Another awesome legendary archival release out of the NZ underground from Siltbreeze, this one the super obscure Above Ground, who existed for all of a single year back in 1983, and made this one record, originally released as a super limited cassette, only sold at gigs and local shops. And while the band name might not seem familiar, the band members probably will, legendary NZ musician Bill Direen (Vacuum, Builders) along with Carol Direen (his wife? sister?), Maryrose Crook from the Renderers, and Stuart Page from the Axemen (whose reissued lp we reviewed here a list or two back). That Axemen connection is definitely a hint as to what this stuff sounds like: murky, low fidelity pop, lots of organ, spidery guitars, the drums simple yet propulsive and really loud in the mix, the vocals a booming sung spoken croon, the vibe is dreamily druggy, droned out and hypnotic, definitely a Velvets vibe going on, but also some old school psych rock, the sound is loose and ramshackle, sounds very much like it was recorded live, but it's undeniably darkly groovy, mesmerizingly trancelike, with the organ slipping into freaked out squalls that threaten to overtake the whole song, but when the band lock in, it's super tight and hypnotic, a little bit jangly, occasionally borderline funky, the best tracks the murkier druggier jams, which do take up most of the record. Fans of all things Flying Nun, Xpressway and classic NZ underground, this is some essential archival radness.
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...
It's getting a little bit hard to keep track of their various permutations, but in a nutshell, first there was Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho who trafficked in sprawling blackened folk flecked dronescapes. That band transformed into Wolvserpent, with the sound remaining essentially the same, weaving blackened drones, fluttery folk, and corrosive doomic dirges into something heavy and psychedelic, cinematic and atmospheric. So now we have Aelter, which just so happens to be the solo project of Blake Green, one half of Wolvserpent / Pussygutt, who takes the sound of WS/PG as a starting point, crafting something much more melodic and soundtracky, eschewing much of the metallic crush of the former in favor of shimmery deserty twang, swirling strings, lush layered drones, choral vocals.
This double disc collects two super limited out of print lps, and weirdly enough, the first half of disc one, sounds a little bit like Barn Owl, but infused with the spirit of Goblin, and with vocals (!), breathy and ethereal. The label mentions that this sounds more like something you'd find on 4AD, and we can definitely hear that, it's a delicate almost shoegazey dreamfolk blackdrone drift, which is less heavy than it is mesmerizing and hypnotic, the guitar twang, delicate piano and swoonsome synths woven deftly into the minimal downtuned riffage that again is less about metal, and more about mood. In fact, for folks who were looking for more Wolvserpent, this might be a bit of a let down, cuz this is something else entirely, a sort of soundtracky post rock, or atmospheric black ambient soundscape, the second disc offers up more of the same, hushed shimmer, melancholy melodies, distant drones, the drums do come into play on disc two, and there is a bit of a slowcore doom vibe, but even then, it's more darkly ominous than doomy, more haunting than heavy, but as a gorgeous lab of abstract ambience and cinematic soundscaping, it's pretty tough to beat. Fans of the current crop of Goblin / Carpenter worshippers who are after something a bit darker and a lot less synth heavy, might find this is just what they were looking for.
Longtime readers of the aQ list probably remember a strange lp by a group called Sperm, a mysterious collection from 1970 of experimental sound from the Finnish underground, the project of a man named Pekka Airaksinen, who under the moniker Sperm, created a series of haunting soundscapes, and 20th century tape music, experimental landscapes of wild skronk and skree, out-jazz, lots of drones and weird rhythms, that as we said at the time puts the modern noisemakers to shame.
Well this little artifact was just unearthed, or at least, finally reissued/released, a recording made by Airaksinen in 1972 as his Sperm project came to a close, shortly before he gave up music for a decade. And its proximity to the Sperm record timewise definitely reflects the sonically similar sound, an extension of sorts of the recently laid to rest Sperm, if anything the sounds here more intimate and reserved, less noisy, and more electronic, more rhythmic, with long stretches of barely there minimalism peppered with haunting electronics, disembodied melodies and murky percussive thumps.
Like the Sperm record, the sounds are all over the map, with some strange ineffable something linking them all together, mysterious mechanical rhythms that sound almost like some sort of primitive home brewed techno give way to droned out free folk reminiscent of countrymen Avarus and Anaksimandros, chaotic drumming and layered high end tones, which drifts into more of a moody futurescape, all swirling effects and muddy electronics. The flipside begins with a long stretch of warm subtle ambient drift, which splinters into some awesome, but awesomely maddening looped high end skree, before slipping into some strange cosmic crunch, and then finally some blissful spaced out drift.
Gorgeous, strange stuff, anyone who bought the Sperm record will probably want this, and all you Finnish weirdo music obsessives, this one is for YOU.
One of two new releases recently from Wierd Records, the other reviewed last list, the long awaited new one from Xeno & Oaklander, and then there's this, the debut from Los Angeles one man dread-dance coldwave synth wrangler Frank Alpine, aka Rich Moreno, an LA punk scene veteran, who channels all that pink energy into a bit of synthwave that's surprisingly grim and grimey, evoking images of the gritty LA streets, of squalor and filth, the sound shadowy and dark and sinister. The opening track has to be THEE synth jam of the year, all creepy crawly, but weirdly melodic, the synth sounds buzzy and thick, cool weird handclap rhythms and all manner of mysterious sonic embellishments. It actually reminds us of a cold wave reinterpretation of The Specials' "Ghost Town", that same sort of haunting moodiness, but wedded to a sound that's weirdly danceable. We've probably listened to that track about 20 times so far, and besides it being a great song, couldn't quite figure out why it resonated with us so much, until we learned a little bit more about Mr. Alpine, who apparently only uses consumer Casio synths to create the harshest, most lo-fi sound possible, which is exactly what that ineffable thing is, other cold/synth wave outfits sometimes sound like they went to Guitar Center and just charged a bunch of cool gear, but these tracks, you can imagine Alpine with a bag full of crappy synths, trudging down the Sunset strip, head down, middle of the night, headed for his dank basement of a practice space, where he creates THESE sounds. The rhythms are immediately recognizable, as those brittle skeletal beats, but hear, wreathed in synth buzz, and woven into gristly shadow epics, they become a weirdly propulsive pulse, driving these grim late night anthems. Just might be our favorite thing on Wierd yet, and definitely the best thing to emerge from this new wave of new (cold/synth/dark) wave in ages...
Packaged in a super striking red and black mini lp style jacket (or not so mini, in the case of the actual lp version).
After a multitude of records filled with austere expanses of ultra minimal, cold and clinical beep and click, or warm lush dreamlike ambience, Alva Noto, aka Carsten Nicolai, finally seemed to embrace the funk a few years back - which for some of us, would not have been a good thing necessarily, if it weren't Nicolai, cuz Alva Noto funk is something utterly unto itself, a wild super dynamic robotic funk that takes all manner of glitch and whir, hum and click, beep and hiss, and weaves those minimal building blocks into something incredibly and impossibly groovy. This might be the best Alva Noto funk record yet. Weird and minimal enough for the dancefloor hating avant experimental headphone set, but holy shit, we can barely imagine what would happen if some big time DJ just unleashed one of these jams at full volume, besides everyone going apeshit, it seems like everybody's brains and eardrums would just melt, these sounds so pure, the lows so intense and rib cage rattlingly low, the highs piercing sine waves, and in-between, all manner of hum and hiss that we imagine would blow your hair back if you were standing in front of a big pile of speakers. But in headphones, this is total bliss out alien robofunk, that sounds better than anything we can imagine! But this is Alva Noto, so there's lots of other stuff going on, long stretches of glitched out super ominous buzz, over some looped skitter, or some weird swirling lush drones, or some dizzying rapidfire percussive stutter, some full on speaker shredding noise, some gorgeously serene electronic ambience, but it always eventually returns to the funk, or the groove, or whatever you call the thing that makes these weird beeps and clicks take over your body and force it to move along to the music. So goddamn great!
Of all the Ukrainian black metal hordes we love, all of which seem to share members, be it Drudkh, Blood Of Kingu, Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Lucifugum, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra and the like, Astrofaes seems to be the only one we've never reviewed, which is definitely a shame, since most of the black metallers around here dig that band as much as any of the others. So in some weird way this almost seems appropriate, even though the band has released six full lengths, their 1998 debut will be the first one to make it on the list. Recently reissued by Negative Existence, Dying Emotions Domain should most definitely hit the spot for fans of any of the above mentioned outfits, and since it's their debut, it's the most raw, the sound simultaneously lo-fi but also impossibly heavy, the guitars super distorted, the sound informed by lots of classic metal as well as more grim blackness, the riffing definitely not run of the mill black metal, the chugging and churning peppered with cool little licks and trills, the guitar so blown out the sound is transformed into a blurred in-the-red warmth, as opposed to a frosty buzz, everything underpinned by soaring majestic synths, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums pretty kick ass but down in the mix as well, it's all about those riffs and that crazy super saturated guitar sound, just check out the sample below for "Fiery Mysticism" and you'll know just what we mean. They also cover a Celtic Frost track and pretty much make it their own, there are also some hints of the folk that would inform later bands, but for the most part this is just a pretty serious slab of blown out blackness, that anyone into buzzing old school black metal (Ukrainian or otherwise) will probably dig big time.
Most folks know that we are pretty picky and particular when it comes to contemporary jazz. Of course we're not that into it when it's too straight ahead, but we're also not the biggest fan of wanky, aimless skronk sessions. So it takes a lot for a new jazz album to win us over, but these two long jams by San Francisco's Astronaut Body Four, are really hitting the spot, some seriously forward thinking, left-field jazz for sure. The A side is the 18 minute track "Citizen's Day Parade" which starts off like some lost vintage early '70s psych-jazz complete with awesome mystical sounding flute, and as it progresses a really odd but wonderful keyboard that sounds as if its being channeled from another planet, enters the fold and along with the sax, bass and drums the track takes all kinds of twists and turns, including some serious skronk, which instead of being annoying actually serve as great moments of tension building and release.
The B side is another long one, the 20 minute track "Murder City Planetarium" which starts with a very moody and voyeuristic vibe, reminding us of moments from one of our very favorite films of all time, "The Conversation." As the track continues on it maintains that subtle sense of suspense, leading up to a charged, chaotic freak out, and then ending on a note of deranged elegance. Awesome.
