of sonic sickness that offers up everything we've come to expect from these guys, insanely furious riffing, impossible blasting programmed beats, throat shredding vokills, twisted, convoluted arrangements, seemingly continuing in their quest to create the sickest, blackest, buzziest metal ever. But weirdly enough, for as heavy and black and buzzy things are this time around, there's also a lot of other weirdness going on, which seems at odds with their core sound. But you know how we are - the weirder things are, and the less they make sense, somehow the more the record in question hits the spot. So Anaal Nathrakh circa now, are mixing in lots of clean vocals (something they began doing back on Hell Is Empty... or thereabouts), dramatic and almost operatic, giving much of the music here a Borknagar or Code vibe, not to mention, even the heaviest bits here are surprisingly melodic. Plus there's twisted stretches of effects drenched tunefulness, some downright psychedelic flourishes, midtempo grooves, industrial ambience, tripped out electronics, all woven into the band's core black buzz, and while on the surface, it could seem like weirdness for weirdness sake, it actually sounds more like those various not-strictly-black elements were borne out of vastly improved songwriting, cuz goddamn these songs are catchy, the riffs are killer, and none of that weirdness sounds at all out of place. Sure, a lot of the time it doesn't sound as much like Anaal Nathrakh as it does Khold or Code, but often those moments splinter into some blurry black blast that couldn't be anyone else.
As much as we loved their debut Codex Necro way back when, this new one, as different as it is, might just be catching up...
We first heard Annapurna Illusion on a split with looped psychedelic drifter High Wolf. The weird thing was that we discovered the guy in High Wolf as also the guy in AI, but his (?) side of the split ended up being one of our favorite jams for sure. So when we discover that Rocket was releasing a full length by 'em, we were pretty excited, and if anything, the new AI sounds like a perfect fit for Rocket, not sure if it was coincidental, or if AI whipped up some sort of space rock for the occasion, or Rocket heard this new spacier AI and knew they had to have it, hardly matters really, what matters is what comes out of the speakers when you set the needle in the groove. And what comes out is some super drugged out psychedelic mesmer, an even more minimal and abstract take on the Wooden Shjips / Moon Duo axis, the sounds more obviously looped, but layered and repeated and woven into sprawling stretches of murky and washed out, rhythmic space rock drift. Sort of. The tracks never truly launch into total space rock, instead they hover right this side of it, creating tense druggy stretches of krautrocky ambience, and minimal psychedelia, simple motorik rhythms pulse within clouds of swirling effects and distorted looped guitars, a few of the track veer away from the space psych swirl, dipping into creeping organ driven dronescapes one second, and more abstract and laid back Spacemen 3 like dirgery the next, rife with effects and tribal percussion and swirly shoegaze guitars, but the finest moments, which do make up the bulk of the record, are when the band lock into that psychedelic spaciness, and unfurl epic expanses of drugged out, blissed out space-psych-loop hypno-drift. So great. Our favorite thing on Rocket lately, along with Teeth Of The Sea's Your Mercury lp (which we just got back in, too)...
Super swank packaging, and pressed on see-through maroon vinyl.
Alex Cobb's Students Of Decay imprint must issue an edict to those who pass through its doors to deconstruct the song to particular base elements - primarily noise and drone with a ghost of melody - and rearrange them, for some truly compelling albums. Evan Caminiti, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Brendan Murray, Celer, Peter Wright, and Natural Snow Buildings (the latter being perhaps the most 'traditional' of these SoD acts) have all obeyed Cobb's edict, alongside plenty of lesser knowns.
Aquarelle (aka Ryan Potts) is not a project we've heard all that much about, but the work certainly holds up to the high Students Of Decay standards of scattered drone pocked with sculpted noise. Beginning with cyclical patterns of cello and guitars all encrusted with rough-cut shards of glass that reflect and refract sound into a consonant shimmer of white noise. The fundamental tones from the cello in particular surface through "With Verticals" brightening the space with all of the cinematic flourishes one hears in Stars Of The Lid, but produced with the granularity of a particularly discordant Christian Fennesz (e.g. Endless Summer). "The Blue Light Was My Body" sets undulating washes of static-noise upon a finger-picked acoustic guitar riff and a stately drone that forms a enveloping corona to the track. Again, the references to Fennesz, Loveliescrushing, and Tim Hecker ring true, with Aquarelle flashing Americana-hues from weathered wood and rusty nails to his grit-laden ambience. Limited to 300 copies!
We've reviewed a couple records by Canadian drone / free jazz / krautrock improv trio Arc, probably best know for being fronted by Mr. Aidan Baker, he of doomdronedirge duo Nadja, and numerous other solo records. But Arc is definitely a group, with the three members each contributing to Arc's lovely, minimal sound. Haunting and hushed, slow building and mysterious, simple percussion, fluttering woodwinds, the distant swirl of layered drones, Arc almost sound like a more abstract Necks, which is a huge compliment. And in fact this reminds us of several recent Baker releases (Still Life, Lost In A Rat Maze), in its dark abstract sort-of-jazziness. But unlike the inherent minimal dronemusic leanings of those more recent records, Arc build into something almost propulsive, at times reminding us of Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, an almost world music sounding landscape of sound, the flutes especially evoking a world/folk music vibe, with the minimal tribal percussion, really sealing the deal, especially on the second track, with the band doing a sort of tabla driven, synth heavy bit of Muslimgauze worship, flecked with strange bits of electronic glitchery, and some twisted bits of FX drenched guitar squiggle. Folks who dig Baker's more minimal murky drone side or the heavier metalgaze of his Nadja stuff, might be a bit put off, but if you dug the other Arc records, or just like strange minimal electronic experimentalism and dreamy faux world music weirdness, this just might hit the spot.
WE ONLY HAVE SIX COPIES OF THIS, and as we mentioned, the label folded, and these are absolutely the only copies we'll be able to get, which means snap one up before they disappear.
We sold out of the pre-ordered super deluxe boxset version of the latest full length from dronescaper Aidan Baker, but fear not, for those of you who didn't want to shell out $52 for that deluxe edition, we've got this, the standard version, still quite swank, a deluxe black, blue and silver metallic, 6 panel digipak style sleeve, with the same amazing music at a much nicer price...
By now, long time readers of the aQ list know how much we dig Aidan Baker and all his various projects, and it seems that you all do too, based on how many of his records we sell. The sad thing is that so many of his most amazing records were released as super limited cd-r's, often so limited that we were never able to get any for the shop at all. Such was the case with 2007's Noise Of Silence. Originally released on Hyperblasted, the amazing Essence Music in Brazil has now stepped in to make this dark droney gem available again...
So what's the big deal about Noise Of Silence? Needless to say at this point, it's doozy, a gorgeous, haunting, 50 minute abstract drone/drift, super cinematic, rife with dark chordal swells, layered shimmer, mysterious disembodied voices, a strange bit of processed sibilance, that could be the vocals processed, but instead becomes weird little shards of soft focus white noise peppering the hushed soundscape, almost like the sonic equivalent of white caps on a blackened sea. It doesn't take long for the track to blossom into something far from tranquil and drifty, the sound growing more agitated, the vibe more noisy, the atmosphere more dense, the voices more strident, a swirling cacophony, that manages to build to an almost white noise squall, but even them the edges are smoothed out, and the sound, while harsh and heavy, still manages to be darkly droney and weirdly hypnotic, the sounds grinding and crunching, the various tones splintering and crumbling, a heady blown out wildly looped collage that gradually settles into something much more mellow, the last 20 minutes a slowly decaying stretch of ambient dronemusic, the whispery shadows of that cacophony still present, hissing and swirling just below the surface, seriously and surprisingly haunting and demonic Baker, we can definitely imaging this as the score for some experimental foreign horror / art film. Gorgeous stuff for sure, and definitely on the dark side of Baker's sound, one we don't get to hear as much as we'd like. Obviously WAY recommended!
Latest blast of kick ass hook heavy garage pop from Mr. Matthew Melton and company, and it's another doozy, ditching the reverb and low fidelity that so many of their sonic brethren rely on, in favor of some KILLER songs, as well as a sound and production that sounds like it was transported here direct from the sixties. Opener "Don't Ever Change" was the A side of a single we were never able to get, and it's an impossible (and impossibly kick ass!) blend of glammy T.Rex stomp, fuzzy sixties pop and Beach Boys surf rock, all crunchy jangly guitars, lots of oooh's and aaah's, a hook to die for, and some super strange production with the second guitar swooping in from one channel, way louder than the rest of the mix, adding a strange bit of psychedelia to the proceedings. Once we got past that first track (after listening to it about a million times), the rest of the record unfolded similarly, Melton's knack for conjuring up classic pop unmatched these days, and the sound, we can't help but think we're listening to some lost collection of sixties Nuggets or something. As always, regardless of the sound, or the production, it's all about the songs, and BW are tough to beat when it comes to classic hooks, just check out the title track, fuzzy, jangly, a little bit surfy, a little bit rockabilly, bur pure pop at its core, and that coupled with the weird mix, the vocals panned hard right, the drums panned hard left, only makes it that much cooler and weirder. As the record progresses the sound gets a bit heavier, and the Who vibe that was all over past records resurfaces here big time (check out "Sweet Little Stranger), as does some Stoogesy swagger.
As always, killer stuff, and like with past records, we find ourselves not really wanting to listen to anything else!
Zach Condon and his entourage are back for another album of lush, orchestral pop. Piano, pump organs, horns, keyboards, and more creating the rich tapestry for Condon's soaring and emotive vocals. Sure to please fans of the band, as this displays both their more subdued and melancholic side as well as their more bright and poppy leanings. Music that makes you want to head to the shore with nothing more then a blanket, a small bag of your most precious belongings and a bottomless bottle of red wine.
