This was another one of those records that just showed up one day, and knocked us on our asses. And while all the descriptors pointed to something that would be right up our alley, spacey and psychedelic, krautrocky and kosmische, heavy and hazy, which all do definitely apply, the music manages to embody all those adjectives, while tangling them up into something all its own.
This one man band opens up the proceedings with some droned out psychedelic synths, sounding like Amps For Christ or Daniel Higgs, the sounds undulating and spiraling into little tangled melodic squalls, there are bells, and a deep crooned almost chantlike vocal, very hypnotic and almost new agey, those droning synths (or are they effected guitars?), get more and more wild as the song proceeds, a wild woolly freakout over that deep sonorous drone. Great stuff, and we would have been perfectly happy had the whole record sounded like that, but instead, the second song starts off all low slung slither and wah guitar, it's got 'boogie' in the title, and it shows, sort of. Loose and ramshackle, the guitars again blossom into soaring streaks of high end skree, the drums pound and stumble, the vocals wreathed in reverb, the sound insanely dubbed out, everything swallowed up in echo and send swirling into the ether before landing again and reengaging with the in-progress kraut-dub space rock freakout. This is the sort of shit Burnt Hills would conjure up if they wrote songs instead of endless jams, infusing sort-of-proper song structures with all the elements of an unhinged drug addled jam, and the results are pretty wild.
The rest of the record though is all over the place, feet firmly planted in psychedelia, and Appalachia, but exploring pretty much every disparate strain, from clattery, foresty free folk, sounding almost like No Neck Blues Band or Avarus, to back porch bluegrass Fahey-y style American primitivism, from strummy, synthy, noise drenched darkdrone balladry (maybe our favorite track, sounding like a muted Merzbow / Portishead slowburn mashup woven into some Appalachian psychedelic creep), to blown out, in-the-red, Japanese psych style White Heaven / Les Rallizes / Fushitsusha grinding guitar freakout, finally finishing off with another bout of melancholic minor key Appalachia.
Killer stuff, most definitely recommended for fans of modern psych, neo-Appalachia, psychedelic dronemusic and the weirder side of space/psych/drone rock.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Includes multiple inserts.
Last time, we reviewed The Omni Corporation's reissue of a wonderful rare "library music" album entitled Omega 2000 by German composer Peter Thomas and his "Orchestra". Those diligent diggers at Omni Corp. have another one along those lines for us this week, again a '70s library music collection, from the much less well known name of Patrice Sciortino. Can't believe this is the first we've heard of the man and his music, considering that this stuff sounds something like the more outre of Morricone efforts, pretty darn cool. And apparently, there's plenty more where this came from. Wow, thanks Omni!!
Sciortino is classically trained French musician, born in 1922, who eventually established a career in the '60s/'70s as a prolific and somewhat peculiar composer, with, eventually, many obscure recordings to his credit. He's also a poet and playwright. With an interest in both non-Western musics and the most avant-garde of electronics (he studied at GRM), his musical vision, as displayed here, is unusual and otherworldly.
Where that Orchestra Peter Thomas disc was groovy and funky, all about the big bombastic beats, this Sciortino stuff is much more atmospheric and academic sounding... it's like 20th century classical gone soundtrack wacky. Imagine Bernard Herrmann (of Psycho fame) meets Carl Stalling (of Warner Bros. cartoons fame). Or Luigi Nono writing music for TV shows. His music is sometimes ominous, sometimes uplifting, offering plenty of percussive exotica, chimings and tinklings, with shuddering, sawing cello and eerie wordless female vocals. And occasional echo effects intensifying the rhythms.
This disc comprises Sciortino's entire, intriguing 1970 album Chronoradial, plus extensive selections from three different 10" records of his belonging to a library music series out by the Musique Pour L'Image label circa 1967-1968. There's 36 tracks here in all, many of them jittery and unsettling, suspenseful and nervous - but others lively, joyous and beautiful.
Nicely done, in typical Omni fashion, the cd booklet full of informative liner notes, and awesome freaky black and white artwork from the original lps - love that raccoon-like creature with the clocks for eyes!! Quite recommended.
When we first heard about a band called Sex Church on Load Records, we were pretty much expecting a wild costumed troupe spitting out gouts of speaker shredding cacophony and grinding metallic noise, and while there is a certain amount of noise and cacophony going on here, these guys traffic in something wholly different, a gloomy post punky sort of downer pop (much like Daily Life, who also had a record on Load), all clanging minor key chords, pounding dirgey rhythms and buzzing swirling synths, the opening track sounds like a slightly noisier take on some lost Joy Division live jam, or some classic goth group revved up and supercharged. And then when the vocals finally kick in, all deep and dramatic, wreathed in echo and delay, the mood grows dark and doomy, the drums pounding out a tribal rhythm, the bass lurching and lumbering in throbs and thrums, the sound building to explosive psychedelic crescendos before slipping back into slithery deathrock grooves or loping postpunk crunch. Fans of outfits like Naked On The Vague, Crystal Stilts, Total Control, Soft Moon and the like should go apeshit for these guys, and while they definitely borrow heavily from the gloom/goth classics, think Kommunity FK, the Mission UK, Birthday Party, Sisters Of Mercy, Wipers, Scientists, Bauhaus, Fields Of The Nephilim, once those sounds are filtered through a more noise rock / post punk aesthetic, it ends up pretty heavy, hooky, noisy, darkly poppy and sorta irresistible.
We had never really heard The Spits before. Pretty sure we just assumed they'd be super generic boring punk rock. But one aQ staffer who'd been living in Seattle until recently was shocked that the rest of us had never checked these guys out, and talked them up as being one of his favorite bands, which was enough of a recommendation for us, and holy shit, do these guys rule. This is full length number 5 (we think), all self titled, and all, we presume, packed to overflowing with killer jams that meld Ramones style three chord punk with blown out Devo-style electro-punkpop, and the results are pretty mindblowing, hooks galore, but often buried in murk and buzz, the vocals slipping from a Joey Ramones style yelp to a mush mouthed heavily effected drawl, with even the most straight ahead jams wreathed in weird streaks of processed guitar buzz or twisted electronics, opener, "All I Want" is a pretty perfect pop song, and yeah, total Ramones worship, but the whole track is underpinned by killer sinister sci-fi guitar sounds and lots of buzz and drone, the result is punky pop, but sort of tense and intense. And "My Mess" is all curdled guitar crunch and tripped out doped up vox, wild drumming, and some rad psychedelic effects drenched breakdowns, and while there's not a proper chorus, somehow the whole goddamn song gets stuck in our heads like crazy. Oh and did we mention the bizarre falling apart interlude replete with dialed telephone tones and all the instruments sounding like they're melting before your ears. Then there are jams like "Tomorrow's Children", with muted muddy riffage wrapped around motorik programmed rhythms, and some druggy Hawkwindy vox, with a distinctly electro vibe throughout. We could go on track by track, but it's hardly necessary. 13 tracks, 21 minutes, short sharp, hooky, heavy, buzzy, fuzzy, catchy and totally ruling, these guys might just be our new (old) favorite band!
These are always the hardest ones to write. The bands we've loved for years, the songs we've been listening to for decades, with no need to think beyond the pure visceral enjoyment of the sounds, just years of getting lost inside the music, and with music like this, going deeper and deeper with every listen, never a need to put that sonic magic into words, but still championing these sounds for all we were worth, but instead of a lengthy essay or diatribe, it was an insistent "YOU NEED THIS!" Or "You've never heard anything quite like this." Or even still "This is probably one of our all time favorite bands, and if you haven't heard this music, you have been missing out."
Years of finding copies of these long out of print gems in used bins and bargain bins and even dollar bins, because this was not popular music. As much as we loved it, and obsessed over it and played it for everyone we knew (and not everyone felt the same unbridled passion for these sounds that we did) and as much as often as we gave those occasionally discovered used copies to anyone we thought might love it as much as we did, there was no real hope for this band to reach the heights as a Sebadoh or a Pavement, even though they swam in the same sonic waters, for the Supreme Dicks were their own peculiar musical beast, one whose pop was subtle, whose noise was chaotic, whose vocals warbled and cracked, whose recordings were of extremely low fidelity, whose performances were loose and ramshackle, but whose magic would not have existed, certainly not in the same way it did, had all of those random elements fallen (im)perfectly into place. Thankfully they did, and we have this, years later, a lovingly compiled collection of the complete recorded works of Massachusetts indie folk outsider rock weirdos the Supreme Dicks.
The Dicks experienced a brief bit of popularity in the mid-nineties, finally seeing their debut record released, especially notable having formed all the way back in 1982, and during the years 1992-1996, the band released two albums, one ep, one single, one split single and a collection compiling the early works that predated their proper debut, it's all included here, and is darn near overwhelming all gathered up in one place, especially considering that ONE song in, and we already had chills. Such is the power of the Dicks, who sonically seemed to situate themselves somewhere between the Palace Brothers, Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Sebadoh (Lou Barlow even pops up on a Dicks jam or two), their sound an eerie psychedelic folk, a stumbling abstract primitivism, raw, and a bit warped, always seeming to teeter on the edge of collapse, that tension, that inevitable doom, rendered in sound and somehow woven into the fabric of their unique sound. Later, that sound would evolve to include sonic elements that would seem to be drawn from krautrock groups like Ash Ra Templ or Popol Vuh, but it's hard to say whether that was intentional or happenstance.