Two new gems from Atlas Sound (aka, Bradford Cox from Deerhunter). The A side, "Parallax" sounds like a song written in on the bridge of a ship lost at sea. Bittersweet melodies so tender they feel like they could unravel at any moment. The B side "Oh Ricky" is more hypnotic and dizzying, showing the versatility in sonic scope that Cox has developed over the years. We can't tell for sure but it almost sounds like thumb piano providing the core of the track, with disjointed layers of Cox's vocals. Both songs are awesome, and "Oh Ricky" is exclusive to this 7" and won't be on the immediately impending new album.
The newly released, highly anticipated Smile Sessions are finally here and it's been an occasion for all sorts of debate and nerd-ery among us. First off, some of us have been obsessed with the record for years, having acquired various bootlegs, the recent Brian Wilson re-do, as well as tracing the seeds of the Smile sessions throughout the trajectory of the later Beach Boys records (which are some of our favorites). While our bootleg versions always had the main song cycle separated from the various shorter interludes and segues that connected them, the Brian Wilson re-do saw the potential of what could have been, yet it still felt like a cover version of what was supposed to be the real thing.
Now what the Smile Sessions tries to do, and for the most part succeeds in doing, is taking the blueprint Wilson made with the re-do and marrying the songs and interludes into a solid dazzling whole. The flow of what is understood as the proper album has never sounded better with the rich harmonic vocals, symphonic arrangements and beautifully antiquarian lyricism provided by Van Dyke Parks combined in elaborately layered arrays of epiphanal pop orchestration. It also adds a disc and a half of bonus material, session segments, and stereo mixes of various tracks and interludes left off the main album, which is where the debate among us begins. Scott appreciates the bonus material but really wishes (and this goes for most reissues with bonus material) that they isolated the whole of the album to one disc, so that you really get a sense of the proper album's completion. Starting multiple alternate versions of "Heroes and Villains" (whose lyrical motif is repeated in various forms throughout the record) shortly after "Good Vibrations" ends, mimics the sensation we imagine Brian Wilson probably felt in realizing he couldn't finish the project because it kept endlessly replaying in his head. Andee thinks that the bonus material is the real gold here and just wants to get the elaborate 5 cd/2lp/2x7" version just to geek out on endless takes of "Good Vibrations" and all the rehearsals and studio chatter (and he also thinks that Scott should just learn how to use the stop button on his cd player.). Allan doesn't understand the "lost record" appeal of it all. "What was wrong with Smiley Smile?" Oh, Allan.
We're sure plenty of folks will be having their own geeky debates. For instance, why isn't "Cool, Cool Water" included in the main song cycle like it was in the bootlegs, and in Brian Wilson's version (renamed and rewritten as "Blue Hawaii")? Instead it's relegated to the bonus material. But really that's all music geek piffle to be argued and discussed in some other forum. For the most part, the main album is put together quite faithfully to Wilson's vision and it sounds amazing!. We're used to the sometimes slightly abrupt transitions that have long become a part of the record's charm and the result is still quite incredible and kaleidoscopic. No matter our particular desires of how we would try to put this together, it's still quite a remarkable feat. We still wonder if Wilson finished and released this as it was meant to be in 1967, would we still care so much about it? That's for another debate. Still for those obsessed as we are or even for the newly curious this comes Highly Recommended!!!!!
The two cd version comes housed in a box with a 36 page booklet, liner notes by Brian Wilson, a 15" x 20" poster and a button!
While the 5cd+2lp+2x7" box comes housed in a 3D version of Frank Holmes illustrated storefront cover. 4 and a half discs of bonus material including a disc each of the "Heroes and Villains" and "Good Vibrations sessions alone. The 2lps have the album proper as well as a side of extra bonus material and two 7"s with the 2 parts of "Heroes and Villains" on one and "Vege-Tables" / "Surf's Up" on the other. Plus a 60 page case bound book, liner notes by Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston and a 24" x 36" poster. Wow!!!
Transparent Make Believe was the first we ever heard from Pink Floyd worshipping psychedelic space rockers, and that debut is now available as a super limited lp, only 100 copies, each one hand numbered, in super swank hand silkscreened jackets, here's what we had to say about the record, when we reviewed the cd version way back in 2004:
Holy Pink Floyd! New Orleans' Bipolaroid are definitely channeling some serious Syd Barrett on the acid drenched Transparent Make Believe. In fact, everytime we've played this in the store, someone has come up and asked if it was in fact some strange lost Pink Floyd record. From the first track, a bizarre hybrid of the Beach Boys' "In My Room" and Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine" you know things are gonna get weird. The Floydisms abound, swirling psychedelic swoosh, drunken Barrett-ish vocals, loping drug addled waltzes. But mix in lots of strings, some serious spaced out heavy bits and you have a totally wicked heavy rock Floyd meets Hawkwind hybrid. The sound is so authentic you'd be hard pressed to convince someone this record wasn't recorded 30 years ago. But who cares. Definitely for fans of all things druggy and psychedelic. And why not tease your psych nerd know it all friends with this long lost psychedelic gem before you bring the hammer down and shatter their already fragile egos!
Several years ago, we made the first archival release from housewife turned experimental electronic musician Ursula Bogner our Record Of The Week, even knowing full well, that there probably is no Ursula Bogner. On the surface it definitely seemed like the find of a lifetime. The story involved someone's casual interaction with a man on a plane, discovering that this man was the son of a virtually unheard experimental electronic musician, a mom and pharmacist, who had built a recording studio in their home, and who had recorded for twenty years, those recordings proving to be impossibly prescient, the sort of sounds that would stand up to similar recordings at the time by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. That initial release was filled with all manner of documentation, photos, notes, like we said, it seemed like the real deal. But it also seemed like an ingeniously perpetrated hoax. The man in question who supposedly ran into Bogner's son on a plane, was none other than Jan Jelinek, whose music is not all that dissimilar to Bogner's. Perhaps we're just the suspicious types, but there seems to be little or no information about Bogner, other than that provided by the label, which could just speak to her absolute obscurity, but could also speak to the fact that it's all a put on. To be honest, we want to believe it. How cool is that story? But that said, as we mentioned in the review of that first release, if it IS a hoax, we like it even more. So meticulously planned, photos, hand written notes, then the music� Similar to those funereal violin cds we carried a while back (that guy not only recorded all the cds, he also wrote a whole book about the history of funereal violin!), it would require a whole other level of creativity, but enough about all that, it is ultimately about the music, as much as we love the story, true or not, and like the first record, this is another fantastic collection of 'early' primitive recordings, these newly unearthed tapes featuring a focus on the voice, which was not present before, and our first actual exposure to the voice of Bogner, who supposedly passed away in 1994. Opening with piano and vox, the sound fluctuates as the tape speed falters, the sound is murky and definitely sounds old, plenty of spaced out effects, female voices processed into mysterious melodies, percolating rhythms, primitive and very low fidelity. Some of the tracks feature kitschy sounding organs and snippets of looped pop music, but they are transformed into cool sixties style tape music, occasionally lush and lovely, other timeshaunting and austere, there's one track in particular which finds Bogner reciting numbers over a backdrop of hiss and static and blurred melody, that most definitely is a nod, intentional or not, to the perennial aQ fave The Conet Project.
As with the other record, there are expertly penned liner notes, translations of original texts that Bogner wrote to accompany the pieces (especially the boxed cd version which features a massive 100+ page book of liner notes and artwork), all very cryptic and Eno-esque, tons of photos, of installations, of the reel of tape these tracks were discovered on as well as Bogner herself (again, especially in the book that accompanies the cd!). Very recommended of course, for fans of vintage sixties experimental music, of Jan Jelinek, and of impeccably crafted musical hoaxes.
There has been a lot of anticipation hovering around this first full-length from San Francisco's psychedelic darlings Bronze. After a slew of relatively hard-to-find singles, Copper definitely delivers on the promise of those early recordings. No other record in recent memory has created the same conflicting compulsions: both to thrash around like a maniac on the dancefloor and to throw on the headphones while zoning out into outer space. With ultra-minimal instrumentation (at least live), Bronze has managed to mine an untapped vein of post-punk psychedelia. Space-echoed vocals, acoustic drums, and a home-built electronics box the size of a coffee can comprise all of Bronze's (visible) live gear. On Copper, they've flushed out their sound a bit with layers of synths, but not so much that it sounds overproduced or inauthentic. There's so much electronic music saturating record stores (including aQ!) right now, it's extremely refreshing to hear a band that obviously loves and listens to tons of electronic music but still uses acoustic drums. Too many bands that sound dynamic and exciting on record fall flat live because of the lack of an engaging drum sound. Brian Hock is one of the best drummers around when it comes to dance beats. Take a listen to The Vanishing's lp Still Lifes Are Failing if you doubt. Rob Spector, whose voice truly has its own timbre, at times sounds like Perry Ferrell minus the heroin rasp. His clear tone will glide above the music, then, all of a sudden, take a sharp left and dissolve into space-echo debris, creating a transition into the next part of the song. Brilliant. Bronze's electronics mystery man, on this record known as Miles Friction, built his instrument himself. You have to see it to believe it, and even after you've seen Miles play it, you still probably won't understand it. Covered in knobs and a few switches, it looks like a prop from an '80s sci-fi flick, and not a high-budget one.
Bronze's exact sound is difficult to pin down. Try to think somewhere in the range of Silver Apples mixed with Emeralds. Available on vinyl only, there's eight songs in all. One, "The Rouge Became," was available on an earlier 7" in a slightly different form. The vinyl comes with mp3 downloads of the entire record, plus a remix of "Parallels".
The cover has a small piece of actual metal (copper?) glued onto it. It looks super cool, but Copper might be one of those records you can't file in your collection in the normal way because the little metal tab could damage the record next to it. Oh well, guess you'll just have to frame the cover and leave the vinyl forever on your turntable!
Most folks probably know Bobb Bruno as the guitar player in sunshiney retro poppers Best Coast, although some aQ-ers no doubt know him as the man behind ultra heavy guitar/drums duo Goliath Bird Eater, and still others might remember him as a member of late great nineties indie rock weirdos the Polar Goldie Cats, so with all that in mind we weren't sure what to expect from this long in the works solo record, on which Bruno plays everything, but has some notable guests along for the ride (including Nels Cline, and Josh Klinghoffer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers!).
The title is your first clue, as these are in fact mellow sonic dramas, the opener is a dark, dreamy gloom pop gem, all murky chordal whir, shimmery organs, and some gorgeous torch song vocals, courtesy of Kandyce Lynn Crane, the song smolders and slithers, peppered with pizzicato strings, sounding a bit like a moodier creepier Best Coast actually, the music could maybe be a Best Coast 45 spinning at 16rpm, but regardless it's so lovely. The second track is another dark pop gem, this one more orchestral, sweeping and grand, a dreamy softly fuzzy epic, laced with some cool droned out buzz, it's the sort of sound you might have expected from Cardinal back in the day. "Loveletter" is another symphonic pop number, all swirling soaring strings, swaddled in mysterious electronic chitter, the melody theremin like, hazy and lush and again so lovely, the guitars warm and buzzy, and when the drums finally kick in, the song slips into a Mazzy Star like shoegaze drift, all dreamy slowcore, and again, the song features a cool, weirdly effected super melodic guitar solo.