Special deluxe packaging while they last, cloth-covered hardback sleeve, both the cd and vinyl (the latter of which comes with mp3 download code).
Big Troubles' recent Sad Girls 7", reviewed on our previous list, marked a big sonic change for this aQ beloved weirdo pop combo, one that we were loathe to embrace. Our experience is that typically, when bands 'mature' and their sound changes, becoming less weird and less idiosyncratic, in most cases the band also essentially becomes less GOOD. So we feared the worst, word was Big Troubles had shed much of their warped quirkiness and were headed for jangle pop central with an about to pop new album on Slumberland. But we need to fear anything, cuz while we may lament the band's old sound, much of the pop core, that made them so awesome in the first place, still remains, just cleaned up a little. And as they say, these boys sure do clean up nice.
And the new Big Troubles are a perfect fit for Slumberland, a dreamy mix of modern fuzz pop and classic nineties indiepop jangle, the A side of the aforementioned single is here, and as we descirbed it before, it "sounds like a classic slab of nineties Britpop, all big soaring fuzzy guitars, hazy dreamy vocals, shimmery, glimmering and hooky as all get out, a huge hit in a perfect world, but since this is not, it will remain an underground perfect pop gem." Which really applies to most of the record. While "Sad Girls" might be the obvious single, opener "She Smiles For Pictures" is a close second, with its cool quirky main riff, its sweetly melancholy melody, warm muted jangle and the lush dreamy vox that slip easily into a soaring falsetto, there's even a couple brief squalls of psychedelic noisiness, but they are brief and deftly woven into the group's perfect pop. And pretty much perfect is what it is, any one into other Slumberland bands who maybe found Big Troubles too weird, just might find themselves with an unlikely new favorite band.
We've been listening to this non stop (along with Slumberland's Veronica Falls record, also reviewed on this week's list), and we can't stop listening to either, total pop heaven bliss!
From the twisted mastermind behind outsider weirdo black metal one man band Cloak Of Displacement, comes this debut from the oddly monickered T. Bjorklund Quartet, a CoD offshoot of sorts, oddly named for several reasons, one, it's not a quartet as far as we know, and T. Bjorklund is not his name, but by now we should have come to expect that sort of whatthefuckness from Mr. CoD, which bleeds right over into the music here, which is a sort of abstract free jazz, black noise weirdness, imagine wild squalls of lo-fi super distorted shredding, like a more damaged Mick Barr, that matched by some wildly abstract 'free' drumming way off in the distance, not to mention some blown out, croaked alien vokills, everything wrapped in an insane amount of tape hiss, as if it were recorded on a 1950's dictaphone, the end result being like a Faxed Head jazz record, or some abstract black metal record melting down and going totally haywire. But for all the damaged shred and abstract fuckery, the sounds do become strangely hypnotic, murky and muddy and blurred. There seems to be some bass going on too, that surfaces part way through, but the weird thing is, it doesn't sound played, it almost sounds like another record is playing with just bass on it, and that's where it's coming from. The sound does swing wildly all over the place, from weird electrified ambience to full bore noise, to what sounds -almost- like black metal, our favorite bit maybe being near the end, where that strange bassline, thrums beneath a field of high end sine wave skree, while the vocals howl maniacally, the bass getting louder and louder, as if someone was jamming in another room, and just opened the door.
Some seriously weird shit for sure. But if you've dug all the other Cloak records, or alternately are a jazzhead who somehow made it through this whole review, than check this out, we love it, but it's definitely on the 'difficult' side.
Packaged in a hand pasted digipak style sleeve, LIMITED TO 20 COPIES, we have 15 of those, all hand numbered, with a hand written 'free jazz' insert.
We first heard from Blood Escutcheon, aka Thaniel Lee, on a recent split cassette with weirdo black metal aQ faves Cloak Of Displacement, BE's modus operandi then was a blurred and blackened soundscape of blacknoise and grimdrone, which seems to continue here, with Lee weaving epic expanses of feedback wreathed low end thrum, big billows of metallic buzz drifting through abject, almost industrial wastescapes, like a more metallic Wolf Eyes, the same sort of post apocalyptic, blackened skies, end of days sonic vibe. But like the split, just strap on some headphones and sink into the abyss, and the whirring vacuum cleaner like buzz blossoms upon closer inspection, the sounds softening, the edges blurring, the sound much prettier, and warmer than on first listen. A softly roiling world of layered tones and swirling overtones, of buried melodies and constantly shifting textures, it's noise, but soft noise, dreamlike noise, the sort of noise that lulls and mesmerizes, a hypnotic sprawl of otherworldly soft focus dreamlike chaotic drift, that in some realms would be the perfect music to sleep to. A gorgeously gauzy stretch of grim black mesmer, that should appeal to dronelords as much as metalheads.
LIMITED TO ONLY 20 COPIES!!!! We have 15 of those! Each one is hand numbered, and housed in a hand spraypainted sleeve, with a photocopied insert.
Karl Bosmann is a German post-industrial / electro-acoustic tactician who seems to from the Conrad Schnitzler mold of continuous experimentation with his equipment in pushing it to expressive means, no matter how atemporal or atonal the resulting sounds might be. Our previous experience with Bosmann had been through monolith drone-fields that swelled from electronics and possibly cymbals into discordant dissonant crescendos somewhere between SUNNO))) and Sunroof! Here, Bosmann showcases a wide array of electronic circuity, whose home-built, tone-bent aesthetics take after the sound poems of early electronic music coupled with the nondestructive strategies from the likes of Nautical Almanac. His electronic insectoid blips, click, and blorps percolate through live-wire electrical fields and the humming cycles akin to fluorescent bulbs. Many of these tracks begin rather charmingly similar to something by Dan Deacon or Black Dice, but Bosmann twists the demeanor of his electronics through anxiety-riddled tones that glow as if a background radiation, with all of the clicks then standing in for Geiger counter pulses to allude to the neutrino bath that he's unleashed through his electronics. The pierced feedback mantra "Around The Sun" is a great recapitulation of what Arcane Device and Nurse With Wound have done with similar material. Dotted through the experiments, Bosmann interjects collages of industrial-space field recordings coupled with overlapping male / female spoken word bits, whose content and context are smeared to the point of abstraction following the Hafler Trio's many demonstrations of information overload.
Limited stock on this title, we might add.
Finally managed to snag a few copies of this recent retro-doom obscurity from last year, the debut album by a band masterminded by one Howie Bentley, the guitarist of an equally obscure power metal outfit from the '90s called Cauldron Born. Lyrically and atmospherically, it's inspired by classic Hammer horror films and Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic vampire novel Carmilla, along with an assortment of other weird fiction and poetry. Musically, it's all about chugging doom RIFFS, total Black Sabbath/Witchfinder General/Pagan Altar worship, heavy guitars thick with fuzz... Vocal duties are handled by Phil Swanson, whom AQ customers may know as the voice of Hour Of 13 and Seamount, among other stoner/doom acts. His depressive Ozzy-ish delivery fits the arcane, Sabbathy vibe quite well, this sounding something like a more "cult" Hour Of 13. Bentley himself takes over the mic for the album's last and most lengthy track, the 13 and a half minute "Karnstein Castle", and his much deeper voice, droning away, only increases the doom factor. Old school occult-metal obsessives should check this out while we've got 'em...
Gotta mention the band photos, each band member pictured individually, out in the winter woods someplace. We find 'em amusing, in that it kinda looks like all three of the trio could be the same person in different stages of life...
They may have taken a twelve year break, but East Coast grinders Brutal Truth sound as good as they ever have, 2009's reunion record Evolution Through Revolution found the band sounding like they had never left, their weed fueled hypergrind in full effect, a band of old men who essentially put pretty much every other grind outfit to shame. And two years later the band still kill. So the fact that End Time rules, and is crazy catchy, and super fucking weird, is thus really not a huge surprise, certainly not as big a surprise as was that reunion record, but we can still revel in BT's twisted avant grind, maybe more twisted now than ever.
The record starts off very much like their classic Need To Control, quite possibly our favorite grind record EVER, with a longish downtuned doom/death metal dirge, all thick buzzing riffage, mathy drumming, cool harmonics and weird feedback, and Kevin Sharp's distinctive vocals, slipping from guttural growl to wild shriek, the track laced with some seriously twisted riffage, some crazy blown out effects and electronics, the whole thing collapsing near the end, leading right into "Simple Math" with BT immediately demonstrating their total grind dominance with 90 seconds of churning, frenzied grind metal fury, intricate and heavy as fuck, but somehow, still weirdly catchy. Their (now, not so) new guitarist definitely proves himself once again of keeping up with his BT bandmates unfurling some of the most twisted riffage yet, most of the songs short and sharp, frenzied and furious, there's also the requisite 5 second Napalm Death style micro blast, there are samples peppering various tracks, with some of the jams sounding like super charged classic punk rock, others slipping back into the crusty dirgery of the album opener, and still others, insanely melodic. AQ weirdo noise faves Winters In Osaka even show up on a track adding some fractured electronics to the proceedings, and the thing with these Brutal Truth guys, as we mentioned before, they make even the ugliest sounds and fucked up songs stick in your head like crazy, we still don't know how they do it, but we've found ourselves humming some of these riffs days later.
The record closes with a slo-mo doom/death metal dirge similar to the first track, which leads directly into the 15+ minute experiment that is "Control Room" with super lo-fi drumming, beneath streaks of feedback, lots of noise, and gnarled effects, disembodies voices, some stretches of proper grind, but for the most part, this is like some fucked up metallic noise metal Necks, the drums loose and wild and chaotic, the swirl of sound in constant flux, totally bizarre, but in its own way, weirdly listenable, sort of haunting and hypnotic, and a kick ass what the fuck finish to this modern avant grind masterpiece.