Their first album, The Unexamined Life, is probably the Dicks material that would be the least alienating to the casual listener, rooted in indie folk, the arrangements simple and spare, the instrumentation standard, but that's where the familiarity ends, as the Dicks forge their own path, and one song into their debut, seal the deal and establish themselves as masters of this arcane and unique to them musical form. "In A Sweet Song" gently tumbles into motion, all spidery acoustic guitar, delicate and crystalline, the vocals a sung/spoken warble, frought with emotion and tension, the drums stumbling, a lo -fi pound, in swoop more guitars, a brief bit of psychedelia, all druggy slippery melodies, and the clang and jangle of loud guitars, slowly building, a wild tangle of competing melodies that give us chills every time. The lyrics haunting and heartfelt, building again to a seriously rad jam that sounds like it was lifted straight out of a classic Pavement jam, pressed onto a 7", left in the sun, and then played back on an old Sears turntable, all warped and woozy and so so so wonderful. Even nearly 20 years later, nothing can touch this. And so goes The Unexamined Life, a bizarre collection of fractured folk music, fragmented and abstract, multiple vocalists, keening high about to crack warbles, and deep croons, fluttering flutes, hazy soft focus psychedelia, lilting and gently pastoral one second, weirdly chaotic the next, sawed strings, total super catchy jangle pop nestled amongst twisted Jandekian slowburn outsider folk, blown out super distorted psychpop melting into what sounds like some sort of bastardized classic rock, like the Grateful Dead via Faxed head, the tape crumbling, the sounds seeming to decay, even though the music itself is fairly straight ahead, finally finishing off with the appropriately titled "Strange Song", a sprawl of slow building tripped out psychedelic free noise freakout most modern bands would KILL for.
Workingman's Dick was originally released on Freek Records in 1994, and collected all of the early Dicks recordings, and is a glorious hodgepodge hinting at what was to come, not that far removed from their debut, if anything a bit more experimental, the timbre of the sound and the quality of the recordings varying from track to track, the sounds slipping from freakfolk to murky dirgery, and from haunting skeletal folk to Sentridoh like experimental fuckery. It's maybe the most difficult listen of the various releases, but also contains some of the band's dreamiest gems. This Is Not A Dick, was recorded around the same time as their final record, but was a lot like Workingman's Dick in that it was cobbled together from recordings made between 1987 and 1994, and much like Workingman's Dick, is sonically varied, opening with some abstract psychedelic drift, all grinding guitars and chiming melodies, a freaky lo-fi basement jam that is surprisingly and fantastically (although subtly) unhinged, and from there on out, the band slips from dreamy strummy shimmer to garbled crumbling experimentation, one of our favorites being "Marks Phonecall From Orgoneland", which is a dreamy little Avarus like microjam that's all whistling and tinkling chimes, skittery rhythms and hushed percussion, all accompanied by the phone call in question, a strange spoken word rant over a clattery No Neck Blues Band like clamor, the other being "Harmonic Convergence (Live At L'Oasis 1987)" which is a cool collection of recordings of the what sounds like various clubs between songs, lots of silence, clinking glasses, a recited poem with plenty of jeers from a sparse crowd and the band requesting someone to come up and play drums for them. Weird and wonderful.
Finally, the band released their last record, The Emotional Plague, in 1996, and this is where the band's warble folk and psychedelic crumble becomes a bit more expansive and far reaching, the above mentioned perceived influence of Ash Ra Tempel and other like minded outfits, transforming the group's sound into something more lush and lovely, and marginally less difficult. Marginally. Opener "Synaesthesia" is a haunting bit of droned out psychedelic drift, thick low end rumbles, chiming melodies, distant skeletal guitar melodies, the song starting out dark and powerfully minimal, but seeming to gradually fall apart as the track progresses, which leads right into the first proper song, the production notably more polished, the guitars ringing out, the drums not buried in the mix, but the sound still a little off kilter, slightly atonal, a little off key, the song a gorgeous lilting almost ballad, that builds to a full on psychrock freakout, and then peters out, leading directly into a nightmarish stretch of ominous FX drenched psychdrone creep, atonal and warped and warbly, eventually morphing into what almost sounds like some lost Neil Young outtake, unexpected for sure, but quite cool. And The Emotional Plague is where this already hard to describe band gets even more difficult to understand, let alone describe, most of the elements were present on past recordings, but here sound reimagined, and reinvented, repurposed even, the band seemingly able to reel of some perfect, delicate folk music like they could have been making music like that all along, but as if to say "why the hell would we?!" they immediately take the sound and pull it apart into a stumbling alternate dimension Pink Floydian dirge that manages to be psychedelic, but also some sort of twisted indie pop, all fused together into something that is both and neither. The tracks on The Emotional Plague are longer, some nearly 10 minutes long, which let the Dicks explore and ramble and stretch out, weaving tranced out sprawls of repetition, of looped mesmer, of smoldering psychedelia, of hushed delicate dreampop drift, of haunting backporch alien Appalachia and of brooding, almost orchestral majesty, replete with horns and haunting spoken word, and a twisted deconstructed coda, "Green Wings Fly Adventure (Showered Reprise) an elegiac final movement, the perfect way to end such a mysterious and strange record, and an even more perfect way to lay to rest one of the strangest, most incredible, and under appreciated bands of the last two decades.
This deluxe reissue includes most of the original artwork, new liner notes, tons of rare photos, and tacks on a couple B-sides and a handful of unreleased jams, but even without those extras, this collection gathers up one of the most beautifully baffling and bafflingly brilliant bodies of work from one of our favorite groups of the last 20 years. And while we did our best with the above review, it's hard to stress just how utterly recommended and essential this really is!
And vinyl folks, while the whole set was not pressed on vinyl, the two proper albums were, so both The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague are available on vinyl (deluxe double lps to boot!) for the first time EVER.
These are always the hardest ones to write. The bands we've loved for years, the songs we've been listening to for decades, with no need to think beyond the pure visceral enjoyment of the sounds, just years of getting lost inside the music, and with music like this, going deeper and deeper with every listen, never a need to put that sonic magic into words, but still championing these sounds for all we were worth, but instead of a lengthy essay or diatribe, it was an insistent "YOU NEED THIS!" Or "You've never heard anything quite like this." Or even still "This is probably one of our all time favorite bands, and if you haven't heard this music, you have been missing out."
Years of finding copies of these long out of print gems in used bins and bargain bins and even dollar bins, because this was not popular music. As much as we loved it, and obsessed over it and played it for everyone we knew (and not everyone felt the same unbridled passion for these sounds that we did) and as much as often as we gave those occasionally discovered used copies to anyone we thought might love it as much as we did, there was no real hope for this band to reach the heights as a Sebadoh or a Pavement, even though they swam in the same sonic waters, for the Supreme Dicks were their own peculiar musical beast, one whose pop was subtle, whose noise was chaotic, whose vocals warbled and cracked, whose recordings were of extremely low fidelity, whose performances were loose and ramshackle, but whose magic would not have existed, certainly not in the same way it did, had all of those random elements fallen (im)perfectly into place. Thankfully they did, and we have this, years later, a lovingly compiled collection of the complete recorded works of Massachusetts indie folk outsider rock weirdos the Supreme Dicks.
The Dicks experienced a brief bit of popularity in the mid-nineties, finally seeing their debut record released, especially notable having formed all the way back in 1982, and during the years 1992-1996, the band released two albums, one ep, one single, one split single and a collection compiling the early works that predated their proper debut, it's all included here, and is darn near overwhelming all gathered up in one place, especially considering that ONE song in, and we already had chills. Such is the power of the Dicks, who sonically seemed to situate themselves somewhere between the Palace Brothers, Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Sebadoh (Lou Barlow even pops up on a Dicks jam or two), their sound an eerie psychedelic folk, a stumbling abstract primitivism, raw, and a bit warped, always seeming to teeter on the edge of collapse, that tension, that inevitable doom, rendered in sound and somehow woven into the fabric of their unique sound. Later, that sound would evolve to include sonic elements that would seem to be drawn from krautrock groups like Ash Ra Templ or Popol Vuh, but it's hard to say whether that was intentional or happenstance.
Their first album, The Unexamined Life, is probably the Dicks material that would be the least alienating to the casual listener, rooted in indie folk, the arrangements simple and spare, the instrumentation standard, but that's where the familiarity ends, as the Dicks forge their own path, and one song into their debut, seal the deal and establish themselves as masters of this arcane and unique to them musical form. "In A Sweet Song" gently tumbles into motion, all spidery acoustic guitar, delicate and crystalline, the vocals a sung/spoken warble, frought with emotion and tension, the drums stumbling, a lo -fi pound, in swoop more guitars, a brief bit of psychedelia, all druggy slippery melodies, and the clang and jangle of loud guitars, slowly building, a wild tangle of competing melodies that give us chills every time. The lyrics haunting and heartfelt, building again to a seriously rad jam that sounds like it was lifted straight out of a classic Pavement jam, pressed onto a 7", left in the sun, and then played back on an old Sears turntable, all warped and woozy and so so so wonderful. Even nearly 20 years later, nothing can touch this. And so goes The Unexamined Life, a bizarre collection of fractured folk music, fragmented and abstract, multiple vocalists, keening high about to crack warbles, and deep croons, fluttering flutes, hazy soft focus psychedelia, lilting and gently pastoral one second, weirdly chaotic the next, sawed strings, total super catchy jangle pop nestled amongst twisted Jandekian slowburn outsider folk, blown out super distorted psychpop melting into what sounds like some sort of bastardized classic rock, like the Grateful Dead via Faxed head, the tape crumbling, the sounds seeming to decay, even though the music itself is fairly straight ahead, finally finishing off with the appropriately titled "Strange Song", a sprawl of slow building tripped out psychedelic free noise freakout most modern bands would KILL for.