The vocals return on "We Know You Know" which is all low slung, electro-skitter, which quickly blossoms into a sort of dubbed out Portishead-y downtempo shuffle, but with lush squalls of super distorted guitar and some gorgeous wordless vocals, the sound dark and dramatic and a little bit gothic, sounding like a more post punk shoegazey Zola Jesus, which is not at all a bad thing.
"Loners" is all murky lysergic slow jam, with James Blake like distorted slo-mo soul vox, the sort of track Balam Acab or Clams Casino might conjure up, woozy and washed out, warped and warbly. "Near Ecstasy" starts off all minimal and fuzzy, with some sweetly crooned vox, again sounding very goth, almost Kate Bush like at times, all over an almost krautrock sounding groove, wreathed in flanged synths and swirling gauzy thrum, and then finally, the record finishes with "Over", a strange bit of experimental synthscaping, that sounds like it was modeled after some Beach Boys outtake, pounding chords, overlapping, all over a hushed shimmer, finally coalescing into a fuzzy chunk of dream pop, with a sweet tinkling chime melody, only to seemingly melt into a warped stretch of druggy murk, that sounds more like the Skaters than anything, but a gorgeously tripped out finish to a pretty fantastic record. Not at all what we were expecting, but all the more exciting for that. Definitely for fans of dark, lush pop and hazy electronic dreaminess, we're actually digging this like crazy!
Cool bloody panda bear sweat sock cover art!
Yep, this is one of those that barely needs a review, besides our thumbs up (we like it!) and a few other crucial facts of the matter: it's from Finland, it's doom metal, it's on the cult Shadow Kingdom label. And perhaps unsurprisingly, sounds a heck of a lot like the late great Finnish doomsters Reverend Bizarre. Which is not to say it's unoriginal, any more so than Rev Biz, 'cause both bands worship at the altar of old school traditional Black Sabbath derived doom. This is what they're SUPPOSED to sound like: epic and emotive, dire and depressive. The debut full-length from Cardinals Folly (cool name, we think, but shouldn't there be an apostrophe in there somewhere?) is appropriately sloooow and heavy, adorned with dramatic deep voiced vox, that for sure recall those of Albert Witchfinder. If you miss the ol' Reverend, Cardinals Folly will be right up your dark, cobblestoned alley. But not only do they have that "sound" (which they do very well), they also work in enough interesting, creative moves of their own to make this a worthy doom endeavor in its own right, too.
The album begins with an atmospheric intro track, "The Hammer Speaks", featuring a militaristic drum beat amidst distorted ambience, eventually joined by deeeep vocal intonations. A bit Current 93ish, really. That's a fine way for this to slide into the full-on amped-up doom metal of track two, the title track, oven ten minutes of slow majestic riffery, dissonant downer psych leads, loosely-strung low end bass, and more of those droning deep but melodic vocal stylings... Things speed up a bit for the chugging "Valkyries I Avenge", energy matched by maniacal laughter from the vocalist (who has his insane side, heard later in the album as well), but it's the very end of track four "The Spear Of Destiny" that got everyone in the store staring at the stereo, when they start in with some studio trickery, messing with the tape speed, for a moment making this druggily "drag", like a 45 played at 33, but even more warped and warbly. Nice!
And so it goes, seven tracks, well over an hour of rumbling heavier-than-thou true doom wretchedness from up near the Arctic, like we said, definitely for anyone into fellow Finns, Reverend Bizarre (RIP). Also Lord Vicar, Procession, Gates Of Slumber, Condenados, Garden Of Worm, The Wounded Kings, that sort of thing. You know if this is meant for you, or you for it...
Finally! The return of Swedish black metal horde Craft, six years after their crushing Fuck The Universe record, purported to be their last at the time, but it was well worth the wait, and we're happy to report very little has changed in whatever negative grim underworld these guys call home, in fact, if anything, Void sound even more misanthropically miserable, the sound seriously cranked, a killer production that doesn't take away from the sound's raw immediacy or caustic filth at all, just makes it that much more powerful. As always, these guys weave dizzying blackened riffs into plodding doomic trudges, creating a strange dichotomous sound that find the guitars riffing furiously, while the rest of the band lumbers ominously, their debt to Mayhem and Darkthrone more than paid, as they take the classic sound of vintage Scandinavian blackness and make it all their own, peppering their dirgey miserablism with cool little melodic trills, processed backwards guitars, weird effects, all employed judiciously, and subtly, letting the core black buzz and demonic pound speak for itself, the vocals even more harsh than before, and so blown out and high in the mix that occasionally you can almost hear the needles in the studio peg, but for all the lumbering midtempo dirgery, it's not just all doomy blackness, and while the band rarely go full bore frenzied blast, they do crank up the tempo here and there, although they do tend to slip right back into some gnarled and churning dirge before too long. There's also plenty of classic metal mixed into their black buzz too, which makes these songs surprisingly catchy, but again, without at all sacrificing the band's grizzled hellish blackness.
It's not really all that much fun writing a review of this new Danava album. What's fun is listening to it, turned up loud... and maybe getting buzzed on a substance of choice whilst doing so. Whoo-hoo! Granted, that's the case with lots of albums, classics like say Deep Purple In Rock or Alice Cooper's Love It To Death. The kind that require, nay inspire, such behavior. Those, though, weren't just released, but this was, so all the more an occasion for drunken loud listening. They don't make 'em like this all that often anymore, so kudos to Kemado for bringing us the real deal (ironic, isn't it). Though its exactly what we've come to expect from Portland psych-prog-stoner rockers Danava, and are happy to hear once again.
Since the time we checked in with these boys, they've undergone some lineup changes. They now rock to the beat of a different drummer, for one thing. And the guy who only played synths is gone now... but in his stead, way better yet, they've added a 2nd guitarist for extra twin axe attackin', so that's a win. The bassist and the singin' lead guitarist are the same, and that's what really matters in this band, those dudes. They slay.
Needless (at this point) to say, this new album is a killer, replete from the very get-go with rollicking, riff-rockin' badassery. These new Danava jams are seriously being kicked, way out. And they're, y'know, real songs too, with real vocals and everythin', like it's back in 1973 or so and they've got something to prove, those twin guitars givin' with the glorious harmonies (think Thin Lizzy, on the song "I Am The Skull" here especially). They sound like old time Pentagram too, but galloping like they wuz in the Preakness. The Preakness of freakness. Danava are doin' it, here. They're gonna out rock, out prog, out psych, out retro-proto-metal all comers. Speedy and sinuous, no doubt a bit of stress on all the wrists and necks involved in the making of this music. And there's still the usual embellishments of spacey synthy FX sprinkled about, even with that one guy gone. It's all almost a bit overwhelming, which is why it's nice that the very last track, the instrumental "Dying Into The Light" winds things up on a calming, eerily pretty note. Whew...
And, it should be noted that they further pay tribute to their '70s forebears by covering a song, "The Last Goodbye", by obscure UK blooze bashers Slowbone, not that you'd think it wasn't one of their own.
So, yep, getting ripped and listening to these guys rip (rollercoaster style, like they do) is of course way better than writing or reading this review. The response should be obvious. We, or well at least one of us anyway, is gonna kick back and crank this right now. You, should buy a copy and do the same as soon as you can.
By the way, all that drink/drug stuff is meant metaphorically, for all we know the guys in Danava, and their intended listening audience, are super straight edge, not stoners, let alone beer drinkers and hell raisers - though we doubt it.
British Goth outfit the Danse Society signed to Arista in 1983, in the wake of dour post-punk acts like The Cure and Bauhaus getting courted by the major labels with considerable success. The album that followed for the Danse Society - Heaven Is Waiting - was met with a tepid response, given the promise of their raw, commanding live presence and the strength of the two previous singles the band released through their own imprint. These recordings were made prior to the Arista album, with just five of the 11 tracks making the cut for Arista's commercially viable edicts and a few others relegated to B sides. The sound here is much more tempestuous, claustrophobic, and bleak through the band's ferocious rhythm section featuring Paul Gilmartin's tumbling, tribal drums and the spectral, heavy flange of Tim Wright's bass. This was the tried and true formula of many of the Bat Cave alumni: Sex Gang Children, Southern Death Cult, Siouxsie, Virgin Prunes, Specimen, Killing Joke, etc. The intensity of The Danse Society's sound is demonstrated in the differences between the demo version and the Arista version of "Come Inside" the former of which really does put the rock in Goth-rock, with Sisters Of Mercy inflected guitars swarming around that rhythm section and vocalist Steve Rawlings parading around the track with suitable theatrics and bravado. The title track of the Artista album could have been a Killing Joke track off of Nighttime with its death-disco basslines and metronomic percussion, flecked with atmospheric synths and droned guitars. In so many ways, The Danse Society never sounded better than they did on these demos. Another tip of the hat to Dark Entries for digging this one up!
Metal in the form of a magazine. On the cover... Skeletonwitch. Also: Brutal Truth, Goatwhore, Circle Of Ouroborus, Exhumed, Junius, The Atlas Moth, Wolvhammer, Alice Cooper, Ministry (in the Hall Of Fame for The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste), and plenty more. Including the usual amusing columns (shout out to John Darnielle) and also-amusing album reviews.
Our heads are nearly exploding from getting not only The Beach Boys Smile Sessions box, but also this beautifully elaborate quadruple lp, in a hand pulled screen printed box set containing the 24->24 Music sessions of Arthur Russell's Dinosaur L project complete with remixes and extra Russell related Sleeping Bag Records singles! Both sets have more in common than you might think in the way they show what fastidious creators both Brian Wilson and Arthur Russell were, in that they both sought to take their musical visions to the limits and didn't know really when to finish. And in both cases, under different circumstances and contexts, had to have others come in and pick up the pieces.
It's really funny scanning back over all of our past Arthur Russell reviews. The first couple from 2004 suggest that a lot of people were into this, "but no one at aQ has become a big Arthur Russell fan", although since then there have been more than a few of us here who have become HUGE fans. While we admittedly have gushed over nearly every release, the Dinosaur L sessions have always been our favorite of Russell's work, probably because it is the one project that went beyond just being a singles project and it also unified his avant experimental leanings with his love for disco and extended dance forms.