Another massive sprawling live psychedelic experience from this space / psych / kraut rock collective, who get together with whoever may be in town ever week, and blow the roof off their humble Midwestern abode. And while the abode may be humble, the basement is most definitely not, as it seems to be where some of the sickest psyche rock is produced these days, most of it going unheard, some of it captured on tape, and released as crazy limited documents of these ecstatic sonic experiences.
This most recent release is scant on info, but by now, we know how it went down, multiple guitar players, sometimes as many as 5 or 6, multiple drummers, and a xylophone player, playing for what we imagine must be hours and hours, as there's no way to tell from the record, it fades right in mid song, fades out at the end of the side, and right back in again on the other side, and then fades out at the end. It certainly feels like this chunk was grabbed mid-jam, and these wild sounds continued on and on in both directions. And like their BH lps, this heavy, heady, tripped out, hypnotic stuff. The drums and bass hold everything together, and the guitars go wild, swooping and soaring, melodic one second, caustic and crunchy the next, fuzzed out riffage, the sound shifting from droned out and hypnotic to chaotic and free, the performance surprisingly dynamic in places, considering its extended improvised origin. One notable thing about this recording, is the xylophone, which on most of the recordings is totally inaudible, but here is finally way more present in the mix, which gives the sound a whole different vibe. Yet another fantastic slab of druggy, dreamy, krautrocky blissed out psychedelic space rock from these basement psychedelic warlords...
LIMITED TO 139 COPIES. Housed in a beautiful jacket!
***Grizzly Bear Alert***
Cant, is the solo project of Chris Taylor from Grizzy Bear. We got our first earful of his solo sound on the debut 7" that came out a while back on his label Terrible records, which was a split featuring an unreleased Arthur Russell song. Besides being in one of the most popular indie rock bands around, Taylor has also been busy working magic in the studio, producing records for folks like Twin Shadow, Blood Orange, and Solange. His debut full length is a woozy and rich sounding set of sounds that embrace electronics in creating such a strong sensual and brooding overall vibe. For sure classic Grizzly Bear sounds are present throughout, but they are showcased in a much more hazy, late night, steamy setting. Taylor has this wonderful ability to always create such thick and viscous sounds in all of his recordings. Much like his hero Arthur Russell, Taylor has such a great ability at creating psychic and sonic intimacy as well.
For some reason, we've never reviewed any records by garage folk duo the Dutchess And The Duke, which means that to many folks Case Studies, aka Jesse Lortz, will be an unknown quantity, but sometimes that's the best way to experience a group or a record, especially when it's a new direction and/or a new sound for an established artist, it makes taking the music on its own merits a bit easier. So as you may have surmised, Jesse Lortz is in fact The Duke, one half of the aforementioned group, and fans of that band will definitely find some connections between that groups' songs and the music of Case Studies. But the music of Case Studies is much more stripped down and moody, the songs here apparently based on a year in the life of Lortz, and quite a year it must have been these songs painting lush miniatures of sorrow and loneliness, of bitterness and misery, but also of happiness and hope, or at least the promise of such.
Case Studies is at its core, country music, Lortz' deep croon, a dead ringer for country legend Townes Van Zandt, even his phrasing is eerily similar, the music is minimal but rich, the production spare but lush (produced by Greg Ashley), the songs mostly simple steel string strum, fingerpicked melodies and those deep moody vocals, but the voice and acoustic guitar are sometimes fleshed out with mournful strings, reverbed piano, sweet female harmonies, but for the most part, it's Lortz's voice that drives this record, that and his bittersweet (sometimes just bitter) lyrics and subtle way with melodies.
Dark and dreamy, hushed and melancholy. Opener "From The Blade Of My Love" is a heartbreaker, the melody, the vocals, the lyrics, the perfect start to a harrowing and ultrapersonal dark country missive, a song suite / melancholy missive that culminates in the droney slowcore twang of "California Ghost Story", a dark dreamy depressive creep, that drifts and shimmers, wreathed in the faded haze of forgotten love, and record closer, a surprisingly jaunty stretch of hushed minimal twang, replete with whistled melody, a glimmer of hope, as if finally, the clouds might part and the sun might shine down. Nice!
We were floored when we first heard this four song ep that was dropped off by the band a little while ago. We just assumed they were from San Francisco and we were so stoked to have a new favorite band in town, but we kept looking for flyers with their name on it to go see them live, and kept asking local folks if they knew who they were. Well, we were off by a few thousand miles, as Chapter 24 actually reside in the UK and just happened to drop us a copy on a visit to the states. Luckily we tracked them down and got enough copies of this to list and damn if it's not some of the most urgent, intense, and melodic post-punk that we've heard in a long time. Think of Erase Errata, Wild Flag, Wire, and The Slits, all full of youthful energy and wide eyed possibility and you get close to the kind of terrain Chapter 24 so wonderfully explore. This immediately has us jumping up and down with fists in the air with sweat dripping down our bodies (not at work though of course!).�
Grab one of these fast as once this first batch sells out we won't be able to get more until mid-November when Chapter 24 make their way back to the States and San Francisco.
Ultra limited release from local label Flenser, of the debut from this mysterious Bay Area trio, featuring members of Sutekh Hexen, Necrite and Swampwitch, and while that pedigree might have you imagining some sort of blacknoise blackbuzz blowout, this is actually something else altogether. Three long tracks of creeping, ambient ritualism, if you had to classify it as some sort of metal, it would definitely be doom, but only barely, there are thick, coruscating guitars, crumbling distortion, but they're not riffs so much as atmospheric smears of black sound. It's more a sort of blackdrone creep. The vocals a demonic bellow, the sound creeping and oozing over a backdrop of distant shimmer and muted rumble, the result like some sort of demonic ritual, performed by firelight in some mysterious cavern. The guitar erupting occasionally into wild tangles of noisy skree, but quickly settling back down into a more haunting tranquil drift. In fact the two tracks on the B side pretty much forego the downtuned slo-mo riffage entirely, instead, weaving spidery guitars, and hushed ambient shimmer, growled and mewled vox (sounding like more demonic Eugene from Oxbow), the sound much more spare and sparse, cinematic and soundtracky, the whole tape like some oozing black mass (both meaning intended), a gorgeously tripped out blackened sonic mystery that will probably appeal to the ambient doom set and weird drone fans more than metalheads, even though at it's core, this is some sort of super abstract atmospheric ethereal metal. Regardless, we dig big time.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Ahhh Coffins. Japan's masters of primitive, dirgey, filthy, crusty death metal return with this massive double disc collection gathering up all the group's singles, splits and compilation tracks, including the tracks from their splits with Otesanek and The Arm And Sword Of A Bastard God, which we'd carried in the past. But besides those, we'd basically heard almost none of the rest of this, and like their records proper, this is some fantastically ruling heaviness, sludgey downtuned pummel colliding with classic old school death metal crush, resulting in a nearly two hour barrage of grunted and belched demonic vokills, pounding skull caving drum damage and of course plenty of sick, murky metallic riffing. The song titles alone tell much of the story: "Eat Your Shit", "Corpse Parade", "The Cracks Of Doom", "Abysmal Blood Sea", "Cremated Remains", "Wasteland Of Terror", "Decapitated Crawl", "Bonesawer", "Acid Orgy", we could go on but you get the drift, the music sounds exactly how it would have to to go with those titles, the sound slipping from dirgey doom sludge lumber, to stumbling blasting DM blowout, but even in dirge mode, the songs are peppered with frantic riffing and double kick drumming, and similarly, even when blasting away, the sound oozes and creeps, the band sounding like they could collapse at any moment and slip right back into a blackened tarpit creep. Way recommended for fans of Acid Witch, Decepitaph, Skeletal Spectre, Wooden Stake, Hooded Menace and other modern old school death metal outfits, as well as classic combos like Autopsy, Dismember, Hellhammer and the like�
Comes housed in a massive 8 panel double digipak.
When we first heard about a new band featuring Sam Coomes of Quasi and Spencer Seim of Hella, we were definitely curious, but to be honest we weren't expecting anything this amazing and weird. We figured on some fuzzy jangle, some poppy hooks, which are definitely present here, but this is WAY removed from your typical indie rock record. In fact the record opener, "No More Dumb Fun", starts things off with a blown out impossibly distorted buzzy main riff that sounds more like synth than guitar, the drums downright groove, which had us imagining an indie rock version of Justice or some Ed Banger outfit making a record for Matador, but then Coomes' vocals come in, and the sound is transformed into some sort of weird twisted super psychedelic, druggy and delirious take on indie rock. That opener adds all manner of swirling effects, some strange industrial banging off in the distance, Coomes' vox wrapped in echo and distortion, the result hews closer to something like Black Moth Super Rainbow or The Flaming Lips, but even more twisted and noisy and fantastically fuzzed out. In fact if you've heard about the soon to be released collaboration between The Flaming Lips and Lightning Bolt, it seems Crock have beaten those guys the punch, cuz this has the same sort of fuzz drenched psychedelia, spastic sputtery stuttery rhythms and studio-as-mad-scientist's-laboratory production, but Coomes injects the proceedings with plenty of pop hookery, Beatles-esque at times, but also recalling old school Northwestern outfit Pond, albeit utterly deconstructed.