Workingman's Dick was originally released on Freek Records in 1994, and collected all of the early Dicks recordings, and is a glorious hodgepodge hinting at what was to come, not that far removed from their debut, if anything a bit more experimental, the timbre of the sound and the quality of the recordings varying from track to track, the sounds slipping from freakfolk to murky dirgery, and from haunting skeletal folk to Sentridoh like experimental fuckery. It's maybe the most difficult listen of the various releases, but also contains some of the band's dreamiest gems. This Is Not A Dick, was recorded around the same time as their final record, but was a lot like Workingman's Dick in that it was cobbled together from recordings made between 1987 and 1994, and much like Workingman's Dick, is sonically varied, opening with some abstract psychedelic drift, all grinding guitars and chiming melodies, a freaky lo-fi basement jam that is surprisingly and fantastically (although subtly) unhinged, and from there on out, the band slips from dreamy strummy shimmer to garbled crumbling experimentation, one of our favorites being "Marks Phonecall From Orgoneland", which is a dreamy little Avarus like microjam that's all whistling and tinkling chimes, skittery rhythms and hushed percussion, all accompanied by the phone call in question, a strange spoken word rant over a clattery No Neck Blues Band like clamor, the other being "Harmonic Convergence (Live At L'Oasis 1987)" which is a cool collection of recordings of the what sounds like various clubs between songs, lots of silence, clinking glasses, a recited poem with plenty of jeers from a sparse crowd and the band requesting someone to come up and play drums for them. Weird and wonderful.
Finally, the band released their last record, The Emotional Plague, in 1996, and this is where the band's warble folk and psychedelic crumble becomes a bit more expansive and far reaching, the above mentioned perceived influence of Ash Ra Tempel and other like minded outfits, transforming the group's sound into something more lush and lovely, and marginally less difficult. Marginally. Opener "Synaesthesia" is a haunting bit of droned out psychedelic drift, thick low end rumbles, chiming melodies, distant skeletal guitar melodies, the song starting out dark and powerfully minimal, but seeming to gradually fall apart as the track progresses, which leads right into the first proper song, the production notably more polished, the guitars ringing out, the drums not buried in the mix, but the sound still a little off kilter, slightly atonal, a little off key, the song a gorgeous lilting almost ballad, that builds to a full on psychrock freakout, and then peters out, leading directly into a nightmarish stretch of ominous FX drenched psychdrone creep, atonal and warped and warbly, eventually morphing into what almost sounds like some lost Neil Young outtake, unexpected for sure, but quite cool. And The Emotional Plague is where this already hard to describe band gets even more difficult to understand, let alone describe, most of the elements were present on past recordings, but here sound reimagined, and reinvented, repurposed even, the band seemingly able to reel of some perfect, delicate folk music like they could have been making music like that all along, but as if to say "why the hell would we?!" they immediately take the sound and pull it apart into a stumbling alternate dimension Pink Floydian dirge that manages to be psychedelic, but also some sort of twisted indie pop, all fused together into something that is both and neither. The tracks on The Emotional Plague are longer, some nearly 10 minutes long, which let the Dicks explore and ramble and stretch out, weaving tranced out sprawls of repetition, of looped mesmer, of smoldering psychedelia, of hushed delicate dreampop drift, of haunting backporch alien Appalachia and of brooding, almost orchestral majesty, replete with horns and haunting spoken word, and a twisted deconstructed coda, "Green Wings Fly Adventure (Showered Reprise) an elegiac final movement, the perfect way to end such a mysterious and strange record, and an even more perfect way to lay to rest one of the strangest, most incredible, and under appreciated bands of the last two decades.
This deluxe reissue includes most of the original artwork, new liner notes, tons of rare photos, and tacks on a couple B-sides and a handful of unreleased jams, but even without those extras, this collection gathers up one of the most beautifully baffling and bafflingly brilliant bodies of work from one of our favorite groups of the last 20 years. And while we did our best with the above review, it's hard to stress just how utterly recommended and essential this really is!
And vinyl folks, while the whole set was not pressed on vinyl, the two proper albums were, so both The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague are available on vinyl (deluxe double lps to boot!) for the first time EVER.
These are always the hardest ones to write. The bands we've loved for years, the songs we've been listening to for decades, with no need to think beyond the pure visceral enjoyment of the sounds, just years of getting lost inside the music, and with music like this, going deeper and deeper with every listen, never a need to put that sonic magic into words, but still championing these sounds for all we were worth, but instead of a lengthy essay or diatribe, it was an insistent "YOU NEED THIS!" Or "You've never heard anything quite like this." Or even still "This is probably one of our all time favorite bands, and if you haven't heard this music, you have been missing out."
Years of finding copies of these long out of print gems in used bins and bargain bins and even dollar bins, because this was not popular music. As much as we loved it, and obsessed over it and played it for everyone we knew (and not everyone felt the same unbridled passion for these sounds that we did) and as much as often as we gave those occasionally discovered used copies to anyone we thought might love it as much as we did, there was no real hope for this band to reach the heights as a Sebadoh or a Pavement, even though they swam in the same sonic waters, for the Supreme Dicks were their own peculiar musical beast, one whose pop was subtle, whose noise was chaotic, whose vocals warbled and cracked, whose recordings were of extremely low fidelity, whose performances were loose and ramshackle, but whose magic would not have existed, certainly not in the same way it did, had all of those random elements fallen (im)perfectly into place. Thankfully they did, and we have this, years later, a lovingly compiled collection of the complete recorded works of Massachusetts indie folk outsider rock weirdos the Supreme Dicks.
The Dicks experienced a brief bit of popularity in the mid-nineties, finally seeing their debut record released, especially notable having formed all the way back in 1982, and during the years 1992-1996, the band released two albums, one ep, one single, one split single and a collection compiling the early works that predated their proper debut, it's all included here, and is darn near overwhelming all gathered up in one place, especially considering that ONE song in, and we already had chills. Such is the power of the Dicks, who sonically seemed to situate themselves somewhere between the Palace Brothers, Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Sebadoh (Lou Barlow even pops up on a Dicks jam or two), their sound an eerie psychedelic folk, a stumbling abstract primitivism, raw, and a bit warped, always seeming to teeter on the edge of collapse, that tension, that inevitable doom, rendered in sound and somehow woven into the fabric of their unique sound. Later, that sound would evolve to include sonic elements that would seem to be drawn from krautrock groups like Ash Ra Templ or Popol Vuh, but it's hard to say whether that was intentional or happenstance.
Their first album, The Unexamined Life, is probably the Dicks material that would be the least alienating to the casual listener, rooted in indie folk, the arrangements simple and spare, the instrumentation standard, but that's where the familiarity ends, as the Dicks forge their own path, and one song into their debut, seal the deal and establish themselves as masters of this arcane and unique to them musical form. "In A Sweet Song" gently tumbles into motion, all spidery acoustic guitar, delicate and crystalline, the vocals a sung/spoken warble, frought with emotion and tension, the drums stumbling, a lo -fi pound, in swoop more guitars, a brief bit of psychedelia, all druggy slippery melodies, and the clang and jangle of loud guitars, slowly building, a wild tangle of competing melodies that give us chills every time. The lyrics haunting and heartfelt, building again to a seriously rad jam that sounds like it was lifted straight out of a classic Pavement jam, pressed onto a 7", left in the sun, and then played back on an old Sears turntable, all warped and woozy and so so so wonderful. Even nearly 20 years later, nothing can touch this. And so goes The Unexamined Life, a bizarre collection of fractured folk music, fragmented and abstract, multiple vocalists, keening high about to crack warbles, and deep croons, fluttering flutes, hazy soft focus psychedelia, lilting and gently pastoral one second, weirdly chaotic the next, sawed strings, total super catchy jangle pop nestled amongst twisted Jandekian slowburn outsider folk, blown out super distorted psychpop melting into what sounds like some sort of bastardized classic rock, like the Grateful Dead via Faxed head, the tape crumbling, the sounds seeming to decay, even though the music itself is fairly straight ahead, finally finishing off with the appropriately titled "Strange Song", a sprawl of slow building tripped out psychedelic free noise freakout most modern bands would KILL for.
Workingman's Dick was originally released on Freek Records in 1994, and collected all of the early Dicks recordings, and is a glorious hodgepodge hinting at what was to come, not that far removed from their debut, if anything a bit more experimental, the timbre of the sound and the quality of the recordings varying from track to track, the sounds slipping from freakfolk to murky dirgery, and from haunting skeletal folk to Sentridoh like experimental fuckery. It's maybe the most difficult listen of the various releases, but also contains some of the band's dreamiest gems. This Is Not A Dick, was recorded around the same time as their final record, but was a lot like Workingman's Dick in that it was cobbled together from recordings made between 1987 and 1994, and much like Workingman's Dick, is sonically varied, opening with some abstract psychedelic drift, all grinding guitars and chiming melodies, a freaky lo-fi basement jam that is surprisingly and fantastically (although subtly) unhinged, and from there on out, the band slips from dreamy strummy shimmer to garbled crumbling experimentation, one of our favorites being "Marks Phonecall From Orgoneland", which is a dreamy little Avarus like microjam that's all whistling and tinkling chimes, skittery rhythms and hushed percussion, all accompanied by the phone call in question, a strange spoken word rant over a clattery No Neck Blues Band like clamor, the other being "Harmonic Convergence (Live At L'Oasis 1987)" which is a cool collection of recordings of the what sounds like various clubs between songs, lots of silence, clinking glasses, a recited poem with plenty of jeers from a sparse crowd and the band requesting someone to come up and play drums for them. Weird and wonderful.