Not to be confused with Dinosaur, the single project that Russell worked on with The Gallery's Nicky Siano and David Byrne for Sire Records in 1978 (the single, "Kiss Me, Again" was Sire's first disco single release!). Dinosaur L was born of a performance at the Kitchen in 1979 where Russell compiled a band of downtown regulars including Peter Gordon and Peter Zummo with a congo player and a drummer with Russell on cello, and presented orchestrated disco music as an avant classical performance. The move was a bold and calculated political statement, thumbing their noses at the snobby attitudes of the new music scene towards club music, to which Russell claimed no such hierarchical distinctions. But the performance created strong divides in the downtown scene even though they were largely more bemused bafflement than outright hostility. Emboldened by the reaction, Russell next step was to get these performances on tape, using most of the same musicians and enlisting vocalists like Jill Kroesen, Julius Eastman, and Marie-Chantal Martin, as well as various members of little-known New York new wave and punk bands. While the original performance project allowed the musicians to work freely and expansively, the overall music was highly composed, which adds a strange element of chance to the proceedings, allowing the pieces to include many deliberately wonky and unpredictable twists and turns. The vocals adding both a disaffected no-waveish delivery from Jill Kroesen on "#5 (Go Bang!)", as well as strange operatic fits on "#3(In the Corn Belt)" and Yoko Ono-ish yelps on "#1 (You've Gotta Be Clean On Your Bean)", make this the perfect punk and disco hybrid that delivers highly on both counts. The entire original project consisted of 4 extended cuts with two shorter interludes, the last song, "#6(Get Set)", going the deepest in to no-wave guitar territory but maintaining a forward thrusting momentum through its strange and beguiling devolution.
You probably wouldn't unleash such a leftfield dance classic like "#5 (Go Bang!)" on an unprepared dance audience unless you had the timing exactly right, with the crowd all extremely revved up and sweaty. We imagine that was the thinking when stalwart downtown DJs like Larry Levan, Francis Kevorkian and Walter Gibbons each took their editing chops to the Dinosaur L sessions and made them a bit more dance-floor friendly. Stripping out certain vocal parts, adding others, allowing tension to build up and release, each producer taking a different approach to Russell's maximalst visions with the composer's full approval. Russell thought the remix process was just another form of extended creation, and while he favored some remixes over others, he was very generous in handing his creations over to the club DJs he was affiliated with for further manipulation. Included in the set are 3 remixes of "Go Bang!" which are all highly different and all very worthy. The Francis Kevorkian mix is probably our favorite, taking a dub like approach with a tight focus on the rhythms yet utilizing dream-like atmospherics. There are also two Larry Levan remixes from other Dinosaur L sessions. The last three sides are devoted to various Sleeping Bag Records singles from Russell related projects like Felix ("Tiger Stripes"!), Indian Ocean, The Sounds of JHS 126, and Bonzo Goes To Washington.
Packaged in a deluxe screenprinted box with each record housed in a hand-pulled screen printed mat sleeve, and a 20 page booklet with liner notes, production information and testimonials from all the musicians and Djs involved. So unbelievably fantastic!
Ducktails is another one of those bands that went to zero to sixty in no time, in terms of releases. Before, it was a tape here, maybe a 7" there, now every week brings a new slab of Ducktails' twisted tropical pop, but hell, we're not complaining one bit.
Especially this time, as Landscapes might just be one of the strangest Ducktails record yet, The first track is what we've come to expect, and dig big time, swirling lo-fi, tropical soft fuzz pop, antiquated drum machine, warbly synths, playful woozy sun dappled melodies, plenty of tape hiss and amp buzz, definitely raw and muddy but also weirdly lush.
That, however, is just the first song, from there on out, Ducktails bounces wildly from sound to sound, all held together by a strange hard to describe thread that runs through all the songs here, keeping this from being just a mish mash of sounds and songs, and instead smearing it into a crazy yet cohesive dizzying drift through some seriously tweaked eighties retro future fuzz Ducktails dream pop. Weird buzzing Eastern sounding new age gives way to some groovy hard pop, with warped guitars, lots of flange, rad leads, like an alternative dimension instrumental lo-fi Loverboy (?), before switching gears and unfurling some looped almost African sounding warble, which then transforms into fuzzy jangly blissed out garage pop, then falsetto crooned jangle and swoon, then a bit of bluesy bedroom slow jam and finally a wicked, twisted late night infomercial soundtrack, all of the sights and sounds in Ducktails' soundworld hazy and shimmery and otherworldly and gloriously washed out.
Gotta give it up to the folks at Drag City, they're (weird) music lovers after our own hearts, all right. Not only did they reissue the eccentric 1986 outsider "doom" "metal" "masterpiece", Animals, by one-man-band Duane Warr aka Dwarr (an album that we at aQuarius had previously made a Record Of The Week, back when we were ordering an earlier, self-released cd version directly from Dwarr himself, we might add), they have now reissued that album's predecessor, 1984's privately pressed Starting Over - which, despite its title, was in fact Dwarr's debut. Thereby proving that they didn't just put out Animals for a lark! They're serious about their love for Dwarr, and really think people should hear his stuff - and people should, we agree. Maybe not all people, but certainly people who appreciate the finer things in, well, wacked out, downer DIY psychedelia, occasionally dosed with Eddie Van Halen style guitar shred. It's the '60s in the '80s, the dark sides of both decades distilled down to a unique, entertainingly demented essence. And not just entertaining, but truly affecting.
Now, we hope you already have Animals (go read our rave review of that right now, if you haven't!). If you do have it, we probably only need say you want this too. If you don't, well, while we would have to say Animals is the #1 best Dwarr, this one comes close, certainly possessing a similar vibe, and since it was the man's first album, there's no reason not to start with it if you wish to delve into the weird world of Dwarr. In fact, depending on your inclinations, this one might just be a bit more accessible, as it's not so overtly metallic, but perhaps even more sparse and psychedelic (if possible). Super slow but for the soloing. Black Sabbath is perhaps less of an influence on this one, than Pink Floyd... Or at least, rather than riff monsters like "Iron Man" and "Electric Funeral", this one takes its cues from the mellower, pot-wreathed Sabbath numbers like "Solitude" and "Planet Caravan". This is a gentler, folkier Dwarr, sort of. But definitely druggy and proggy (like Captain Beyond, circa Sufficiently Breathless), very odd and home-brewed, and certainly sometimes heavy too. Well, always "heavy", maaaann.
The songs are moody and melancholic, with hushed, woeful vocals. The production is lo-fi, of course, with tinny, trebly guitars indulging in widdly, effect-drenched soloing. Heck, there's a gnarly two-minute instrumental called "Christmas Shopping" that sounds like something Mick Barr might do, overdosed on cough syrup! Or anyone remember the '90s Mexican prog/psych band Humus? Probably not, but it totally could be them. And is that a genius song title or what? We also like "Lonely Ecstasy" as a title, that's another one here. Well, he's got a lot of interesting ideas, that Dwarr. And, as with Animals, this has an amazing piece of album cover artwork, to match the music in outsidery strangeness.
Along with Sabbath and Floyd, another "ordinary" comparison we could make would be to, maybe, solo Steve Hillage in the '70s. And Hendrix is a likely influence (Dwarr's vocals on "I've Been Thinking" kinda remind us of Jimi). Uli Jon Roth's solo stuff, too?? But given an even more eccentric, living-in-his-mother's-basement makeover. Then there's the pantheon of other outsiders we love, with whom Dwarr totally belongs... Michael Yonkers, Bobb Trimble, Todd Tamanend Clark, and more recently, and possibly more precisely too due to the doom metal element, Tony Tears.
Ok, enough said really. Either we've piqued your interest, or your life will stay sadly Dwarr-free. And again, if you're already a fan, you'll want this for sure!
Hmmm. Maybe 25 years from now Drag City will be reissuing Fastest albums too...
Despite being called Elder, the guys in this stoner/doom trio look pretty young! Nevertheless, this is their 2nd full length for the quite reliable Meteorcity label. We actually never listed Elder's first, self-titled album, from back in 2008, that one somehow slipped by, for whatever reason, but hope to make up for that by highlighting this new one, which we do dig big time, particularly 'cause of how it possesses a blissful lightness within its considerable heaviness.
And it's worth pointing out that, like a lot of things we list, it's by choice, we didn't have to list it y'know, there's lots of other things we could have listed instead, but it's something we liked enough to go to the trouble of ordering in and writing up to share with you 'cause we think you'd really like it too - well in this case, especially if you're into the stoner/doom sounds like we are.
They traffic in extended bouts of churning, blown-out heaviness, sludgey and psychedelic, with lumbering riffs, wailing guitars, hypnotic rhythms, and some nice, almost folky melodies (the 12 minute title track has some bits in it that remind us of early Wishbone Ash!). Theirs is not exactly a groundbreaking style, but boy do they bring it all together and do it right. And even though they're from Massachusetts, they've got the desert-y vibe down (these kids obviously having consumed much Kyuss), heavied up further to swing with the likes of Electric Wizard, Yob, Sleep, UFOmammut, and Boris (note the similar Roger Dean inspired logo). The vocals here are mostly an echoed afterthought, with the urgent instrumental unfurling of that desert-y doom being their main mode of mesmerization.
While the whole disc delivers those goods, they perhaps save the best for last, "Knot", another epic at 11:56 (well, all their songs are pretty darn long), which somehow seems to channel the essence of some of Elders' elders - ye olde '70s proto-metallers that is - into its bulldozing rifferama.
We've noticed a lot of customers going a little Fastest crazy recently. Which doesn't surprise us. In fact, we were so nuts for Fastest, we made his Theme album our Record Of The Week one week. Although considering what Fastest actually sounds like, maybe we are a little surprised. It is, as we've explained in the past, some of the most fantastically twisted, and utterly polarizing music we've heard in ages. Like all the best art, there's no middle ground with Fastest. There are only two responses, the first, a baffled look on the face, and the thought that how could something like that exist and why would people want to listen to it. The second being, a baffled look on the face, and the thought that how could something like that exist and I MUST OWN EVERY SINGLE RECORD!!! And we're not exaggerating. While there may be a few folks out there who have indeed just bought one, maybe two, the majority of folks do indeed go nuts and order them ALL. This one might be designed more for you dabblers out there, as it's a sampler of sorts, featuring a couple tracks from each of the Fastest records, but we have to say, we've sold a bunch so far, and most to folks WHO ALREADY OWN ALL THE RECORDS!! Such is the power of Fastest. If by now, you're wondering what the heck we're on about, and haven't already checked out our Record Of The Week review for Theme, or or review of Into The Night, well, let us tell you all about the many joys of Fastest. This time it starts with the wonderfully redundant album title, MAGICMANCY, which yes, basically means 'magic magic', and this is indeed some magical musical magic. This one man bedroom band from the East Bay, seemingly armed with a guitar synth and a drum machine, creates some of the strangest music we've ever heard, it sometimes gets filed in the metal section, due in part to the very metal looking Fastest logo, but also because the vocals are a mysterious sort of black metal rasp, but the music is about as far from metal as it could get, Allan thinks it sounds like hip hop (no one else does), imagine warped synth melodies, sputtering stumbling rhythms, slipping from dark ominous creep, to sweetly melodic Legend Of Zelda style video game music, and back again, it's twisted, baffling and totally brilliant.