"Corpsecrystal Mountain" dials back some of the fuzz and dips a big toe into some serious indie rock, but again it's all tweaked and twisted, the drums weirdly recorded, again super groovy, the music a tangle of synthy squiggles, with some wild progged out lo-fi weirdness that sounds more like some warped bedroom experiment that an indie rock super group, which is precisely why this is so good. "Nutritional Beast" might be our favorite, sounding like a weirdo electronic indie rock fuzzpop combo doing their best Carpenter / Goblin, but failing brilliantly, and coming up with one of THEE fuzziest, hookiest jams EVER. "Where We Get Off" is classic pop ballad, done Crock style, Queen by way of Torche, epic and soaring and dramatic, but also pretty much perfect pop. While "Bad Moves" opens like "Tom Sawyer" before stumbling into a lurching fuzz drenched dirge, and "Eat Your Hat Out" is total modern day indie pop fuzz prog, with tangled melodies, soaring vox, everything warm and washed out, gauzy and dreamily druggy. And so it goes, the whole record, a bombastic and blissed out, lo-fi psychedelic pop experiment that has yielded one of the most fantastically fun records in recent memory.
The rhythms drive everything, sometimes sounding electronic, always groovy, and hypnotic, but often exploding into bombastic Bonham style rib cage rattling pound, which is where the Hella really starts to show (and where the Lightning Bolt comparison stems from). And unlike most 'indie rock', where it's the jangly guitar that drives the proceedings, almost nothing here sounds like a proper guitar, whatever riffs there are, end up twisted and FX drenched, blown out and gloriously fried, those guitars (if they're even guitars?) blur and distort until they sound like fuzzed out analog synths, and if they're in fact synths, they're about as in-the-red and fucked up as they can get and still remain melodic, then the vocals, which while occasionally surfacing as a proper croon, spend most of their time dripping with weird effects, buried in the mix, drifting amidst the sound, hazy and druggy, it's a pretty irresistible combo, one that definitely straddles the line between indie rock and full on noise rock, in fact we'd probably qualify this as noise rock if it weren't so warm and melodic and dreamily fuzzy. But it IS noisy, and loud, and kaleidoscopic, and weird as fuck, but somehow still crazy catchy. The perfect mad scientist fuzz pop concoction, and quickly becoming one of our new favorite records.
Up until now, SF garage popper Mikal Cronin seemed to exist mostly as sideman, his name usually following an ampersand, which in turn seemed to typically be preceded by the name Ty Segall. Thus most of our experiences with Cronin had been the duo of Segall & Cronin, and everything we had heard we dug, a LOT, but it was hard to tell what exactly Cronin was bringing to the table, versus Segall, but listening to this now, seems the answer is EVERYTHING! And as much as we love Ty Segall, we're thinking that maybe much of that garage pop magic was coming from the other side of the ampersand, cuz WOW is this record totally great. Anyone at all into the SF garage pop scene, Thee Oh Sees, the Fresh & Onlys, Ty Segall, Bare Wires, etc., will go absolutely nuts for this. And if this record doesn't immediately catapult Cronin into the spotlight, then there's something very very wrong with the world.
It's a perfect blend of sunshiney jangle, garagey fuzz, paisley pop and noisy psychedelia. And for all the warped fuzz and reverbed drenched lo-fi crunch of his peers, it seems Cronin has much more of a pure pop heart. That pure pop is however gloriously corrupted by little bits of wild flute flecked freakouts, strange horns, noise rock jams, and whatever else struck Cronin's fancy it seems, yet whatever sonic weirdness Cronin adds to the mix, it never sound gratuitous, it always sounds like an organic part of the song and the sound, and without fail, the song is crazy catchy, and the sound is fantastically lush and psychedelic and utterly ruling.
The first track manages to sum it up pretty perfectly. Starting with some dreamy Beach Boys a cappella harmonies, then some big distorted guitar crunch, pounding drums, before slipping right into some dreamy almost folky jangle, acoustic guitar strum, fuzzy bass, sweet vocal harmonies and HOOKS FOR DAYS, like the best song the Fresh & Onlys never wrote, but a little bit more twisted and a little bit more Byrds / paisley pop, but with plenty of crunch and fuzz, a little bit proggy in its arrangement, and then out of nowhere, with about a minute left, the song explodes into a double time pounding psych rock blow out, complete with jagged guitar crunch and a wild flute freakout (courtesy of John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees, who knew he played flute?). We've probably listened to that song 50 times since we got this in.
But once we dug deeper, we realized that pretty much every song here is an absolute gem, "Apathy" with its start/stop acoustic strum, wild feedback, and total classic pop hooks (reminding us melodically of The Olivia Tremor Control actually), "Green And Blue", with its thick crunch droned out guitar buzz, dirgey drumming, thick blown out wall of sound and wild tangle of psychguitar freakout, "Get Along", which is another acoustic guitar driven chunk of practically perfect dreampop, rife with sweet harmony vox and some cool tripped out backwards psych guitar melodies, "Slow Down", a lo-fi, organ driven ballad, all stretched out drones and fuzzy reverbed vox, "Gone", another crunchy, riff heavy rocker, that should have Thee Oh Sees fans frothing at the mouth. And so it goes, the perfect mix of modern garage pop and classic indie jangle, and some of THEE best songs EVER. This week's list is chock full of contenders for pop record of the year, but if any of the other ones are gonna come out on top, this is gonna be the one to beat.
Oh, if you're wondering if it's vinyl-only, no it's not. But we're just listing the vinyl format this week, 'cause for some weird reason, the cd version we originally received turned out to be a cd-r. However, the label has fixed that and pressed some actual, real cds, we're just waiting for them to show up. They're on the way, should be here sometime next week, so if you're a cd person, or just prefer the cheaper format, let us know and we'll put your name down for one. We'll also of course list it on our next list.
We first heard from Crooked Necks on their split with Finnish (sort of) black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. And as CoO made their way to the new Handmade Birds label, it makes sense that Crooked Necks would too. Born of the band Frail, who we raved about a while back on the list, who essentially sounded like a black metal Cure, or more accurately, they sounded exactly like the Cure, or a similarly dour new wave band, just with black metal shrieks instead of the typical deep gothic croon. That band transformed into Crooked Necks, and while the sound didn't change all that much, the vox were dialed back a bit, and the band began to sound more and more like an actual cold/new wave band, with the occasional BM tendencies, instead of the other way around.
This brand new 12", launching Handmade Birds' new White Label series, was apparently recorded a long time ago, and was born of some unnamed tragedy, and because of that was shelved for years, only now finally seeing the light of day. The most interesting part is that it's a collection of Joy Division covers, presented pretty true to the originals, but reimagined enough to make them interesting and a bit weirder. The A side is a bit more upbeat, so much so that we had trouble realizing that it was in fact meant to play at 45rpm, but the band definitely make these their own, which really is no great feat since they sort of sounded like Joy Division to begin with, but the drum programing is creative, the strange effects add a twisted vibe, it's mostly instrumental, but then the vocals do appear, they're buried in the mix, and heavily reverbed, ominous and mysterious and dramatic. The B-side is where it gets great, the band take on "New Dawn Fades" and "The Eternal", gloomy and dirgey and darkly haunting, emotional and melancholy, "The Eternal" especially, all spaced out and abstract, there are some shrieks on the B side, but just a few, and at first it was hard to tell they were voices, it could have been some sheet of high end guitar, but instead of distracting, it simply adds more emotion and passion.
The weird thing is that these guys are beloved by metallers, and that it ended up on Handmade Birds, when it almost sounds like it could have been some unearthed rarity reissued on Dark Entries. Gorgeous, haunting stuff. Fans of gloom rock and doom pop and the various waves (cold, synth, new, etc.) will definitely dig.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, in plain black sleeves, with no labels, simple black and white stickers on the front and back.
We're a sucker for the drummer as band leader. You don't really see that so much any more, but back in the fifties and sixties, plenty of drummers led their own bands, there are the obvious ones, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Max Roach, and then there's Les Demerle, a drummer / band leader you probably have never heard of. We hadn't either but holy heck is this record ruling, originally released in 1968, when Demerle was 22, Spectrum demonstrates not only Demerle's incredible drumming, but also is knack for arranging, seeing has a handful of these tracks are covers, including a killer version of the Beatles' "I Am The Walrus" and "A Day In The Life".
The record opens, as all drummers' albums should, with a drum solo, and it's a killer, wild and jazzy, loose and a little chaotic, a super energetic intro, which leads directly into the band's version of "A Taste Of Honey", which is appropriately drum heavy, opening with an ominous horn driven James Bond like groove, the song so swinging, arranged for some extra kick ass drumming, little flurries here and there, but some seriously monster drumming that somehow manages to not sound out of place. There's some more standard jazzy jams, many leaning more toward a sort of funky psychedelic sixties jazz, groovy and hippy but tight as hell. And then there's the Beatles covers, the arrangement of "A Day In The Life" is laid back, a little bit dark, a little bit funky, with some killer soloing as well as more bombastic drumming, while "I Am The Walrus" is another funky groover laced with plenty of wah wah guitar. They also cover the Fifth Dimension's "Aquarius", which gets a little bit funkified, with some awesome horns, some weird psychedelic buzz, as well as, yep, another DRUM SOLO, as well as a killer breakbeat coming out of the solo, that we imagine must have been sampled, and if not, it won't be long now. And while the covers and reinterpretations are fantastic, we almost wish there were more Demerle originals, cuz the 8+ minute epic "Deflections 1, 2, 3 & 4" might be the best track here, with its wild tangles of psychedelic guitars, its frantic drumming and constantly shifting arrangement, more killer horns, amazing solos, wah wah guitar all over the place, the sound totally psychedelic and funky, and that track has us hoping there's another record of all originals out there somewhere, cuz we can't even begin to imaging how amazing that might be.
Psychedelic sixities jazz pop reissue of the year hands down!!