Finally, the band released their last record, The Emotional Plague, in 1996, and this is where the band's warble folk and psychedelic crumble becomes a bit more expansive and far reaching, the above mentioned perceived influence of Ash Ra Tempel and other like minded outfits, transforming the group's sound into something more lush and lovely, and marginally less difficult. Marginally. Opener "Synaesthesia" is a haunting bit of droned out psychedelic drift, thick low end rumbles, chiming melodies, distant skeletal guitar melodies, the song starting out dark and powerfully minimal, but seeming to gradually fall apart as the track progresses, which leads right into the first proper song, the production notably more polished, the guitars ringing out, the drums not buried in the mix, but the sound still a little off kilter, slightly atonal, a little off key, the song a gorgeous lilting almost ballad, that builds to a full on psychrock freakout, and then peters out, leading directly into a nightmarish stretch of ominous FX drenched psychdrone creep, atonal and warped and warbly, eventually morphing into what almost sounds like some lost Neil Young outtake, unexpected for sure, but quite cool. And The Emotional Plague is where this already hard to describe band gets even more difficult to understand, let alone describe, most of the elements were present on past recordings, but here sound reimagined, and reinvented, repurposed even, the band seemingly able to reel of some perfect, delicate folk music like they could have been making music like that all along, but as if to say "why the hell would we?!" they immediately take the sound and pull it apart into a stumbling alternate dimension Pink Floydian dirge that manages to be psychedelic, but also some sort of twisted indie pop, all fused together into something that is both and neither. The tracks on The Emotional Plague are longer, some nearly 10 minutes long, which let the Dicks explore and ramble and stretch out, weaving tranced out sprawls of repetition, of looped mesmer, of smoldering psychedelia, of hushed delicate dreampop drift, of haunting backporch alien Appalachia and of brooding, almost orchestral majesty, replete with horns and haunting spoken word, and a twisted deconstructed coda, "Green Wings Fly Adventure (Showered Reprise) an elegiac final movement, the perfect way to end such a mysterious and strange record, and an even more perfect way to lay to rest one of the strangest, most incredible, and under appreciated bands of the last two decades.
This deluxe reissue includes most of the original artwork, new liner notes, tons of rare photos, and tacks on a couple B-sides and a handful of unreleased jams, but even without those extras, this collection gathers up one of the most beautifully baffling and bafflingly brilliant bodies of work from one of our favorite groups of the last 20 years. And while we did our best with the above review, it's hard to stress just how utterly recommended and essential this really is!
And vinyl folks, while the whole set was not pressed on vinyl, the two proper albums were, so both The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague are available on vinyl (deluxe double lps to boot!) for the first time EVER.
We had never heard Canadian black metal horde Svetovid before, but we got this, their debut full length, from the same place we got recent BM cassette faves from Surt, Sunchariot, Gnieu, and Lascowiec, so were pretty excited to check them out, and weren't sure what to expect from the haunting acoustic folk intro, a lilting and slightly stumbling bit of Appalachian sounding fingerpicked melancholia, which lead directly into an avalanche of crumbling blackness, a swirling, whirling wall of sound, infused with a surprising amount of melody, the drums buried in the mix, the vocals a reverbed croak, but the guitars, dense and lush and layered, and while buzzy, almost more soaring and shimmery, the blackbuzz blossoming into something almost shoegazey, that minus the vox, might be something you'd hear on Starlight Temple Society. Blissed out blackened heaviness that is as poppy as it is buzzy, whether it's intentional or not, but we're digging it a LOT. And actually, maybe not all of the record is that poppy or blissed out, once we got done listening to that first track about ten times, the sound gets darker and meaner, chugging and churning, the vocals a sinister monstrous bellow, but somehow, the sound is still melodic, almost as if someone was used to the chordal structure of pop music, and was applying it to black metal, but the result is something grim and black, but warm and fuzzy and washed out, that track, not at all blasting, instead swirling and shimmery, the guitars tranced out and cyclical, the sound nearly psychedelic. We could go on and describe all the tracks here, but the sooner this review is done, the sooner we can strap on our Walkman, get away from this computer and dig in to the rest of this tape.
LIMITED TO 320 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK. THE ULTIMATE DRONE RECORD.
We love this record so much. The Taj Majal Travellers are so utterly mind blowing. This is a double cd reissue of this legendary Japanese psych ensemble's second lp which has been unavailable for several years now, but when we did have it in stock, if anyone asked about drones, this is the record we would always suggest. One of the most hallowed artifacts of the psych-rock collector scum scene (originals on vinyl could set you back more than $1000!), this album is an epic higher key improvised drone extravaganza, all performed live on beaches and deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated. Feedback, time-space lag, horns, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound. So unbearably awesome. And this is not electronic music, or studio based carefully constructed drone music, this is massive and organic, dreamy and natural, waves of sound drifting through sun and sky, rain and fog, trees and electrical wires, the shape of the earth, the temperature, the wind, all affecting the sound, changing the timbre ever so slightly, band members spaced out over hundreds of yards, improvising on an impossible grand scale, the earth as their stage, nature as their recording studio, a deliriously abstract sound world of subtle drones and drifting ambience. Imagine some long hairded seventies Japanese psych rock combo, but filtered through the Jewelled Antler Collective, jamming with Chris Watson, set up on sandy dunes, grassy knolls, forest glades, each not necessarily -playing- their instruments, but instead coaxing sounds from within the instruments, setting those sounds free and sending them skyward, watching it drift downwind, where a bandmate snatches the sounds and coaxes complimentary sounds from his instrument, sending a sonic respone, until these messages, these sounds weave into and around each other, the sky full of warm warbly mysterious sound. Psychedelic for sure, but more a sort of eyes closed, mind open dream drift drone psychedelia. ONE OF OUR ALL TIME FAVORITE RECORDS!!
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While virtually ignored upon its release in 1991, this continuingly influential album continues to elicit marvel from music lovers of all stripes. The final album from Talk Talk, the once New Romantic Euro-popsters turned introspective chamber minimalists, pretty much foreshadowed most post-rock music that would follow throughout the rest of the decade, especially with groups like Low and Movietone, but you can also hear the nascent strains of Tortoise and Labradford in there too. At the time, there was nothing at all remotely like this (and there really still isn't!), and though it didn't completely come out of the blue for the band (both Colour Of Spring and especially Spirit Of Eden clearly displayed minimalist leanings far away from the Euro-pop of their beginnings), Laughing Stock is a culmination of the reductivist sound the band through the tireless vision of its leader, Mark Hollis, had been striving for. Both Laughing Stock and Hollis' self-titled solo album from 1998 have been given the vinyl reissue treatment (first time ever on wax domestically) by the fine folks at Ba Da Bing. And since Laughing Stock is essentially a Mark Hollis solo album with a group of friends and session players, both records are more like essential companion pieces of measured and restrained beauty than any of the previous Talk Talk material would have been.
Said to have been inspired by Can and John Coltrane, though not sounding much like either of them, Laughing Stock instead trades on those artist's methodologies of musical structure, incorporating delicate textures and nuanced atmospheres into hushed but dynamically attuned elegiac compositions. The songs are stripped of excess, but are stylistically complex, mining elements of jazz and chamber music in finely-tuned and polished layers that build up slowly, with no verse-chorus-verse type of considerations or big overt payoffs. This is music that requires patience to appreciate but offers many rewards over repeated listens. A "long-tail" classic, this is one of our favorite late night listens. Completely and unabashedly essential!
We had never heard this Portland duo before, until their new record showed up at aQ. Obviously the band name was intriguing, and when we threw it on, we were pretty blown away, a haunting sort of electronic flecked rhythmic post rock, or blackened ambient electronica, hard to know exactly how to describe them, one thing we definitely would not have guessed is that they were a drums / viola duo!! The drummer is also the programmer, who we imagine is the one who fills out the sound with all manner of buzz and crunch, but the viola adds some dreamy drama to the proceedings, drifting over percolating rhythms, and wreathed in wild swirls of space-y effects. The opening track "Slumber Verses" sounds like the music from some soundtrack, remixed and revamped, the melancholy melodies are blurred and buzzy, the sounds are streaked with feedback, and hazy droned out chordal shimmer, the heartbeat like pulse, blossoms into a distorted drum beat about halfway through, while the guitars explode into a blissed out sky full of shoegaze high end. It's a pretty dreamy mix, darkly rhythmic, but also noisy and fuzzy and seriously psychedelic. The second track though, the title track, is the first song we heard and the one that really won us over, with a skeletal skittery beat, and a sky full of crumbling distortion and buzzing melody, some electronic bleep and little bits of glitch, washes of hiss and hum, while the viola offers up dreamy melodies, the drums getting super distorted at one point, a totally psychedelic freakout, the electronics freaking out to match, and then when the viola comes back in, so dramatic. Every track here sounds like it could be the music from that super intense movie in some quirky indie film, without the music being quirky itself, which is rare indeed.
Oh did we mention how the title track tumbles though some in-the-red backwards drum damage before slipping right back into a sixties Stereolab like groove? The songs are super varied, but manage to all work together, dreamy and hushed and droney one second, wildly propulsive and blown out the next, fuzzy and poppy one moment, hazy and dreamy and washed out the next. So good! Released on the dude from Modest Mouse's new label.