Check out opener "Blame", with it's wild free jazz blackened psych squall opening salvo which quickly gives way to some fuzzy synthy drift, the vocals here definitely almost rapped, the song constantly peppered with reprises of that opening squall, not to mention jagged shifts, from part to part, the sound buzzy and fuzzy, the vocals sounding very Lou Reed-ish here for sure. Then there's "Legend" with its pounded synth organ churn, it's mechanical drumming, dirgey and doomy, a little bit proggy, the grunted vocals all tangled up with the awesomely atonal synth buzz. "Foresee" offers up our favorite side of Fastest, wildly sputtery almost Indian sounding rhythms, haunting minor key melodies, the opening is dark and mysterious, but then it suddenly shifts into a fuzzy groove, again, constantly twisting and shifting, the sounds all over the place, often the song structured like changing channels, abrupt and off kilter. "Jetsound II" is one of our favorites, starting with the simulated rumble of jet sounds before slipping into a dreamy lilting little ditty that sounds like the final screen from some 8-bit video game, transformed into a sort of eighties soft rock ballad. We could go on, but by now you probably know if this is your cup of tea. For more about Fastest, and to feed what we can only imagine will blossom into a full blown obsession like it has in the rest of us, go check out the reviews of Theme and Into The Night elsewhere on the site. And for those who have resisted up until now, this might be the perfect way to ease your way in.
Brilliant and baffling. If you want all six of the other records too, just ask...
When beloved noise duo The Skaters broke up, the two partners went in drastically different directions sonically, with Spencer Clark taking his Monopoly Child Searchers in a more hazy, tribal, washed out direction, which wasn't really all that removed from the Skaters' sound, at its loveliest, at least. And James Ferraro going off the musical deep end, transforming into some sort of bizarro avant pop songsmith, his last record Night Dolls With Hairspray, exactly what the title might have you expecting, a tripped out, lysergic collection of tweaked lo-fi glam rock weirdness, which managed to be totally baffling, but pretty much totally irresistible at the same time. And while we were expecting more of the same on Farsidevirtual, Ferraro once again has mixed things up and managed to come up with something even MORE ridiculous, and again, a glorious car crash of a record, channeling the cheesiest parts of eighties music, sure he was sort of doing that before, but now it's like new age mixed with the sort of upbeat music that would accompany one of those workplace educational films, all swirly synths, programmed rhythms, weirdly funky grooves, all rendered in shades of super shiny, super well produced, gleaming ultra produced electro rock. Or something.
The opener "Linden Dollars" sounds like Shadowfax covering the theme from Peanuts, but given a little 21st century new age makeover. Then there's "Global Lunch" which just baffles all the way through, super cheesy synths, a woman asking if you want something or other beamed directly to your "I-Tablet", with faux strings, tinkling chimes, a melody played using those weird voice presets on synthesizers, then a solo played on a fake sitar, or the sitar setting on a synth, while male vox are clipped and sent stuttering off into the distance, and then finally the song builds to a crazy climax with a wild sax solo, and some fuzzy electronic bass, it's literally some of the craziest shit we've ever heard. The whole record sounds like library music from 1985, composed and recorded for infomercials, straight to video rom-coms, and third tier sporting events, and if that seems like we're bagging on it, we're totally not, we're just baffled by how someone could even conceive of making music like this in the 21st century, how they would make these sounds, and why the hell we can't stop listening to it.
Packaged in the usual garishly futuristic sleeve, with thick printed cardstock insert and a download coupon too!
Gauntlet Hair's Out� Don't single on Mexican Summer might just be the best slab of post Animal Collective pop we've heard. Certainly our favorite. If any band spawned a million wannabes, it's Animal Collective, but few of those wannabes managed to take that sound and make it their own, unlike this duo from Colorado, who somehow feel more like a band that just happens to share some of the same influences, more than a band who wants to be AC. That single was pretty much prefect, a barrage of echo drenched noise pop, super reverbed soaring vocals, tribal rhythms, programmed beats, weird convoluted, almost proggy arrangements, hand claps, tripped out production, crazy hooks, fuzzy bass, chiming crystalline guitars, all of that stuff is still present here on the full length, the band expanding their sound to be even more hazy and druggy and dreamy, from the opening track, the blissfully propulsive "Keep Time", whose sound is so dense and layered that it takes headphones to hear everything that's going on, all the weird bits of skitter, the subtle harmonies, the music sounds like one of those photos when you shoot right into the sun, all shimmering sunspots and prismatic glimmer, this is total alien summer dream pop, and the more we listen to it, the less it seems to have any connection to the Animal Collective. "Top Bunk" wraps spiraling melodies around a dirgey groove, the multiple vocals all tangled up, the main riff twisted and swirly, the song like some sonic popsicle melting in the sun, warm and sweet, gorgeously warped and woozily washed out, "Mop It Up" adds some heft to the sound the vocals effortlessly slipping into a dreamy falsetto, a driving big beat, and some thick ropy basslines underneath soaring Big Country like guitars, all blurred and smeared into another stretch of sun dappled psychedelic outsider poppiness that we can't get enough of. Thankfully there's plenty more where that came from. New pop fave big time!
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!!
Hey, all right! This British band is back, at long last, with their 2nd album, and once again sound like a blast from the past (the past circa 1972 or so) even though they're from this day and age. We're almost sorta surprised they're not from Sweden, usually it's Swedish bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, and Noctum who do the bellbottomed retro-rawkin' thing this damn well, but heck the bands Gentlemans Pistols most sound like - Sabbath and Zeppelin - were from England, so it's in their blood after all. We wuz big fans of their self-titled debut a few years back, and are damn happy to hear 'em kicking out the jams once more, this time with new axe slinger the one and only Bill Steer (Carcass, Napalm Death, Firebird) on board, GP's upping the ante on all others in the realm of '70s styled stoner rock with their wailing vox, crunchy fuzz guitar riffage, and hard to beat bouncy energy. They're delivering the goods here, is what we're sayin'. A dozen new songs, all catchy and heavy and authentically '70s proto-metal sounding, they could hold their own with Pentagram and Hard Stuff and Leaf Hound and Highway Robbery, etc.... and they've got a sweaty muscularity to 'em that makes 'em more of a powerful proposition than just some kind of imitation or approximation. They're real, and rockin'. A ripping good time. Another one of those bands, in our view, that should be HUGE, and would be if we ran the rock n' roll world! F'ing recommended.
Hildur Gudnadottir has such a way with the cello, able to create such utterly moving music that is filled with nuance and texture but that is also so deeply emotional. Hailing from Iceland, Gudnadottir's resume includes collaborations and partnerships with the likes of Pan Sonic, Mum, Sigur Ros, Angel, BJ Nilsen, etc. It's so nice to get to hear her take center stage, carefully crafting a sound that is about as moody and beautiful as music really gets. Perfect for those eternal gray days we are faced with so often in San Francisco, this is a record we put on when we just want to get lost in the fog and haze. There is very nice and subtle processing throughout the album as well, and here and there Gudnadottir tries her hand at the zither with stunning results. Johann Johansson adds organ on a few tracks as well, and fans of HIS best work as well as music by folks like Sylvain Chauveau, Philip Glass, Michael Cashmore, Joan Jeanrenaud and Colleen should for sure check this out. Truly elegant and intensely resonant. And thus highly recommended!
Ripping heavy metal infused with ornate Queen-like pop smarts, in support of lyrical concerns that 99 percenters could rally around? Hmm, that could only be the new album from San Francisco's Hammers Of Misfortune! It's interesting to think, that 17th Street might be the very first record by these guys (and gals) that lots of people will be exposed to, on account of 'em now being on a "big" label, the venerable Metal Blade, who besides putting out this new record, also reissued Hammers entire back catalog last year. What will those newbies make of it, a bold, brash, bombastic, very very "musical", progged-out opus that's part power metal, part pop, part political commentary??
However, most folks reading this are probably already familiar with Hammers, perhaps possessors of the preceding four entries in their discography (or 5 or maybe even 6, actually, depending on how you count 2008's double album Fields/Church Of Broken Glass, as well as the archival release of their early material recorded under the name Unholy Cadaver). So this review is mostly directed those Hammers fans, AQ customers who have been following 'em over the years like we have, and are aware of all the various the lineup changes, and stylistic shifts (raspy black metal influences out, '70s Hammond organ driven prog in) that have become part of the Hammers saga. (If you are a newbie, we suggest you get The Bastard first, then check out their others.)
But, while 2001's The Bastard remains our favorite HoM release (heck, Andee here originally put it out on his label tUMULt, right?), we are definitely finding a lot to like about what Hammers have turned into ten years on. They remain a brilliant band, if an indulgent one - but then that's one of the perks of prog, isn't it?
As Hammers fans have come to expect, this is chock full of intricate, incredible guitarwork. Lots of vintage sounding Hammond organ in there as well, those ivories tinkled by a classically trained pianist, juxtaposed with technical thrash velocities. And soaring, quasi-operatic vocals of course, too... speaking of which, that's one of the most significant aspects to mention about this new album, that among the lineup changes since the last one, they have a new male vocalist who might finally fill the void left by the departure of Slough Feg's Mike Scalzi after 2006's The Locust Years. New frontman Joe Hutton is a more than capable singer, in fact he's quite good, and while he doesn't sound exactly like Scalzi, there's a quality to his voice that old fans who miss Scalzi in the band will appreciate.
He's not their new 2nd guitar player though, that'd be Leila Abdul-Rauf, formerly of blackened death metallers Saros, also of Vastum - who in addition to being a shredder who can hold her own playing those harmonies with Hammers founder John Cobbett, turns out to have a nice "clean" singing voice (she did the cookie monster thing in Saros!), filling the female 'diva' role now in Hammers - though these new songs, with Hutton up front, definitely place more emphasis on the male vocal part, a good thing we think. And he's certainly given some infectiously melodic material to wrap his pipes around, as it were.