Nice new vinyl reissue of this 1978 classic. Those of you familiar with Boston's garage-scuzz legends The Lyres will immediately recognize -that- sound, as DMZ were essentially a Lyres prototype, equal parts blasting garge-y punk rock, fuzzed out organs, crunchy guitar, and Jeff "Monoman" Connolly's howled vocals. Think the Seeds, the MC5, the Kinks and the 13th Floor Elevators, but filtered through a sludgy stew of Stooges, Rocket From The Tombs, Electric Eels and the Ramones. Awesome cover art with the band hugging what appear to be either beer kegs or Daleks (or maybe they're supposed to be in a pinball machine).
Local San Francisco favorites, The Drift, return three years after their stunning Memory Drawings album with a beautiful memorial to their fallen bandmate, trumpeter Jeff Jacobs who succumbed to cancer early this year. Jacobs had given a plaintive exploratory charge to that last album that greatly attributed to its majesty, and Blue Hour shows the band taking a moment to regroup and reflect on the band's core strengths than to venture into strange new territory. Alternating between large rhythm heavy instrumental post-rock explorations and quieter blissed out but melancholic interludes, Blue Hour features all that we love about this group, intricate intertwining melodic passages, a delicate weaving of soft textures and forceful rhythms and that wonderful dynamic sense of floating and being propelled forward by hidden but benign forces. Quite Beautiful!
It's amazing what a producer can do for a band. The first single on Captured Tracks found the Dum Dum Girls '60s girl-group pop tunes buried beneath an overblown spring-reverb fuzz that instantly offered comparisons to the Jesus & Mary Chain. In collaborating with the Blank Dogs as the Mayfair Set, Dee Dee of the Dum Dum Girls found herself swimming in that weird soup of off-kilter post-punk murk. Here and elsewhere, Dee Dee has always been an exceptional songwriter, penning great vocal melodies around simple jangles and garage-pop rhythms, but steadily the production of her work has been lifting the fuzz, the noise, and the distortion, allowing those pop-songs to shine through. As on the first record, Dee Dee worked with Richard Gottehrer on Only In Dreams, the man who produced Blondie and The Go-Gos back in the day. Only In Dreams finds the Dum Dum Girls embracing cleaner tones to pretty much everything, with Dee Dee's vocals striking more than a few similarities to Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, and the guitars being all bright in their jubilant jangliness and whose three-chord rock arrangements showcase plenty of influence from Johnny Marr's inventiveness back in The Smiths. No matter how you slice it, the Dum Dum Girls manage to always create fantastically catchy bubblegum pop - noisy or otherwise.
We love how far and wide across the globe Dark Entries have been traveling to find us some of the best and most overlooked synth sounds of the early '80s. This time out they take us to Valencia, Spain in 1980 for the bright, DIY inspired synth pop of Europa. Originally released as a cassette, these songs now get their proper place on wax and goddamn is this a set of irresistible electro-pop perfection. Just goes to show that the UK wasn't the only place turning out amazing, catchy, synth pop bands, as this really stands at the same level of excellence as records by folks like Depeche Mode, OMD, and The Human League that were released around this time.
While most bands that surrounded them in Valencia were still trapped in over the top prog rock conventions, Europa took inspiration from punk and the burgeoning electronic scene and proved that you didn't need fancy, expensive equipment to make an awesome sounding record. They built their synths from scratch, and recorded this on a 4-track reel-to-reel, and it pretty much blows away what so many folks these days with so many more resources and endless plug-in's use when trying to capture this sort of sound. Some reissues are cooler in theory than in actual listening pleasure, but this one is all about pleasure! Anyone who loves great early synth-pop will want to jump on this right away. Viva Europa!
We had never heard of these guys before, but were definitely pretty taken with the name, the sort that sets the bar pretty high in terms of the music living up to the band name, but these weirdo Philly psych rockers pull it off. Opening up with a cool creepy intro, all gamelan like melodies, buzzing metallic percussion, creepy piano, twisted sci-fi FX and crumbling distortion, before launching into a cool stretch of depressive gloom pop, all low slung basslines, simple motorik drumming, and melodic guitar jangle, before launching into something a bit more blown out, a psychedelic squall that is grounded by an oh so sweet guitar melody which holds it all together, and keeps it firmly rooted in pop, the vocals come in, all laid back and woozy, very Sonic Youth-y, and in fact, the whole sound is very nineties indie rock, we hear some Bardo Pond, some Swirlies, a soft cacophony of jangle and crunch, even some Dinosaur Jr, in the crunchy leads, opener "Hate" is definitely our new noise pop / post punk jam, the sort of thing you could almost imagine Eric's Trip whipping up. For all the obscure comparisons the label throws out (Cramps, Bauhaus, Blue Oyster Cult), some of which we definitely here, the sound seems to hew much closer to classic indie rock and nineties shoegaze, a druggy dreamy psychedelic rocking combo of Sonic Youth, Eric's Trip, The Swirlies, Bardo Pond, Dinosaur Jr along with a heaping helping of early Siltbreeze. We're pretty psyched on these new SB releases (check out the Kitchen's Floor elsewhere on this week's list), both of them feel like they were transported straight here through some crazy timewarp from Siltbreeze circa 1995! Except if they were from '95 they'd be on cd, which would be nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, vinyl-only. Comes with a download coupon too.
The Austrian avant-guitarist offers four tracks of beautiful guitarscapes tricked out through his signature glitched-n-blurred processing. Hardly cold for a slab of digitalia, the opening track "Liminal" is one of Fennesz' more structured numbers, built from a simple chord progression on his acoustic guitar, that then stomps on a Mogwai-ish distortion box for at least one burst of incendiary soft-loud-soft dynamics. All of the sounds prickle, squish, and splutter amidst a swarming sea of digitized pixels that reassemble themselves as echoes and ghosts of Fennesz' original guitar playing. "July" darkens the hue quite a bit with a warbling bass that looks back to the post-rock explorations of Rothko or Labradford. "Shift" is one of Fennesz' finer drone-centric moments that builds a hallowed melody out of a cavernous wash of sun bleached tones, and the title track is a collaborative effort with Steven Hess on drums, resulting in a slowcore tune fleshed with all of Fennesz' digital ephemera.
FYI, there is a compact disc scheduled for release in September 2011, for those not so keen on the vinyl format. Oh yeah, this has been cut at 45rpm, so you know that we'll be playing this at 33 as well!
Album number three from one of our favorite forces to emerge in the world of electronica over the last several years. Their (his?) Kompakt debut, Here We Go Sublime, still stands as one of our favorite records of the last five years and this new one is making us think we probably have lots of great records from The Field to look forward to for a long time to come. The Field's hypnotic take on minimal techno has the ability to win over folks who might not usually find themselves listening to techno records, while at the same time putting those who do occupy that word into a perpetual state of bliss.
Looping State Of Mind finds The Field taking their trademark approach to repetition and harnessing it deftly to reach ecstatic levels of energy, yet also demonstrating a knack for evoking much needed breeziness into their sound. We can't wait for some serious late night drive-time with this blasting as we cruise over bridges and under freeway ramps, only paying attention to the road ahead and the blinking lights of the city that surrounds us. So damn good!
Three drone-centric artists from three different parts of the world... Five Elements Music is a Russian isolationist / ambient project spawned by one of the members of the similarly minded Exit In Grey; Andrea Marutti is an Italian dark ambient practitioner with a number of occultish recordings under the moniker Amon; and Jim Haynes is a Bay Area artist who "rusts things" and also happens to work here at aQuarius. Both Marutti's and Haynes' compositions are responses to the piece made by Five Elements Music. A massive tectonic rumble emerges from the onset of the Russian track, as if the resonant echo from a meteor striking the heart of Siberia were captured through the felling of a million trees. Out of these frequencies, Five Elements Music evolves this sound into a growling dissonance more dialed into those rasping drones that Oren Ambarchi or Birchville Cat Motel might broadcast from time to time. Over the 23 minutes, this track becomes steadily more placid and inviting, eschewing the desolate horror at the beginning for something beautifully introspective. Marutti builds from the bleak horror where Five Elements Music began, producing cavernous hues of black and grey on amorphous clouds of mist and fog. Marutti's work parallels those blackened static movements of Yen Pox and Inade. For Haynes' part, the theatrical cloak and dagger of Thomas Koner's isolationism comes to mind in his response to the Five Elements Music track, albeit constructed from his distressed textures and fluttering shortwave radio manipulation. Easily the most dynamic piece of this triptych, Haynes deftly transitions pools of nocturnal drones into snarling crescendos of volatile motors, turbines, and Kevin Drumm-esque guitar dissonance which morph into an evocative movement of super-slow-motion heartbeat rhythm and radio frequencies detuned into sweeping, ghostly sinewaves, captured from within one of those WWII era bunkers that dot the California coast. Haynes presented a version of this at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a collaborative, expanded cinema piece involving a massive diorama, lots of old scientific gear, a couple of surveillance cameras, and a toy train. Alas, there's little video documentation of that performance, but the audio here works amazingly well on its own.
Limited to 400 copies (although some websites claim this to be limited to 300)...
The first in an occasional series from Graham Lamkin's Kye Records of split releases by like-minded noiseniks. Fossils are an outfit from Ontario, Canada, mostly content to release editions of 5-10 cassettes to their friends, amassing a discography that rivals that of Phil Blankenship or Aaron Dilloway. It's a horrific blackened noise that Fossils muster, with something that might resemble a band trying to break through the 10,000 year old tarpit of tape hiss that everything is buried in. It's either that or a tin can getting kicked around an alley. As those gritty noises settle onto the horizon, Fossils articulate an undulating sinewave that ramps up and down at a slow-motion cycle. This is smashed up in a noise-junk assault with some atonal blurts and alarm sirens screeching behind a smoldering aktionist pipe-fight. The Canadians finish things off with a desolate chorale of bowed metals, smashed radiators, and thumming engine noise, that all pitches into a grim stupor.