The return of these New Order named electro pop new wavers, this one not a new record, but a reissue of a rare 2008 ep, which in turn actually featured early recordings from all the way back in 2005. The title track is the jam here, a fuzzy minimal pop wave gem, all chiming melodies, heartfelt vox, thick buzzing synths, a simple pulsing groove, in some ways it reminds us of a less bombastic and shoegazey M83, that same sort of retro eighties vibe, total new wave dream pop bliss, laced with all sort of shimmery swirl and lushly harmonic guitars, and a sweet sweet hooky chorus. Definitely worth the price of admission alone, but the other three tracks are pretty great as well. "Fur Judith" is a bit more funky and propulsive, sounding a lot like it was built on the framework of Maxwell's "Somebody's Watching Me", all low slung and synthy, but a little radio pop/soul mixed in. "The Moon In The Gutter" is a beauty, all hazy and washed out, hushed and muted and swirly, a perfect chunk of blurred blissy ambience, and finally "Don't Take Your Hands Away" finishes things off in a darkly Depeche Mode. Nice!
We've been waiting for this one for a long time: the debut disc by Norwegian black metal legend Thorns! Aka Snorre W. Ruch. He's been an important, if obscure part of the Norse black metal scene since the early, church-burning days, but never managed to
Managed to get a handful of these split tour 12"s when Thrones, aka Joe Preston, was in town recently. This two song 45rpm12" matches up Preston's Thrones with the new-to-us Sedan, who we had never even heard of before, but whose track here kills, a moody broody rhythmic chunk of kick ass post rock, plenty mathy, with big drums, lush thick guitars, definitely sounds like it could be a new record by some nineties Thrill Jockey band, BUT, the group pepper their math/post rockisms with cool stretches of haunting cinematic chamber music, all layered drones and swoonsome shimmer. Pretty great, and unexpected, and has us definitely wanting to hear more.
The Thrones side offers up a different side of the Thrones we're used to, unfurling a dark, droney super minimal low end creep, all slithery and gurgly, a rumbling drone that soon reveals itself as being pitched down processed vox, the sound blur into a sort of post industrial black ambience, until the song blossoms into cool melody, but again, those synthy sounding melodies are in fact Preston's processed voice, it's total avant a cappella prog, or something, whatever it is, it's awesomely dirgey and droney and a little bit sci-fi, a tripped out minimal ambient soundtrack that might have some Thrones obsessives on the haunt for heavy scratching their chins, the rest of us can revel in Preston's mysterious dark soundscapery.
Probably crazy limited, so not sure if we can get more. Nice cover art too!
Hurrah, two early Tindersticks albums have recently been re-released on vinyl, and we heartily recommend them both! If you're only going to get two Tindersticks lps, these are they.
Of this band's first two triumphs, their second (and also self-titled) album, from 1995, is at least as good as the first, maybe even better and more sophisticated, but of course still similarly somber and elegant, with a lush sound that is definitely reminiscent of Scott Waker (1-4), plenty of vibes, delicate melodies, swirling strings and vocalist Stuart Staples deep haunting sung/spoken croon, that at times reminds us of a more torch songy Lambchop, and years later, we can't help but realize how much bands like the National and the Editors and the like owe to the mighty Tindersticks. Absolutely gorgeous stuff, another moody masterpiece.
180 gram vinyl. Not a gatefold though, unlike the other one.
Hurrah, two early Tindersticks albums have recently been re-released on vinyl, and we heartily recommend them both!
This is the Nottingham, England band's self-titled debut album which was originally released in 1993, not to be confused with their second album from 1995 which was also self-titled. Although lead singer Stuart Staples and company have shifted into different stylistic choices in the past few years, back in the early days you could definitely count on the band for a consistency in sound, mood and aesthetic (and album titling too, apparently!) that was distinctly their own and which drew masses of diehard fans.�
This one is where it all started, and where any potential fan should start. Staples' trademark deeeeep vocal delivery is on display amidst their somber, elegant, downright lush chamber pop compositions. Lyrically, Staples delves into some less than elegant areas, however (song titles include "Jism" and "Drunk Tank"), although like Arab Strab, Staples and company are masters at taking such salacious sentiments and transforming them into brooding loveliness.�
Nice to have this on vinyl again, for maximum decadent atmosphere. 180 gram wax, gatefold sleeve.
We were never able to review the debut single from this Canadian dark-dance-pop-wave combo, cuz for whatever reason we could never get enough copies to list, which is a shame cuz we dug it like crazy. But this extended 12" single takes the dancier elements from that 7" and pushed them right up front, the A side a sizzling, pulsing, buzzy blast of bass heavy almost housey sounding new wave, with some thick bassbuzz that sounds almost dubsteppy, weird vox with a serious eighties vibe transforms this into something more than retro dancefloor worship, and then there's the last few minutes where the song (d)evolves into an ominous John Carpenter / Goblin like bassy, droney super cinematic outro. Killer.
The flipside starts off with a brief bit of eighties electro pop, all synthy and propulsive, and seriously eighties, and again with some truly strange vox, before slipping into a remix of the track on the A side, which adds some heft to the proceedings, making it fuzzier and more distorted and a lot more shoegazey, all washed out and dreamy, but still finishing off with that same killer creepy outro.
Cool gothy disco big hole 12" sleeve too...
The first time we heard Scott Tuma play guitar, was with skeletal slowcore country legends Souled American. His washed out dreamlike atmospheric guitar parts helped define their sound, but more importantly, introduced Tuma as a truly idiosyncratic guitar player, with a haunting and mysteriously unique sound. Tuma's music was like an acoustic version of Tim Hecker or Fennesz, but whereas those guys use electronics and computers and effects to transform their guitars into blurred dronescapes, Tuma's approach is much more organic, unfurling skeletal guitar lines, a slowed down Appalachia deftly woven into a sprawl of slow motion, washed out, sepia toned countrified ambience. Tuma's two proper solo records, Hard Again and The River 1 2 3 4, are both HUGE all time aQ favorites, so we were pretty excited to hear about a brand new release, especially since we've been waiting patiently for almost 5 years!
Not For Nobody begins quite strangely, a super spare, lo-fi recording of barely there guitar, stretched out beneath reverb drenched childlike vocals, cooing and purring, a bit like a countrified Bjork, the sibilance stretched out into glistening shimmers, the melody, mournful and dreamy, bits of tinkling chimes, and muted ambient clatter, the whole thing sun dappled and soft focus, so strange and haunting, but so lovely and sublime.
The next track finds us on much more familiar ground, a loose tangle of steel string guitar, sounding like it could have come off one of the later Souled American records, but sans vocals, the melodies lyrical and lilting, couched in a thick layered backdrop of warm whir, sprinkled with tinkling bells and chimes, laced with bits of piano, somehow sparse and skeletal, but impossibly lush. Which is sort of Tuma's specialty, turning minimalism into maximalism, but without losing any of the former's hushed urgency or whispered intimacy.
The whole record is quite varied, but each track manages to sound like it couldn't be anywhere else, every one seamlessly leading into the next, a song suite, an album of cohesive musical pieces, not just a collection of songs. The third track, "Eloper", introduces what sounds like horns, for a haunting funereal march, a woozy fanfare that seems to slowly spread out, a simple pulse like rhythm beneath hazy streaks and deliberate minor key strum. The next track begins as a jaunty upper register steel string lullaby, giving way, part way through, to a languorous late afternoon sun dappled sprawl, slightly atonal, gorgeous and bleary eared. "New Joy" buries the guitar in a haze of whirring buzz and warm swirls of lush chords and muted feedback, very liturgical sounding, a dark ambient drift through some ancient crumbling cathedral, while "Rakes" begins as a simple stripped down halfspeed Appalachian hoedown, before transforming into a sea of sawing strings, of layered buzz and extended steel string drones.
The record finishes the way it began, with that ghostly childlike voice, the bits of spare guitar, the massive clouds of delay and reverb, that voice a wraith hovering above the web of subtle minor key guitar, the floorboards creaking, motes of dust tinkling like chimes in a soft evening breeze, creepy, sorrowful, and so completely gorgeous.
Tuma conjures a timeless magical mystery with his guitar. He plays the mysterious traveler, a wandering audio alchemist, turning notes and chords into gold, or rather, golden streaks of dusty memory and soft golden glimpses of some hidden and blurred otherworld. His are sounds to get lost in, to wrap around yourself like some cloak spun from gold thread, to hide under with a flashlight like a child, creating worlds of light and shadow, a sound at once mystical and enigmatic, warm and familiar, and truly truly sublime.
ATTENTION!! The first 100 copies come packaged in a gold on black, cardstock gatefold sleeve, housed in a special oversized handscreened 7" style outersleeve, black ink on metallic gold paper, each one hand numbered. We managed to get nearly 3/4 of that first 100, but the way things have been going these will probably not last long, so once we run out, you'll get the normal, slightly cheaper version (the innersleeve white on brown instead of gold and black, and without the oversized hand numbered outer sleeve).
The latest in Sacred Bones' on going series of unearthed gems, former installments included records by 13th Chime, Cultural Decay and Carl Simmons, all of which we dug big time. And this seven inch from UK outfit is another good one. Originally released in 1982, and produced by Cabaret Voltaire, the A side is fast becoming a new favorite jam, definitely of its time, but had you told us it was some new band channeling the past, we definitely would have believed it. Very groovy, a little bit funky, that sort of propulsive postpunk/funk bassline, a bit of an industrial vibe too, but the horns, layered droned out horns, laying down these totally mesmerizing muted atonal melodies, stretched out into long blasts of sound, that in their own way are seriously heavy, and then the vox come in, loud and distorted, the whole thing jagged but hypnotic, sort of dancey, but also a bit dark and sinister.