We're probably notorious for finding buried 'poppiness' in all sorts of not very overtly poppy music, but don't think we'll get much argument here when we say that while Hammers have always been melodic, this is definitely their poppiest outing yet. To the point that we can almost imagine 'em being played on the radio, and could even kinda compare some of this to the likes of, uh, Journey, at times. Ferinstance, "The Grain", the album's first "single" (or at least, leaked YouTube track), is something that WILL definitely get stuck in your head, the chorus catchier than a really catchy thing, though it's over 7 minutes long, so forget the radio idea... Elsewhere on this album, Queen (and the many-layered guitars of Brian May) are a good comparison. You'll hear that on the heartwrenching piano ballad "Summer Tears", a moody one... Going beyond Queen, the sprightly likes of "The Day The City Died" gets almost into Sparks territory, even! Lest that not sound very "metal", don't worry, the frantic charge of "Romance Valley" amongst other stormers here should be enough to demonstrate that 17th Street is totally deserving of having the old school bloody axe Metal Blade logo emblazoned on its sleeve.
Conceptually (and being Hammers, you know there's concepts!), well, all their other albums came out during the heinous reign of George W. Bush. Now the class warfare is more the focus than the so-called War On Terror. And guess what? This is thus the first, and doubtless only, protest prog-metal album aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement (Occupy 17th Street!?). One of the songs, "Staring (The 31st Floor)", is about the collapse of Lehman Brothers, for gosh sake.
With the demise of Ludicra, Hammers are now lead guitarist and main songwriter John Cobbett's only going concern. And there was a lot of pressure on, but we think Cobbett & Co. rose to the occasion. Though it's hard to gauge what other folks will think of this, as no other bands really sound anything like Hammers do these days.
Available on both cd (digipack) or deluxe double gatefold vinyl, 180 gram, 45rpm for maximum fidelity!! The vinyl version features an extra 7 minute track, "Salt", right in the middle of the first side. And furthermore, the mastering job on the vinyl is said (by the band) to sound better, though we haven't yet made that determination ourselves.
Fallout is one of those reissue labels whose gargantuan output has some quality control issues but when they strike gold, we're always, like their catchphrase, blown away. Recent Fallout gems have been Malachi, Friar Tuck and Fraser and Debolt, but when this Harumi record came in, we knew it had to be good. And boy, is it! Recorded in New York in 1967 by Tom Wilson who helmed records by The Velvet Underground, Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel, the self-titled debut of Japanese musician and singer Harumi is one of the best instances of East-meets-West influences. Acid-tinged fuzzy folk pop with lots of phase shifting and reverbed vocals largely played on a range of traditional Far Eastern instruments, this album features plenty of sample-heavy passages. The album is anchored by the two final tracks. One a mesmerizing 13 minute sitar-soaked spoken word piece called "Twice Told Tales of The Pomegranate Forest" and the other the 17 minute garage rocker, "Samurai Memories" featuring extended bits of conversation in Japanese from members of Harumi's family. Highest Recommendation!!
We had never heard (of!) these Chicago noise poppers before, but heck, their new record is on Hozac, home to the Wax Idols (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), as well as Black Bug, Fungi Girls, Puffy Areolas, Smith Westerns, Woven Bones, Super Wild Horses and loads more, so we had good reason to expect this might be right up our alley, and guess what? It most definitely is, fuzzed out jagged guitar noise pop, equal parts classic Pixies style pop and new fangled lo-fi scuzz pop garage rock, the guitar slipping from chiming and melodic to raw and crunchy, the vocals also melodic but still rough and raw, with some crazy killer hooks, just check out the opener "Motionless Drift", 100 seconds of buzz and jangle that you won't be able to get out of your head. But then there's tracks like "Future City", which is all synthy and fuzzy, and a little bit eighties new wave pop, but revved up a bit, and transformed into something just a bit noise poppier. The title track is a minute long blast of twang flecked fuzz pop bliss, with some super hooky guitar melodies and a sing-along chorus to die for. There's definitely a Ramones vibe too, maybe some Misfits too, and a gloomy vibe that has us thinking the Wipers, and Crystal Stilts, many of the songs barely cracking the minute mark, most not making it to two, which is plenty of time for these guys to pound and buzz and howl their hearts out, a heady hybrid of post punk, gloom pop and punk rock, that any fans of the above mentioned groups will most likely flip for. Definite contender for pop record of the year, another record we want to keep listening to instead of all the other things we're supposed to be reviewing.
One of the more amazing curios of the late sixties folk-rock era, this sole record by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester is a strange and heady amalgam of baroque pomp-rock, lilting folk-pop and experimental electronic weirdness. Henske is best known for a series of early folk-revival albums on Elektra, that featured her howling blues vocals and cabaret like wit. Yester, best known as a producer from an assorted array of folk and psychedelic bands including The Association, The Loving Spoonful, Tim Buckley (and more recently No Neck Blues Band!), made his debut as a musical artist and singer on this record. Originally released on Frank Zappa's Straight label (like those Alice Cooper albums we made Records Of The Week last time!), the album never did real well, but has always remained a cult treasure due to its genre-defying song styles and early psychedelic synthesizer experiments on the title track. Written in the voice of a dying star, Henske utilized an early vocoder device for the vocal tracks which also features Moogs and Theremins. Although it's the only track to feature that effect, it seems to fit right in with the rest, as no two songs are quite alike. That might make it a hit and miss listen for those craving consistency, but those who like the more unpredictable corners of sixties music, this cult gem is well worth it.
French one man psychedelic loopscaper High Wolf finds his way onto our pal JW's Holy Mountain label, and offers up another mesmerizing collection of collaged soundscapes and rhythmic mesmer, but unlike on past records where the High Wolf sound was dense, and noisy, a little chaotic, a Birchville Cat Motel like slow build to a dense layered soft cacophony, the sounds here are much more blissed out and dubby, very rhythmic with a bit of an Eastern vibe, the opening track especially sounds like a more lysergic Muslimgauze, with some sitar like buzz and tribal hand drums woven into the song's blurred soft swells and spidery melodies, it's easily the dreamiest thing we've heard from HW, and we definitely wish it had gone one way longer. The second track offers up more of the same, with a bit more effects, muted percussion, some warm fuzzed out shimmer, all in a haze of washed out effects, until the low end swoops in, thick and dense, synthy and warbly, a strange fuzzy pulse laid over that initial rhythm, a dark raga like kosmische sound that drifts and shimmers hypnotically until the song finally winds down.
Track three, "Raagini" begins all raga buzz, layered high end tones, but quickly blossoms into a sound more like the High Wolf of old, a gauzy expanse of mesmerizing buzz, but here the drones are laid over a strange sonar like pulse, which gives the otherwise nearly static buzz an otherworldly propulsion. "Kenya Sunset" is another one that starts off all Muslimgauze-y, looped and darkly rhythmic, ominous and cinematic, the surrounding sounds in constant motion, totally tranced out, the sort of thing we could listen to forever, but instead of going on forever, the song erupts into a wild psychedelic squall, that wraps itself around that pulsing rhythm, and rides it for the length of the track. And then finally, the nearly 14 minute "Haiti" smooths the looped rhythms into something much more abstract and droney, some spaced out psychedelic drift, that builds slowly into a warm washed out celestial swirl, all bleary and blurry and dreamy, but still shot through with some smoldering psychedelic guitar, the perfect closer to one of our favorite High Wolf records yet.
Includes a download coupon as well!
An obscure early '70s American power trio that we'd never heard of until a bootleg cd recently crossed our path. Intrigued by the cover photo of three long-haired stoner dudes, we checked it out (hoping for something akin to Sabbath or Budgie but perfectly aware that we were more likely to discover something more like unsuccessful ... wannabes). Lo! Highway Robbery turned out to be bonafide heavy-hitters, playing proto-metal in the Led Zep vein, with moments recalling Sabbath and the Who. Huzzah! Double huzzah, 'cause we then discovered that this, their only album (originally released by Capitol in 1973) had serendipitously just been reissued by Collectables, and we could share our discovery with the lucky patrons of Aquarius. It's almost all super heavy and rockin, despite the obligatory misguided pop efforts made by all not-metal-yet hard rockers of the era, it's got a singing drummer, they've got the look, what more do you want! Fans of current or vintage "stoner rock" should jump on this. Wow, it's always nice to find that there's stuff out there remaining to surprise us.
We first heard Boston post metal heavies on a recent split with fellow post metallers Rosetta, and were surprised by just how UNmetal these guys were, they're still heavy, but more like Katatonia or 'Radiohead' era Cave In, bombastic and epic, majestic and yeah, heavy, but clean vocals, soaring and dramatic (right down to some hazy dreamy female backup vox), the songs proggy and sprawling, unfurling brooding dramatic slow build verses, that build to massive crushing choruses, but never getting fully metal, instead blossoming into some sort of epic doom pop, the sound is a bit mathy too, and weirdly enough, some of the tracks remind us of Three Mile Pilot, albeit a much more metallic version, but the phrasing and hypnotic rhythms definitely draw from the same sonic well. As we mentioned in the review of that split with Rosetta, we can definitely see that this stuff might be too poppy and wimpy for a lot of metalheads, in fact, these guys opened up for some metal show here recently, and were definitely not appreciated, but hell, get these guys on a tour with Katatonia or Opeth or Lifelover, and people would be losing their mind. And really, this stuff could and should be all over the radio, the songs are that good, the production massive, the sound incredible, just like Cave In, if there were any justice in the world, these guys would be huge. And honestly, we weren't totally sold on these guys, but after a handful of listens, we find ourselves a little bit obsessed, playing this record like crazy. So, recommended if you like your metal tempered with plenty of poppiness, or alternately if you can handle your pop music on the seriously heavy side. A new favorite for sure.
Hopefully you already picked up the awesome collection of rare tracks by Turkish psych guitarist Erkin Koray that Sublime Frequencies recently released. If that put you in the mood for more vintage psych pop rock from Turkey, we've also just received this import disc of stuff by one of Koray's contemporaries, the late Cem Karaca, former member of Mogollar. His is a name that's certainly up there in the Anatolian rock pantheon, along with Erkin Koray, Baris Manco and Edip Akbayram.
Originally released in 1972, it compiled songs circa '69-'71, recorded for 45rpm singles by Karaca with his bands Kardaslar ("The Brothers") and Apaslar ("The Apaches"). The general tone of these tracks is towards the romantically, dramatically bombastic and orchestrated, with strings and horns and vocals that are almost operatic. He's like the Turkish Tom Jones at times... but there's some satisfying stabs of fuzz as well, and of course those irresistible Anatolian folk rhythms and melodies. While this disc isn't quite so killer as that Koray one, it's still pretty cool.