Tom Darksmith hails from San Francisco and has one fine piece of obliterated tape-music released on Hanson. He follows the tradition set by a generation of California nihilists (Joe Colley, Scott Arford, John Wiese, etc.) of creating the antithesis to fun-in-the-summer vibes. His hand-off, neurotic-ray-gun synth crawl is one taken right from the Maurizio Bianchi playbook with looping sandpaper textural scraping and EVP-like thumps in the night. This seance of dark electronics snaps to a hiss-laden recording of various rustlings, metallic scrapes, and strange emanations of vibrating ectoplasm. A halo of midrange feedback slowly blossoms across the activities, which collapse into the final episode of slumped activity that could be some nocturnal loop caught from failed demagnetization of tapes run through a 4-track a couple million times. Here lies the negation of sound. Dig it.
It's been almost two years since we last heard from these Sacramento fuzz poppers, and we're happy to report that very little has changed. The last record, Monster Head Room, arrived right at the beginning of summer '09, and we reveled in its Beach Boys harmonies, surf rock jangle, and psychedelic garage hooks, but we also pointed out their tendency for experimentation, and their occasional hints of gothic brood. But this time around it's all pop all the time, their sound even more sunshiney and summery, we're hearing way more of groups like the Drums and Soft Pack that the usual garage rock fuzz poppers we compared them to before.
As we've seen pointed out in other reviews, the sound definitely touches on classic NZ Flying Nun pop, and that classic nineties shoegaze slowcore, but where past records felt ramshackle and a little home brewed, this time around, they sound like a real band, with real songs, poised for something bigger than just playing the local dive every Friday night. And while some folks will find that disappointing, we can't help but love the new songs, and the new more polished sound, we actually hear a lot of Fresh & Onlys, that same sort of classic pop songsmithery, songs like "California Cousins" are total sunshine summer beach jams, right down to the chiming melodies and VERY Beach Boys arrangements, while tracks like "Faster" are snarly and swaggery, with fuzzed out guitars and pounding drums, with a nod to the Ganglians of old, but most of the songs here fall somewhere right in between. Which as far as we're concerned is perfect. Hooky, and fuzzy, dreamy and jangly, poppy and pretty dang perfect, maybe their best yet, and quickly becoming our new favorite summer record, even in these waning days of the season.
It sounds funny to say, but Girls really are a perfect all-American pop band! Not all-American in some cliche, red, white and blue way, but instead their songs and spirit really do capture the landscape, spirit and emotions that all of us share on a daily basis. They unleash their songs, heart fully on sleeve, oozing with guts and bravado that you never doubt, even for a moment. It's hard to talk about or describe what it means to be the real thing, but Christopher Owen's songwriting and delivery is the real thing. His songs are honest, sad, funny, bratty, brave, vulnerable and sincere. When you listen to this new album by Girls you can tell this is music being made not just as hobby or for fun, but that this is what gets him to keep on moving and living every day. So much music being made right now is so too concerned with sounding cool, or hinting at all the right references, but Girls make no apologies for just wanting to be one of the greatest pop/rock bands on the planet.�
While there are those wonderful tender and slow moments on the album that Girls deliver so well, this for sure finds them at their most epic and rocking. We hear their love of so much great classic rock come out during different moments in these songs, whether it's a Fleetwood Mac like melody, mid '70s Pink Floyd sprawling guitar complete with back-up gospel vocals, some Deep Purplish lyrics, or Big Star power pop phrasing, all interwoven into their already unmistakable sound.�Some of us had never made the connection before, but there are times when Christopher's vocals recall another amazing songwriter with a heavy and beautiful heart, Elliott Smith.�When the songs are slower and more stripped down, they can stop you in your tracks, goosebumps all over, as sentiments of extreme yearning sizzle to the surface. Yet alongside the heartache there is an undercurrent of self-endurance and triumph that rings through these songs. Once again, Girls brings us to glory!
While they last, the lp version (not the cd, sorry) we have comes with a bonus flexi-disc!!
We've mentioned it before, but it seems like few can touch French black metal when it comes to originally and innovation, whether it's the gnarled twisted post rock flecked ritualistic blackness of Deathspell Omega, or the industrial drone drenched black buzz of Blut Aus Nord, and on past records, French horde Glorior Belli seemed to hew close to DSO's sound, the same sort of mysterious progressive blackness, that was until their 2009 record Meet Us At The Southern Sign, where GB established themselves as perhaps the strangest of the French BM bunch, infusing the usual black blasts and grim buzz with all manner of not-specifically-black-metal elements, whether it's sort of a twangy bit of moody meander, or punkish vocal howls, or some downright nearly blues sounding moments, not to mention a penchant for rocking, and we're not talking buzzing and blasting, we're talking rocking as in rock music, like shredding leads, classic (even Southern at moments) ROCK, which was a subtle element way back when, but recently, especially on this new one, has come to play a bigger and bigger part in GB's sound. In fact much of The Great Southern Darkness is spent rocking and not blasting or buzzing, the opening one two punch of "Dark Gnosis" and "Secret Ride To Rebellion", includes very little of what one might describe as buzzing black metal, instead, there's lots of midtempo rocking, even some doomy dirgery, with slippery seasick riffage and classic metal melodies. And then check out "They Call Me Black Devil", which starts off with some Joy Division / Earth like low slung twang, before launching into what sounds like some post metal Neur-Isis-y groove, the harsh demonic vokills, the only thing really defining the song as black metal, and then the track shifts into a killer mathy super melodic breakdown, hell, pretty much any band on Relapse would kill for a part like that, which speaks to how good these guys have gotten musically, as they toss off parts like that constantly, without batting an eye. And while you're at it, there's also "Negative Incarnate", which indeed has an appropriately EVIL title, but is almost total classic rock, complete with super melodic leads, and a groove that won't quit. But then the second that song ends, comes the band's harshest blast, the furious opening to "Bring Down The Cosmic Scheme", but that grim buzz doesn't last long, as the track shifts gears into something totally melodic and totally crazy catchy, lurching back and forth between blackbuzz and melodic blackened rock. And not to overly stress the lack of actual black metal, the band do offer up plenty of grim blackness, like on the aforementioned track, but more often then not, even at their blackest and buzziest, the sound is infused with something distinctly not black, or there's inevitably some crazy poppy / proggy / ROCKING part is right around the corner. And to be honest, in a world of buzzing and blasting black metal clones, it's records like this that end up sticking the most. And while it took a few listens to really get into what these guys were doing, once we did, we began to have trouble understanding why more bands didn't actually do something similar. Might not be black metal record of the year, but just might have to make up a blackened heavy rock category, cuz we're digging this like crazy.
We definitely love all stripes of black metal, often the weirder the better, but there's something about pure, raw, classic black metal, the buzz and the blast, the frenzied riffing the, howled vocalizing, the majestic melodies, the murky atmosphere, even the corpsepaint and the over the top theatricality, that we just can't get enough of. Even after all these years, a band can come along, who are not necessarily reinventing the wheel, or pushing boundaries, but whose sound is just so perfect, so classically black, that we just can't resist. Helps too if they're Finnish. Thus we have Graveborne, a grim horde from Finland who sound like they were transported directly from the nineties, with a sound that slips easily from lightning fast frantic blasting, to midtempo melancholy crush, the riffs kill, the arrangements appropriately complex, the sound often slipping into an almost classic metal melodic gallop, channeling a little NWOBHM into their black fury. And these guys actually are pretty heavy on the melody too, with much of this being surprisingly catchy. But fear not, there's plenty of gnarled black weirdness, and chugging churn that definitely hint at some exposure to Deathspell and other forward thinking hordes.
And we have to say, while we were immediately smitten by the sound. The more we listen to this, the more we're loving it. The cliched adage that "they don't make 'em like they used to" can still be applied to black metal. Lots of bands ape that classic era, but few can do it convincingly, with not just the sound, but the songs too, but Graveborne most definitely do. And while we didn't necessarily have super high expectations for this, it's quickly becoming our most listened to new black metal record. Which definitely says a lot...
We weren't familiar at all with Jason Grier, but seeing him teamed up with Nite Jewel on this outing definitely grabbed our attention, as she's for sure one of our favorite left-field hazy dance floor peddlers. Grier gives us a nice peek at how great Nite Jewel sounds in a more uptempo setting. But not to fear, there are still those great valium-on-the-disco-dance-floor moments, like the ten minute syrupy jam "On And On", and the sizzling slow burn of "Midnight Blue". In fact this ep has pretty much perfect pacing, starting off with the more poppy dance jams and then easing into a more atmospheric post-disco comedown. Nice.
From the same label that brought us the avant ambient dubstep of Clubroot and Swarms, comes the debut solo 7" from John Haughm, the guitarist for black metal outfit Agalloch. If that sounds like a weird mix, you might not think so as much once you've heard it, as this finds Haughm trying some spaced out solo guitar on for size. A looped bit of almost krautrocky kosmische mesmer. you can definitely hear some Agalloch-isms in the sound, and the mood and vibe does get dark and ominous, and you can almost imagine the band suddenly crashing in all chug and pound and howl, but it's not to be, this is just a gorgeous little chunk of hypnotic solo guitar, the sounds looped and layered, subtly processed, melodies intertwined, tones run through the computer and spit out a little bit Fennesz-y on the other end. The result is pretty dreamy, even for non-metalheads, or metalheads who don't really care for Agalloch, the only bummer is that it's so short, it's the sort of sound that once stretched out to the length of a cd, or a whole side of an lp, would be the ultimate loopguitar krautpsych bliss out. Let's just hope this is a teaser of more to come.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! It's a one sided 7" with the B-side silkscreened and hand numbered, housed in a swank, super striking sleeve, with a download code to boot!