The flipside sounds a bit more beholden to Cabaret Voltaire, a little more electro pop, heavy on the eighties pop vibe, we're definitely hearing some Talk Talk actually, skittery rhythms, haunting synth swirls, lots of eighties style guitar jangle (a little Smiths, a little Big Country), wrapped in analog electronics and strapped to a pulsing minimal beat, definitely another track that predicts much of what would come decades later, the sort of sound the current crop must worship.
Both sides for how different they are, each play like a single part, with repeated subtle variations, which is what makes both tracks here so hypnotic and trancelike. Love it!
The French weren't the only ones creating irresistible "French Pop" in the '60s and '70s. A whole lot of amazing sassy effervescent pop was being created in Spanish speaking countries like Mexico and Spain (although there it was of course actually called Spanish Pop, but we digress), and this compilation digs out the amazing ladies responsible for these party starting Spanish Pop gems, that fans of French Pop sounds are gonna love. We had no idea who folks like Pili Y Mili, Sonia, Gelu, or Lorella were, but damn now we know they were responsible for some of the most saucy and addictive songs to come out during this amazing era for bright sunshiney pop. These ladies are like the Spanish equivalents of France Gal, Lulu, and Mina... Nancy Sinatra, too, for that matter. These are the kind of tunes you put on and everything around you starts looking a lot better, and a bad mood becomes practically impossible. If you've loved the Pop A Paris comps or the awesome Sensacional Soul collection that Vampisoul released a few years back, this will definitely hit the spot too. This is as fun and colorful as pop music gets. Makes us wanna get all tipsy on sangria and margaritas and dance the night away.
This is the one. If you've never gotten a Studio One compilation or you have, but have been wondering which one to get next, the answer is right here. Soul Jazz pretty has pretty much selected the best, warmest and most memorable cuts by amazing reggae artists from Studio One spanning 1963-1980. We've been playing this almost non-stop in the store, as this really does represent some of the best music ever made. Studio One rivals Motown for being responsible for so much amazing and timeless music. All our favorites are here: Horace Andy, Marcia Griffith, The Heptones, Prince Jazzbo, as well as some stunning tracks by a few folks who had somehow slipped under our radar like Super & Sleepy, Michigan & Smiley, and Doreen Schaffer. It's got everything we love about the Studio One sound, from the super dubbed out, to song sizzling with sensual warmth. Every single track on this kills. This is a no brainer, an absolute must have.
Numero group return with yet another amazing reissue, gorgeously packaged, meticulously researched, It's All Pop is the second collection of power pop from the label, the first being the genius Yellow Pills, a collection of essential groups, lost gems, and classic tracks. This one is a bit more specific, and insanely obscure, as seems to be Numero's way, focusing this time on the short lived and almost completely unknown power pop label Titan, headquartered in Kansas City, existing only briefly from 1978-1981, and having only released a handful of records. But you know what they say about quality versus quantity.
Anyway, the groups on Titan's roster are who's who of unknowns, a few maybe recognizable to only the most obsessive power pop fanatics: Boys, Secrets* (yep, the asterisk is part of their name), Gems, Scott McCarl, Bobby Sky, Millionaire At Midnight, Gary Charlson, Arlis!, JP McLain, and this is normally where we'd say "and loads more", but there really isn't any more. That's it, the whole roster, a handful of tracks from each, and if you love that Yellow Pills comp, then needless to say, this will probably hit the spot too. Obvious references are the Shoes, the Rasberries, Badfinger, E.L.O., Big Star, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, the Nazz, you know what we're talking about. Simple and stripped down, jangly guitars, vocal harmonies, and hooks galore. The sound varies a bit, some of the tracks are a bit glammy, some are total straight Beatles-esque pop, a few have a more classic vibe, others are a bit more hard rocking, but however the sound is twisted or tweaked, the heart and core of these songs is super catchy, super rocking ultra catchy total old school power pop bliss.
Killer packaging of course, deluxe slip cover, two digipaks, a massive book, with extensive liner notes, loads of rare flyers and photos, and a note from label co-founder Mark Prellberg.
The French weren't the only ones creating irresistible "French Pop" in the '60s and '70s. A whole lot of amazing sassy effervescent pop was being created in Spanish speaking countries like Mexico and Spain (although there it was of course actually called Spanish Pop, but we digress), and this compilation digs out the amazing ladies responsible for these party starting Spanish Pop gems, that fans of French Pop sounds are gonna love. We had no idea who folks like Pili Y Mili, Sonia, Gelu, or Lorella were, but damn now we know they were responsible for some of the most saucy and addictive songs to come out during this amazing era for bright sunshiney pop. These ladies are like the Spanish equivalents of France Gal, Lulu, and Mina... Nancy Sinatra, too, for that matter. These are the kind of tunes you put on and everything around you starts looking a lot better, and a bad mood becomes practically impossible. If you've loved the Pop A Paris comps or the awesome Sensacional Soul collection that Vampisoul released a few years back, this will definitely hit the spot too. This is as fun and colorful as pop music gets. Makes us wanna get all tipsy on sangria and margaritas and dance the night away.
We weren't at all sure what to expect from this, the debut from a punk rocker turned Madlib acolyte, with a handful of lo-tech gear, a drum machine and a sampler, although he apparently has a live band, but just check out that first sample below, it's like Portishead crossed with This Heat, but with a weird sort of post punk vibe, the lurching looped rhythm, the woozy groove, those echo drenched laid back vox, everything hazy and blurry, the song peppered with some mysterious industrial clatter and hiss, as if this was some sort of surreptitious jam happening at some subterranean construction site, it's pretty insanely appealing, and although influenced by and rooted in hip hop, the vibe is way more punk. The rest of the tracks too, it's as if he was trying to make a punk record but decided to do it usually just a sampler and a drum machine, which is pretty much what he did, but the results are pretty bad ass, the songs simple, most with just two parts, slipping from verse to chorus to verse again, but it gives the tracks a sort of minimal repetitive trancelike quality, a sort of Velvet Underground feel, albeit rendered in crunchy distorted guitars and looped breakbeats. Some of the tracks even sound all cold wave-y, with deep dramatic vox over pounding Teutonic beats and wrapped in clouds of noise and skree. "Crash Course" almost sounds like it could be a 7" on Wierd or Sacred Bones, or even some unearthed eighties dancepunk jam reissued on Dark Entries.
Killer stuff, really hope there's a full length on the horizon, cuz we're spinning this ep to death!
Wolfgang Voigt has produced various strains of minimal techno under a number guises since the mid '90s. We have long championed his work as Gas whose four albums of blissed-out techno surveyed the Bavarian forest at autobahn speeds, standing as a marvelous and breathtaking pinnacle in the history of electronic music. Despite the totality of the Gas project, Voigt has kicked out countless singles of banging techno, minimal monotrax, schaffelfieber jitter, and pulse-driven ambience - some of which are destined for the club, some of which amount to a very peculiar headphone techno. For the Kafkatrax series, Voigt sourced everything except the bassdrum from the voice of Frans Kafka! It really could have been anybody's voice that Voigt used as there's nothing particularly engaging about Kafka's voice, but the act of transforming Kafka's voice into the insectoid chirps, buzzes, and pulsations of Voigt's techno is a nice touch! Originally, Voigt released Kafkatrax as a trilogy of singles, with each track and each single incrementally deconstructing Kafka's voice more and more. The first few tracks feature that voice contextualized as a constant, if rhythmic chatter amongst the girding monophunk of thumping kickdrums; and it's quite reminiscent of Thomas Brinkmann's use of Blixa Bargeld's voice way back when. But the more Voigt obliterates the voice into non-vocal sounding elements the better. "Kafkatrax 2.3" bends and bloats those samples into acid lines of percolation; and "Kafkatrax 3.4" oscillates swarming masses of Kafka samples into strange melodies sitting above Voigt's churning backbeat.
Finally!!! The hotly anticipated debut full length from San Francisco weirdo electronic duo Water Borders, aka Amitai Heller and Loric Sih, formerly of SF rockers New Thrill Parade! And HOLY SHIT does Harbored Mantras deliver the goods! All of us around here have been eagerly awaiting this and are so psyched to finally be able to share this freakily futuristic and subversive bass goth with everybody. Hopefully, by now, avid aQ list readers are well familiar with the warped soundworld of Water Borders from past records on killer labels like Skrot Up, Disaro, and the Hungry For Power label run by kick ass blog 20 Jazz Funk Greats. While all that material was definitely amazing, and excitingly forward thinking, their proper debut, "Harbored Mantras", might just turn out to be a total game changer. It makes sense a bleeding edge label like Triangle would put it out, as it's an obvious attempt to diversify and re-direct their already stunning canon. The future is simply bigger than 'witch-house', and the keen eyes of the powers that be at Triangle seem to understand this all too well. (Also see the beautifully stark Ayshay ep featured elsewhere on this list for further evidence).