Cd booklet includes liner notes, photos, all that good stuff.
Uh, c'mon, how could this NOT be awesome? Sublime Frequencies never fails us, first off. AND we're already fans of vintage Turkish psych in general, guitarist/vocalist Erkin Koray in particular. So this release, with its excellent eyeballs-shooting-purple-rays-from-space-or-whatever cover painting, was eagerly anticipated at AQ. And yeah it's awesome. As the subtitle says, this consists of singles and rarities circa 1970-'77 from this Middle Eastern psych rock master, founder of "the first underground group of the Orient", a living legend whose career stretches back to the '50s. Rarities? Well, compiler Mark Gergis notes in the liners: "This collection features tracks not found on the many unauthorized Erkin compilations and LP reissues that have emerged in the west over the years." And indeed these eleven tracks were provided to Sublime Frequencies by Koray himself, sourced from his personal vinyl collection! So, listen up, 'cause this is the stuff Erkin wants us to hear, and well, if you're any sort of Turkish psych fan like us, you NEED to hear it. Tracks like "Kendim Ettim Kendim Buldum" and "Hadi Hadi Ordan" are going to make you very happy. Swirling and shimmering, twanging surfy electric saz (or is that oud?), melodic deep droning vocals, bellydancing folk motifs, stirring orchestration, and YES some wild blasts of psychrockguitar distortion, it's the exotic East (lots of East) meets West sort of thing we just love! While some of this is wonderfully moody, a lot of it rocks, all right, ferinstance just crank up "Krallar" (a '75 single from whence that striking cover image comes) with its especially dramatic vocals to match its uptempo urgency.
Digipack cd release for now, with a vinyl version due out in a couple of weeks as well. Is it too much to hope that Sublime Frequencies will get Erkin to undertake a Western tour like labelmate Omar Souleyman, one of these days...?
Thee latest blast of confusional sonic chaos from this sort-of black metal supergroup, featuring avant outsider axeman Mick Barr (Orthrelm, Ocrilim, etc.) and bass shredder Colin Marsten (Behold The Arctopus, Dysrhythmia, etc.) is Krallice album number three, the follow up to the awesomely titled Dimensional Bleedthrough, and it's pretty much another opus of epic, soaring and majestic, yet convoluted and confusional black metal as only these guys can play it. There are moments, where you might, MIGHT think this could be some other black metal band, but those moments pass, and before long, when the band lock into their blazing blasting fury. As with the other records, the real surprise is how melodic Krallice can be, judging from the pedigree, one might be forgiven for assuming this would be incredibly difficult, and it is, in some ways, but it's also weirdly catchy, a pretty good mix of classic black metalisms, and the player's obtuse and obviously idiosyncratic take on the genre. The sound this time around actually seems a lot cleaner, and arrangements a bit more straight ahead, and the melodies much more pronounced, and it definitely suits them, but just when we begin to think that, the song we're listening to will fracture into some impossible tangle, or some super tripped out sort-of guitar lead, before slipping right back into more soaring buzzing melodic black metal. Which is just fine with us. Be sure to check out the epic 15 minute closer "Forgiveness In Rot", which is maybe the most melodic thing they've done, with some impossible hooks, and some subtle poppiness, all woven into the buzzing and blasting, almost like Krallice channeling Alcest AND some sort of epic post rock!
So, Andee just asked the perennially valid question, when it comes to Lopez recordings at least, after coming up to the front of the shop and seeing this new cd on the counter, yet hearing 'nothing' coming from the speakers: "Are you actually listening to this right now?" With a sizable portion of Lopez' nearly 300 compositions being sub-audible at best, it is in fact not always a bad idea to pose that question. It should be stated that the above query was made between tracks one and two, when Lopez was enjoying some downtime; but aside from this brief moment, Lopez is much more forthright in presenting a goodly amount of immersive sound.
For Elektra Bidasoa, he and Xabier Erkizia (better known as half of the AQ-endorsed noise-rock outfit Billy Bao!) slogged down the Bidasoa River in Spain, making recordings from the various hydroelectric plants located on that waterway. Earlier in 2011, the two presented an installation of their findings intermeshing the two sets of recordings; but here, their findings are presented in parallel. While both Lopez and Erkizia were drawing from the same source material - industrial hum, hiss, drone, and klank - they arrive at considerably different compositions. For Lopez, the whorl of the turbine, the hum of the circuit board, and the hiss of the cooling unit all become sustained elements in a gradually evolving composition of dehumanized activity. Such pneumatic and automated systems can function rightly on their own, seemingly independent of the human hand; and Lopez speaks to the engineered functionality as an aestheticized language - a poetry of the sterile and antiseptic.
Erkizia is far more in awe of those machines than Lopez', presenting his recordings with considerable dynamic force. Along with the machined drones that Lopez uses, Erkizia occasionally turns his microphones to the water which drives those dams, at times sloshing at the riverbank and at times roaring through the massive concrete sluices that guide the water through the turbines themselves. This contrast from the bursts of activity from either source, poses a threat of electrocution. Coupled with the intense explosions that Erkizia uses in his concrete-styled composition, this work can be downright scary at times.
One of the most emotionally devastating and beautiful records of all time. We couldn't be more happy that this classic album by Low has finally been reissued on vinyl. It's an album really made to be listened to in the solitary refuge of your bedroom, so hopefully your turntable is in there. Produced by Shimmy Disc mastermind Kramer, and released in 1995, this will always be the way we hear the sound of Low when we close our eyes and think of all the times their music has been the soundtrack during times of heartache, confusion, and despair. The pinnacle and defining moment of slowcore, every single song on Long Division slowly creeps its way into your subconscious. No other bands could use such a minimalist approach and achieve such a heavy & haunting aura. Songs like "Violence", "Caroline", "Shame", and "Alone", are not only some of the best Low songs ever recorded, but they are simply some of the most emotionally impacting songs of the last two decades.�
Long Division is not a record you put on in the background or when you're just hanging out with friends, this is a record you listen to during moments of introspection, of soul searching, loneliness and sorrow yet they're also infused with a sense of hope. Music doesn't get more emotionally intense or elegant then this. A perfect album!
Portable mp3 players and iTunes and all the digital music out there has definitely changed the way we listen to music. Many folks barely listen to whole albums anymore, instead making playlists, or setting their devices on shuffle, and while in some ways, that's a bummer, that the traditional concept of THE ALBUM, seems to be slowly fading from the collective consciousness, in other ways, it's actually gotten lots of folks to listen to music they've had forever, but had maybe forgotten all about, and shuffle is the best thing to happen to deep cuts EVER. How often does some track start playing, and you're forced to check and see who it is, and it ends up being some band you love, some record you love, but it's a track hidden away mid record. And the other thing we've noticed is how much you end up listening to records that are in your iTunes RIGHT AFTER one of your favorite records, there's that record you always listen to, which inevitably leads right into whatever comes next alphabetically, and bam, that next record is suddenly a new favorite too. Something similar happened at work, where one of the computers had an iTunes full of music, and there were certain records we listen to all the time, and like above, one of those records would play right into the next, and EVERY time, we would have to check and see what it was, and every time, it was a band called Magdalena Solis, so we checked the store, and the website, and we had never carried it. A mystery of sorts. Quickly solved when we discovered that it was sent to us by two awesome aQ customers, Wouter and Terje, thinking we'd like it, and boy did we, we LOVED it in fact, so much so that we tracked down the band, and then the label, and finally got actual copies for ourselves, and for YOU. And trust us, it was well worth the wait.
The sound of Magdalena Solis hovers somewhere between psychedelic space rock and kosmische krautdrone, which means it's pretty much EXACTLY what we love, hazy, washed out drifts of dense distorted wah wah guitars, swirling FX, Eastern melodies, hushed angelic female vox, minimal drums, most of the tracks, pulsing and drifting and shimmering, and when there are drums, it's more sort of a blissed out, percussion laced spacedronedrift, take "Seven Boys And Seven Girls" the drums a simple motorik pulse, the main melody looped and cyclical, the whole thing wrapped in effects-heavy swirls of distorted synth and psych guitar buzz, the sound building to a seriously blown out cacophony, only to settle right back down again, leading into the comparatively contemplative "Cities Crumbling Planets Growing", a sitar soaked stretched of billowy low end, and distant sci-fi squiggle, barely there guitars slowly build into something, thick and fierce and spaced out and dreamily distorted.
The whole record is a series of smoldering slow build space drone epics, heavily layered landscapes of swirling synths, wheezing organs, skittery percussion, lush warm sonic swells, all wreathed in thick swaths of serious psych guitar, the sound constantly shifting from tranquil and dreamlike, to blown out and druggy/droney and way tripped out, heady and hypnotic and easily some of the best kaleidoscopic kosmische space/drone/psych we've heard. Most definitely recommended for fans of White Hills, Grails, the Alps, Expo 70, Gnod, Carlton Melton, Bong, Lumerians, White Noise Sound, Spacemen 3 and other droney, druggy psychedelic drifters...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, comes with a download code.
Last year we got turned on to the music of Marc Manning, and we instantly fell in love with his wonderful music. He's got quite the touch for creating dark, haunting and mesmerizing tracks both on his own and with his band Tied To Branches. His newest solo outing might be his moodiest release yet, slow and creeping songs with buried vocals, and a dark tinged shoegaze vibe that we love so much. Imagine tracks by Spiritualized and Felt slowed way down and doused in heavy sonic molasses and an extra narcotic haze. We also think folks who dig records by Rameses III, Jon Poras, Windy & Carl, Scott Tuma, and Grouper should check this out right away. This is one of those awesome records that makes just as much sense to listen to first thing in the morning or in the depths of a bleak, sleepless night.
Slowcore might have disappeared, but damn, Manning is doing an amazing job of bringing it back. But this is no rehash as he brings synths, rustic guitar, drone and dream pop all together in a seamless mix, making for an album that's going to be near our side all winter long. Highly recommended!