Canadian dronescaper and ambient deconstructionist Tim Hecker's most recent record, Ravedeath 1972, was, as we proclaimed in out review of that record a few lists back, probably our favorite yet, which is all the more notable for belonging to a body of work that impossibly seems to consist of nothing BUT favorites, but there it is, Hecker has tapped into a unique sound that manages to evoke feelings of loss and memory, of some otherworld, some othertime, a music both modern and experimental, but still classic and timeless, deftly casting ambient music as something so much more than simple ambience. Lush and textural, haunting and emotional, the rare sort of sounds that the listner can't help but get gloriously lost in, this latest manages yet another remarkable feat, offering a glimpse into the process Hecker goes through to create his record, the most recent in this case, and offering those 'sketches' as just that, sketches, while presenting what is essentially, to these ears at least, another fully formed Tim Hecker record, one that had it been presented as just that, we most certainly wouldn't have batted an eye. Which again speaks to Hecker's sublime mastery over sound. That these tracks are 'works in progress', not the finished product they so appear to be.
As the title suggests, the focus here is on the piano, the sound minimal and spare by Hecker's standards, trading the often think gristly walls of buzz and crumbling thrum, for something much more stately and sparse, washed out and delicate. But even so, this is not a collection of raw piano recordings, the sounds are already blurred and bleary, sun dappled and crystalline, seems impossible these could be untouched original recordings, but even with a minimal amount of processing, the tracks here have already been transformed, gauzy soft focus squalls of swirling piano, give way to haunting funereal ballads, rife with creaks and thumps and various other room sounds, the low notes stretched out into deep resonant rumbles, laced with the subtle swoop of muted backwards melodies, hazy old timey shimmer drifts on the tinkling of music box like melodies, the notes heavy with effects, the sound seeming to melt under a warm summer sun. There are what appear to be solo piano pieces, but close listening reveals all manner of subtle sonic weirdness just below the surface, in many cases, those strange subtleties taking over completely, swallowing the piano whole, while other times the notes seem to bleed into one another, blurring into dramatic swirls of sound, tense and dark and very cinematic.
Most of the pieces here are brief, all of them could have been stretched out to fill up the whole record, and we would have happily blissed out to any or all of them, but even so, Dropped Pianos does not sound fragmented, the various pieces, even in their 'sketch' form, woven into an album in its own right, culminating in the final sketch, which is probably the most fully formed proper Hecker piece, the piano, maudlin and mournful, buried in buzz, a crumbling distortion that comes in swells, those heaving washes infused with their own melody, the sound shifting dreamily from blurred muted crunch, to ethereal drift, occasionally fusing the two into something darkly divine.
Vinyl version forthcoming, maybe later this month.
Latest from this master of murky psychedelic slo-mo soul, and while we were expecting another batch of that distinctive HTDW warped and warbly lo-fi soul music, all ghostly and spectral and otherworldly, this 4 song 10" has definitely thrown us for a loop. It's still soul, just not really slo-mo, in fact, the three part title track sounds more like something you'd hear from Antony & The Johnsons, lush, piano driven, with soaring strings, and dreamy falsetto vox, if anything, this proves that HTDW can really sing, cuz this is all about his voice, and the lush accompaniment only adds drama and emotion, just gorgeous soulful pop, the songs stately and elegant, building to seriously cathartic climaxes, the third part is the most intense, a fantastic slab of lush chamber soul, a little bit hazy and softly psychedelic, but other than some reverb it still seems mostly unadorned, but really, it doesn't need anything else. The final track is about as close as things get to the more murky, witchy HTDW sound, and takes the strings from the title track, and those gorgeous vox, and adds a bit of murk, some subtly twisted effects, a cool skeletal hand clap rhythm, the Prince like vocals settled amidst the blurred dreamy soul, a perfect ending to a surprising, and surprisingly satisfying sonic detour, which has us wondering if this is a one off, or if the new full length might offer more of this less twisted murky sound, either way, we're psyched to hear more.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, but almost sold out. These may be the last copies we can get. Housed in a super swank sleeve, thick textured paper, with embossed lettering.
Latest slab of psychedelic dancefloor drag / slo-mo soul / eighties synth wave weirdness from this European boy/girl duo (not to be confused with the hip hop video director), and it's more of what we loved about the other HW record, all hazy synths, and laid back handclap rhythms, fuzzy new wave basslines, and sultry vox. The opening track almost sounds like it could (should?) be on Italians Do It Better, that sort of Euro disco wave, the second track on the A side sounds like some lost instrumental version of one of Madonna's eighties B-sides, which leads right into the first track on the B-side which could have been modeled on Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time", some sort of alternate universe prom night slow dance ballad, but warped and tweaked and warbly, all cheesy synths and eighties drum machine and shopping mall Wurlitzers. The final track is really strange, the prettiest of the bunch, a dreamy lilting gamelan like melody, all murky and swirly and druggy, but then over the top there there are some super strange sampled vox, which change the vibe completely. Speaking of which, since there was no speed indicated on the label, we were listening to this at 33, and holy crap does it sound awesomely woozy and witch housey all slowed down...
A cool live recording from 2002 that finds Acid Mothers Temple mainman Kawabata Makoto joining his pals in Italian psych rock combo Jennifer Gentle for some sprawling, dreamy, druggy, droney, buzzy, fuzzy psych rock workouts. The opener is a slow build from crowd sounds to thick warm undulating swells, everything wreathed in hazy effects, sun dappled and woozily laid back, some cool processed vox that sound more like the bellow of a distant horn, and then of course, after a few minutes of dreamy drift, the song blossoms into a wild tangle of dueling guitars, a sky full of jagged melodies and shards of feedback, a violent sky full of sound, floating above that churning, fuzzy motorik groove that started things off. The rest of the record follows suit, the band slipping from stripped down and minimal to totally blown out and frenzied, even dipping into what sounds like some alien folk music or some abstract 20th century experimentation, but even at its noisiest, or weirdest, the sound remains surprisingly melodic and dreamlike.
This is actually a 2008 reissue of a previous version, originally released in 2002, and tacks on a nearly 20 minute bonus track from another live collaboration the same year.
ONLY SIX COPIES IN STOCK, this is out of print, the label is no more, so once these are gone, they are gone forever.
Here's one of those albums that we KNEW we'd make Record Of The Week - IF ever it was reissued. And now it has been! Here's a fully legit reish of this cult '70s hard rock rarity, a record by one of those bands who seem simultaneously to be both testosterone-tanked young men and wizened ol' wise wizards. Yeah, a Record Of The Week easy, on account of it not only being an old fave of some of us here, but something that immediately caught on with the AQ staffers who hadn't heard it before, this reissue getting played in the store quite steadily (and loudly!) since it arrived. Let's listen in, as Jerusalem's vocalist belts it out, in an emotive yowl a bit like Robert Plant but with Ozzy Osbourne's paranoid feelings: "Hey girl, will you never learn? Who d'you think you're fooling with your lyin' and your cryin'? You'll only be happy the day you see me dyin'!" But then, in more of a normal speaking voice, we get the casual aside: "Oh yeah, that's the way it happens sometimes. Ha."
Right on, brilliant. That's from "Frustration", the first of nine fantastic tracks on the one and only album by this English band, recorded in 1971, released in '72 on Deram/Decca, produced by Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. Why Jerusalem didn't get big is a mystery, though the liner notes give some clues as to why they disbanded. Heck they're even fairly unknown (or a well-kept secret) among connoisseurs of '70s heavy psych and hard rock, with this being its first ever official, non-bootleg reissue on compact disc. Now, there's lots of great obscure heavy rock rarities from the early '70s. We've raved about reissues of many of them (Dust, Leaf Hound, Toad, Bang, T2, etc.). But as far as unheralded proto-metal goes, this belongs pretty much at the top of that longhaired, bellbottomed heap, as essential as any of 'em anyway. Pentagram, Bedemon, Blues Creation, Budgie, Night Sun, you name it.
Allan here first heard Jerusalem a few years back when a friend who shares his taste for proto-metal passed along a cd-r copy of this otherwise unavailable album (thanks, Glenn!). Killer stuff indeed, damn it was good. One of the heaviest things from the era he'd ever heard, Jerusalem took it to an extreme that most of their peers didn't approach. With elements of both biggies Sabbath and Zeppelin, but more frenzied and frantic on one hand, more plodding and suicidal on the other.
Crashing, fuzzed out guitars. Energetic hectic riffage. Doomy, thudding blues. Wicked stinging, sliding soloing. Punkish attitude (competitive with contemporaries Crushed Butler). The vocals often hoarse, on the verge of screaming, or gone over that edge. Yeah, pretty heavy for '72! This is rough, raw, proto headbanging mania mixed with mystical, melodic proggy interludes, of course we love it. Plus it's got a genuine dark, occult, despairing vibe, with poetic lyrics about madness, murder and death... And you can't get much more "downer rock genocidal" sounding than the truly, uh, primitive bludgeon what might be the heaviest track here, "Primitive Man".