It's a rare sonic artifact that successfully bridges the gaps between such disparate and divergent influences and comes out on the other side as something utterly unique. but Harbored Mantras does just that, and then some. Most of the reviews thus far and even the press release from the band itself have gone over the groups influences ad nauseum, but for the most part, they are pretty right on, we too hear Coil, we hear modern UK bass music, we hear echoes of Gavin Friday at his most expressive and brooding. All apt comparisons for sure. But what's so interesting to us is the manner and method in which Water Borders implement these influences to effectively create a fresh crossover. Water Borders' sound successfully inhabits multiple musical universes in ways that are both subtle and surreal, yet somehow impossibly calculated and perfectly executed. It's a churning gothic weirdness, it's well informed dance music, it's textural and moody, while at the same time solidly rooted in lyric based song form. The songs that constitute "Harbored Mantras" solidly convey a dark vision of the present and future. Technophobic paranoia, social inequities, workaday drudgery, narcissistic identity crisis, and the ever-changing nature of communication are all strands that are woven into the spirit and soul of this record. There's much to be discovered in this piece of work... let's get to the tunes.
The album opens up with the slow burn of "Tread on Them". We're greeted with the sounds of long forgotten bones clattering in a blackened wind, while a ritualistic metallic clang creeps into the foreground. Heller's creepy baritone enters atop this hissing texture and suddenly with the introduction of bass we're sent falling into WB's bottomless sound-cave. The low end frequency is a dark and dubby stomach ache drone, creating a different type of club vibe. Euphoria replaced with claustrophobia. The sound is functionally cathartic, like good dance music ought to be, but the feeling is still foreboding. "Yelling long live success" as we waltz on top of the vanquished, feeling a deep shame all the while for acts willfully committed to arrive at the top of this heap... "What Wiwant" ups the energy with a nervously syncopated 2-step. Disassociated hand percussion and the ever-present bass wobble creating an absolutely hypnotic head-nod trance. The song is a driving banger swaddled in ominous synth textures, working you up to a frenzy while never letting you leave the hazy nightmare. "Waldenpond.com" is a brief respite from the chaos, offering up a beautiful slab of gloomy triphop. The guest vocals from Group Rhoda are a gorgeous addition to the WB's sound, strongly contrasting Heller's guttural croon with plaintive melody. The tempo is slower here, kind of a groovy, opiated dream state where melodies and textures swirl atop a dubbed out rhythm track. The vocal production is particularly stunning on this one. For the first half of the tune Group Rhoda's vocals are shimmery and ghost like, floating atop the beat with dense reverberation and spacious delay. About half way through the track the vocals are sampled and arranged rhythmically, becoming part of the beat itself. This clever production tactic lends itself well to creating an arc within the song... where we once sought comfort in the gauzy atmospherics we now are suddenly bucked off that cloud, hurled into a more jarring moment. The line "I hate the night" bouncing in our brains, awakening visions of a parallel world where identity is fragmented and "reality" is confused. And that BASS! Caustic, deep rumbles shaking us to the core. All elements combining to give an overall feeling of discomfort, albeit one that you can get down to. "Bad Ethos" is a harshly negative slo-mo industrial track. Lots of noisy mids and highs droning on and on with some seriously demented histrionics going on with Heller's vocals, the deep dark bellow replaced with a high end evil screech. Next up is arguably THEE cut of the record, "Even in the Dark". Originally featured on the group's Disaro disc, but now revamped and made even more MASSIVE! Starting with a minor key arpeggiation, the bass slowly creeping in and the vocals murky and misanthropic. Suddenly those same vocals become more discernible, albeit DRENCHED in a reverb glaze, revealing probably the strongest melodic moments of the record. The underpinning is still the throbbing pulsations heard throughout, but now with an intense element of high end melodic skree, tom toms ping ponging across a vast cavern, synths clawing at the ears, a cacophonous tumult resulting in an undeniable urge to erase the self and finally dance off that cliff that "Harbored Mantras" has been beckoning you toward throughout.�
From here on out, the album remains driven towards this death trance mood, incredibly focused in its intent. It's alienating and disturbing but at the same time engaging and creative. Moments of beauty, moments of chaos...a fully developed record with an incredibly consistent vibe. This is what we mean by game-changer. It's at once a part of the now, but also something wholly different and utterly challenging, not easy listening at all. Never pandering to the trends, but at the same time so current and powerful! An infinitely rewarding debut record from an outfit that promises to keep on pushing their futuristic sonic agenda. Absolutely essential!!!
We got this in on the day we sent out our last list, the latest from weirdo Finnish avant electronic surreal industrial outfit Will Over Matter, the solo project of the maniac behind damaged sort-of-black-metal avant rhythmic alchemists Ride For Revenge, and we were totally tempted to just list it then, with a review that simply said "This is so much better than anything on this week's list" and leave it at that. We wussed out at the last minute, thinking it a bit too flip, and like all records we love, we really wanted the chance to gush and get a bit more in depth, but it seriously only took a day or two of listening, before we were very nearly incapable of listening to anything else.
The music of Will Over Matter, whose Might Of The Planet Eater double cd we made our Record Of The Week a few months back, is simultaneously infuriating and addictive, baffling and beautiful, a dizzying collage of primitive electronics, of abstract spaced out synths, of bizarre spoken word vocals and sprawling pulsing glitchy malfunctioning buzzscapes, like an Emeralds record if it was crafted by some strange tribe of interstellar cave dwellers, or Daniel Higgs creating primitive spiritual rituals post frontal lobotomy. There's definitely an Amps For Christ vibe too, the same sort of controlled chaos, disparate sounds and tones woven into songs both textural and strangely melodic. The opening track here is the perfect example, a 12+ minute of warped lo-fi kosmische exploration, sounding a bit like it was culled from samples of the Starship Enterprise, recorded on a handheld microcassette recorder, and then played back on a busted up old Casio sampler, a sort of spaced out industrial power electronics, but with the power rendered not so much in volume and intensity, but in depth and mystery, a hazy sort of pulsating rhythmic ambience, one that takes on more and more hiss and buzz as it goes, and it's not until about 9 minutes in, when all of the noise abates, leaving a jagged throbbing synth pulse, beneath which a strange voice intones some mysterious manifesto, the sounds gradually blurring until finally blinking out.
Even though the above paragraph would seem to point to the opposite, this stuff is actually insanely difficult to describe, because it is so unlike anything else we've heard, a compelling bit of modern electronic industrial minimalism, with touches of cold wave, of classic old school industrial, hints of course of the rhythmic weirdness of Ride For Revenge, but here stripped way down, and presented as something much more austere and cold, the voice a Teutonic bellow, that only occasionally erupts unto a more black metal growl, while the music does all the heavy lifting, creating undulating stretches of analog synth, blown out bursts of gristly glitchy crunch, rhythms cobbled together from bits of hiss and thrum, skies full of skittery bleep, of old modem high end flutter, of white noise and pink noise and brown noise all sculpted into sort-of-shapes and almost-melodies, creating again, something that to many ears might be perceived as damaged and difficult and borderline unlistenable, but to us, and presumably many of you, that's part of what makes this so amazing, the fact that it IS completely and utterly whatthefuck bizarre, while somehow managing to be totally mesmerizing, and impossibly listenable, a warped chunk of avant outsider electronic industrial weirdness that has quickly become some of our favorite music ever, and even now, we're still fighting the urge to erase this whole review and just write "this is so much better than anything/everything else EVER"...
Another great issue of this indispensable & adventurous music magazine. On the cover, DJ/ Rupture. Also, everyone from our pal Drew Daniel of Matmos (on "queer sound") to Christoph Heemann to David Lynch to Gang Gang Dance, and more. Including David Toop talking about the SMiLE sessions. And, there's a free cd sampler bagged with this ish, The Wire Tapper 27, featuring "20 new, rare or unreleased tracks from Blank Disco, Palmer Eldritch, Praed, Gary Smith/Silvia Kastel/Ninni Morgia, Soema Montenegro, Artifact Shore, The Drift, Dimitris Bakas, Dalglish, Konntinent, Toddlers, Ekoplekz, Artifact Shore, La La Vasquez, Phog Masheeen, ROBERTS, Action Beat, The Astroboy, Ektoise, Mathon and ton." Definitely some new stuff to check out there.
South Of Salem is just the second record from this long running (14 years!) Portland doom outfit, but it's their first with vocalist Uta Plotkin, and she really makes all the difference, transforming the groups dirgey bluesy Sabbathy groove into something much more unique, soulful and slithery, and weirdly poppy too. In fact Plotkin is not possessed of a raspy howl, or a guttural growl, but an actual voice, a serious set of pipes that almost sound out of place in a metal band, which is exactly what makes this record sound so special. Plotkin belting these tunes out like some metallized Janis Joplin or doom-ed Heart, like the lost Wilson sister who chose the darker path. The music is a doom lovers dream, thick churning downtuned guitars, dense busy drumming, the sound thick and heavy and epic, and then Plotkin just seals the doomed deal, her voice slipping from a sultry croon, to a powerful yowl, occasionally launching into some seriously wild wails, with some cool multitracked vocal harmonies only adding to the doom-Heart-ed vibe.
Rad stuff for sure, and most definitely recommended for the other witchy doom combos we've dug in the past like Loon, Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Witch Mountain tour-mates Christian Mistress, etc.
The return of Cascadian black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room, introduces us to their latest epic, Celestial Lineage, with a sound that continues to move well beyond the bounds of black metal. As it was the band never shied away from augmenting their furious Weakling-beholden buzz and frantic blasts with swaths of ethereal drift and dark hushed minimalism, but here, those non black metal elements play a much bigger role, and manage to take the sound to a whole other level, positioning those non-metallic sounds less as 'interludes' and more as fully realized elements that are woven deftly into the fabric of the songs and sound. The record even opens with a hazy bit of choral drift, all tinkling chimes, shimmery synths, stately piano, and ethereal vocals, that sound more seventies British folk than black metal. Then, instead of simply exploding into some black buzz, the riffs are introduced slowly, blending into the folky drift, transforming the 'intro' into a blackened chorale, allowing the folky flutter to fade, until finally the blackness descends, the sound impossibly lush and heavy, epic and expansive, the sound thick and more lush than ever, the riffing wild and tangled, the drums mathy and intricate, and then again, the band take this grim buzz and wreath it in soaring epic almost folky melodies, some gorgeous harmonized guitars, there are even some full on psychedelic leads, the song shifting from black churn to ephemeral shimmer and back again, even dipping into some majestic doomic dirgery, but somehow the varied parts all fit together perfectly.