One of two new Tapeworm's this week, as in limited cassette releases on UK tape label The Tapeworm, the other is a bit of Tesla coil rhythmatism from NYC audio alchemist Lary Seven, and this one, a selection of data driven sounds created by aQ fave Stephan Mathieu. And we do mean these are actually the sounds of data, with Mathieu taking pictures of his equipment in the studio and then transforming that data into music, or more specifically sound, as while this strange array of grinding static, crunchy rhythms, looped thrum, screeching sine waves and modem-malfunction crunch and stutter may be music to our ears, this is a pretty challenging chunk of abstract industrial rhythms, and Raster-Noton style beep-click-buzz, but raw and blown out and in the red, sound that seem to be pushing the speakers to their very limit, but in doing so, creating a strange sort of low fidelity primitive electronica, a jagged collage of Merzbowish grey noise and crumbling electro-glitch buzz, the sound snowballing into thick squalls of corrosive almost psychedelic sounding blur, but just as often splintering into a strange sort of caveman krautrock, rendered in shades of hum and hiss, peppered with jagged shards of electronic gristle and barbed streaks of smeared hiss.
Definitely pretty far removed from our favorite Mathieu records, but pretty curious and cool nonetheless, a noise record, but one that's dynamic, and rhythmic, surprisingly engaging and listenable in a way much noise is most definitely not.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, already sold out and out of print at the label, so these are the last copies EVER.
An off-kilter hard-hitting soul masterpiece, Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse was the cap to a strange topsy turvy career. Starting off in the early sixties with suave soul-pop hits like "A Hundred Pounds of Clay" and "Tower of Strength", McDaniels became more successful as a song-writer than a singer, with his songs taking on a more conscious and political vibe. While he did write the RnB hit, "Feel Like Making Love" for Roberta Flack, he also wrote the heavy groover, "Compared To What" for Les McCann and Eddie Harris which became a hit for the black protest movement. Signing to the Atlantic Label in the seventies, McDaniels' recorded two of the perhaps most uncompromising political soul records, Outlaw in 1970 and Headless Heroes in 1971. Of the two, Headless Heroes is the one we keep coming back to, because what makes it most unique is its unusual form. Combining elements of jazz, funk, and rare groove, with some acid-psych and folk thrown into the mix, the result is a heady and allegorical rallying cry against social injustice through a veil of nightmarish imagery and narcotic sounds. While not a hit upon its initial release, it has grown in influence over the years especially in the nineties, when much of this record was sampled in hip-hop circles. Much tougher in form than similarly themed records by Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, McDaniels' records were harder to market because of their rather scathing views of powerless humanity on the brink of depravity. This is really what's going on!
At last, for those of you whose turntables are built sturdily enough to withstand the massive heaviness, here's some VINYL from former AQ Record Of The Weekers, Megaton Leviathan, those droning Portland doomsters who, while as heavy as their name so inadequately attempts to indicate, are surprisingly somnolently mesmeric too!
Released on their own label, it's a limited lp pressing of their original 2009 demo tape, five tracks, around 34 minutes of doooOOOOOooooom. The first two tracks, "Water Wealth Hell On Earth" and "Guns And LSD" both were later rerecorded for their cd debut that we made ROTW, while the other 3, "Repeating Patterns Of Love", "Time Fades", and "Turlock", all appeared redone on their 2011 demo cassette as well. So, no new songs, but if you don't have the original demo, you haven't heard these versions before, and in any case this is the only way to weigh your turntable down with their doom, as we said... though as we also have said, ML's doom is a special sort of "soft doom", as much spacey slowcore shoegaze as it is anything else, uniquely so even on these, their debut recordings.
From the same label that brought us the amazing electro-metal / glitch-grind of Whourkr (whose debut is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and whose newest records we made our Record Of The Week a while back), comes this equally baffling and brilliant chunk of glitched out electro deathgrind hypermetal from the oddly monikered Mulk, a one man band who basically makes some of the most twisted, complex and convoluted metal ever. With head spinning drum programming, wild gouts of lightspeed blasts and inhuman flurries of beats, chopped up and sliced and diced and reassembled into furious bursts of outsider deathmetal weirdness, laced heavily with strange effects and electronics, the sound constantly stuttering and skittering and transforming, the beats splintering into weird blasts of buzz, the sound glitching out almost as if your cd player were melting, or imagine playing a Morbid Angel record and an Immolation record at 78rpm on two tapes that were recorded on a busted up boombox on old tapes that had been left on the dash in the sun. It's like a futuristic cybergrind Faxed Head! Theres definitely a big drill and bass electronic component, but instead of mixing beats and riffs, this guy mashes them together into a single raging sound. It almost sounds like a death metal record made by Venetian Snares. It's hard to describe, if you dig Whourkr, you definitely need this, and if you're after the heaviest, weirdest most fucked up death metal / deathgrind record EVER, this is most definitely it.
Latest from SF garage pop wrecking crew Thee Oh Sees, originally meant to be released as two separate eps, and presented here as a sort of two on one, it's another killer collection of crazy varied weirdo pop radness from John Dwyer and his compatriots, opening with what might be their most classic sounding pop jam to date in the form of the first ep's title track, all driving wandering bassline, echoey vox, simple shuffling propulsive drumming, and Dwyer's distinctive croon, not to mention all manner of tangled guitar melodies, and a bit of sax skronk right at the beginning, which leads right into a fat fuzzy chunk of Stax infused organ driven fuzz rock that kills, the trippy vox transforming it into something that could only be Thee Oh Sees, with a cool sing along chorus, and some seriously fierce guitaring, in fact, this is one of the best sounding Oh Sees records yet, thick and crunchy and fuzzy. But like all their records, the sound veers dramatically all over the place, "Robber Barons" is all lush and fuzzed out, almost shoegazey, the sounds blurred into a hazy back drop for some surprisingly sweet vocals, and with a killer main melody, which leads right into the punky pop stomp of "Chem-Farmer" with its organ stabs, loping bassline and big drums, it's like the 'break down' of some classic sixties soul groover transformed into a whole song, and finally Carrion Crawler finishes off with a short blast of killer fuzzy psych pop.
Which is where The Dream takes over, ep #2, and while they were both recorded during the same session, we were maybe expecting something totally different, but it's like Carrion Crawler part two, the opening title track another winner, with Dwyer going full falsetto, and the organs buzzing all over the place, the sound getting seriously sixties for sure. The rest of The Dream seems to be a bit more lo-fi and reverby, "Crack In Your Eye" might be our favorite, reminding us of the Crystal Stilts, that sort of dour organ driven downer pop, but Thee Oh Sees add some extra tangles of psych guitar, but keep it droney and fantastically hypnotic, before finishing off with "Heavy Doctor" a fuzzy jangle fest, based around a wicked riff, and some more of that super active driving bass, Dwyer's vocals riding above the crunch and buzz, with some super catchy melodies, and some seriously rad psychguitar.
What more to say? Fans already know they want this, and odds are, even if you've never heard these guys before, once you do, you'll be a fan as well...
The Oregon Painting Society is a collective from Portland which features Matt Carlson of Golden Retriever, Birch Cooper and Barbara Kinzle (both of The Slaves and The Greys), filmmaker Brenna Murphy, and Jason Traeger. During a frenzied three year period, OPS presented peculiar happenings through elaborate installations of discarded materials reconfigured into weird electronic instruments. The images of Cruisn' - an installation / performance at the Appendix Project Space in 2010 - shows the five members wielding very strange objects, including a couple of black corncobs with connected to a salvaged folding table by way of guitar cables lending to the impression that these corncobs might be acting as some sort of theremin. Then there's a small wood-panelled platform covered in light switches and dimmers that one of the members is flipping off and on; and there's also a loom which seems to be grinding a large stick; and somebody wearing a low-rent Stellarc cybernetic suit whilst balancing on a bale of hay. The imagery is weird yet compelling in the deliberate low-rent / high-tech approach to hand-crafted instrumentation, and this tape is a documentation of the five performing on these objects.
So what does it all sound like? Circuit-bent boards, broken consumer electronics, malfunctioning amplifiers, and electronic-sound-kits all rewired into a huge tangle of spluttering noise, sick-tone, and static. Think David Tudor trying to work out what he did with all of the janky gear that Nautical Almanac scraped together from thrift stores and the basements of antiquated electronic stores. All of the blistering, scabrous, polydactyl blurts of 4-bit electronics are improvised into grotesque swarms that aren't all that far from the later Matthew Bower explorations of free-noise through Sunroof! Wild and wooly for sure, and you bet this is limited!
Record number two from weirdo eighties new wave revivalists Pink Skull, and it takes up right where their last record Endless Bummer, left off, mixing post punk with lysergic dream pop, eighties funk, and the occasional bit of housey disco, equally influenced by Television, the Fall, P.I.L, Lou Reed and New Order. Opener "Hot Bubblegum" sounds like something you might have heard some tight pants-ed spiky hair combo unfurl from the stage at CBGB's circa 1985, while "Mu" sounds like some sort of brooding summer funk ballad, laced with groovy synths, squiggly feedback, lo slung fuzz bass, thee's even a sax solo (those pop up all over the place). The awesomely titled "Either The Luminescent Wallpaper Goes, Or I Do" almost sounds like some sort of Zombi thing, pulsing soundtracky synths and programmed robotic funk, while "Janine Aubergine" sounds like later period David Bowie. "Bee Nose" is like a groovier M83, all shoegazey and blissed out, but still funky and fuzzy, "Summer Reading" sounds like something you would have heard on 120 Minutes, and "Late Night Eggs" is total Carpenter worship, woozy and moody and darkly dramatic, we could go on, but you definitely get the vibe, this is some twisted retro eighties synth pop weirdness, that should most definitely appeal to fans of James Ferraro, M83, Autre Ne Veut, D'eon, Greatest Hits, Gary War, Laurel Halo, Majeure, Trust, Soft Metals, etc.
We almost thought we would never get to list this. When we first got it Vibrant New Age in stock, it flew out the door and we were never able to get enough copies back in to review, depriving us of the opportunity to gush about how much we love this album. Luckily we were finally able to get our hands on a stack of these, a record that ranks near the top of the list of the awesome sounds Not Not Fun has been releasing over the last few years by folks like Sun Araw, Ducktails, Maria Minerva, and LA Vampires. After a slew of limited run cassettes, cd-r's as well as splits with LA Vampires and Sex Worker, Vibrant New Age finds Psychic Reality really taking her sound to the next level. Stuttered synths and analog electronics creating a sound that blasts with radiant color and a warped left-field pop sensibility. In fact the record sort of sounds like what it might be like to show up at a late night dance party only to discover a secret side room filled with smoke, candles, and languid bodies brushing up against each other creating magical sparks that bring about a shift of energy. Like our favorite parts of Gang Gang Dance and Peaking Lights, or how we daydream a collaboration between Fever Ray, Throbbing Gristle and Lizzy Mercier Descloux would sound. Intoxicating, intense and full of a haunting potency.
Jump on this fast, as we're not sure if we will be able to get more once this batch is gone.