Pretty darn metal when it comes down to it, forget the "proto". In their own way though, Jerusalem sounding halfway betwixt '60s garage rock and '80s New Wave Of British Heavy Metal... which on balance puts them a bit ahead of their time. In fact, since what's old is new again, this actually sounds like if could have been made now, not because it sounds modern (it doesn't) but because it's so line with certain stonery retro-stylings popular today, particularly in Sweden. In other words, if you like Witchcraft, you'll love Jerusalem!! We always thought that of all the obscure '70s bands that are their forebears, Witchcraft sound most like Jerusalem (well, next to Pentagram). Remember what we said in all caps about Witchcraft's debut? "PERHAPS THEE BEST '70s INSPIRED DOOM ALBUM EVER!" Well the same would go for this, except that it's the real deal, which makes it even better.
Anyway, to return to our story, after Allan got that cd-r dub, he knew he had to find a proper cd. There HAD to be one, this was too good not to have been reissued, right? But, after looking and looking, no luck. Then, one day, Allan came to work at Aquarius and lo and behold what did he hear, but Jerusalem blaring from the store stereo! No, it wasn't this reissue. This was still a few years ago. Turns out, Andee had found a used copy of a bootleg cd someplace, and had bought it simply 'cause he thought the cover looked cool (he's like that), without knowing anything about the band. Life is so unfair, thought Allan. But he was able to eventually guilt Andee into giving him the cd for a birthday present (thanks, Andee! You can have that one back now). Later on, we discovered a Japanese reissue that may or may not have been a boot but in any event was way too expensive and hard to get, nothing we could easily stock and sell for a reasonable price. But NOW, we happily are able to share Jerusalem with you thanks to this nicely done reissue on the Rockadrome label's Vintage imprint! Yeah!
In addition to the nine songs from the original LP, this cd comes with five bonus tracks, including non-album single "Kamakazi Moth". The thick booklet is filled with lengthy liner notes, complete lyrics, vintage photos, all that good stuff you want in a reissue. Once more, yeah!
There's absolutely no information about Judah as to the who, the what, or the when. We could be really bold and say that this bleak, murky synth-punk outfit was active in the early '80s emerging out of the Bowery alongside the likes of Suicide and Dark Day; but in all likelihood, this is a contemporary project that has all of the minimal wave trappings. The arrangements on this eponymous album are suitably stripped down with just syncopated bass-tones, monophunk drum machines, and motorik pulses through pure analogue electronics with very little touching on melody. The vocalist (whoever that may be) strikes a sneering rock pose certainly modeled on the rockabilly vocals of Alan Vega with a few funhouse Elvis grinds by way of Karl Blake of Shock Headed Peters. This is a pretty damn compelling record, and one that we wish we could tell you more about. Unfortunately, we do have very limited stock on this, with very little hope of getting more...
We've long been fans of progressive post metal combo Rosetta, every record is a super ambitious sprawling multi-part epic, that manages to do MORE than just cram a million parts into a twenty minute song. They are as adept at meaningful song construction as they are at shredding, and they manage to make their metal art crazy catchy to boot. Which is true here too, their half of this split cdep is a single ten minute track, but it's fantastic, opening with a long stretch of chiming guitars and muscly drumming, definitely post rock, then the bellowed vox come in, and the song begins to metallize, but they haven't really gotten into it yet, cuz a minute or so later, the song proper kicks in, and the already epic jam gets that much more epic and heavy and loud, the band unwinding a thick tangled chunk of psyche metal crush, slipping from mathy post rock to churning downtuned sludge and back again, before shedding the heavy and unfurling a moody, shuffling, shimmering post rock interlude, with chiming guitars and some killer intricate drumming, a slow build smolder as the band builds their way back up, eventually erupting into a wild proggy mathy freakout, some killer guitar playing intricate and a little bit shreddy over what is almost a continuous drum solo, the sound getting more and more blissy and blown out, until the final minute or two, a seriously dense and heavy as fuck stop/start chug fest, with more insane drumming. Holy shit do these guys slay. When we haven't listened to them for a while we tend to forget how incredible their records are. But we just listened to this one song about 4 times in a row.
Never heard Junius before, but these Boston heavies definitely have their own take on the whole post metal thing, their take being a way more melodic one, with the vocalist front and center, his voice soaring and clear, which gives the music, no matter how heavy the sounds in the background, a much more commercial feel, definitely reminding us of Cave In during their Radiohead period, which is not a bad thing at all, in fact, after hundreds of records of screeching and howling and yowling and grunting, it's kind of excellent to hear seriously heavy music paired with real vocals. And while much of the music here is heavy, the band do stretch out into a sort of progged out shoegazey metallic pop, the sound epic and emotional, perhaps a bit to wimpy for a certain segment of metalheads, but we're digging it a lot, and this one song definitely has us wanting to hear more.
Killer packaging too, a nice digipak, but with one of those 3" cds within a 5" cd, so the outer ring is clear plastic, with the printing on the top, done so that when you look at the underside of the disc, there's readable text underneath the disc art. So cool. Also includes a download coupon for extra exclusive songs!
Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (and Avarus, and Anaksimandros, and Uton, and Lau Nau, and Doktor Kettu, etc.) are often referred to as "forest-folk", implying some sort of quiet, gentle rustling mystery amidst the trees, and sometimes that's quite the case. But the first few tracks here, on Kemialliset's latest, would certainly scare off any friendly small animals -and- wake up the sleeping forest trolls. It's woozy woodsy cacophony unleashed. This be outsider "folk" at its most abstract and noisy and "free". But, by track four or five things have calmed down a bit, the sounds have gotten more organized. Some charismatic, long-haired, bearded guru has obviously taken charge of the previously wild music-makers, their pagan energy now channelled down paths previously trod unshod by the likes of Parson Sound and Amon Duul... more mellow and musical, still druggy and damaged. Track six, "Superhimmeli", comes off like something by cult '60s ESP tribe Cromagnon!! (Perhaps due to having the same keening horn cry as heard in Cromagnon's "Caledonia".) There's a hippy chant drone density to a lot of this that's VERY satisfying. It's like an ancient celebration underway, wooden space rock rituals, accompanied by electronic squiggles or birds atwitter, burbling and gurgling sounds in the margins... sunshiney yet strange, very strange. Fonal thinks this is one of their best yet and we wouldn't argue.
NB. There IS vinyl of this, but unfortunately the copies we got were damaged -- we're expecting replacements from Finland soon, though.
According to the liner notes, this 2cd set of acousmatic minimalism from the Italian composer Gianluca Becuzzi - here working under the moniker Kinetix - centers on "the relationship between physical space and acoustic space." The work certainly jumps from the classic minimalist piece "I Am Sitting In A Room" by Alvin Lucier; and the text of that piece actually gets reprised by, presumably, Becuzzi's voice at the end of disc one amidst a sea of buzzing drones. If Becuzzi is in fact rebroadcasting the same frequencies dozens, maybe hundreds of times in particular rooms, he's not applying the linear accumulation that gave the Lucier piece its telescopic psychedelia. Instead, Becuzzi slices and dices those recordings into spatialized musique concrete compositions that are halfway between the ultra-minimalist work of Ryoji Ikeda situated beneath the psychosexualized vocal delivery found on Luc Ferrari or Robert Ashley pieces. Becuzzi has certainly manipulated and filtered many of the frequencies in his recycling resonance recordings, as there are extreme low-end and high-end frequencies that could only be generated with some digital help. This artificiality is emphasized through Becuzzi's many jump cuts from various rasping drones in and out of silences, with male and female voices whispering throughout in both English and Italian. Alongside those aforementioned composers, Francisco Lopez, Bernhard Gunter, and Sachiko M might be other references to this intriguing set of electro-acoustics. Very few copies, last ones ever!
While we've been treated to numerous divine sonic excursions from Mr. Leyland Kirby (aka The Caretaker) over the last couple years, since the release of the mind blowing and unanimous all time aQ fave Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was lp trilogy, which included the all-over-the-map Intrigue & Stuff series, and the old timey mixtape that was the Caretaker's An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, this latest mysterious missive, evocatively (or provocatively?) titled Eager To Tear Apart The Stars, most definitely seems to be the first record that sonically acts as a logical follow up, to that sprawling triptych, delving into the same sort of hauntological soundcaping, but with a distinctive shift in sound. Which becomes obvious from the first track, and continues throughout, the mood is somber, the vibe darkly cinematic, easily the most patient and painterly thing we've heard from Kirby,
ominous piano stabs wreathed in thick surface noise, a warm muted hissy buzz, hovering over softly soaring strings, a weightless chordal thrum, that seems hopeful and lit from within, but manages to still remain earthbound, as if tethered to some unseeable darkness. The first two tracks and the haunting closer, seem to be a suite of sorts, some lost soundtrack, driven by melancholy piano and wreathed in those sweetly sorrowful strings, initially the sounds buried in grit and crackle, but by the record's end, that noise seems to have abated, leaving the sound crystalline and prismatic, almost as if the receding noise reflects a sort of sonic hopefulness, a light at the end of a very long tunnel.
But between these cinematic bookends, lurk several tracks that rank among our favorite Kirby jams yet. "To Reject The World" is a sonic trifle, an intro of sorts, the piano from the opening movements carry over, this time over a thick rumbling swirl of blackened buzz, drifting on sinister swells, before giving way to "No Longer Distance Than Death", which sounds like it could have been lifted from Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was, a slow motion creep, everything hazy and blissed out, rumbling distortion and muted buzz smeared into bleary streaks of dreamlike sound, like an M83 track spinning at 6rpm on an old Victrola, so moving and haunting, and that's when The Caretaker pays a visit, his "They Are All Dead, There Are No Skip At All", another haunted ballroom slow dance, all murky strings, muddied chiming melodies, woozy strings, some sort of slow motion waltz, a dance of the damned captured on wax cylinder and played back in an alternate future, mysterious and utterly lovely.
Once again, Kirby continues to explore the hauntological sonic underworld, and gives us just a glimpse of the musical mysteries that reside there.