After a bit of chanted field recording flecked ambience, sounding like some ancient forest ritual, the band slip right back into pure transcendental blackness, with another sprawl of epic soaring blasting buzz, but again, it manages to be lush and weirdly melodic, on the surface it's a roiling churning blackness, but somehow the sound is infused with a blurred warmth, a subtle melodic core, that elevates the sound beyond simple black buzz. The sound constantly confounding, the song splintering into wide open expanses of feedback drenched, tribal drum driven abstraction, then slipping into a sort of hazy post rocky drift, before finishing off in a blaze of frantic black ferocity, but even there, the sound is wrapped in thick soaring swirls of melody.
One of our favorite tracks might be "Woodland Cathedral" which sounds exactly like the title suggests, over a bed of what sounds like forest sounds, guitars hover and shimmer and soar, the rhythm is glacial and funeral, everything is wreathed in a patina of buzz and thrum, the sound super distorted and almost shoegazey, angelic female vocals drifting over the top, tangled into strange but lovely harmonies, a doomy choral bit of blackened loveliness, which leads directly into the final movement, two 10+ minutes epics, the first, another example of Wolves' mastery of melodic blackness, grinding black heaviness wedded to delicate folky flutter, with hints of post rock, a sound that while in the past was perhaps too obviously beholden to many, now seems to belong to no other, and finally, a sprawling buzz drenched black doomdirge that sounds like Nadja and Comus and Sunroof! and WITTR all blurred into one glorious blackbuzz ur-drone doom-bliss epic. So good.
Super swank packaging too, with some of the most gorgeous artwork/photography we've seen on a black metal record for sure. Vinyl version forthcoming as well.
Album number three for the Brooklyn retro-garde duo Xeno & Oaklander (aka Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride), who are the flagship outfit for Wierd Records in their recapitulation of a particular strain of cold synthwave circa 1981. Wendelbo and McBride have collected a mighty impressive collection of synths, sequencers, and drum machines of that era, and they've stuck to their 'no computers' ethos in creating their retro sound. Given the limitations in instrumentation and aesthetics, the Xeno & Oaklander albums do trend toward similarity, veering towards a brighter, new wave / Italo-disco vibe here on Sets & Lights and slightly away from the industrial-tinged notions found on their 2009 breakout album Sentinelle. Wendelbo and McBride alternate on vocals, with Wendelbo taking up her breathy waif-like elegance and McBride adopting British affectations in his delivery. The title track and "Years Before" glide upon percolating, almost Moroder-esque sequencing with disco-inspired basslines and suitably propulsive rhythm tracks bracing everything inside the synth-pop shell that Xeno & Oaklander have so carefully refined. The icy sensuality of the instrumental track "Italy" slows the pace down to something more akin to Johnny Jewel's heartbeat instead of their typically urgent tempos; and it actually suits Xeno & Oaklander quite well, allowing all of the synth blorp to glow just a little bit more. A fine record, even as it doesn't quite venture into new territories.
For all the things that are truly great about working in a record store, on of the only real bummers is that sometimes it's kinda hard to be surprised by new music, in most cases, we know when a record is coming long before it's out, and often we get to hear albums before they're released, so some of the musical excitement we grew up with is gone, and we sometimes really miss that thrill of making a special trip to the record store only to discover some record you didn't even know about. So when it does happen, we freak out big time. Similarly, being the music nerd obsessives we are (and most of you are too), we're constantly on the hunt for new sounds, and for new favorites, and the one thing we DO still experience, is stumbling upon a record, and being blown away by the crazy cover art, or the weird name, or both, only to find that the music inside more than lives up to that unspoken promise, which is precisely what happened with the oddly monickered Yamantaka // Sonic Titan (and yeah, that double back slash is part of the name), not a split between two bands, but a duo, who the label describe as being a "pan-Asian cultural collective" based in Canada, whose two person lineup is expanded to eight members for this record, and whose eclectic lineup includes a traditional Mohawk singer, and the sound, WOW, not just a pleasant surprise, but a total revelation. The label describe YT // ST as being "for fans of Boredoms, Flower Travellin' Band, Taj Mahal Travellers, Deep Purple, J-Pop and Chinese Opera", and whenever you read such an over the top impossibly rad comparison, you sort of feel obligated to call hyperbole/bullshit, but the weird thing, as impossible as it seems, we might have come up with something similar, although we would add something about math rock / post rock / noise rock, and would definitely include Blonde Redhead, the vocals are occasionally a dead ringer for Kazu Makino, albeit much more washed out and druggy, and there's definitely some of the hyper Magmoid prog of Hundred Sights Of Koenji / Koenjihyakkei going on, but not so hyper, a little more toned down and stretched out into woozy rhythmic mesmer. As with all great records, this stuff is actually really difficult to describe, although odds are by now, some of you are already flipping out over the above comparisons.
The record opens with a brief bit of ritualistic ambience, the sound of rainfall and distant thunder, reverbed vocal harmonies, like the chanting of some astral female monks, all swirly and druggy and ethereal, which leads directly into "Queens", which unfurls in a haze of strange looped voices and whirring Deep Purple like organs, the vocals come in, and the sound is transformed into a sort of psychedelic indie rock, the melodies though reminiscent o seventies British acid folk, the rainfall present throughout, haunting and liturgical, epic and mysterious, and then the drums kick in, super distorted, in-the-red, the guitars coalesce into some serious riffage, splintering off into psychedelic swirls, the sound blown out, but dreamily so, until the blown out indie rock haze devolves into some seriously heavy, churning mathy pound and crunch, the vox processed into dizzying loops, blurred into the organs and the swirling psychedelia. So good. Imagine a way heavier, mathier, tripped out psychedelic Blonde Redhead and you might be close. But it only gets better/weirder from there.
After a brief bit of ethereal haze, that sounds like a grittier spaced out lo-fi take on Kate Bush / Cocteau twins, those British folk melodies here rendered in thick corrosive streaks of warm woozy guitar buzz, underpinned by powerful drumming, the sound coalescing into a brooding ballad, heavy and dark and broodingly beautiful.
But then comes "Reverse Crystal // Murder Of A Spider", which feels like the record's centerpiece, beginning with a grinding, crumbling bit of blurred orchestral swell, wreathed in clouds of decayed FX and fractured muted rhythms, the song explodes in a twisted mathy progged out frenzy, like the Ruins meets Nomeansno, only to immediately blossom into a super distorted heavy post rock lope, and then the soaring crystalline vocals come in, and the song is transformed into a bass heavy math prog groove than manages to be impossibly catchy at the same time, with what sound like wordless vocals unfurling a gorgeous and irresistible melody over some serious organ drive prog that sounds almost carnivalesque at times. After a brief tangle of abstract noise and processed tape, the song shifts into its second movement, a muted, rhythmic, almost krautrocky groove, that sounds like This Heat by way of Tortoise, and as the song progresses, the drums distort, the sound gets darker and heavier, the vocals surface adding a swirling spectral layer to the churning rhythmic low end below, before gradually getting more and more abstract and then finally fading out. YT // ST manage in one song what most bands can barely pull off on a whole record.
"Hoshi Neko" starts off sounding almost like some alien Christmas carol, a music box melody over a hushed tinny rhythm, all blurred with FX, and then in come the big distorted drums, and the band locks into a dark sinister groove, that almost sounds like a heavy creepy Stereolab, the vocals here are dramatic, transforming the song into what sounds like some classic sixties girl group songs reimagined as some sort of rhythmic post rock churn. "A Star Over Pureland" is the other long song on the record, and in some ways is competing with "Reverse Crystal // Murder Of A Spider" for sonic centerpiece privileges, and definitely makes a good case, although it's less fully formed songwise, instead it's a killer mathprog workout, the drumming particular, intricate and intense, while the guitars grind and crunch and howl, occasionally splintering into full on psychedelic squalls, there's definitely some sort of White Heaven / Fushitsusha classic Japanese psych going on here, but filtered through groups like Aluk Todolo and the Psychic Paramount, the track constantly morphing, locking into a very Ruins-y groove about midway through replete with strange effected vocal barks, wild Yoko Ono like warbly wails, and some thick buzzing bass, only to return to that strangely hypnotic lurching and stuttering groove and riding it out until the end.
Finally, the record closes with the awesomely and evocatively titled "Crystal Fortress Over The Sea Of Trees", which opens ominously like some sort of John Carpenter cinematic creepfest, but instead launches into some serious mathy post rock, only to have that Carpenter-y synth return, to help the song transition into something more swirling and surreal, but it only briefly, as the drums crash right back down, and the song returns to that opening post-math-psych-prog groove, the sound noisy, with all manner of guitar shards and fragmented melodies and bits of keyboard and strange voices swirling all around it, the song building to a strangely choral sounding drum and vocal coda, before devolving into burst of bass buzz and drum pound before clipping out abruptly, leaving a long stretch of near silence, a barely there distant blur of tinny vocals and ghostlike shimmer.
Definite contender for record of the year, it's available on both cd and lp, the vinyl limited to 500 copies...
